search engine optimisation Archives - MIU Your Creative Digital Agency

May 25, 2023August 31, 2023

The Top 5 Soft Skills SEOs Should Develop To Succeed

Master 5 Soft Skills SEOs Success. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a specialized profession that requires expertise and technical know-how. Unsurprisingly, building a career in SEO typically involves mastering the hard skills needed to excel in it. An SEO expert must have a good understanding of SEO tools to excel. From keyword research to link building and understanding the ranking factor of content.

However, considering the current scenario, knowledge of technical SEO is not enough for an SEO professional to do digital marketing. You must pair them with soft skills enabling you to engage with your clients and customers fully.

What Are Soft Skills?

You may wonder: what exactly are these soft skills? And why are they so important?

Soft skills are the personal qualities and characteristics of a person. These include work ethic, punctuality and empathy. They are skills that you do not usually study in school. Instead, you acquire them through relationships with others. Having them makes it easier for you to work well with colleagues. You can also create more appealing SEO content. When you understand how people think and know what appeals to them, your SEO strategies will bear more fruit.

After all, you work with people and create content for people to enjoy; they consume it. Knowing how to deal with the human element in your work would help you go that extra mile to succeed. These are the top 5 soft skills SEOs should develop.

Empathy At The Heart Of All You Create

Empathy is king in any task that requires creating content for consumers. You must understand what customers want when they interact with your content. Indeed, not everyone thinks the same way or has the same life experiences. It leads to different perspectives and desires among people. Being an SEO professional, you must understand the varying requirements and create content for every audience.

However, empathy is not all about changing your opinion or attitude to fit others. Instead, it is about being accepting of others. You will better understand and cater to various viewpoints when you have empathy. Building this skill will benefit you greatly in digital marketing.

For instance, an SEO professional should know how the customer and search engines judge SEO content. They need a good balance of hard and soft skills. Hard skills are knowing how search engines crawl for results and filter content. While soft skills are understanding what customers are looking for and creating relevant content. Hard skills are knowing what keywords to put into the content. Soft skills are knowing how to incorporate the keywords naturally so that customers enjoy the reading experience.

Customers search for keywords in the content. Content that incorporates keywords in a jarring manner will put them off. SEO content creators can only achieve this balance if they have hard and soft skills.

Empathy is also telling great brand stories. Everyone loves a good story – including you. A brand should always have a good story at its core to showcase its progress to customers. Empathy and an innate understanding of life and emotions, can make you a master storyteller. A good sense of storytelling will help you naturally construct and convey marketing narratives.

In content marketing, an exciting narrative provides more value and enjoyment to consumers. Narratives take the reader on an exploratory journey. They appeal to universal human values and personal development. You can engage your customers better through your content when you tell them a story that appeals to their emotions.

Communicate With Clients And Colleagues

Listening is paramount in developing practical communication skills. We might not always be fully engaged when we hear another person speak. We may be thinking of what to say in response or be distracted by something else.

Good listening is not simply hearing what the other person is saying. It is proactive and attentive; involves much empathy as well. Careful listening means taking a non-judgemental stance towards another person. Ensure you carefully observe their body language and take the time to ask insightful follow-up questions afterward. You will better discern their innermost feelings and thoughts by reading their verbal and nonverbal cues.

Being able to listen well also means thoroughly understanding your client’s needs. With this, you can set clear and reasonable expectations for yourself. Knowing what the client requires helps you create a realistic content creation strategy. You’ll be able to communicate these goals to your client while acknowledging that you are keeping their considerations in mind. Clients feel valued and heard, knowing that you have their best interests at heart. It builds trust between both parties.

Good listening should be paired with good speaking and writing skills for you to become an even more effective communicator. When speaking with clients or writing content for consumers, you want to present as accurate and error-free information as possible. Training your verbal and written reasoning skills comes through practice and takes time. Practice this by striving to get better at composing emails or writing reports. You can also explore different ways of presenting complex SEO concepts more straightforwardly to co-workers or clients. These train you to adapt your communication skills to fit a variety of audiences from different backgrounds.

These are valuable in helping you present your next strategic plan to your client. Explaining things clearly and concisely can elevate your clients’ confidence in you. It is because they believe you can deliver effectively for them.

Managing Your Time Well

Time management is of utmost importance in a job that is driven by meeting deadlines. Some tasks are more urgent than others. A seasoned SEO professional is familiar with getting work done within specific periods. Given these demands, it is essential to manage your time well. You must know how to prioritize your work to optimize the effectiveness of time spent on projects.

Prioritizing work includes knowing the amount of time needed at each project stage. For instance, the process of link building requires a lot of time. It is not easy to do because you need to get organic hyperlinks that lead to your website from other websites. It is essential to determine page rankings on Google; it shows the worthiness of your webpage content. If you can systematically prioritize your work, you can allocate enough time for this part of SEO strategies.

Managing your time well also means that you’ll have more confidence in your abilities to complete projects. Good time management strengthens your work ethic because you can ensure the timely completion and delivery of projects. More confidence in yourself naturally translates to a client’s greater confidence in you.

