30-second summary:

• Low-code and no-code technologies are becoming increasingly popular among businesses of all sizes, and a leading example is JSON LD
• They allow businesses to create websites and applications with little to no coding experience
• There are many benefits including saving businesses a lot of time and money
• They can also help your SEO efforts by presenting linked data in a format that’s meaningful to search engines

A burning challenge in a world of IoT and technology is the need to stay ahead of the curve. As more and more businesses adopt cutting-edge technologies, those that lag behind will inevitably be left behind. This is especially true in the field of SEO services, but also in website development and design. In order to stay competitive, businesses must constantly update their websites with the latest trends and technologies.

A prime example of this is low-code and no-code technologies. These technologies are becoming increasingly popular among businesses of all sizes. But what exactly are they? And how can they help you get ahead of the competition?

In this article, we’ll take a detailed look at low-code and no-code technologies. We’ll also explore how they can be used to improve your website in a number of different ways.

What are low-code and no-code when it comes to website tech?

Low-code and no-code technologies are exactly what they sound like. They allow businesses to create websites and applications with little to no coding experience.

Low-code and no-code platforms are becoming increasingly popular for website creation and management. These platforms allow users to create and manage websites without having to write code or hire a developer. This can be a great way to save time and money, especially if you’re not familiar with coding.

How do these low-code and no-code platforms actually work?

Typically, low-code and no-code platforms provide an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, similar to a traditional website builder tool. This makes it possible to create a website without any coding knowledge.

In some cases, you may need to use a bit of code to add advanced features or integrations. However, for the most part, these platforms allow you to create a fully functioning website without writing any code.

What are the benefits of using a low-code or no-code platform?

First and foremost, they save businesses a lot of time and money. Rather than hiring developers to create a website from scratch, businesses can use low-code or no-code platforms to do it themselves.

Not just that, these platforms are also much easier to use than traditional coding languages. They allow businesses to create complex websites and applications without the need for extensive training.

Finally, low-code and no-code technologies are constantly evolving. This means that businesses can easily keep their websites up-to-date with the latest technologies, without having to make any changes themselves.

What are the opportunities for SEO?

One of the great things about using low-code or no-code methods is that it opens up new opportunities for SEO. Opportunities include:

• Better target customers through local SEO – Local SEO is a great way to improve your website’s visibility in search engines, especially if you’re targeting customers in a specific geographic area.
• Optimized code – One of the best ways to improve your website’s ranking in search engines is to ensure that it loads quickly. Low-code and no-code methods can help you do this by optimizing your website’s code and eliminating unnecessary elements.
• Create better-targeted pages – Another way to improve your website’s ranking is to create pages that are more relevant to your customers’ needs. By using low-code or no-code methods, you can easily create custom pages that are tailored to your customers’ needs.

All of these opportunities can help you improve your website’s ranking in search engines, which will ultimately lead to more traffic and customers.

These are just a few of the ways that code or low-code methods can help you get smart about your website optimization.

Does Google like websites that use low-code tech?

Yes! In fact, Google has stated that they “see great potential in low-code development.” They see it as a way to make website creation more accessible and efficient.

Google also notes that low-code platforms can help improve website performance since they often come with built-in optimization features. This means that websites created with low-code methods are more likely to rank higher in search results.

How do low-code and no-code impact user experience?

One of the benefits of using low-code or no-code methods is that they can improve your website’s user experience. This is because page data can be better organized and structured for search engines, meaning that users are more likely to find what they’re looking for.

Low-code example: using JSON LD

A good example of low-code is JSON LD. This is used for linked data and means that you don’t need to put unnecessary code on your site as it is all done in the background. It also can speed up page load times as there is less code for the browser to load. JSON LD is a great way to save time with on-page SEO and create better-targeted pages.

What is JSON LD?

JSON LD is a type of code schema that can be used to add structured data to a web page. This structured data can be used by search engines to better understand the content on a page.

It can replace traditional HTML tags and provide more information about a website’s content. This means that JSON LD can be used to improve load times, local SEO, content, and images.

What’s the difference between JSON LD and plain JSON?

• JSON LD is a type of code schema that can be used to add structured data to a web page. This structured data can be used by search engines to better understand the content on a page.
• Plain JSON, on the other hand, is simply a format for storing and transmitting data. JSON LD takes it one step further by utilizing JSON for website data.

JSON LD compatibility

For the developers among you, JSON LD has a wide range of compatibilities:

• Javascript
• Java
• Rust
• Python
• C#
• Typescript
• Ruby
• Erlang / Elixir
• Go
• PHP

Four key benefits of JSON LD

Low-code techniques such as JSON LD have the potential to transform the performance of your web pages. Here are some benefits of using JSON LD:

1. Improved load times

One of the great things about JSON LD is that it can help improve load times. This is because JSON LD code is typically smaller and more efficient than traditional HTML tags. This means that your website will load faster and be more visible in search engines.

2. Improved local SEO

JSON LD can also be used to improve local SEO. This is because JSON LD code can provide more information about your website’s content.

This means that your website will be more relevant to customers in a specific geographic area. Examples of additional information include your website’s address, phone number, and hours of operation. And in ecommerce websites, product information such as pricing and availability.

3. Richer and better-formatted content

JSON LD can also be used to improve content. This is because JSON LD code can provide more information about the content on your website. This means that your website’s content will be more relevant to customers’ needs.

For example, if you’re a restaurant, you can use JSON LD to provide information about your menu, hours of operation, and location.

4. Better-performing images

JSON LD can also be used to improve images. This is because JSON LD code can provide more information about the images on your website, such as size and purpose. This means that your website’s images will be more relevant to customers’ needs and better formatted for SEO.

How does this help your SEO efforts?

Low-code technologies like JSON LD can make your SEO easier in a few key ways:

Save time

Low-code and no-code methods can save you a lot of time with on-page SEO. By using these methods, you can quickly and easily create well-structured and targeted pages that are easy for both users and search engines to understand.

Potential for more traffic

This can help you attract more traffic to your site and improve your chances of ranking high in search results.

Higher conversion rate

In addition, low-code and no-code methods can help you create pages that are more relevant to your customers’ needs. This means that you can attract more qualified leads and convert more sales.

Top tips for getting started with low-code and no-code on your website

Now that you know more about low-code and no-code methods, here are some tips to get started:

1. Start small – Don’t try to do too much at once. Choose one or two areas of your website to focus on first.
2. Don’t forget the basics – Make sure you still have a strong foundation in place with things like keyword research and competitive analysis.
3. Choose the right tools – There are a lot of different low-code and no-code tools available. Do your research to find the ones that are best for your needs.
4. Test, test, test – Always test your changes before you implement them on your live website. This will help you avoid any potential problems.
5. Monitor your results – Keep an eye on your website’s performance after you make changes. This will help you gauge the effectiveness of your efforts.
6. Get help if needed – If you’re not sure where to start or you need help with implementation, don’t hesitate to reach out to an experienced SEO professional.

Closing thoughts

Low-code and no-code methods can be a great way to improve your website’s SEO. These methods can save you time and help you create better-targeted pages. However, it’s important to remember that these methods should be used in addition to, not instead, the basics of SEO. But when used correctly, they can be a powerful tool in your SEO arsenal.

Joe Dawson is Director of strategic growth agency Creative.onl, based in the UK. He can be found on Twitter @jdwn.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The post Four ways to get smart with no-code or low-code methods: a detailed overview of JSON LD appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• Search engines are laser-focused on improving user experience and voice search plays an increasingly key role
• With 100+ global languages, people are prone to searching in their native language
• How do you optimize your website for multilingual search while keeping a natural and conversational tone?
• Atul Jindal accurately guides you through the process

Google is now recognizing 119 different languages on voice search. Which is great for user experience. But it makes ranking a bit more challenging for website owners, especially those who host multi-linguistic traffic. Website owners must act to cater to these people who are taking a different linguistic approach to search. That’s where multilingual SEO comes in, done with voice search in mind.

But before we begin digging deeper into multilingual SEO for voice search, let us first introduce the search of the future aka multilingual voice search.

What is Multilingual Voice Search?

With the evolution of technology, search engines like Google, Bing, Yandex, and others work towards enhancing their user experience and making the search easier than ever.

Keeping up with these efforts, they now let people talk to them in their own language, understand it and yield the results they were searching for.

Moreover, more than 23 percent of American households use digital assistants, and nearly 27 percent of people conduct voice searches using smartphones. This number is expected to increase by more than nine percent in 2021 alone.

This means, more and more people will converse with Google in languages other than English. Like, a German native is likely to search for something by talking in German. A native Indian could use any of the 100+ languages spoken in India, and a US national may use English, Spanish, or some other language.

This increase in the popularity of voice assistants, multilingual voice search inadvertently leads to an increase in the demand for multilingual SEO for voice search.

But do you need to optimize your website for multilingual searches? Yes. How else will your website reach your target audience that searches in their native language?

