September 2017 - NextJSjointviews

Is Link Building Still the Most Powerful SEO Strategy

Posted on September 27, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Link building is one of the important aspects of SEO. It is the process of building links through the web that lead to your page. Google counts these links as votes to your page while ranking it. They indicate that your page is useful as a result. Without links your page would just be an island in the ocean with no roads to reach it.

Google uses metrics that tell about a page’s relevance to rank it. Search engines only want to show useful results to its searchers. Search engines have been using backlinks to rank page since the beginning. This is why any SEO effort to rank higher on search engines is incomplete without link building activity.

In fact, Backlinko did a study of 1 million search results last year and found out that links impacted search engine rankings more than any other factor.

It must be clear by now that link building has been and continues to be the most powerful SEO activity. It is also the most challenging activity for SEO. It takes unique and quality content to earn links from other sites. Also, links from just another site will not work to boost your ranking. Google looks at Domain Authorty of the site linking to you to determine backlink quality.

What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority (DA) is the metric developed by MoZ to measure the quality of your site. The score varies from 1 to 100, 100 indicating extremely good site whereas a score of 1 indicating poor site.

Sites such as Forbes.com or Entreprenuer.com have DA of above 90. You must try to earn links from a higher DA site. A link from 75+ DA site is great but even a few links from 50+ DA sites can do wonders for your SEO. You should have minimal links from any site with a DA of 30 or lower as these can actually pull your reputation down.

Here is what you should know before you start your link building campaign:

1) Link building must be accompanied with on page SEO, quality content and great user experience on your site. Nobody wants to link to poor quality pages that are of little value to readers.

2) As pointed above make sure to earn links from high DA websites. Low DA links can actually harm your rankings on search engines.

3) Do not put links in irrelevant places. Inserting irrelevant links will confuse your audience. Ask yourself who will appreciate this content. This will get you targeted audience that convert better and spend more time on your site. This will in turn improve your ranking.

4) Be patient, link building takes time to show results. Kristina Kledzik found that it takes up to 10 weeks for link building to start showing its magic on rankings.

What can I do to get Links?

So how can you get good DA links to your site? Strategy is the answer here. Since results take time to show, you must have a calendar and strategy that you will follow diligently nonetheless. Here are some smart strategies that winners are using:

Strategy #1 Guest blogging

Search out leading blogs in your domain and offer to write a blog as an expert for them. Insert a link to your page in that blog to drive traffic to your site. Guest blogging is a good way to get new traffic and links from a high DA site. Make your expertise and reputation known to the blog owner when you request for a guest blog.

You can also ask other experts to write on your blog and insert the link in their site. This will only work if you have decent amount of following already.

Strategy #2 Popular Format Articles

There are some types of articles which always earn high number of links. These include:

> Round ups of industry experts. This is where you can ask industry experts for their opinion on a particular topic or issue. For example: You could ask leading digital marketers ‘What is their take on importance of social media?’. You need to then compile all the answers into one blog post. This way you will earn a lot of links from digital marketing blogs as everyone wants to know what the reputed experts have to say.

> Do research in your domain and publish the results in your blog. People always need data to substantiate their opinion and keep the article interesting. You can earn tons of links if you can study on interesting topics and share the results with the world.

> Visual content is very popular nowadays. It is 3 times more likely to be shared. You can even turn a leading text post into an infographic to save the effort of developing fresh content.

Strategy #3 Manual Outreach

This is simply reaching out to popular sites via email and begging them for a link. Leading bloggers like Neil Patel have used this strategy and it works! The key here is to write a piece of content that is valuable and pitching it to lots of site owners.

This is an aggressive strategy and requires high volume of requests to succeed. If your blog is a decent read a few bloggers are sure to respond and link to you.

Strategy # 4 Self created Non-editorial Links

This is inserting links to your page via comments in others blogs or forums.

You can also do this in Quora.com. Search for a popular question in your domain and write a well rounded and expert answer on it. Insert your link in the answer to let people know about your site here. People will visit your page if your insert a bait like ‘visit my site to know the data behind this result’.

However, don’t go too aggressive on this strategy. You don’t want to come across as a spammer and spoil your reputation on these sites.

Strategy # 5 Skyscraper Technique

This technique has been used successfully by many top ranking blogs. In this you pick out the popularly linked posts , study it and then write a post better than it.

You can make your post better by adding more points or presenting it in a better visual format. For example: if you find that a blog ‘5 ways to earn more links’ is highly linked to, then you can write ‘ 21 ways to earn more links’. You can then contact the sites linking to it, tell them about your improved version of the link and request to link to you instead.

Link building requires the most effort in SEO. It also requires a lot of patience. However, once links from good sites are in place you can expect increasing flow of traffic from these sources and see your ranking climbing up steadily.

25 Best Tools for Improving Your Content Writing Skills

Posted on September 26, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Improving your content writing is one of the best ways to succeed in the SEO world. High-quality content can boost organic site traffic, improve SEO rankings and strengthen your on-site conversion rates.