Flexibility is another critical factor in good time management. In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, trends are always changing. Search engines constantly update how they crawl for results and examine web pages. An SEO professional must keep up with change. They must be flexible with evolving deadlines and client demands. For instance, an SEO professional may find out that specific campaigns are not working for one business. A client can suddenly change their demands at the last minute. An SEO professional needs to be able to switch strategies as fast as possible.

Think Critically

When creating SEO content, an SEO specialist often deals with large quantities of information. Data is available in large amounts, and information can be made by anyone and posted online for all. One needs to know how to separate the jewels from the junk.

Google Analytics often yields a lot of data on SEO campaigns. An SEO professional uses his or her analytical and technical skills to work on this data. But they must be able to think critically about what this data means.

Critical thinking is a combination of optimism and a healthy dose of skepticism. It means seeing both sides of the same coin and questioning existing perspectives. It helps immensely with implementing SEO strategies. Someone who thinks critically could sift out informative, credible content from their research online. They would be able to determine what the analytics data could mean about consumer behavior and social media outreach success.

For instance, when doing keyword research, Google Keyword Planner might bring back lots of results on keywords used by competitors. Being able to think critically about these keywords means that you know how and when you should use them. Not all keywords will fit every business, and you shouldn’t just use keywords because all the other competitors are using them. Even if it works for one company, it may not work for another.

Critical thinking also means acknowledging that you don’t know everything despite being an SEO expert. You should be humble and willing to learn or improve in areas where you may be lacking. Constant improvement means that you keep growing as a professional; it is a good attitude.

In his book, “Influence”, author Robert Cialdini said, “we are persuaded by reason, but we are moved by emotion.” Reason appeals to logic, and if people can see the rationale behind something, you’ll convince them. But you also want your strategies to touch people’s hearts as they will remember it better that way. Appeal to consumers’ emotions through excellent communication and upholding universal values. It will create deep and lasting positive impressions on your clients, consumers, and colleagues.

Through this guide, we hope you have gained a profound understanding of 5 soft power soft skills SEOs should develop to excel. Add these to your toolbox of SEO skills to become an even better SEO professional.

May 19, 2023July 4, 2023

Content Writing Mistakes You Need to Avoid

Content writing mistakes you need to avoid. A good writer will shell out quality content businesses and they have the ultimate skill to build your brand by creating an intended impression on your target audience. However, what if you are starting with content writing or want to hone your skills? We can help you there.

Content Writing Mistakes to Avoid Today And Forever!

Often, we mistake content writing for being everyone’s job, and any written piece can be content and that’s a horrible misconception that can land one in trouble. So let’s not let that happen, and to ensure you don’t here, are some pointers compiled, particularly on content writing mistakes that you can avoid.

Inadequate understanding of your audience

Let’s be honest. It’s impossible to know everything under the sun and moon, but for a good blog post, you have to know almost everything. A good piece of content will start with the writer having a concrete, if not a thorough, understanding of the audience. You must understand your audience well enough. To begin with, you must have a clear idea about your business, its goals, the industry to which it belongs, targeted audience, potential risks and strengths. Research well regarding how you want your brand image to be like, build your confidence and start creating content. This way, you can avoid errors of judgement, leading to more nods of approval amongst your readers.

Vague Intention of Your Writing

Every occasion has a dress code; likewise, each content has one or more objective(s). Clarifying your content’s purpose will trim down unnecessary details, presenting the reader with the content of high value for your targeted audience. Not only will this pivotal step avoid losing the reader’s interest, but they will also feel satisfied having spent their time reading your content. And that also is a perfect response to the purpose of the query. Benchmark the intention of your writing with a value, that is, does the content solve a problem, inform or educate your audience?

Too Much Jargon

Avoid using ‘flowery’ words or too much jargon, which might oversalt your content. Of course, you don’t want your potential readers to sit with a dictionary! Therefore, using simpler terms and language; it will allow the readers to grasp the information much faster. Also, they won’t have to put in much effort to comprehend the content. Be mindful that the tone of the content should exude a semi-formal vibe and yet, be error-free. Ensure that you don’t overdo the casual vibe! [Insert image of someone reading with a puzzled look]

Presentation Perfected

Presenting your content in structured and cohesive bullet points is preferable. Ideally, this is more inviting for readers, because headings and subheadings visually seem more organized. Each topic has to be in individual paragraphs. Besides this, be mindful to start with a catchy introduction and conclusion can be interrogative, simultaneously summarizing the value of the content.

SEO Optimization

Ever wondered why certain content always gets the most audience? Notably, it is because the right keywords, including relevant Meta descriptions, which subsequently let search engines find them more easily. Such content work gets more audience coverage, and this is one aspect you wouldn’t want to overlook. So, when you start writing, keep this in mind or allow a sticky note to remind you about it!

Omitting a Call To Action

Now that you have written your content according to the above points, the next step is to include a call to action. Because now that your reader has read your content & received the intended value, the next obvious step would be to engage them—especially readers who are reading your content for information regarding a particular product or service. A CTA would egg the reader to purchase the product or service. However, ensure that the CTA doesn’t sound like a sales pitch; otherwise, it would be a put-off factor for your readers.