Combining Multilingual SEO with voice search

So far, there are guides only for either multilingual SEO or for voice search. However, gauging the rising importance of this relatively new search, we present you with a guide that combines voice search and multilingual SEO.

What is Multilingual SEO?

Multilingual SEO is a practice that adapts your website to cater to your target audience that uses multi-linguistic search. It involves translating the web page, using the right keywords, and optimizing the web page accordingly. We will go into the details below.

Notice how Google yields Hindi results for a search conducted in Urdu/Hindi. That’s because these results were optimized for multilingual voice searches.

Voice search: The search of the future

Voice searches are hugely different from regular typing searches. When typing, you want to do minimum physical effort, that is typing, and get results. Anyway, when speaking, you are not doing any physical effort and just talking. Therefore, voice searches tend to be longer and have a more conversational style and tone.

Let’s take an example

A person looking for a Chinese restaurant will go about it in two different ways when using voice search and regular search.

When typing, this person will type something like “best Chinese restaurant near me.”

On the other hand, when using voice search, he or she will simply say “Hey Google, tell me about the best Chinese restaurants I can go to right now.”

Do you see the difference? To optimize for voice assistants, you have to adapt to this difference when doing SEO.

Adding the multilingual touch to this and you’ll have a multilingual voice search.

From the example above, I searched for the weather in my city.

If I were typing, I simply would’ve typed “[my city name] weather.”

However, when using voice, I used a complete phrase in my native language, and google yielded results in that language. These results showed that they were optimized for multilingual voice searches.

How to Do Multilingual SEO for Voice Searches?

Now, if you want to cater to a global audience and expand your reach. And you want your website to rank when your target audience searches for something you offer, in their own language, you need multilingual SEO.

Below we are discussing some steps to optimizing your website for multilingual searches:

Keyword Research

No SEO strategy can ever start without keyword research. Therefore, before you begin doing multilingual SEO for your website, you need to perform proper keyword research.

When translating your website, you can’t just translate the keywords or phrases. Because a keyword that has high search volume in one language may not be that viable when translated in another language.

Let’s look at a case study from Ahrefs to understand this point.

Ahrefs looked at the search volume for the key phrase “last minute holidays.” They found out it received 117k searches from the UK in a month.

However, the same phrase translated into French “ Vacances dernière minute.” Had a total search volume of 8.4k.

The findings from this case study go to show the importance of independent keyword research for multilingual SEO. Because simply translating the keywords won’t yield good results.

So, what you can do is pick up the phrases from your original website, which we assume is in English and is optimized for voice search. Translate them. Brainstorm additional relevant keywords and plug them into any of the keyword research tools to see their search volume and competition.

Additionally, keywords for voice searches are different from regular keywords as you need to take an intuitive approach by getting to your target audience’s mind to see what they think and speak when searching. And how they do it. Then use these phrases to go ahead with your keyword search and make a list based on high search volume and low competition.

Translation

Once you have a list of keywords you want to optimize, the next step is to translate the content that’s already there on your website and optimize it with the keywords.

When translating a website, the best approach is to hire a human translator who is a native speaker of the target language.

You may be tempted to use Google Translate or some other automatic translation tools. But even though Google endorses its translators, it leaves a subtle recommendation on using human translators. Because robots are yet to come as far as competing and beating humans. At least when it comes to translations.

Additionally, make sure the translator aligns the content with the tone of your original website.  

Hreflang Annotation

Here comes the technical part. Did you really think you can get by multilingual SEO without getting involved in the technicalities?

Hreflang annotation is critical for websites that have different versions in different languages for various searches.

It enables Google to identify which web page to show to which visitor. For example, you don’t want your English visitors to land on the French version of your page. Using Hreflang will enable you to receive English visitors on the English page, and French-speaking people on the page in French.

Another important attribute that will go in your website’s code when doing multilingual SEO is the alternate attribute. It tells the search engine that a translated page is a different version, in an alternate language, of a pre-existing page and not a duplicate. Because Google cracks down on duplicate pages and can penalize your website if you haven’t used the alternate tag.

URL structure

You can’t discuss multilingual SEO, without talking about URL structure.

When doing multilingual SEO, you are often saving different versions of your website under the same domain. This means, you have to create a URL structure for each version, so the search engine can take the visitor to the right page.

When it comes to URLs for multilingual websites, you have many options, and each option has its pros and cons. You can check out how Google lists these pros and cons in the image below.

 Source: Google Search Central

Confused about which URL structure to use?

You can choose any option as per your preferences. According to Google, no URL structure has a special impact on SEO except using parameters within URLs. I personally think using a sub-domain as Wikipedia or Sub-folder/directory as Apple, are the easiest options to create a multilingual site. But if you’re using WordPress then you can use a plugin like Polylang to multi-lingual.

Content style

The content writing style is quite important when optimizing your website for multilingual SEO. your content should be more focused on conversational style rather than academic or complex sentence structures. As said, voice-related queries are mostly in questions format, so faqs, short paragraphs with more emphasis on addressing questions will be better for voice-related search queries.

The importance of multilingual SEO for Voice Search

Now that you know how to set your website for multilingual SEO, you might be wondering whether it is worth all the hassle.

If your website sees a lot of multilingual traffic, you have no other choice than to go for multilingual SEO for voice search because,

1.   Voice search is the future of search 51 percent of people already use it for product research before buying. Therefore, starting with multilingual voice search right now will prepare you to tackle the challenges of search and SEO that the future brings.
2.   Your business can’t grow all that much unless it personalizes its offerings to the visitor. In this case, speaking to them in their own language adds up to a good user experience.
3. Multilingual SEO will expand your website’s reach by catering to multi-linguistic searchers. If your business is global or spread to multiple countries with different languages, and your website is restricted to only English, I bet you must be missing a big chunk of easy traffic. Which would be difficult with English keywords with higher competition globally and keywords difficulty.

Final thoughts

Multilingual SEO for voice search is something that you’ll see all website owners (who receive multilinguistic traffic) doing in the future. Therefore, it is better to start now and get ahead of your competitors.

The key takeaways for optimizing your website for multilingual voice searches are target language keyword search, human translation, hreflang tags, and the right URL structure.

With the right keyword research, a meaningful translation, thorough technical SEO, and by using the URL structure that fits best with your unique web requirements, you can enjoy riding the wave of multilingual voice search when it arrives, and it will arrive soon.

Atul Jindal is a web design and marketing specialist, having interests in doing websites/apps optimized for SEO with a core focus on conversion optimization. He creates web experiences that bring conversations and transform web traffic into paying customers or leads.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The post Multilingual SEO for voice searches: Comprehensive guide appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• The story of SEO and UX began almost 20 years ago with both making a foray into the market in the 1990s
• After years of analyzing data, I found that UX is a critical ranking factor for SEO
• If you’ve exhausted all your SEO techniques but still don’t see a considerable movement on your website or rankings – you’re probably losing at user experience (UX)
• Atul Jindal condenses years of his experience and observations into this SEO guide to help you win at SEO and search experience

I’ve worked with many SEO and CRO campaigns as well as fortune 50 companies over the years. This gives me access to valuable data that helped me understand what is working and what’s not. Over the years by analyzing data I found that UX is a critical ranking factor for SEO.

The story of SEO and UX began almost 20 years ago with both making a foray into the market in the 1990s. While SEO was widely used as a marketing technique, UX (user experience) concentrated on giving the users an enhanced engaging experience on the website.

If you have exhausted all your SEO techniques but still don’t see a considerable movement on your website or rankings. Then probably you’re losing at User experience.

But it is quite difficult to find UX-related issues on your website. When you’re only looking at your website from an SEO perspective! You need to take a look at your website with your user’s (customer’s) eyes.

In this guide, I’ll explain UX and guide you on how to implement it into your SEO campaigns to get results.

What is UX?  

User experience (UX) is the experience of a user with your website/application. An easy-to-use website will provide a pleasant user experience but an unplanned website will have a bad or poor user experience.

UX focuses on the site architecture, visitor journey, desktop, and mobile layouts, user flows. In short, user experience is driven by how easy or difficult it is to navigate through the user interface elements that the website designers have created.

User interface (UI) focuses on the graphical layout of any application. It includes several factors such as fonts and design styles, text entry fields, transitions, images, and animation interface. In short, anything visual comes under the umbrella of UI.

It is important to note that UI and UX are two different functionalities. While UI revolves around design layout, UX is the experience of the user on the website while they are navigating the web pages.

Since we have a better understanding of the two, let us further understand how we can successfully implement UX into an SEO campaign.

Why does UX matter in SEO?

In recent years, Google has changed its ranking criteria. There was a time when Google was looking for the keyword reparations in your content or the number of backlinks that your website has.

But now the scenario has been completely changed. Google is becoming more user-centric day by day. They are using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and other kinds of latest technologies to understand, evaluate and provide the best of the best results. 

