SEO

One of the biggest misses in SEO is neglecting your brand.

At first glance, including brand names in internal or external blogs may not seem to have many benefits. However, the truth is that you should promote your brand through SEO for quite a few reasons. 

First of all, SEO promotion helps new customers find you. If someone is searching for your company or product by name, you want to make sure your brand comes up in the search results. This visibility, in turn, helps maximize your SEO efforts. When customers see a brand name in search results for a blog, they’re more likely to click on it, which helps improve the blog’s ranking in search engines. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle.

Second, including brand names in blogs can help build customer relationships. For instance, if someone sees your brand name in a blog post or article, they’re more likely to trust what you have to say. This statement holds true for promoting your own brand name, products you sell, or products your customers sell if you are a B2B company. In the latter case, by featuring the products your customers represent, you show that you’re an expert on those products and that you’re interested in helping them promote their businesses.

Finally, this approach can also help generate leads for you and your customers. If a consumer is looking for information about a particular product or type of product, and they see that your company has written a blog post about it, they may be more likely to reach out to you or your customers to buy it, so you may even generate a great lead for the sales team. 

If you’re a business owner, it’s important to make sure your brand is front and center in your blog posts. While you may think your content is strong enough to stand on its own without including your brand name, you could be missing out on valuable search engine optimization (SEO) opportunities. By including your brand name in your blog posts, you ensure that your content is more likely to show up in search engine results pages (SERPs) and thereby drive traffic to your website. Furthermore, potential customers who see your brand name in a blog post are more likely to remember it when they’re ready to make a purchase. So, if you’re not already including your brand in your blog posts, consider doing so—it could make a big difference for your business.

If you’re thinking of using brand names of products in your blog posts, you need to keep a few things in mind. 

First of all, the product should be relevant to your business. What’s the point of mentioning a product that your company doesn’t sell or that isn’t related to your industry?

Second, don’t forget to optimize your blog post for SEO. Include the product’s name in the title and throughout the body of the content. You should also include relevant keywords so customers can easily find your post when they’re searching for information about the product. 

Finally, don’t forget to include a call to action. If you want customers to reach out to you for more information, include your contact information at the end of the blog post or link customers to where they can buy the product.

You can promote a brand name through SEO in a number of ways, one of which is to use it as anchor text in links to the website. This tactic tells search engines that the site is about the brand, and it can help the site rank higher for branded searches. 

Another way to promote a brand name is to mention it in website pages’ title and meta tags. This approach helps search engines associate the site with the brand, and it can also help the site rank higher in branded searches. 

Finally, including the brand name in website content can also be helpful. Doing so ensures that search engines know the site is relevant to the brand, and it can (you guessed it!) help the website rank higher in related searches. By using these strategies, businesses can ensure that their brand is well-represented in search engine results pages.

Following these tips will enable you to use product brand names in your blog posts to improve SEO and generate leads, even if the resulting customers aren’t your own.

Additionally, as previously mentioned, this approach can help build trust with potential customers. By featuring brands that your company trusts, you send a signal to potential customers that you’re knowledgeable and reliable.

Including brand names in blog posts can also help improve your  blog’s click-through rate (CTR). If a customer sees a brand name in their search results and clicks on it, they’re more likely to visit your website and convert into a paying customer.

This approach can also help improve your overall traffic quality. If you’re sending customers to your website who are interested in the products you sell, they’re more likely to convert into paying customers than if you were sending them to your website for other reasons.

If you want to improve your SEO and generate leads, include product brand names in your blog posts, don’t forget to optimize your blog post for SEO, and include a call to action so customers can easily reach out to you.

As a business owner, you know that promotion is key to success. With so many competing businesses, making your brand stand out from the crowd can be difficult. Fortunately, you can promote your brand using SEO in a number of ways. By optimizing your website for search engines, you can increase your visibility and attract more potential customers. Here are five ways to promote your brand with SEO:

1. Choose the right keywords. When choosing keywords for your website, think like your customers: What terms would they use to search for your product or service? Use these keywords throughout your website, from the titles and headlines to the body text and alt tags.
2. Create quality content. In addition to using the right keywords, it’s also important to create high-quality, relevant, and engaging content. Search engines favor websites that offer valuable information other websites are likely to share and reference.
3. Build links. Links are one of the most important search engine ranking factors. By building links to high-quality websites, you can improve your search engine ranking and attract more traffic to your website.
4. Optimize your images. Whenever you add an image to your website, be sure to include appropriate keywords in the file name and alt text. Doing  so will help search engines index your images and make them more likely to appear in image search results.
5. Promote your brand on social media. Social media is a great way to connect with potential customers and build interest in your brand. Be sure to optimize your social media profiles for search engines and include links back to your website. 