Don’t Forget To Promote

megaphome advertising promotion red background

Now that you have completed your content and made it SEO-friendly, it’s time to put it across all social media platforms and your mailing list as well. You may find this unnecessary, but it is from where your content piece would grab eyeballs, especially from your existing mailing list. It can even go viral if your content strikes a chord with your readers; otherwise, it would be like throwing a message bottle into the sea, hoping that someone would read it. Why wait for the Sindabad when you can land them on your targets?

Remember to Proof-read

Since you spend a reasonable amount of time creating good content, you may overlook some inevitable mistakes. Therefore, it is advisable to get someone to review your content. Proofreading is mandatory before your content is published. So make sure you are publishing proofread content; that’s being more professional for your business.[Insert image of one person seated and another hunched over and both reading/looking at desktop/laptop]

Rome wasn’t built in a day; therefore, no one becomes a content writer in a short period. Constant practice will sharpen your skills. The content writing mistakes aren’t just for SEO content but for social media platforms as well. So how about using the above pointers to avoid pitfalls that could ruin a brilliant content piece?

March 7, 2023June 13, 2023

Optimizing Old Webpages Vs Creating New Content

Have you noticed how Google always lists up the latest articles when you run a search for a particular query? It doesn’t show the ones published two or three years ago. That’s right, freshness sells, and content creation is no exception to this rule. On the other hand, simply tweaking old content also propels new reach. Either of the way works, but which is better?

Revamp the Old or Bring on the New? Let us decide!

Many content creators are jumping on the bandwagon to revamp existing web pages. That’s because inserting key search engine optimization words helps to index the page higher up on Google searches. This trick does help marginally because crawlers in search engines are continuously searching for new pages to index. On the other hand, fresh new content will direct more traffic to your website. So which way to go? Optimizing old web pages vs creating new content? Let’s look at both sides of the ‘page’, shall we?

Optimizing Old webpages: Time Saving & Traffic Generating

Let’s face it! Content creation is no easy feat; if there is a shortcut, revamping the existing content is a sure-hit formula. It is a time-saving idea because you are not starting from scratch. You must tweak the blog post with relevant crucial SEO keywords. Then watch how the search engine crawlers nail the indexes in any search engine while generating more traffic. Make sure the meta descriptions contain words from your current keyword research. It’s like improvising an existing recipe by changing some ingredients for better flavour and meeting market demand. Additionally, the screaming frog is a resource that helps you identify vital data guiding SEO searches to make informed choices. Creating content is crucial, but focusing on wholesome SEO strategies is always a good idea. Taking that into account, you cannot spend much time creating new content. You must equally and more focus on promoting them on relevant platforms and generating revenue from there.

To Create New or to Renew

Shelling out new content is relatively easy; you have no shortage of information. You have the time. In-house or freelance content writers are creating new content at the speed of light. They optimize the title tag, include key search words, lay out a brilliant piece of content, and the deed is done! But wait! What if you can save time by repurposing your old content & and re-key the relevant SEO words? It’s a no-brainer that old optimized content is a sure-fire easy way to grow. Often, we assume that new content brings more traffic, but that’s not true. Your audience looks for high on utility content and learns from and improves things on their own. They don’t bother if it was published yesterday or some years ago. So, give them quality content, whether new or tweaked.

Also read: 10 Content Writing Examples to Help You Reach Your Audience

Inject some life

Readers have a shorter attention span; the best way to hook them is to infuse more ‘life’ into the content. Integrating visual or audio media, such as YouTube videos, infographics or podcasts, dissipates information. Consumers swarm to such pages because of the enhanced user experience factor, getting information in exciting ways. The more people visit your page, Google understands that you are offering quality content. Hence, your content marketing strategy should encompass how to woo your target audience, receive engagement, and fulfil the user audience purpose. Search engines will pick up the frequent click-through rate visits to your page. So now your page will rank higher in search engines and bring more traffic. Isn’t that a smart move?

Bull’s eye search?

You would probably focus on fine-tuning the SEO-friendly keywords when revamping old content. But how will you find the most relevant content for your audience? Try to know your audience through targeted campaigns. Study the click-through rate for every campaign to understand which keywords are working well. You must include this in your content strategy. One needs to focus on the content strategy primarily. However, there is a growing trend of updating old content. The ever-increasing shift to revitalize old content saves time and allows constructive focus on creativity. When you update your page frequently, either with fresh content or tweaked existing content, Google validates your page SEO. At the same time, it pushes it up in its search results. It prevents your page from tanking into the ocean’s depth of no return. Therefore, the only way to keep afloat or swimming would be to infuse your existing content with new organic data. Changing times will always reveal further information.

Lock and keywords

Whenever someone looks up something, Google will pick out the primary keyword and crawl through the pages. Suppose your page has valuable content, but it is more than two years old, then; Google might skip your page. This might happen despite having the prime keyword. Such a situation can be a disaster. The only way to curtail it would be to actively and consistently update your page. Google and other Search engines would never miss suggesting your address page because, as mentioned earlier, these crawlers love to index constantly updated pages or websites. Use Google Search Console to know your indexing status for better results.