Google has introduced the EAT concept as well as metrics like search intent, page speed, mobile-friendliness, dwell-time are ranking factors to rank on Google. All these factors are part of a rich user experience. 

A rich user experience is a factor that creates the difference between the first and second positions. Providing a rich user experience is always helpful for visitors and encourages them to stay longer and engage more on your website. That sends positive quality signals that show your website the best result to Google. And as a result of that Google rewards you with top spots.

How to implement UX into an SEO campaign?

As mentioned above, SEO and UX share common end goals – audience engagement. SEO will answer a person’s query, while UX will take care of their navigational queries once they reach the webpage. 

Today, it has become imperative to include the two while designing SEO campaigns or any digital marketing strategy. Google is constantly evolving its user experience and merging effective SEO strategies to give the audience a more meaningful experience. 

An excellent example of UX and SEO design is IKEA. We all know what IKEA stands for, but their website forms a story at every step. It guides the user to the correct landing pages and keeps them engaged. The color palette, their tags, and categories make a user stay longer and engaged on the website. 

Source: IKEA designed on Canva

Empathy plays a vital role in optimizing your web pages with the right combination of keywords. Those days are no more with us when the exact keyword matches were enough to rank well. Today, it is about putting yourself out there and thinking from a bigger perspective. 

Google has done a great job over the past five years of getting away from ranking signals that can be spammed easily such as links and keyword stuffing. 

In other words, understanding your audience’s buying intent and analyzing their search queries will lead to refined and sustainable results. 

Let us understand the three most critical factors that influence the SEO + UX ranking. 

Understand your audience

It is probably one of the trickiest parts of running any successful campaign – Understanding the target audience. 

Most companies spend a considerable amount of time researching the audience before concluding who will be their right target. It is why we have spent a sizable amount of time highlighting its importance. 

We have often heard of marketers, businesses, and content creators emphasizing the importance of the right target audience. While sometimes it is more or less commonsensical to grasp the audience’s pulse, there are times when you need to explicitly ask: 

• Who is my target audience? 
• What do they want? 
• What they are searching for? 
• How are they looking for the information? 
• Did my searcher bounce right away? 
• Was there any action taken on the link?

These are key questions, Google’s algorithm takes into consideration to understand whether search results are aligned to the searcher’s intent.

For example, Airbnb works on an inclusive design model that concentrates on improving readability across all platforms. Their target audience is clearly defined – travel enthusiasts, people looking for holiday home options, and people looking for holiday hosting solutions. Their focal point has been improving the user experience by leading them to the right landing pages. They coupled it with catchy CTAs that probed the user to take an action. Whether you are a host or someone seeking an extraordinary travel experience, their comprehensive holiday solutions pave the way to make booking a holiday faster and easier. 

Source: Airbnb. Designed on Canva 

Once you understand your audience completely, it can lead to a page getting clicks and some action taking place if you are on the first of Google search results. 

UX helps the audience stay glued to the page while SEO honors their intent to click on the page’s keyword and land. Everything you do, your focal points are always around the satisfactory experience of the users. From addressing their color preferences to the layout and messages, you have to build everything that caters to your customers. 

Another critical factor in understanding the audience is the user’s intent. It would help if you addressed it while carrying out a detailed audience persona such as informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial purpose. In each case, the queries have to be predefined to understand the user’s need. 

Keyword research

Understanding the intent of potential visitors landing on your web page through search is another crucial factor that makes up for an effective UX and SEO strategy. If your website is not fully optimized with the right set of keywords, there is a bleak chance of it ranking on Google or even leading to any action. 

For example, imagine searching for the keywords – “How to wear a bowtie?” 

The most logical conclusion is that your search will lead you to a tutorial or a video, right? If the same set of keywords are used by an ecommerce site selling the bowtie, your query will remain unanswered. You may conclude that the website using this keyword is not worth visiting in the future because they apply ‘click-bait’ words to lead a consumer to their website. 

But if the person lands on the right page with the instructions clearly outlined, they stay to learn, thus increasing the dwell time and may browse the website for more information. Here your keyword has played a vital role in leading the consumer straight to the tutorial. 

Google keyword planner, Moz keyword explorer, Keywordtool.io, Ahrefs Keywords explorer, or SECockpit are some practical tools used widely to search for the right keywords. 

The best way to select the right keywords to fit your SEO strategy is to iterate the keywords you need ranking. Search relevant topics based on your business to portray and understand how the user intent affects keyword usage. 

In short, keyword research, before setting up SEO campaigns and merging them with UX, help you evolve with changing market trends. 

Site architecture

Designing a website without optimizing it for search engines is a waste of time and vice versa. Both these aspects work together and need to be carefully considered right from the beginning. 

The site’s architecture is how the pages flow on your website. From the SEO point of view, good website architecture means Google will easily find and index your page. Simply, links should help Google to navigate smoothly from high to low authority pages. Google Search Console has improved a lot since its early days and became highly informative to SEO technicians, helping them to understand how a website is indexed and appeared to Google. 

Using H1, H2 tags, headings, taglines, catchy CTAs, and informational menu labels, decide whether your audience will interact with your website or not. Remember- your homepage should not be more than four clicks away. 

Mobile responsiveness

Mobile-responsive design has gained significant importance for both the user experience and SEO. Over 50 percent of all traffic is now driven by mobile search and sites that are not mobile-responsive will compromise the user experience.

According to Google’s page experience document, mobile-friendly websites have priority access to appear above in search results. Enhancing the readability of your readers by incorporating the right font family and text size is a must-have to consider improving the mobile experience. Having a responsive website with the ability to load faster has on varying screen sizes has become a standard these days.

You can check a site’s mobile responsiveness by using Google’s Mobile-friendly testing tool. 

Conclusion

Bad SEO + UX ruins the entire motive of brand building. It pays well to give importance to the fine attributes today. It includes domain name, informational content, internal links, optimizing meta tags, meta descriptions, image alt tags, headings, and page titles to make the entire experience worthwhile.

Implementing SEO with UX design may seem a little daunting initially; however, it is critical to boost rankings and build a great brand.

Atul Jindal is a web design and marketing specialist, having interests in doing websites/apps optimized for SEO with a core focus on conversion optimization. He creates web experiences that bring conversations and transform web traffic into paying customers or leads.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The post UX: an important SEO ranking factor appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• Progressive web apps (PWAs) offer app-like experiences without requiring users to download anything from an app store
• PWAs are also much less of a burden for developers than native apps, which require ongoing updates, review management, and shared profits with app stores
• Nick Chasinov, Founder and CEO of Teknicks, outlines a few of the major business benefits of using PWAs

If Apple was threatened by “Fortnite” trying to bypass the App Store, it’s not going to be happy when progressive web apps take off. PWAs disrupt the tech giant’s granular control over the Apple App Store because they offer app-like experiences without the need to download an actual app. They’re designed for the everyday website user but provide many features that are exclusive to native apps.

Although many companies love the idea of building a native app, this approach can be a hassle for developers. You have to update them, manage reviews, attract downloads, and pay most stores a 30 percent cut of every sale — this includes paid apps and in-app purchases, which can add up quickly. Apple raked in $64 billion from the App Store in 2020.

That’s part of the reason Google is an advocate for PWAs, encouraging developers to build and distribute them. The search engine also leads Project Fugu, which aims to expand browser capabilities and help web apps “do anything native apps can“. This dream could become a reality: Almost 65 percent of internet users already rely on Chrome, and its open-source Chromium foundation lets other browsers use its PWA technology.

Since the pandemic has been sending more people online than ever before, much of the focus in 2021 will remain on the user experience. So, would you rather take cues from Apple or Google? The PWA vs. native app war has begun, and if you’re looking to stand out and get a leg up on the competition, then a PWA may be the way to go.

The business benefits of PWAs

PWAs provide users with numerous benefits. For example, they are smaller files than native apps, which frees up space on people’s devices. However, PWAs can also impact your goals and bottom line as a business. Here are three key advantages of progressive web apps:

1. Rapid connections

Consumers have options: There are plenty of places to browse news, buy clothes, and watch videos. If your website isn’t up to speed (literally), people will take their attention and spending power elsewhere. For instance, the Forbes website used to take anywhere from three to 12 seconds to fully load, those delays caused 53 percent of users to abandon the website. Once the company switched to a PWA, browsing sessions increased by 43 percent.

PWAs can increase speed for all users, but the acceleration is particularly important for browsers on slow connections. By caching content after the first visit, PWAs make it possible for more people to access your products. That increase in speed also translates to improvements in discoverability for all users. According to Google’s 2018 announcement, mobile speed factors heavily into overall page ranking.

2. SEO capabilities

Aside from the fact that speed affects your page rankings, PWAs are also SEO-friendly. Because they live on the web, their content is visible to search engines. This can boost your ability to generate traffic and leads. For example, when Alibaba turned its website into a PWA, it saw 76 percent more conversions.

Native apps are limited to the SEO constraints of app stores. Typically, only the app profile page is listed in Google search results, forcing companies to rely on the app’s description, pictures, and positive reviews to improve visibility and land more downloads.

