Over-time a well optimized website gets more traffic which translates to more leads and sales. If your website does not have SEO, potential clients and guests cannot find your website and all your hard work will go to waste.

Important SEO Factors To Note

However, there are so many SEO factors that you need to consider. All of this work can be intimidating especially to newbies.  In this blog, we will focus on the most important SEO factors that you need to focus on.

Secure & Accessible Website

First of all, you need the right kind of URL. You need a URL that Google bots can easily reach. This means that Google has to be able to find your URL, crawl the page and understand what it’s about. To help the bots out you need:

• You need a website that is well coded.
• A robots.txt file to help Google find site information.
• A site map that lists all of your pages.

HTTPS is not a primary factor for Google to index your site, but it is a “lightweight ranking factor”. However, having HTTPS is still great for your site.

Page Speed Loading

Page loading speed includes the loading speed of your mobile pages. Page speed has been a ranking factor for years. This is because Google wants to let searchers have a positive experience on the web.

Google has announced that they will be including mobile page load speed as early as 2018. If your site does not load fast, it could get penalized.

Mobile Friendliness

Your website should also be responsive. This means that it is screen friendly not only for desktop and laptop users but for mobile and gadget users too.

Google’s mobile-first policy is real. Google has been prioritizing mobile friendliness mainly due to the increase of people who are using their smartphones and gadgets to access the internet. If you’re site is not mobile friendly, it could be missing out on visitors.

A mobile friendly website is:

• A website that automatically resizes to the size of the screen of the user.
• Using large fonts for easy readability on a small screen.
• Easy navigation including easy to tap menu.
• Ensuring that essential content isn’t hidden by interstitial ads.

Domain Age & Authority

Did you know that the top sites listed on Google have a domain age of 3 years or more? Data shows that very few sites that are a few months old achieve top ranking. This means that if you’ve had your website for a while and optimize it, you’re already at an advantage.

In some cases, domain names also matter. Although Google has penalized sites with exact-match domains (those that target keywords), that penalty is generally for spammy sites with thin content.

Authority is important too. This means content has to be great and original.

Optimized Content

Google likes good content especially when it comes to ranking. Google’s algorithm relies on keywords. These are words and phrases searchers use when they are looking for information. They are also the words used to describe what your site is about. Ideally, both of these should match.

Get more SEO tips and how to increase traffic.

User Experience

Google will also take a look at how users experience your website. It uses an AI called RankBrain to take a look at:

• Click through rate – the number of people who click to visit your site.
• Bounce rate – the number of people who leave your site right away because they didn’t find what they needed.
• Dwell time – time they spent on your website after they’ve landed.

These are just a few examples of what Google looks at in order to know how to rank your website. While SEO is always changing, being in the know can help your website rank higher in SERPs.

If you need a SEO expert in Sydney, we can help your website perform better. SEO is an ongoing process and contacting us can help you focus more on your business.

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Competitive analysis is a critical part of a business marketing plan. Competitor analysis will  not only give you an insight to what your competitor is doing, it will help you compare and ultimately capitalize on it.

Whether you’re just starting out or expanding, knowing what your rivals are doing can help you devise a marketing strategy that can help you outrank them because it identifies their weaknesses and strengths so that you can benchmark them against your own.

Learn Secrets To Outranking Your Competitors

If you’re looking for SEO tricks that can help you outrank your competitors you’re in the right place because we have some tips for you.

Investigate Their Online Presence

Get details on how the competitor behaves online. For example, do they use PPC, do they have multiple landing pages, do they use schema data, who are their referrals?

It’s best to identify the strong and weak points in their marketing strategy.

Analyze Their Reputation and Reviews

Analyze how customers think of your competitors. You can find these by going to their Google reviews, social reviews or comments left on their blogs. Read positive and negative reviews.

This will give you an insight on what needs to be improved, how customers perceive a product and other information like what customers don’t like. You can then apply what you have learned to better your product or service.

Track Mentions Of Your Competitors

Remember the saying: keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Aside from monitoring customers or other websites that mention your brand, you also need to track mentions of your competitors online.