Nothing can stop you from creating new content, but optimizing content has many benefits. Replacing obsolete content is relatively more straightforward as compared to other SEO methods. Interestingly, whipping out new content for seasoned writers is a piece of cake. In that case, optimizing old content would be akin to a maintenance job. You need to review past high-ranking content, look for keywords, and then tweak it and publish. Since many people have reaped benefits from this tactic, why don’t you try it?

March 21, 2022July 29, 2022

Here’s why You Should Prioritize Internal Linking in 2022

Here’s Why You Should Prioritize Internal Linking in 2022

Most SEO strategies incorporate internal linking, but that’s not enough. They deserve more priority.

SEO often tends to focus on a host of other ranking factors; internal linking is one. However, we often fail to realize how powerful internal linking boosts keyword rankings.

Take a look at the chart below.

According to this 2021 data, out of 15 SEO factors responsible for search rankings worldwide, internal linking figures are just at 13.7%. But that does not mean it is any less critical for digital marketing campaigns. It means that it is not being utilized optimally.

And this is what we are going to show you in this article.

We’ll tell you:

Why is internal linking so important?
How to set up an internal linking strategy?

What are internal links?

An internal link connects two pages of your website. It has many benefits, and we’ll come to that in detail later.

Let’s say that it helps both website visitors and search engines. It allows website visitors to look at related information and know more about your company. Doing so decreases your site’s bounce rate, especially if your website’s content is informative. It helps you rank higher on search engines since they use links to navigate your website.

There are many types of internal linking. No website can do without links on the menu, the home page, links to post feed, etc. But you can add links within the content called contextual links.

Contextual links are important because they lead readers to find related and exciting content.

Besides that, Contextual linking also allows search engines to find out which content is related, which determines which content is most valuable. The more links a page gets, the more valuable it will seem to search engines.

Internal linking vs and external linking

Before we understand why internal linking is necessary, we must clear out the confusion. If you’ve ever been confused between internal and external linking, this is where we sort it out.

Internal links connect pages within your website.

External links connect your pages to other websites.

In this post, we’ll focus on the former.

Why is internal linking so important?

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(Click on video to see the YouTube video explaining why internal linking is essential)

This video shows several reasons why it is essential to focus on internal ranking in most SEO campaigns. Search engines follow links to find content on websites, and then they rank these websites on search results. When search engines see a page or post having a lot of links, it sees them as being high-value content. It works for both internal and external linking.

You’ll also see how you can build an internal linking strategy. We’ll talk about that later as well, so hang on!

If you are new to all this and want to learn from the ground up, Ahrefs has this handy video on internal linking for beginners.

Relationships between content

We’ll talk about Google for our topic. There are other search engines, but Google is the most dominant one.

Have you wondered how Google crawls your website? Or how does it determine which site deserves to be ranked higher?

Google does that by using its Googlebot. It is a web crawler that follows both internal and external links. When this crawler comes to your website, it renders your homepage and goes for the first link. The search engine can determine the relationship between your pages, posts and other materials by following the link. This lets Google understand which pages are related.

Link value

After understanding the relationship between content, it is essential to comprehend link value. Google divides link value across all links on a web page. The homepage tends to have the most backlinks and has the highest link value. This link value is shared between all the links on the homepage, and it then gets passed onto the next page and then gets divided between all other pages linked to it – the process repeats.

If you link your newest article on your homepage, it’ll get more link value. Doing so helps Google find your recent posts faster as well.

When you understand link value, you’ll see that more links in a post mean adding more value to it. Google thinks pages with more valuable links are more important than your competitors. That’s how you rank higher.

Advantages of good internal linking

There are many ways in which internal linking is valuable for your overall SEO strategy. In this article, we will focus on the top six benefits.

They improve usability through anchor texts.

Internal links help visitors navigate to your website easily. This is made possible when you add sufficient user-friendly links to your articles. You must ensure that these point to related, relevant content pieces when you add anchor text. The aim is to direct viewers to content that shall interest them.

They spread the link juice.

It is equally important to focus on both external and internal linking. Creating backlinks is essential. Yes, but don’t ignore internal linking. They aid in spreading the link juice to other pages of a website. While building backlinks to a page, ensure that the page has links to other relevant pages. Here’s the most important thing you should ask yourself: is the link juice reaching your monetization pages? Is it reaching your blog, information repository, and product or service pages?

They boost your page views.

You already know that anchor texts help visitors navigate to your website. They are more likely to read the articles you have linked from the original content if they are relevant. Linking through your content helps in increasing your conversion rate. Relevant links are great for assisting visitors in discovering a website. The more links they follow, the higher your page views get. You have to avoid those significant bounce rates and optimize page speeds for all this to work.

They improve PageRank

Before we move on to why internal linking is vital for PageRank, let’s define PageRank first.

PageRank is a metric devised by Google to find out how essential web pages are. This is based on the number of backlinks relieved by a website, and the score is from 0 to 10.