With a PWA, you have the same unlimited flexibility as a website to create custom user experiences and optimized resourceful content that will rank on Google and showcase your app’s features and benefits. App store optimization is limited, but a PWA enables you to execute all SEO strategies.

3. Engagement opportunities

PWAs support push notifications, creating opportunities for companies to reach out to their customers with personalized product recommendations, news updates, and other relevant communications. This can improve customer engagement and help increase brand loyalty.

PWAs can also boost engagement with your social media pages because they’re able to use device tools like cameras and Global Positioning System (GPS). And as augmented reality (AR) becomes available on PWAs, all kinds of exciting possibilities will open up. Imagine a customer trying on your company’s latest apparel in AR and then sharing their selfies on social media — all without a native app that has to be developed for multiple operating systems and tweaked to support dozens of devices.

Decreasing coronavirus case numbers and accelerating vaccine distribution efforts are contributing to optimism in many parts of the world. Still, it will likely be a while before life returns to normal. As people continue to spend more time at home (and on the internet), organizations need to prioritize their digital transformation strategies.

For the reasons above, this should include building PWAs. While web apps aren’t new developments, they are uniquely positioned to help companies achieve their goals in the current environment. Companies can focus their efforts on one web app that prioritizes the user experience instead of wasting energy on multiple native apps designed for different operating systems with limited search engine visibility.

Nick Chasinov is the Founder and CEO of Teknicks, a research-based agile internet marketing agency certified by Google in Analytics, Tag Manager, and Ads.

The post Why progressive web apps (PWAs) are poised to dominate moving forward appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• A sitemap is one of the technical sides of SEO.
• A sitemap doesn’t boost your SEO traffic but helps search engines index your web pages faster.
• It’s very easy to create an XML sitemap and doesn’t require any coding knowledge.
• Once a sitemap is created, you need to submit it to Google.
• Through your Google Search Console dashboard, you can see detailed index coverage reports and fix any technical errors if present.
• Founder of WPMyWeb.com, Jyoti Ray guides you through the process of creating an XML sitemap using different tools and details on how you can fix existing sitemap errors.

When it comes to SEO, there are over hundreds of Google ranking factors you need to master as well as execute them in order to increase your search engine visibility. Believe me, it’s lots of work – generating content ideas, keyword researching, creating high-quality content, building backlinks, auditing your website, etc. And working on each of the techniques is time-consuming and requires lots of effort. Fortunately, there are some SEO techniques that are easier to perform but have a huge impact on SEO. One of them is – submitting an XML sitemap to Google.

Although a sitemap is one of the parts of “technical SEO”, it doesn’t require any technical knowledge, and most importantly, it’s free and easier to create.

Even, in just 10-15 minutes, you can create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google.

So, in this article, we will first explain what is an XML sitemap, why do you need a sitemap, and then show you how to create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google. Let’s get started.

What is an XML sitemap?

A sitemap is a list of a website’s URLs. It’s a roadmap of a website that tells Google what information is available and where to find it. A sitemap contains important information about each URL, such as – when a post or page was last updated, how often do you change, etc.

The best part of a sitemap is that you can specify what pages, posts, or media files to be indexed by search engines crawlers.

Sitemaps are specially written for search engines, not for humans. So, it would be hard for us to understand if not seen before.

Here’s how an XML sitemap looks:

Source

Why do you need a sitemap?

Search engines use crawlers to find and index all the information on the web. While crawling a page, they use both internal and external links to discover new content.

However, if a new webpage hasn’t linked from other known pages, crawlers find it difficult to discover new pages on a website, and as a result, the indexing process gets delayed.

That’s where a sitemap comes.

A sitemap doesn’t only contain a bunch of valuable links but also helps Search Engine crawlers to discover new information faster.

Once you submit your XML sitemap file to Google, you can see that all new posts/pages you are publishing are available somewhere on Google search results (after a couple of minutes). It’s because of the sitemap file.

When do you need to use a sitemap?

Not everyone needs a sitemap. Google has its own complex algorithm to schedule crawling.

Google officially stated when a webmaster needs a sitemap:

• Your website is really large
• Your website is brand new and has few external links pointing to it
• You don’t build internal links

However, in most cases, having a sitemap could be beneficial in a few ways.

Now I know the basics of a sitemap, let’s see how to create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google.

How to create an XML sitemap

Creating a sitemap is very simple. You can use an online tool to generate an XML sitemap and for WordPress sites, there are plenty of plugins available.

I will show both of them.

1. Creating a sitemap in WordPress

More than 35% of the total websites are powered by WordPress.

If you run a WordPress site, you can create a sitemap using a plugin.

There are several WordPress plugins available that allow you to create an XML sitemap, such as Yoast SEO, Rank Math SEO, etc.

Method 1, Create a sitemap using Yoast SEO

Yoast is one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress. Yoast plugin helps you to optimize your page titles, meta descriptions, SEO analysis, etc.

It also has an option to create an XML sitemap.

If you are not using the Yoast SEO plugin, download and install it from the WordPress plugin directory.

Follow the steps below

From your WordPress admin panel, go to Plugins > Add New and search for “Yoast SEO”.

Once activated, go to SEO > General > Features. Click on the Question icon to reveal the sitemap URL.

Method two – Creating a sitemap using Rank Math SEO

If you are using the Rankmath SEO plugin, you can generate a sitemap like the way you created using the Yoast SEO plugin.

But, I prefer using the Rank Math plugin because it gives more advanced options that are missing in Yoast SEO.

First, log in to your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins > Add New.

Search for “Rank Math” and install it.

Upon activation, go to Rank Math > sitemap Settings.

From there, you can set how many links you want per sitemap page, exclude URLs, images in posts, etc.

At the top, you can see your sitemap URL which looks like:

“https://www.website.com/sitemap_index.xml”

Now, you are ready to submit to Google Search Console.

2. Creating a sitemap without a CMS

If you are not using any CMS, you can still generate a sitemap.

For this case, Screaming Frog would be a great option. Screaming Frog is a desktop-based program (available on Windows & Mac) that crawls your website. The software comes both in free and premium versions.

If your site has less than 500 URLs, you can start using the free version of Screaming Frog to generate a sitemap.

Follow the steps given below

Once downloaded and installed, open the software on your computer.

At the top of the screen, enter your website URL and click on Start.

It will start crawling your site and may take a few minutes to finish.

Once the crawl is finished, take a look at what pages are being crawled.

If the number is below 500, then you are good to go.

From the top of the menu section, click on sitemap > XML sitemaps.

You can also include or exclude any options that you want in your sitemap file, such as Noindex pages, last modified date, Paginated URLs, PDFs, Images, etc.

I recommend keeping this default, however, you are free to make any modifications.

Once done, hit on the Export button and save the file on your computer.

Your XML sitemap file is ready to use.

3. Creating a sitemap in Wix

If you are using Wix, then you don’t need to manually create a sitemap.

Wix does it automatically.

You can view your sitemap file by going to “your-wix-site.com/sitemap.xml”.

However, in Wix, you wouldn’t have much control over your sitemap.

If you want to exclude a page from the sitemap, simply go to the “SEO (Google)” settings tab under page settings and turn off “Show this page in search results”.

Note: Wix recommends that you submit your sitemap each time you make any changes.

4. Creating a sitemap in Squarespace

Like Wix, Squarespace also creates a sitemap automatically.

You can view your sitemap by adding “/sitemap.xml” at the end of your website’s URL, which is “your-website.com/sitemap.xml”.

You can’t manually edit your sitemap in Squarespace, however, you can exclude pages from search results.

To perform this, go to Page setting and check “Hide this page from search engine results” in the SEO tab.

5. Creating a sitemap in Shopify

Shopify automatically generates an XML sitemap file for you. You can view your sitemap file by going to “your-website.com/sitemap.xml”.

The generated sitemap contains all the products, collections, blogs, and webpages. The sitemap files automatically updated when made any changes.

Now your sitemap file is ready for submission.

Suggested read – How to optimize your Shopify site for SEO

How to submit an XML sitemap to Google

Now you have just created an XML sitemap file, it’s time for submitting to Google.

For this, you will need to connect your Google Search Console account with your website. Here’s the step by step procedure by Google.

Once connected, log in to your Google Search Console account and select your website.

From the dashboard, click on the sitemaps.

You will see the option “Add a new sitemap”. Enter your sitemap URL in the blank field, and hit the Submit button.

That’s it. Now, sit back and relax. Google will take care of the rest.

Fixing your sitemap errors to improve SEO

Generally, if your site consists of one or more technical errors, it’s really hard to figure it out. However, in most cases, it’s not even detectable unless you use a paid site auditor tool.

But, there is good news for you.

If you have submitted your sitemap to Google, you can see detailed index coverage reports to check if there is any technical error present on your site.

Log in to your Google Search Console account, and click on Coverage.