By following these SEO tips, you can increase the likelihood that your website will appear prominently in search engine results and help potential customers find you online.

Related post: Why Branded Keywords are Important

Need help with your SEO? Contact newData today, and we’ll be happy to help you improve your SEO and generate leads.

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Anchor texts are an important part of SEO strategy. They’re one way to improve your ranking on search engines, but you must use them correctly if you want to see results. In this blog post, we’ll answer the question, “What is an anchor text?” and explain why it’s so important for SEO. We’ll also discuss how to use anchor texts effectively and tell you about some common mistakes people make when using them. Finally, we’ll give you some tips on how to tell if your anchor text is working well for you.

1. What is anchor text and why is it important for SEO?

Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink, and it’s important for SEO because it helps search engines understand a page’s relevance to a particular keyword or phrase. When a user searches for a certain term, the search engine looks for pages that contain that term in the anchor text. If many pages contain the term, the search engine will rank those pages higher in the search results. Therefore, by including relevant keywords and phrases in your anchor text, you can help improve your SEO and increase the chance of potential customers finding you.

2. How do you use anchor text to improve your SEO ranking?

When you use anchor text in a link, you inform Google that the material on your page is relevant to the page to which you’re linking. When you place a meta description, Google search crawlers check it for your product’s, service’s, or information’s relevance to a subject. If the crawlers detect a high degree of relevance, it can improve your SEO ranking because it indicates that your website’s content is related to the keywords like the pages in a book. 

You may be doing a lot of things correctly in regard to SEO, but if you’re not properly using anchor texts, your website is definitely sub-optimized. By carefully choosing the words that appear in your anchor text, you send strong signals to search engines about your page’s topic. As a result, your page is more likely to rank for related keyword searches. In addition, using targeted keywords in your anchor text can also help improve your click-through rate, as users are more likely to click on a link that contains the keywords for which they’re searching. So, if you’re looking to boost your SEO ranking, be sure to make use of anchor text.

3. What are some best practices for using anchor text effectively in your SEO strategy?

When utilizing anchor text for SEO purposes, you need to be aware of the best practices to get the most out of your efforts. Some best practices to keep in mind include:

• Using a variety of anchor text keywords. Doing so will help ensure that your site appears in a wider variety of search results.
• Varying the anchor text used on each website page. This technique will help you avoid any search engine penalties for the overuse of any one keyword or phrase.
• Use relevant keywords and phrases in your anchor text. This strategy will help improve your website’s search engine ranking.
• Avoid using too many exact-match keywords in your anchor text, which can look spammy to search engines and may lead to penalties for your website.
• Mix up your anchor text with branded terms, generic terms, and long-tail keyword phrases to get the most benefit from SEO optimization.
• Categorize your anchor text.

Main Anchor Text Categories

• Exact Match Anchors – These link with one of your major keywords (exact match) as the anchor text; for example,  an exact match anchor text would be if you were targeting the keyword phrase “blue widgets” for your website, and you used that exact phrase as your anchor text. This would be considered keyword stuffing if you did it excessively, but it can be an effective way to optimize your website for that particular keyword phrase.). Consider placing no more than 5% of your anchor texts into this category.
• Key Phrases Mixed into Anchors – The MSN homepage uses a variety of anchor text, including keywords and additional phrases not included in the main key phrase. This helps to optimize the website and improve its ranking. Try using 5-10% of your anchor texts for this purpose.
• Brand, Natural, and URL Anchors – These are anchors that have nothing to do with your key phrase unless they’re included in your brand. You should seriously consider placing between 90-95% of your anchor texts into this category.