Pages with PageRank can increase the metric score through internal linking since that helps spread the ‘juice’ to other connected pages. As a result, the related pages slightly boost authority and rankings.

They improve time on site.

One of the best things about using internal linking is the lower bounce rate. Since you take viewers from one page to the next relevant one, they remain on your website for longer. To reduce bounce rate, link them to essential pages for them, relevant and valuable.

They help Google crawlers in indexing your site

We have saved the best for last!

Google bots are getting smarter every day. Already, they can replicate the way a human browses your website. These bots follow all the links on your pages and thus get a good idea of your site’s architecture. With a solid internal architecture backed by internal linking, crawlers can visit pages that website visitors do not often see. Thus, linking to pages increases your search engine ranking.

Now that we have seen why internal linking is so important, it’s time to make sense of it all. It is time for…

Setting up an internal linking strategy

Internal linking is for your website what cardio is in a fitness regimen.

It can jumpstart your SEO strategy when you’re stuck in a rut.

When you add relevant links on your website, you’re telling Google:

How relevant your pages are
How your pages are related
What is the value of your pages

If you want to set up an internal linking strategy, you need to proceed step by step. Of course, it all depends on your website, but there are some steps to follow.

Determine your website’s ideal structure

Imagine your website as a pyramid. At the top, you have your webpage, below which you have sections and categories. Further down, you have individual pages and posts.

It is a basic site architecture, and if constructed well, your website’s menu will reflect the structure.

Want to know how to create the ideal site structure? Click here!

Determine which one is your most important content

Once you have created the best possible site architecture, it is now time to determine which your cornerstone content is.

Not sure what cornerstone content is? Here’s a handy video!

In short, it is the content that you want people to find out the most. It is your best and most complete content. It can be the content that tells people about your company, its values, and its functions.

Now, the way to make Google know this is the critical content you have to add links to it.

Add contextual links

At the beginning of this article, we spoke about contextual linking, remember?

Well, here is where we’ll talk about that in more detail.

How can you show Google that your articles are topically related? By linking them to each other. It doesn’t need to be complicated either. You can add links in the content itself or at the very bottom of the post.

Remember, you want to show Google your cornerstone content. You have to link to your cornerstone content from all the relevant pages and the other way around.

Link hierarchical pages

Suppose your website has a hierarchical structure that interlink parent and child pages. Additionally, interlink sibling pages as well. These pages should be related to a well-organized site, and it makes sense to connect them.

Think about adding a related post section

Whether you’re using WordPress, Wix, or something else, plugins and modules add a related post section to your blogs. If you have a similar strategy, determine whether the associated posts are related. If you’re unsure, it is best to add links manually.

Add navigational links

Apart from interlinking related pages and posts, you can make your cornerstone content even more authoritative by adding links from your home page and even from the top navigation. Ideally, you should do it for posts and pages most valuable for your business. Doing this will give the pages more link value, which ultimately helps rank higher on search engines.

Add links to taxonomies.

Taxonomies, such as tags and categories, help you organize your website, and they also allow both Google and viewers to understand your content’s subject. If you have a blog page, it can be good to have internal links in taxonomies to which the post belongs. This helps Google’s bots understand your blog’s structure, and your website visitors navigate your posts with ease.

Think about adding links to recent and popular posts

It is a no-brainer. If you have recent or all-time popular posts, don’t hide them away—link to such posts from your homepage itself. There are several ways for doing this, and you can link them on the:

Sidebar
Footer

That way, viewers will see them on every page they visit!

Remember about the little thing called link value we spoke of? These pages get a boost in authority when they get more link value. Additionally, showcasing your popular and recent posts help viewers to find them easily. And more traffic is an excellent sign to Google.

We have seen the benefits of internal linking, and we have also seen how to start building an internal linking strategy for your website.

But that happens when a website has poor internal linking? How does that affect your SEO?

Let’s find that out next.

Consequences of poor internal linking

We have seen how essential internal linking is. However, they still require manual upkeep and maintenance. This is why you should have regular site audits, and not doing so can create the same kind of problems that inadequate internal linking brings.

Your website does not remain the same over time, and it goes through significant change, both in structure and content. Unfortunately, such changes tend to produce broken links, and broken links lead to a dead-end or a page that no longer exists. As you can understand, this can put off most website visitors.

So what can you do?

Each time you remove pages or migrate them to a new location, you also need to redirect their links. Find out which links direct visitors to the migrated or deleted page, remove the links or redirect them to a new URL.

Several tools will be of help to you when auditing website:

Discovering broken internal links is essential for your SEO campaigns, as is ensuring link equity from external links throughout your website.

A Recap: Why should you pay attention to internal links?

Internal links are as important as external links.

External links empower your website’s search engine ranking and visibility. Internal links influence your SEO as well.

To recap what we talked about in this article, internal links:

Help search crawlers in determining which pages are important to viewers and search engines
Deteriorate over time naturally, which necessitates the fixing of broken links
Build direct link equity, which is essential for your pages

You should undoubtedly go for external links, but don’t forget your internal links.