Then click on the Error, Valid with a warning, Valid, and Excluded tab to get the details.

From there, you can check pages for:

• Indexed but blocked by robots.txt
• Pages that have a server error (5xx)
• Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag
• Crawled but not indexed
• Not found (404)
• Page with redirect
• Blocked by robots.txt, and many more

Click on each of the error pages to check what you need to fix. Once done, you can request Google to mark it as fixed by clicking on Validate Fix.

Once you fix all the technical errors with the help of your XML sitemap file, you can see a significant improvement in your search traffic.

Conclusion

Creating an XML sitemap is very simple and doesn’t require any technical skills. If you are using WordPress, you can create a sitemap using SEO plugins in just a few clicks. It’s also easier if you are not using any CMS.

There is no evidence that a sitemap boosts your website’s SEO, but it helps Google to find and index your website’s content faster. I also recommend you use a sitemap.

Submitting a sitemap to Google is just a tiny part of the full SEO game.

Jyoti Ray is the Founder of WPMyWeb.com. He writes about blogging, WordPress tutorials, hosting, and affiliate marketing.

The post How to create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• Website usability refers to how easy or intuitive a website is for visitors to interact with, and usability lies at the heart of delivering a compelling user experience (UX).
• Incorporating relevant keywords and building backlinks to your website is still crucial, but Google’s algorithm is continually evolving to reward websites that render top-notch UX.
• In this post, we’ll discuss four core elements you must optimize to gratify both human visitors and search engine crawlers so as to attain top rankings and stay there.

There was a time when usability — how easy-to-use and functional your website is — was seen as a separate concern from SEO.

Usability was often regarded as something that improves visitor engagement and conversions on your website and was not associated directly with SEO — the process used to improve your search engine rankings and organic traffic.

While the former part of the previous statement is still true, Google’s ranking algorithm has changed significantly in the last few years — with an increasingly stronger focus on determining the level of user experience of websites and delivering the most user-friendly results at the top.

Make no mistake — all the mainstream SEO tactics such as guest blogging, link building, and keyword optimization are very much applicable today — and you need to continue working on these as you’ve been doing since you first started optimizing your website for search engines.

But if you wish to reach the very top of the SERPs and stay there in 2021 and beyond, you must shift your focus toward optimizing the various usability elements on your website, such as the ones discussed below.

1. Site speed

Site speed has been a pivotal ranking factor for more than a decade. So, if your pages take too long to load — anything more than three seconds — not only will your visitors bounce away out of frustration but your rankings on Google will also floor.

In other words, ensuring optimal page load speed is critical for both usability and rankings. There’s a lot you can do in this regard, such as:

• Keep your code clean, minify CSS and JS
• Use browser caching
• Improve server response time by using a CDN and fast hosting
• Optimize bulky image files with image compression tools
• Minimize page redirects

Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to evaluate your current site speed. The tool will provide you with a list of recommendations that you can then work on to improve your speed. For instance, you may have bulky images that need to be compressed or too many unnecessary redirects.

Essentially, PageSpeed Insights helps you pinpoint where your site is lacking and tells you exactly what you need to do to satisfy the need for speed.

Knowing that even a one-second delay in mobile load times can impact mobile conversions by up to 20%, site speed is a super important usability element that you must get absolutely right.

Talking about mobile…

2. Mobile-friendliness

Today, mobile devices (excluding tablets) account for more than half of the global website traffic, 50.81% to be precise.

Unsurprisingly, due to Google’s mobile-first indexing, the mobile — not the desktop — version of your website is the benchmark for how Google indexes and ranks your site. Simply put, your mobile usability can effectively make or break your website’s rankings on Google.

Here’s how you can improve your site’s mobile-friendliness:

• Optimize your content’s layout for one-handed use: 75% of users touch the screen only with one thumb, and 10% of users hold their phone in one hand and tap with a finger of the other hand. So, put primary interactions front and center (easy-to-reach areas of the screen), and less crucial ones at the edges. This makes it easy to use your website and constitutes a better mobile experience.
• Get rid of the navigation bar: A navbar can take up a lot of space that could otherwise be used for displaying other important content. Instead of keeping it as is, incorporate a hamburger menu, which turns your space-hungry navbar into an expandable menu.

• Minimize the amount of typing required: Good mobile usability means minimal touch-screen typing. Minimize the number of form fields on the mobile version of your site, enable autofill wherever possible, and provide the option to connect existing accounts (such as Facebook or Google) rather than asking to sign up from scratch.
• Disable popups: Popups on mobile devices can be extremely annoying and seriously hurt the user experience. Google may also penalize you for popups or similar “intrusive interstitials” that make the content less accessible, so disable them right away.

Furthermore, avoid common mobile usability mistakes, such as:

• Unplayable video content due to Flash
• Font size too small
• Touch elements too close to each other

You can check how mobile-friendly your website is with Google’s mobile-friendly test.

3. Content quality

As you’d expect, the quality of the content on your website is strongly linked to the usability of your website. Poor quality content doesn’t inspire visitors to take action or engage with your offerings, and consequently, won’t help your website rank well.

To create high-quality content, you first need to understand your target persona — get to know your audience, their desires, questions, and pain points. Analyze the search phrases that bring people to your site and understand what your visitors are looking for in order to create content that’s relevant and aligns with their intent.

Make sure to get the following pointers right.

Layout

Proper content layout is vital for a better user experience. For that, you can use different font sizes, bullets and numbered lists, and an F-shaped pattern as shown below.

Also, be consistent with your layout throughout your website to avoid user confusion.

Hierarchy

Use subheadings — H2, H3,…, H6 — to create a logical content hierarchy on all pages. This aids readability and scannability by breaking up your content, which makes for better usability.

Also, make sure to have a unique H1 title tag for each page that is inviting for search engine users to click on.

Comprehensiveness

All your content should be in-depth, answering all the questions on the topic so the visitor doesn’t feel the need to refer to other sources and is satisfied with their search experience.

That being said, don’t add fluff to increase the word count — visitors will easily recognize if you do and this will lead to a poor user experience.

Links

Link to reputable and authoritative websites to improve your site’s credibility in the eyes of Google and visitors. Back up your claims with recent statistics and facts from reliable sources.

Have a logical internal linking structure to guide visitors to relevant pages from your content.

Also, broken links (“404 not found”) also harm usability and rankings, so find and fix them immediately.

Format

Publishing long-form articles and text-based content is obviously crucial to rank high on Google.

But what if your target audience prefers more visual content, such as vlogs or infographics? For optimal usability, create content in the format that your audience prefers.

4. Site navigation

Regardless of what your website is about, its navigation structure plays a key role in its usability.

For example, if your website is a blog. How are your blog posts organized? Can visitors search for a specific post? How many clicks does it take to reach from point A to point B? Or, if it’s a web app, does it have easy onboarding for seamless digital adoption by users?

Keep these questions in mind to improve your site’s navigation.

Use menu bars, recognizable icons, and clickable links to aid navigation. For instance, if the text on your homepage is clickable and brings visitors to a particular landing page, it needs to be evident. Make it descriptive, change its color, underline it, or turn that text into a button.

Intuitive navigation means your visitors don’t have to think when browsing your site. They are less likely to get frustrated and easily find what they need — all of which means great usability and thus, rankings.

Wrapping up

Better website usability translates to better rankings, plain and simple.

With each update, Google’s ranking algorithm is having an increasing focus on rewarding websites that contribute to “delightful” web experiences for its users — on fast, intuitive, and engaging experiences across all devices.

So, don’t just fixate on incorporating keywords and building backlinks in the hopes of better search rankings. While doing that is important, prioritize the various usability elements outlined above too in order to ensure you stay on top of the SERPs in the long run.

Hazel Raoult is a freelance marketing writer and works with PRmention. She has 6+ years of experience in writing about business, entrepreneurship, marketing, and all things SaaS. Hazel loves to split her time between writing, editing, and hanging out with her family.

The post Four website usability elements that improve your search rankings appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• Heatmaps represent user engagement data on your web page in a graphical form.
• They were introduced by Cormac Kinney, the software maker, to help traders beat the market.
• Today, marketers use heatmaps to visualize users’ behavior on content and improve their content marketing accordingly.

If you are on the digital marketing scene, you’ve probably already heard of heatmaps. They are a great tool for marketers to see how users interact with websites.

For those of you who are newbie marketers, let’s have a brief look at what a heatmap is.

Heatmaps: Introduction and types

A heatmap can be explained as a tool for data visualization. It represents different values using colors, to show users complex data sets.

Heatmaps shows:

• How well a particular page is performing?
• Which of your content grabs users’ attention first?
• And if there is any content they aren’t understanding or interested in.

Heatmaps use colors ranging through the spectrum from blue to red, with blue being the coolest (showing low engagement with the webpage) up to red, the warmest (showing high engagement levels).

Take a look at the following example. The bright orange and red show the highest engagement from visitors, and the other areas are not so often viewed.