You can use Google Alert to monitor new stories or mention of your competitors , your brand and other related subjects.

Analyze Their PPC Efforts

Learn which keywords your competitors are bidding on. Use both secondary and primary keywords within the search engines. You can also use 3^rd party tools to save time. They will help you breakdown which ads are image, text or HTML. It will even analyze the pages the ads lead to.

Evaluate Content

Take a look at your competitor’s content. This will give you insights on what you need to improve in terms of your own. Scan all their content: online, offsite, landing pages, copies, blogs, news, white paper, FAQs, infographics, ebooks, webinars, podcasts and other content forms.

Snoop On Their Social Media

Take a look at which social media platforms your competitors are using, what type of content they post, how often, who their audience are and how the engage with their audience. This will give you a good idea of how customers feel, what type of engagement works well so that you know which styles work and what techniques will work best for your own social media campaigns.

Engage With Them

Having an insight as to what your competitors are doing well can help you capitalize on it. Behave like one of their customers and add yourself on their email newsletter subscription, blog and social media platforms. This will give you the opportunity to review their content, call to action as well as their engagement style.

Benchmark Yourself Against Them

Compare your competitor’s key matrix against your own. From your insights as well as from data gathered you will get an idea of how your competitors market themselves against you in your shared industry. Now that you have an idea of their marketing strategy you can formulate plans so that you can position your brand against them and stand out.

Comparing yourself against your competitors can show you new opportunities for improvement and growth. Knowing what they are doing and how they are doing it can help you do better so that you stand out

A Sydney SEO Company can help you optimize your website so that you have customers on your doorstep. Our strategies can help you attract the right kind of traffic so that you can boost leads and sales.

The post Learn Secrets To Outranking Your Competitors appeared first on Creativ Digital.

If your website isn’t ranking in SERPs, if sales are in a slump or if calls from customers are down, something is wrong with your content. Unfortunately for many of us, the internet is littered with slick looking websites with terrible copy.

The problem is that content does not need to be decent. It needs to be outstanding. Good content sets you apart from other websites and delivers relevant information to the hands of your customers. This means that the success of your website depends on content.

Content opens the wallets of customers and other components such as design, images, videos and others provide support.

Content is important because it drives traffic to your website and persuade customers to buy. This is why you need to improve your website’s content.

Here are some tips when planning a copy.

Plan Ahead

Solid research should always be the basis of content. Most of the time, website owners think that they already have “useable” content and there is no need for strategic thinking.

This is a mistake because good content should revolve around the customer’s preferences. Content should always begin with market research to determine high value customers and to define the persona of your website. This will make it easier for you to write targeted content.

Knowing who your customers are and what they’re buying is a good start when planning a copy.

Editing Is Important Too

There is nothing more unattractive than a copy littered with misspelled words and grammatical errors. Even great writers look over their work and so should you. Editing is a good skill to master and very important when it comes to copy writing.

Editing is more than just proofreading. If you like what you read then make sure that everything is spelled correctly and has the correct punctuation and grammar. If it doesn’t, it’s usually because of these reasons: poor writing and failure to address the subject.

A good editor can rectify this situation. If you’re not good at editing there is professional help available.

Ensure That Landing Pages Are Amazing

The copy should be as good as the landing page. Copies are generally short so your landing page is a good vehicle for adding more value to your product.

A good landing page addresses the problem. Is their garden too untidy? Is heating a home expensive? Once you’ve established an emotional connection, explain how your product can help. Point out that other clients have successfully solved this problem by linking to testimonials.

The icing on the cake is the call to action button (CTA).

Generate Ideas For Blogs Regularly

Blogs are great for SEO but that’s not its only purpose. For many websites, its main purpose is to sell. Problem is we don’t always know what to write about.

A good way to get yourself out of the rut is to take a look at what your competitors are writing about. Take a look at their most shared and most successful post to get ideas on what people are reading about and sharing. Another good strategy is to ask for ideas around the office or your audience to find out what other people are curious about in terms of your product or service.

Always remember that content is important not only to your website but also to your sales. Good content can generate leads which can turn into sales. Paying attention to what you write about is a good start when it comes to improving content for your website.

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