Detailed Anchor Text Categories

• Naked Link Text – This is the link itself, without a description. For example, “www.ibm.com/cloud/ai.”
• Image Anchor Links – These are the ALT texts for images; they’re meant for the search engines and not humans.  Without them, Google wouldn’t know anything about the image and would just ignore it. These links are important because they’re the series of details that ultimately matters for SEO.
• A Keyword – A keyword is a word or phrase that informs both humans and search engines about a page’s subject matter. For example, “AI for customer service” which links to a specific page on the IBM website that describes that service.
• Partial Keyword – This contains your keyword interspersed with one or more related words. Being too precise feels contrived, and since  Google values natural content, a partial keyword is a compromise between a precise focus and the overall flow. 
• Keyword Plus – These are your most important keyword phrases, plus other, lesser-known words.
• Brand – As the name implies, a branded anchor text contains your brand name. For example, “IBM Cloud Services.”
• Brand Plus Keyword – This is your brand name and a keyword combined into a single anchor. Let’s assume that IBM was promoting their analytics business. In this case, a brand plus keyword might  be “IBM Analytics Center of Excellence.” 
• Generic Anchor Text – Here, no keyword, brand, or anything related to the page is mentioned. For example, “Click Here” or “Download.”
• Website Name – This does not contain “http://” or “www,” but just the URL, like “ibm.com.”
• Long-Tailed Anchor Text – This may include a keyword, plus some related or unrelated words.  For example, “Why storing your data on a reputable cloud platform is more secure.”

4. What common mistakes do people make when using anchor texts?

When it comes to using anchor texts for SEO purposes, people often make a few common mistakes. Some of them include:

• Not using enough anchor texts – When you’re trying to improve your SEO ranking, you need to use anchor text as much as possible. Not using enough anchor text means the search engines won’t have sufficient context. Think of it less as a game and more as your effort to clearly express your page’s purpose. After all, Google indexes millions of pages and needs all the help it can get.  
• Using the same anchor texts over and over again – This probably means that the page has nothing interesting to offer or is downright spammy behavior.  While Google may not explicitly penalize repeated anchors, this approach will certainly not help your SEO efforts. 
• Choosing a wrong anchor text – Again, the name of the game is relevance.  If the content doesn’t match your links, Google won’t give you any brownie points.  The anchor texts should mainly contain relevant and contextual keywords. 

5. How can you tell if your anchor text is (or isn’t) effective?

1. Check your traffic levels. If you see a sudden drop in traffic after implementing a new SEO anchor text strategy, it’s likely that something is not working as intended.
2. Compare your traffic levels to those of your competitors. If they are outperforming you, it’s possible that their anchor text strategy is better than yours.
3. Examine your click-through rates. If you see a significant drop in CTR after changing your anchor text, it’s likely that your new strategy is not as effective as it could be.
4. Check your rankings. If you see a drop in your search engine rankings after implementing a new SEO anchor text strategy, it’s possible that your strategy is not as effective as it could be.
5. Talk to your customers. If you notice that your customers are not responding well to your new anchor text, it’s possible that it’s not as effective as it could be.

Anchor texts play an important role in SEO.  While many factors  can be optimized, anchor texts are at the top of the list.  If you want to see results, you must use anchor text correctly. In this blog post, we’ve answered the question “what is an anchor text?” and explained why it’s so important for your SEO efforts. We’ve also discussed how to use anchor texts effectively and told you about some common mistakes people make when using them. Finally, we’ve given you some tips on how to tell if your anchor text is working well for you. To learn more about how we can help you with your SEO efforts, please give us a call. Thanks for reading!

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In the world of digital marketing, it can be easy to get caught up in the hype of the latest and greatest tool or strategy. But while those new tools and strategies are exciting, they often aren’t relevant to your business. That’s where proven, long-term strategies like SEO come in that provide concrete results over the long term.

When it comes to short-term gains, like driving traffic to your website for a specific promotion or sale, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising such as Google Ads is a great option. With PPC, you’re paying each time someone clicks on your ad. You can target ads at certain keywords, locations, devices, and demographics. PPC is a good light-weight option if you’re selling something online, but unlike SEO, which is an investment in your business, short-term paid advertising is an expense that often doesn’t provide any long-term benefits. You may get a short-term bump in search rankings with PPC but ultimately, if your rankings don’t increase, your business won’t see the kind of growth that it could achieve with SEO as a principle marketing strategy.