Source: Crazy Egg Website

You can see visitors have mainly focused on the top of the page and much fewer have scrolled all the way down.

There are different kinds of heatmaps to choose from, depending on what kind of information you want to get.

Here are three of the most popular heatmap types:

• Overlay reports: These break down clicks on your website into percentages, so you can see where people are clicking the most and where they are not.
• Scroll maps: This option will show you how far down the page users get before they stop scrolling and reading.
• Confetti report: This is a high-resolution view of a traditional heatmap. The difference is a confetti map lets you see individual clicks. Each click is shown by a colored dot.

So now you know what a heatmap is, and the different types to choose from, let’s find out some ways to supercharge your content strategy using heatmaps.

1. Find the missing pieces of the content puzzle

Once you have added content to your page, you will want to know not only how many people see that content, but how much is read. Do they read two lines then leave, or does your content hold their interest?

A scroll map will show how far down the page your visitors go, so you can tell how much of your content they are reading.

For example, let’s say that Tom writes a fascinating, in-depth webpage about growth hacking.

He explains about documents, cases, and what customers tend to do, and also reveals the reasons a lot of solutions are not useful.

Tom publishes his findings online and shares it. The traffic looks good. People are visiting and reading his page.

Tom is happy with this, but still wonders whether they are really reading it, or whether they are looking at it and leaving. He decides to check his visitor reports.

Source: Crazy Egg Website

As Tom (and you) can see, by looking at the scroll map, only about 1 in 15 or even 20 readers get to the end of his page. That means most are either not reading it or only reading a part of it.

As well as this information, the scroll map offers more insights into website user behavior.

It shows which content people spent time on, which filters and menu options are most used, which sections are scrolled over without being read, and how far into the page they click away.

The data can be used to create more effective website content in the future.

Paid search data allows you to uncover keyword opportunities for creating relevant content, social media posts and ad copy, but add heatmaps into the equation and you have even more knowledge about what content your audience wants.

Combine the use of heatmaps with Google Analytics to see how long users stay on your site before they bounce. You will be able to see how far most of them get to before they leave, and figure out the reason why.

Is there something missing from that page? Is it difficult to read? Is the content irrelevant?

The heatmap will show you exactly which parts they are interested in and where they drop off, and you can use this knowledge to improve the content.

2. Smooth out the friction between users and CTA

Heatmaps are often used to help understand how website visitors are interacting with CTA buttons and other on-page elements.

Take a look at this image. You can see on the left, the users spent more time looking at the advertising banner than actually at the website checkout buying something.

Source: Convince & Convert Website

You can see on the right that some small changes have been made, in order to encourage users toward the marketer’s preferred action.

3. Optimize images to grab attention

Another use of heatmaps is to show you the best places to add images. More visitors than you probably realize try to click on unlinked images.

For example, let’s say a blog post has a high bounce rate. Visitors are coming but they aren’t staying and you want to know why.

This is where a heatmap comes in very handy.

A confetti click track report might reveal that your visitors come, try clicking on several things which are not clickable, then get annoyed and bounce.

So they do want to click through. They just don’t know how.

Let’s take a look at another example. This one is two versions of an ecommerce landing page.

Source: VWO Website

In the first image, the baby is looking right at the viewer, making him the most attention-grabbing thing on the page.

But look at the second image. Here the baby is looking at the text. This helps subconsciously guide users’ attention to the web copy and the message it offers.

Source: VWO Website

4. Uncover the “why” behind cart abandonment

Another great use of heatmaps is to test UX and usability.

For example, an online retailer discovers a lot of people are shopping at their online store and adding items to their shopping cart but then abandoning the cart rather than purchasing the items.

Some UX testing can show the retailer why this might be.

Overlays and heatmaps show where people click and where they don’t.

Maybe the checkout button isn’t easy to spot, or it’s too low on the page.

It could be that the shoppers are getting distracted by a colorful nav bar or there are annoying ads or popups driving them away.

Perhaps they are trying to click the non-clickable elements and getting frustrated.

Once these distractions or problems are removed, do an A/B test on the page in question to find out more on which one converts.

5. Boost your conversion funnel

Testing how effective your content marketing is, as well as testing UX and usability, will help make it easier to move potential buyers down the conversion funnel.

For example, if a few visitors are reading a whole piece of content and all of them are signing up for your free guide, you are improving your sales team’s leads and your content is successful.

But what about, on the other hand, many visitors are coming to your landing page, but nobody is interested in getting your free guide or joining your email list?

Simply check the heatmap and find out where they are clicking, and if they are clicking at all.

Maybe they are trying to click but they are clicking the wrong element or it isn’t clear where to click. Or perhaps something is broken on the page.

Do you see a high number of drop-offs on a particular page?

Do people seem to hover for a long time on a strange part of the page?

Keep a record of the weak spots you find on the different pages, then improve them and see if you can get fewer bounces and better conversions.

The main thing is to check for issues that might stop your visitors from converting, whether that might be images that look like clickable buttons, poor web copy, or a confusing checkout experience.

6. Strengthen your internal links

The anchor text used to link to different pages on your website gives more context for what that page is about, or at least that is how the search engines view it.

Internal links let you establish a content hierarchy where the most important pages are seen as the most valuable, and allows you to distribute link equity between different pages.

If you rely on content to grow your site, then internal linking is a great strategy used to strengthen the authority you have about key topics. Content may be grouped into ‘pillar’ or ‘cornerstone’ pages and subtopics.

So what does that have to do with heatmaps?

As you know, heatmaps offer detailed information about where visitors click. This helps you measure internal link performance. The insights you get can be used to drive more traffic to pages by optimizing your link placement.

7. Enhance outbound links too

Although offering tempting outbound links might seem like driving users away from your website, it is not as counterintuitive as it sounds.

Including outbound links in your content is good SEO practice.

Linking to reputable sources shows both readers and Google that you want to provide useful information. According to Stanford University research, the links you choose to feature can tell readers and search engines a lot about the quality of your content.

For example, linking to a spammy site will harm your credibility.

So how do you use heatmaps to assist with good outbound links?

A click map can show you which of your outbound links are the most clicked on, as well as the least. This will give you an insight into what your audience is most interested in.

Which of your outbound looks do visitors want to click on? Which do they find most interesting or most credible?

A scroll map is also useful for improving outbound links. Perhaps readers are finding one of your links irrelevant or spammy, and many are dropping off at that point.

If that is happening, it might be time to find a better website to link to, or get rid of the link altogether.

Otherwise, it could just be that the content on the page is not up to par, and needs some rework.

Conclusion

Knowing how users interact with the structure of your site, as well as its content and other elements can really help you develop a content strategy to retain visitors who read more of your content and convert more.

Heatmaps can help you get ahead of the competition by allowing you to identify friction-causing issues and find new ways to attract visitors and increase conversions.

Heatmaps are useful in many ways for marketers, but they are best when combined with other research tools.

Learning how buyers perceive and experience your website is crucial information and can really help with the success of your website.

Lyuthar Jacob is working as an assistant editor at a digital marketing agency – Clickmatix.com.au. He is the type of geek who loves to explore subjects ranging from Marketing to Lifestyle and Money Saving. And share his evolution through his write-ups.

The post How to use heatmaps to level up your content marketing game appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• Website security directly impacts the SEO performance of the website, as the non-compliance with the security requirements can cause low rankings or Google penalties.
• Blacklisting, malicious bots interfering with the crawling process, and spam attacks are among the main consequences of low website security.
• The “site not available” warning, the presence of strange JavaScript code, not working login credentials and frequent error messages can be the warning signs of a cyberattack on your website.
• Making security checks a part of your SEO strategy would help you create a website that is resistant to cybersecurity attacks.

Every site needs to be secure and there are no “too small” or “too unnecessary” sites for malicious attacks. Online businesses are fully centered on high search rankings for online reputation and profits. For this purpose, they often implement the most effective SEO tactics, from link building to great content marketing, to land up on the front page of Google search. Nevertheless, apart from delivering the best content to the users, Google is also aimed at making the internet a safe environment, hence placing importance on websites’ cybersecurity practices.

In fact, hacks may not only be destructive for your reputation but also for your site’s organic search performance. Hence, cybersecurity and SEO go hand in hand towards building a firm’s online reputation. If the website doesn’t mean the latest security compliance it can be blacklisted by Google, suffer from spam attacks or activities of malicious bots. 

So we want to share effective advice on how to recognize the security vulnerabilities in time, how to integrate the security checks into your development strategy, why you should regularly scan your website, and how to protect your local networks. 

Four main steps to improve website security

Security or the absence of security may seriously affect your SEO. We all know that the HTTP certificate is no longer a reliable way to secure the site and the HTTPS has, for the most part, become the poster boy of the security standard. In 2014, Google started to prioritize the sites with HTTPS in the search results. 