April 22, 2021July 29, 2021

The Local Finder vs. Google Maps: How Different Are They?

You do not doubt by now heard countless times that having an online presence is crucial for a brand to propel itself to success. According to a survey done by We Are Social and Hootsuite, search engines are the most popular method to discover new brands. A total of 35% (or one-third) of the internet users surveyed agreed that search engines are their first choice for researching brands, products, and services that they intend on buying.

Other effective methods include social ads, word-of-mouth recommendations, as well as brand websites.

This means that it’s crucial to make sure your eCommerce strategy capitalises on the value that search engines can provide to your brand. And since Google is the most popular search engine, with more than 86% of the market share, it makes sense for us to delve into Google’s functions and what they have to offer small businesses.

As a revolutionary brand, Google has come up with tool after innovative tool over the years. Many of these, while extremely helpful, can be somewhat confusing, particularly for SEO beginners. So today, we’re going to look at Google Maps versus Google Local Finder and what both of them have to provide.

Google Local Finder is a subset of Google Search. It contains an extended listing of local businesses that appear when clicking on the ‘More Places’ link at the bottom of Google’s local pack.

These often include plenty of Google My Business listings. Remember when we said having an online presence is essential for a brand? Well, by signing up for a Google My Business Account, your brand’s ranking on search engines (particularly that of Google) is guaranteed to increase and gain credibility. This also allows you to appear on — you guessed it — tools such as Google Maps and Google Local Finder. And with Google being one of the most significant search engines out there, this can only serve to boost your brand.

However, what one may be concerned with is the difference between Google Maps and Google Local Finder. Is there any advantage to using Google Local Finder, or is it all just a gimmick?

A recent study conducted by Miriam Ellis confirmed that a business’s ranking on Google Local Finder often does not differ from their rankings on Google Maps even though the same search query is used. This means that, depending on which tool consumers use to search for your brand, they might see completely different results.

The area shown on the map at the automatic zoom level for each tool is different as well. In Google Local Finder, the results are often more specific and detailed, whereas Google Maps gives a broader view of the area’s businesses. Product listings tend to show up on Google Local Finder. On the contrary, Google Maps do not have product listings, but it does have attribute icons.

If that’s the case, which is the best tool for you to be using for your brand? Here are some things you can do to find out.

1. Fill in as much information as you can on Google My Business.

We mentioned that the business information that shows up on Google Local Finder and Google Maps vary depending on the platform. To counter this, the best way is to provide Google with as much information about your business as you can.

Google is constantly rearranging the content that shows up on both Google Maps and Local Finder to the point that there is no way to know for sure what aspects will appear on each. Rather than worrying about what will show up on your search results, why not feed Google with as many details as you can give? That way, internet users will be able to obtain as much information about your brand as possible.

Make sure your website is optimised for the keywords that you’re aiming for. You can also boost your ranking by earning publicity on the third-party websites that Google references as your listings.

2. Study the results for your targeted search query on both Google Maps and Local Finder

Since the results vary significantly for each platform, it is essential to know just the rankings (both yours and your competitors) that pop up for your desired search query. Generally speaking, Google Maps casts a broader net than Google Local Finder for their search results.

For brands that want to rank beyond their location, this is something to keep in mind. Of course, the further a user is from your location, the less likely you will show up in their local results. Your business is more likely to show up in a local pack ranking.

However, the wide net cast by Google Maps could mean that you could bring in potential customers from a further distance. If this is what you’re looking for for your brand, by all means, experiment with Google Maps. Keep in mind, though, that while the radius is more expensive, your ranking might be lower as you would be competing with a more extensive saturation of businesses. Consider adopting some strategic marketing plans to help boost your ranking in these cases.

3. Keep in mind the future direction of Google Maps and Local Finder.

Since local packs default to Google Local Finder, most SEO studies have been focused on this particular tool, leaving Google Maps neglected. However, while Local Finder was introduced in 2015, Google Maps has been around since 2005.

With three times more impressions than searches, Google Maps wears the crown in terms of the favourite search engine. Not to mention — Google Maps is the default app on all Android devices! Users of other mobile brands have stated their preference for Google Maps as well. Think about how much more reach you might be getting with Google Maps.

Since Local Finder is a relatively new tool, Google might have more plans to develop it further in the years to come. Simultaneously, with Google Maps’ massive success, it is not one to be forgotten. The best way to figure out which platform is more suited for your brand is to keep an eye on both and see how it develops in the next few years.

Best yet, you could work on your rankings on both platforms and get the best of both worlds! Contact MIU for more information on how you can boost your SEO ranking today.

April 5, 2021October 5, 2023

How to Avoid and Deal with Negative SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) has pretty much gone mainstream at this point and every business knows they need it to stay competitive. But what a lot of people don’t know is there’s an opposite side of the spectrum called negative SEO or negative reputation.

This can catch companies by surprise and that’s the exact situation our client found themselves in this project:

They tasked us to help them out of the hole they found themselves in. The success of this project helped us move up the rankings of the company listing site The Manifest. While we can’t talk about the specifics of this project, we can share what business can do to get themselves out of similar situations.