The truth is, SEO is an investment. It takes time, energy, and education to reap the benefits of an optimized website. In fact, SEO is often referred to as both an “invisible” and “inconvenient” business strategy. Complicating matters is the fact that the corporate world is notoriously impatient, often demanding immediate results and ROI. But in the case of SEO, it pays to be patient. Just like investing in your business, if you’re not investing in SEO, you’re missing out on promoting the credibility of your brand and attracting potential customers to your website.

With the risks and costs of implementing SEO being what they are, it is understandable to hesitate over utilizing an unfamiliar strategy. With SEO, however, the significant growth that it can prompt in your business often speaks for itself.

Here are some advantages of SEO over PPC:

• Cost – PPC is typically more expensive than SEO. One of the biggest risks of paid advertising is the potential for wasted spend. If you’re not careful, you can easily end up spending a lot of money on ads that don’t generate any ROI. Many businesses spend their entire marketing budget on advertising campaigns that don’t improve their search ranking at all. While PPC can be a useful tool in your overall marketing strategy, it’s important to make sure that you’re targeting the right audience with the right ads. After all, once the ads end, so does your traffic.
• Trust – People are increasingly wary of online ads, especially younger users. In fact, many users block ads altogether. SEO is more effective than PPC because it generates higher quality, long-term traffic that is more likely to be interested in making a purchase. In fact, users are 18 times more likely to click on organic search results than an ad. Remember that PPC may entice users to click on your ad (and you’ll get charged for this click), but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll make a purchase.
• Effectiveness – SEO uses a variety of proven techniques to drive organic traffic to your website, such as creating high-quality content, building a blog that attracts visitors, promoting your content via social media, and optimizing your website for high-quality traffic. People are drawn to your content because they find it interesting or useful, and Google rewards these types of websites with higher rankings.

The bottom line is that SEO works! It is more effective in the long run than PPC because it provides a sustainable and continuous flow of qualified traffic to your website. Unlike PPC, organic SEO generates more trust with users and helps build your brand. Users are more likely to click on a result from a search engine than on an ad. This trust enables users to make a purchase or take other desired actions on your website.

Let newData help you create a scalable, repeatable, and profitable SEO strategy that will boost your online conversions and revenue. We will create an SEO plan that is tailored to your business goals, objectives, and current ranking. We’ll also ensure that your SEO efforts are compliant with Google’s continually-changing guidelines and best practices, so you can be confident that your campaign is optimized for maximum search results and organic traffic. newData is an SEO company based in Nashville that will help you reach your marketing goals faster, more effectively, and more cost-effectively than other SEO providers. Contact us today to get started.

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Both on-page and off-page SEO are essential for search engine optimization. On-page SEO is concerned with the website elements that influence search engine results page (SERP) rankings, whereas off-page SEO, as you may have assumed, focuses on online factors that are not on your website. In reality, both SEO types play a crucial role and are intimately linked. This blog emphasizes frequently-neglected on-page SEO.

At a recent forum of SEO professionals, experts noted that on-page SEO is so critical that a page can stand on its own and be ranked on Google without any backlinking (off-page SEO) whatsoever. Before we get too far into the weeds, however (and we will), let’s figure out why on-page SEO is so important.

Google indexes billions of pages so that people who search for a keyword or phrase can find relevant information about it. Even though this is a daunting task, Google continually repeats this process in an ever-growing online community. Protocols exist to ensure that search engines like Google can easily and efficiently crawl through websites to find what they’re looking for. This feature is important because it helps them determine whether your website is relevant to a user’s search query. If it’s not, then your website won’t rank high in SERPs.

On-page SEO covers a broad range of activities, from written content meant for human consumption to technical SEO, which focuses on a website’s technical aspects such as structure, code, and performance. Besides the noted search engine efficiency gains, on-page is also meant to improve a visitor’s experience. Google’s recent algorithmic updates have emphasized such experiential factors.

Relevance is a key factor in both search engine optimization and the user experience. Search engines want to provide the best results for a user’s query, part of which is returning results that are relevant to the original keywords. Similarly, users expect to see results that are relevant to their query. Relevance is also important in the connection between off-page and on-page SEO. Backlinks, which are an important part of off-page SEO, must have content relevant to the final page to which they connect. The anchor text used in the link can also add an extra layer of relevance. Taking all these factors into account, it becomes clear that relevance is essential for a good user experience and successful search engine optimization.