Focusing on SEO and security will help your business to step on the steer of success. The struggle to improve the website’s ranking and keeping it cybersecurity is common for many companies so here what we suggest:

#1: Learn to recognize the earliest warning signs

Cyber attacks can cause malicious bots activity. Bots will always represent a part of your traffic but not all bots are harmless to the site’s security. Cybercriminals, however, launch bots to crawl sites in the search for vulnerable parts, data theft, or content crapping. Malicious bots use the same bandwidth as the “good” bots and normal visitors do. If your server is a subject of repetitive tasks by malicious bots, it may lead to the server to stop serving pages. 

Cybercriminals always rely on the website’s weak sides to hack it. Thus, it’s essential to stay ahead and pay attention to the following warning signs of cyberattacks that are supposed to make your inner radar shout. Cybercriminals can cause malicious bots activity. 

Google Alerts and notifications

In case you received a Google alert notification or see a “Site not available” warning in search results, we have bad news. This is a sign that your website has been hacked. To confirm this fact, go to the Google Search Console, the Security Issues section, and look for the hacked URLs that Google has detected.

Presence of strange JavaScript code

The presence of a weird Java code in the source code of your website is a reliable alert sign. Javascript codes are often used by hackers to steal precious personal data like credit card details or passwords from your site. If you see any trace of strange-looking code, get rid of it immediately. 

Your login credentials don’t work

Not hard to guess that something goes wrong when you enter the valid login info and get the “wrong password” notification. Your login credentials have been altered by cybercriminals. 

You get frequent random popups or error messages

More than half of malicious attacks on websites are performed by “black” SEO’s who are aimed at improving their own site’s ranking. They target the sites with prominent search rankings and insert links or use Javascript to redirect users to their own malicious websites. SEO spamming allows scammers to use high-ranking websites in order to promote low-quality content to low masses and, consequently, push their rankings. SEO spam has several negative impacts:

1. The site will get blacklisted by the search engine.
2. The site’s spam ranking may reduce the site’s ranking
3. The business reputation will get dramatically spoiled as visitors will see lots of spamming content.

Very often hackers use cross-site scripting or insert their own code into the source code of your website to bypass its security system. So if you get any kind of these notifications, don’t ignore them. It’s time to run a serious scan in order to discover the malicious software.

#2: Make security check a part of your developing strategy

If you ever become the subject of a cyber attack, financial losses are not the only concerning consequence. The compromised website may face a range of penalties by Google and distort the search results. When potential customers will look for your website, they will most probably first meet a warning page that will dissuade them from visiting your site. Consequently, it is essential to make cybersecurity a part of your SEO strategy.

Trusting Google alerts is a good piece of advice there’s more than that to be done. Learn to predict the possible threats and control the cybersecurity level. In addition to involving your team of IT-specialists, hire one more cybersecurity professional. Only a qualified specialist will help you discover the site’s vulnerabilities and elaborate on the cyber protection strategy for your eCommerce business.

#3: Use effective scanning tools

One more way to get rid of malicious intervention is by using a file malware scanner. The system looks at the website code to check web pages for malware or strange PHP or HTML files on your server. The examples of scanners that can prevent your site from being penalized, blacklisted, and maintain your search engine rankings are Sucuri SiteCheck or Web Inspector. 

In addition, open-source web analytics tools like AWStats can scan your log files for suspicious activity. This tool offers data on every bot that crawled your site, bandwidth consumed, last crawled date, and total hits, allowing you to detect malicious activity.

For example, a bot’s throughput does not exceed a few megabytes per month. If you face thousands of page hits from a single IP address within a short time period the available bandwidth will be limited.

Finally, use tools like Ahrefs and Majestic to check your backlink profile. They will not only improve your site’s SEO but also track down unnecessary backlinks from SEO spammers.

#4: Protect your security and privacy with VPN

No matter where you are in a remote area, at home, or office, local network security should be tightened under any circumstances. A large network is highly susceptible to human error, and the risks cannot be underestimated compared to a small network. All users need to ensure that they’re compliant with all standard security measures. Despite the time and place of their work, they must ensure that the traffic is controlled with the Web Application Firewall and the connections are encrypted with a stable VPN.  

There are three main ways in which a VPN significantly increases the security of your website. First, it encrypts all the sensitive data, so hackers can’t access it. Second, VPN intercepts any malicious software or phishing attempts stopping them from infiltrating your system. And third, VPNs are a must-have for companies having remote employees who might be accessing companies’ systems using public hotspots as doing that without a VPN can lead to security vulnerabilities. 

Today’s market does not experience any shortage of quality VPN suppliers. So do your research and choose the VPN that would meet all of your business needs. 

Conclusion

Internet security matters and it matters a lot. The security breach in your website’s operation may cause dramatic damage to the eCommerce web site’s reputation and income. Cybersecurity needs to become a part of your SEO strategy for all eCommerce companies that want to take the leading position on the market of online sales. Now when you know that safety is crucial within the web, it’s time for the SEO and IT team to unite the forces and make up a reliable strategy that will raise the website’s ranking and maintain the security of your site.

Connie Benton is a chief content writer, guest contributor, and enthusiastic blogger who helps B2B companies reach their audiences more effectively. You can find her on Twitter at @ConnieB34412379.

The post SEO and cybersecurity: Incorporating cybersecurity into your SEO strategy appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• COVID-19 pandemic emphasizing the practicality of internet mobile for all-around daily tasks.
• Mobile web browsing skyrocketing fuelled by consumer shopping intent.
• Half the world’s population browsing the internet on a mobile device, with 61 million UK mobile internet users by 2021.
• Google’s webmasters announcing the mobile-first index launch in March 2021, with a knock-on effect on desktop-only and m-dot websites.
• Davies, an SEO expert at UENI reveals the top five ways of complementing SEO efforts with responsive web design to improve websites’ performance in Google’s SERP.

With mobile internet accessibility and usability growing year-on-year, it is undeniable that websites must meet users’ expectations for a smooth and relevant experience. Moreover, 2020 generated valuable insights into the relevance of mobile devices to people’s lives. Still questioning the importance of responsive web design for your website’s SEO? To weaken skepticism, Jos Davies, an SEO expert at UENI reveals the top five ways of complementing SEO efforts with responsive web design to improve websites’ performance in Google’s SERP.

1. Site usability

Mobile visitors are usually impatient, longing for on-the-spot solutions to their needs – which is not to say that desktop visitors like wasting their time! Google endorses this by saying that 53% of mobile users will bounce off a page that is not loading in less than three seconds.

Source: ThinkwithGoogle

Within a highly competitive market, fast loading websites manage to stay competitive, while the rest are subject to traffic fluctuation and inconsistency due to a drop in ranking.

Responsive web design helps optimize websites for mobile search, improving your site’s functionality, and design by scaling the content to users’ devices, thus providing a consistent user experience across all devices.

Since Google is all for serving users the most relevant results, it will then favor and promote the websites that are providing a good user experience by all means: content, design, and functionality across all devices.

It goes without saying that a drop in traffic harms sales. On top, an unresponsive website on mobile devices is missing out on valuable opportunities to attract customers and make them convert.

2. Faster web page loading

Starting with Google Speed Update, back in 2018, Google uses mobile site speed as a ranking factor in mobile search.

Google’s updates are aligned to user’s behavior: an increase in mobile device use means a paradigm shift for how Google bots crawl, index, and display results in SERP to satisfy people’s needs, expectations, promoting customer satisfaction.

Source: Uptimiser

In a mobile-centric world, having a mobile responsive design is a fundamental part of a successful SEO strategy. Responsive web design will help you rethink both the layout and the content of your website to offer a smooth user experience from desktop, to laptop, tablet, and smartphone without any inconsistencies.

Failing to do so, your SEO efforts would be compromised and a drop in traffic is foreseeable beyond question with your desktop only and m-dot website versions being removed from Google’s index no later than March 2021.

3. Lower bounce rate

The bounce rate reflects the percentage of users landing on a page and deciding to leave before continuing the website journey. Google takes it into account for weighting the relevancy of a webpage for a given search query.

A high bounce rate will thus generate a drop in ranking, reflecting thin or irrelevant content, or a poorly designed website, just by looking at user’s interaction.

Source: ThinkwithGoogle

It is still safe to say that content is king but keeping up to speed with the latest tech insights, the content will only remain king if is properly optimized for all devices.

Good content can only do so much, if not supported by an appealing design. Responsive web design does just that by adjusting the layout of the page, displaying the same content, to any device.

4. Boosted social sharing

Social media is not a ranking factor, but that doesn’t make it less important when it comes to your overall marketing strategy. It sure does play an instrumental role in an SEO campaign, complementing each other, and helping you leverage website traffic.

Responsive web design makes content sharing accessible across all social platforms, expanding your audience.

How? By making it easier for site visitors to access the same content on desktop and mobile devices, share it with their peers, and on their social media profiles. This uncovers great opportunities to reach a wider audience.