What is negative SEO?

Before you can slay the beast, you need to know what it is. Negative SEO is basically a series of black hat tactics that can either be the result of malicious external attacks or the website owners trying to cheat the algorithm.

It makes the site look extremely suspicious in the eyes of the crawlers and push them down the rankings and into oblivion. Negative SEO is a definite threat to the viability of a website and every step should be taken to prevent it.

Disavow Tools

If a site finds itself already in the midst of a negative SEO hole there are ways to beat it. Google itself has provided webmasters with one such method called the disavow tool.

The disavow tool basically allows websites to upload a list of links connecting to their site and tell Google “Please ignore all of these links”. You can even tell Google to ignore an entire website that’s linking to you.

Watch Your Backlinks

An old but gold method of monitoring the quality of the links connecting to your site. Spam links are the main weapons that malicious entities use to bring websites down. This makes sense because good links bring sites up the rankings, so terrible ones have the opposite effect.

Similar to Google’s disavow, there are tools available online that will help this process and even make it easier.

Purge Duplicate Content

This item is a bit special because not only is it a favourite method of attack by spammers, website owners can actually do it to themselves if they’re not careful. This most commonly happens with big companies that necessarily have dozens of web pages.

Fortunately, the answer to this problem is quite simple. Delete it, or if the content is really something you need, rewrite it. Solving duplicate content is easy, finding it is another story. Once again, there are tools that can help with this, but you’ll need to isolate the content you think is copied first.

Social Media Spam

The social media age brings another wrinkle to this equation. Accounts with the same or close enough name as the website will be put into the same boat by the search engine crawlers. This means anything those accounts do will affect your website for better or worse.

Just like Disavow, there are tools that will alert a website owner of this situation and solve the problem in the same way. Tell Google that those accounts are not your company and separate them from you.

It will take some time before website owners will notice any effects these methods will have, which means they need to get done sooner. Negative SEO is a reality every online business must face. But with our help, you can rest easy knowing there’s someone looking out for you.

February 18, 2021October 5, 2023

How to Update Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Spring cleaning is a necessary job in any household, but it’s also a necessary job for your digital marketing strategy. Your digital marketing strategy should be checked, measured, and revitalized a few times per year, and the end of the first quarter is the perfect time to take the first steps.

Logo And Design

The first thing to look at is the design aspects of your digital presence. You should check that your logo and designs work across all platforms. Make sure that it’s still relevant and that your customers and potential customers have a positive reaction to your design. You may need to update your logo to give it a fresh look or change any design elements that are outdated and no longer relevant.

In some cases, you may need to completely redesign your logo. You should also make sure that any changes are also updated on any physical promotional materials as well. Try a free logo app like Logo Creator to come up with some concepts for your business.

Goals

Your digital marketing strategy should have set out goals for your business. You need to look at whether these goals have been achieved. Use your key metrics to analyze what strategies worked well, and which didn’t. You should also assess your previous goals to make sure that they were achievable in the first place.

Set New Goals

When you set your new marketing goals, make sure that they are realistic, specific and achievable. You may also want to consider breaking wide goals down into smaller, more specific steps. Lastly, you should also set a realistic timeline for when you expect these goals to be met. You should have a master calendar for your digital marketing strategy, but you may want to have specific calendars for your social media campaigns, blog posts and email campaigns as well. Doing this means you can make sure that all posts and materials are going out on time.

Social Media Accounts

Social media is constantly evolving and changing with new sites and trends emerging all the time. It’s important that you keep your social media presence updated, relevant, on-trend, and consistent with your brand. This may mean updating profiles, creating new accounts, looking at which posts had the most reach and engagement, and updating your response policies. There are plenty of ways you can boost your social media shares to gain more exposure — check our article here for more details. If customers are reaching out to your business on social media, you need to make sure that responses are timely and appropriate.

SEO

Search engine optimization should be seen as a vital task. It’s incredibly important to keep up to date with SEO practices. These practices can evolve as the way people use search engines change. Check your page speeds, meta descriptions, content, images, readability and headers. Optimize every page. We’ve curated a list of SEO tools here that are not only free but perfect for beginners.

Keywords

Re-examine your keywords. Remove any keywords that are no longer relevant, or have a low or no impression. Create a new list of targeted keywords. This will help you create a much more efficient strategy.

Content

Look at your existing content and see which has the most engagement. Revamp lower performing content with fresh links and keywords. Make sure that the information in older posts is still relevant, or update it to include more recent data.

You can also plan out new content. Make a calendar of when each content should be posted. When you’re planning topics or posts, make sure that it is specific and readable. Large topics should be broken into a series of posts.

You should also check how your advertisements are performing. Look at your paid search ads. Examine which keywords are being used and if these need to be extended upon. You should also check the ad copy. Make sure that the copy is free of errors and that it is still relevant. For the best results, read up on our ultimate guide to advertising.

January 12, 2021July 23, 2023

6 Best SEO Tools That are Free!

With more and more brands going digital everyday, it’s extremely important to maintain your online presence amidst the hundreds of other brands out there offering the same service or product to the same consumers.