Tips for Optimizing On-Page SEO

Title:

The webpage title is one of the most important on-page SEO factors. It’s the first thing search engines see when they crawl your site, so it’s important to optimize it correctly. Make sure your title is unique, catchy, and relevant to your page topic, and include your target keywords as close to the beginning of the title as possible. Also, always include each title in the HTML code’s <head> section.

Meta Description:

The meta description (the snippet of text  that appears below your title in SERPs) is also important for on-page SEO, and it’s a great opportunity to introduce potential visitors to your page and persuade them to click through. Make sure your meta description is well written and includes your target keywords, and keep it under 160 characters, so it doesn’t get cut off in the SERPs. As with headings, each title should be included in the HTML code’s <head> section.

Headings:

One way to improve your on-page SEO is by using heading tags correctly. Header tags (h1, h2, etc.) help break up your content and make it easier for search engines to understand. Each page should only have one h1 tag, and you should use other header tags (h2, h3, etc.) sparingly, to highlight your content’s important points or sections.

Keywords:

Keywords are another important factor for on-page SEO. When your content targets specific keywords, it improves your site’s chances of achieving high SERP rankings for those terms. Be sure to research which keywords are relevant to your topic, and use them throughout your content (including in the title, meta description, and body text). However, don’t overuse keywords, as Google sometimes penalizes this practice.

Images:

Images are also important for on-page SEO. When you include images on your page, always optimize them with relevant keywords and captions. You can also use Alt Text to provide additional information about the image for search engines.

Content Length:

Another key consideration for on-page SEO is content length. SEO experts generally recommend you aim for at least 1,500 words per page if you want to rank high in SERPs. However, don’t  focus only on word count—make sure the content is high quality and provides value to users.

Technical SEO:

As the name implies, technical SEO refers to optimizing a website for search engine indexing and ranking. This SEO subset focuses on a website’s technical aspects such as structure, code, and performance. Web developers and engineers usually perform technical SEO rather than marketing or SEO professionals. However, technical SEO knowledge is becoming more important for all digital marketers, as it can have a significant impact on a website’s visibility and traffic. 

Technical SEO’s main goal is to improve how search engines crawl through and index a website, which can ultimately lead to higher rankings and more traffic. To that end, technical SEO experts (developers versus marketers) need to ensure that a website is well-structured, uses clean code, and loads quickly. Additionally, they may need to troubleshoot issues that prevent search engines from properly indexing a website. While technical SEO can be complex, I can’t overstate its importance. For any website that wants top rankings in search results, technical SEO must be a priority.

Website Performance:

Finally, it’s important to optimize website performance. Search engines take into account how quickly a page loads when they rank it. If your website is slow, you’re likely to rank lower than websites that load more quickly. 

Website performance also affects user experience. Ensure that your HTML is properly formatted, with correct syntax and no errors. Poorly-formatted HTML can negatively affect your website’s SEO performance. In addition, check for broken links and repair or remove them as necessary. If your website is slow to load or has errors on the page, visitors are likely to leave (or “bounce,” in SEO jargon) before they even give your content a chance.

Tools and Resources to Help You with On-Page SEO

Several free and paid tools and resources are available to help you with on-page SEO. Some of the most popular ones include:

GTMetrix:

This tool loads your pages in a real browser with an unthrottled connection on the GTMetrix servers, which allows you to change certain options (location, connection speed, screen resolution, etc.) to better fit your needs.

Google PageSpeed Insights:

This tool uses headless/emulated browsers and network throttling to simulate your page load under different network conditions (i.e., desktop and mobile). Note that you can’t change the test options like location, connection speed, screen resolution, etc.

GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights:

newData recommends that businesses test their website speed using both methods. For your convenience, you can test your website with both solutions at the same time.   

Consider Hiring an SEO Expert

SEO can be a complex and time-consuming process, and it’s often difficult for business owners to DIY their way to good results. Hiring an SEO expert can help you improve your website’s content as well as its technical aspects. An SEO expert can also help you stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices, which is essential for achieving good results with SEO in general.

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