Source: GlobalWebIndex

More traffic means more chances for your visitors to convert. Now, more than ever, responsive web design is the foundation that makes it possible for you to boost your sales. What if a desktop user shares a link to a mobile user and the website is unresponsive? Or, imagine your visitors struggling to find the share button, and simply giving up. This robs you of the opportunity to expand your potential consumer market and get more traffic.

5. No duplicate content

With the rise of mobile device use, most websites built a separate mobile version, but this approach is often raising duplicated content issues. Why? If highly similar content appears on more than one URL, then chances are you’re in for duplicate content issues.

Source: Statcounter

Due to the duplicated nature of the content, Google bots cannot tell which version should be indexed, nor if one version should absorb all link metrics, or should they be kept separate. On top, which version should rank for a given search query? Although chances that you will get a Google penalty are low, this doesn’t mean that your rankings will not be affected.

Installing a responsive web design will help solve your duplicated content issues on account of using one URL across devices and adapting the layout and content to fit any screen size while offering a consistent and pleasant user experience.

What is the takeaway?

Google says webmasters do! If Google announces an algorithm change, we follow. And Google recommends responsive web design for a smooth transition to the mobile-first index, with a series of benefits reflected on your overall website’s SEO performance.

Jos Davies is an SEO expert at UENI.

The post Five great ways responsive web design benefits your SEO appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• Recent data from Roku shows that 85% of Americans are now streamers. Making them feel excited about some new CTV app is not a piece of cake but also not totally unfeasible.
• In the dark, dark woods of AdTech, Connected TV (CTV) apps are a dime a dozen. This may sound spooky enough for a proper Halloween horror story.
• The market is currently dealing with many potentially brilliant content creators having cold feet when thinking of launching their own CTV channels.
• Alex Zakrevsky, CEO of Allroll, helps you overcome these fears.

In the dark, dark woods of AdTech, Connected TV (CTV) apps are a dime a dozen. This may sound spooky enough for a proper Halloween horror story. In reality, the impressive growth of the CTV market strengthened the competition and endowed it with many “survival of the fittest” features. As a result, the fact that the number of connected TV devices in the US reached 400 million this year, as per Leichtman Research Group, is not that appealing and comforting for channel owners anymore. The market is currently dealing with many potentially brilliant content creators having cold feet when thinking of launching their own CTV channels. To overcome these fears, it’s important to embrace them first.

1. Failing to start

There is a belief that developing a channel from scratch requires either proficient coding skills or paying a fortune to those who have such skills. So, instead of starting, let’s say a Roku channel, content producers tend to be terrified of the prospect of coding or not being able to make ends meet. To lower the level of anxiety, it’s always useful to look at available options. 

If watching someone building a channel for you is the most preferable model, specialized agencies are the best choice to make. These companies usually have their own in-house developing teams and charge a set price or a revenue share, which gives room for maneuver. Alternatively, there are freelance developers whose price tag normally starts from $25/hour on Upwork.

The downside of both solutions is that they will depend on developers’ availability and may eventually turn out to be slow-moving and quite pricey. Yet, they will definitely help have less on one’s plate. At the same time, there are ways of developing a CTV app without going bankrupt or going full-on with programming languages.

In addition to custom channel development, some CTV platforms, such as Roku or Amazon Fire, offer their no-coding solutions for channel owners. Roku, for example, has its on-the-house model called Direct Publisher. Yes, this tool limits customization, monetization, and third party analytics options, but it does save time, money, and, more importantly, keeps channel owners with no coding experience sane. As a compromise between basic and advanced features, there’s a moderately-priced service for developing Roku channels that is cloud-based and code-free. Instant TV Channel costs $45.95/month. It creates and maintains a video feed as well as offers a range of customization opportunities. Consequently, if coding isn’t a channel owner’s strong suit, it’s needless to pay millions or spend months trying to make sense of programming. What’s crucial is the idea that drives a publisher and the content that will drive potential viewers. 

2. Being mediocre

As CTV ad spend is surging and has already increased by 19% this year, based on IAB’s figures, more and more publishers are getting on board each day. This makes creating original content pretty challenging. Ultimately, channel owners are surrounded, on the one side, by fears of meeting their channel-doppelganger and, on the other side, being ‘eaten alive’ by channels-giants, like Netflix, Animal Planet, and others. Sounds quite dramatic, doesn’t it? If someone is still wondering whether there’s any space left for new apps in the CTV universe, it’s worth checking on how many people delightfully watch channels, which others would not even think of, in the screensavers or special interest sections on the Roku platform. 

As for the chances of becoming a copycat of your own concept, great minds do think alike but most of the time not so literally. Therefore, becoming a successful channel owner calls for out-of-the-box thinking, doing some research, and being generally both strategic and brave.

3. Having zero installs

Recent data from Roku shows that 85% of Americans are now streamers. Making them feel excited about some new CTV app is not a piece of cake but also not totally unfeasible. So, if there is a genuine fear that no one will ever install a new Roku channel, here are several promotional techniques for not letting this happen.  

First of all, it’s essential to make as many people as possible aware of a new channel via a website, emails, and social media. This is absolutely free, a bit time-consuming but worthwhile. Secondly, it’s important to attend online/offline events and accept all networking opportunities where a channel owner can meet potential viewers and introduce a channel to them. Then, it’s good to think of collaborating with like-minded channels so as to make friends with indirect competitors and promote each others’ content.

Additionally, it would be beneficial to be included in one of those guides with top new channels one should install. For this purpose and in general, getting feedback on the content from influencers can be really game-changing. Finally, in case there’s a request to level up the current promotional approach, it’s time to consider monetization. 

Roku has its self-serve platform for growing publishers’ audiences using the tailored display and video ads. While its CPM rates can range significantly with no guaranteed number of installs, the platform is quite flexible in terms of budgets and can meet various needs and wants. What’s more, there’s the Allroll marketing platform aimed to drive viewers to Roku channels by the means of advanced targeting options and personalized advertising messages. It provides higher apps’ exposure and, ultimately, + 60% installs with the same budgets as those required for the native platform. So, there’s definitely a lot one can do to enhance the channel’s results without getting overwhelmed.

4. Surrendering to YouTube

When talking about video channels, there is always an elephant in the room. This elephant’s name is of course YouTube. Some publishers are still skeptical about CTV platforms, thinking their videos will never perform there as well as they do on good old YouTube. They might as well imagine having to stick to one platform to have windfall gains. In fact, there’s much more to this than meets the eye.

No matter how successful, YouTube is just a service. At least for a content owner and not an employee of YouTube. Thus, there is no need to choose between different stages on which to play the content. On the contrary, it is better to use as many platforms as one can manage to reach out to as many viewers as possible. This is the smart way of promoting video content, raising brand awareness, and maximizing profit in the soaring digital space. 

5. Getting lost in streaming obscurity

It’s not particularly a secret that the world of streaming is currently run by four major operating systems: Roku, Amazon Fire, Android TV/Google TV, or Apple TV. The first two have the biggest share of 100.2 million (Roku) and 72.7 million (Amazon Fire) users, according to eMarketer. The rest of the players are of somewhat a lower caliber. Picking one platform for an app may seem like a tough job, bearing in mind their characteristics resemble each other in so many ways. For instance, Roku uses Audience Network with broad geolocation options for targeting and a revenue share model for monetization within its Direct Publisher mode. In the meantime, Amazon Fire’s code-free Amazon Creator offers extensive data on consumers’ preferences collected from Amazon devices and a commission-based monetization. This may rightly seem quite confusing.

The reasonable tactic for not getting puzzled by the best bets is to follow the audience. People mainly prefer streaming platforms that relate to an operating system they are plugged into in their everyday lives. So, if they have an Amazon Prime account that they actively use or they are fond of Alexa, these consumers are likely to go for Amazon Firesticks in their streaming experience.

Similarly, Apple products’ adepts will favor Apple TV, whereas Android users will stand for Android TV. Roku is sort of a black sheep in this family, as it has always been solely TV-oriented. Though, it’s extremely user-friendly, very affordable and its devices were voted the best of this crowd on numerous occasions. Without beating about the bush, knowing your audience is the key. 

Takeaways

The CTV market has been on the rise offering publishers more advanced opportunities to reach their viewers. Meanwhile, the stakes of being bog-standard or outdated got higher, as the competition became more severe. This left some content producers panicked about their chances to succeed instead of being focused on bringing new creative ideas to life. After all, living in fear is counterproductive. Hence, the best method of facing fears is to meet them in person. The launch of a new CTV app will consist of a series of important rendezvous on each of the steps: a platform or platforms to use, development strategy, content ideas, promotional tools, and monetization models. It’s vital to pay attention to every single decision throughout this journey. Now, time to get down to business.

Alex Zakrevsky is the CEO of Allroll marketing platform for CTV/OTT channel owners. Innovator, product lover, CTV, and programmatic enthusiast. He believes that the quality of the product always wins.

The post Five fears of channel owners: What spooks you about creating your own CTV app? appeared first on Search Engine Watch.