That’s why it’s not enough to just have a simple marketing strategy. Whatever content you put out online should also be optimised for search engines to get yourself the exposure you seek. Search engine optimisation (SEO) allows you to show up in more results when consumers look for certain keywords, therefore increasing the chances of them clicking into your content.

There are plenty of SEO tools out there to help you get started. We know it may seem overwhelming to decide amongst the numerous tools — therefore we’ve put down a list of free SEO tools that you can try out before you decide to commit to a paid one, if at all. Here are the SEO tools we think are not only helpful, but great for beginners.

1. Google Analytics

Before you can even plan out an SEO strategy, you need to know what are the areas you should improve on. Google Analytics helps you figure out where the traffic flow to your website is coming from so that you can capitalise on it. Furthermore, you can also look at where traffic flow is in a lull so that you can work harder on the SEO for that particular platform.

With Google Analytics, you would be able to gather in-depth details about your website visitors such as the bounce rate, the amount of time they spend on your website, which page content attracts more visitors, and more. These real-time data can also tell you whether your SEO strategy is effective or not, even as you’re optimising it.

All you need is a Google account to sign in to Google Analytics and connect it to your webpage. You can even pair it with Google Search Console, which helps you understand how Google indexes your site. When you use Google Analytics together with Google Console, you can find out information such as the ranking of the content of your webpage, the keywords consumers are using to find your website, as well as the click-through rate for those keywords. You can even diagnose what, if any, technical errors there are on your website!

2. SEM Rush

SEM Rush assists webpage owners with keyword research, content optimisation, SEO audits, rank tracking, and many more. All their functions are accessible with just an account, which is free to create. Features such as their backlink analysis and link building tool can help by giving you an insight into your backlink profile on your webpages.

Although the free version only allows up to 100 domains in the link building tool, you can still use the data to figure out which are the domains and backlinks that have the highest referral score. This enables you to find out the areas in which you need to improve your link building efforts. With time, you can decide if you want to upgrade to the paid version if you find their features extremely helpful.

3. Ubersuggest

Just as its name suggests (no pun intended), Ubersuggest helps users generate content ideas and keywords for you to employ on your website. This is extremely useful for when you’re running out of content ideas for your website and need some fresh suggestions to fill your content calendar.

Ubersuggest also has a feature that can give you an overview of the keyword you’re focusing on. It will not only suggest content ideas based on your keyword, but also show you related keywords that you can use in your content.

4. Rank Math Plugin

If your website uses WordPress to publish its content, Rank Math is a great add-on to have. It allows you to add meta titles and descriptions to your URLs so that people can see the concise version of your web page before clicking in. It also helps you optimise your content and structure your data more efficiently.

To use Rank Math, you simply need to install the plugin to your WordPress website and let it do the work for you. If you indicate which keyword you’re targeting, Rank Math not only suggests ways for you to improve the keyword ranking, but also gives your content an SEO score. Win-win! You can even identify dead links on your site and redirect URLs to new pages with this add-on.

5. Google Trends

Similar to Ubersuggest, Google Trends can help you generate new content ideas by showing you what are the current trends and topics in your industry. Using this knowledge of popular market trends, you can better craft a content marketing strategy and optimise it based on what would draw the crowd.

In fact, Google Trends can also show you how trends change over time and the search patterns involved around it. All you need to do is enter a keyword, and the tool will show you how much interest was generated around that topic, which regions showed the most interest, as well as other related keywords consumers were using. With Google Trends, you can easily compare various trends over an extended period of time.

6. Ahrefs

Ahrefs offer plenty of free tools, from Content Explorer, to Rank Tracker, to Backlink Checker and more. Ahrefs Backlink Checker works in a way that it analyses a website and shows you the top 100 backlinks of that particular website just by entering an URL into their search bar. You can also view additional information such as the number of backlinks, the domain rating, and the number of referring domains.

They also have a Keyword Explorer and Keyword Generator tool which helps you analyse the ranking difficulty of a particular keyword and calculate their traffic potential. Similar to the Backlink Checker, the Keyword Generator will show you the top 100 related keywords or ideas when you put in a particular keyword that you wish to target. You can also find out their search volume as well as the keyword difficulties for the first 10 keywords on that list, and the top 50 questions related to said keyword.

If you find Ahrefs tools helpful, you can even upgrade to the paid version to unlock more features. However, the free version is a great start to understanding the industry trends and SEO for your own strategy.

Having a great SEO strategy not only increases the discoverability of your brand, but also helps you gain more visibility online. After all, it has been found that 88% of consumers research a brand online before making a purchase. Consumers are now getting smarter and more wise about their purchases, and many are increasingly doing their research online. Therefore, it is vital for a brand to keep their online presence strong with an effective SEO strategy so they can reach a wider audience.

Planning and implementing SEO strategies are but one of the services that MIU provides. If these free SEO tools are not cutting it for you, you can also contact us for a free consultation to see how we can help your business. From digital strategies, to branding, to design, we offer a plethora of services that suit your needs. Click here for more information on what we do and the services we provide.