Google considers quality content and the number of inbound links from other relevant websites as two most important factors in search viability. Poorly written content will impact your SEO efforts to a great extent. Content writing requires some of your creative writing skills. Often issues like writer’s block can be barriers for writers to provide quality and informative content, thanks to the advanced tools now available to improve your content writing skills.

Are you a content writer or digital marketer looking for better ways to improve your writing skills? Check out these content writing tools that will help you to produce highly engaging and grammatically perfect content.

Here is a list of 25 great tools that can help to improve your writing skills.

1. Daily Page – If you would like to develop the habit of writing every day, but not sure to what to write about, Daily Page is the right tool for you. This tool gives you writing prompt every morning, which you can respond to by writing, creating a daily writing routine. You can either make your response public or keep it private. It also provides helpful writing courses

2. 750 Words – Dedicated to helping writers build healthy writing habits, this exercise-based tool tracks your word count until you reach the daily 750-word limit. The program also provides writers with feedback on how well they are doing, such as providing information of writing speed, and how often they get distracted.

3. Quora – Designed in a question/answer format, Quora is a great place to go for crowdsourced answers outside your network. Just search for a keyword and you will get ideas for an upcoming one. Also you can post questions of your own and target industry experts that can provide you with great information.

4. HubSpot Composer – HubSpot Composer is a distraction-free writing tool that helps you easily turn your brainstorm ideas and research notes into a blog post. This content writing tool in fact format drafts into blog posts. Just copy and paste your text from Microsoft Word or Google Docs into Composer, and it will automatically reformat them for blog publication.

5. Google Docs – Google Docs is an easiest way to share one’s work with anyone else online. This platform allows real-time and immediate editing between a group of people. Also you can be sure that you won’t lose your work, as Google docs auto saves to the cloud.

6. Grammarly – Considered to be the world’s most accurate grammar checker, Grammarly runs in the background and underlines any grammatical errors as you type. This is an ideal tool for content writers who are not that good with grammar. It also comes with a contextual spell check that provides correct spellings and vocabulary enhancement that improves readability.

7. Help Me Write – This tool helps to write quality content and topics for your targeted audience. With this tool, writers can post ideas of what they wanted to write about and share those ideas via social media platforms as well as email. This helps to get a response from your audience itself, thus choosing a better topic.

8. Blog Topic Generator – If you are not able to come up with unique and engaging blog topics, use this tool. Just type in three keywords in the Blog Topic Generator and it will auto-generate five fresh topics for your post. If you need more suggestions, click “Try Again” and you will get five more topics. Choose the best one.

9. Content Ideator – This topic generator tool helps to create viral topics based on reader’s preference. Once the keyword has been entered, the tool shows you similar posts published on that topic. Choose the title by checking which one has a large number of likes and was shared more on social media platforms.

10. Twords – This tool is the right one for bloggers to write consistently. It has been proven that companies regularly writing quality content get the most web traffic and leads. In this tool, you can enter how many words you wanted to write and then Twords will push you until you get it done, thus motivating you to write more.

11. Trello – Trello helps to collect content ideas and you can organize them in to some unique content later on. For content managers, this tool can do a lot. They can assign these ideas to team members, add due dates and also keep track of the status of each project.

12. Hemingway App – This tool helps to make your content easily readable. You can drop your content into the tool and click the edit button. It evaluates your writing with a grade and provides suggestions on improving readability with ways to make it simpler.

13. oTranscribe – For content that includes an interview, oTranscribe is an excellent free web application. It makes transcription process much less painful, providing more time for your writing and analysis. You can also choose to export it to plain text or Google Docs.

14. Tomato Timer – Tomato Timer is a tool that helps to stay focus on your writing, thus improving productivity. This simplest app consists of a timer that counts down from 25 minutes to zero and then starts to beep. You work until the timer stops.

15. ZenPen – Avoid distraction with this tool’s minimalist writing zone. This zone is a blank writing space just like Microsoft Word which features to help you stylize the text, add hyperlinks and quotes.

16. Power Thesaurus – This user friendly crowded thesaurus dictionary helps to improve your vocabulary, helping you create more engaging content. When you type a word, you will get alternative word choices provided by a large community of writers.

17. Twinword Writer – It often happens that you may get stuck on a word. For writers using Twinword Writer tool, it will evaluate the context of their writing and provides alternate words to use.

18. Prompts – For those writing using their iPhone, this iOS app provides suggestions, tracks stats about your writing habits and also allows you to arrange the best day and time to write based on those stats.

19. BrainyQuote – If you are looking for a quote to include in your writing, this tool helps. It is a library with millions of interesting quotes on various topics from writers, politicians as well as other famous persons.

20. AtomicWriter– This easy to use tool helps to write specifically for your targeted readers by providing insights on your blog or article that was just published. It also automatically schedules content to social media calendar.

21. ProWritingAid – This content evaluation tool comes with diverse features such as grammar and spell checker, plagiarism checker, overused words detection, cliché locating tool, and more.

22. Correctica – It is an editing tool that triple checks your content before you click “Publish”. It checks grammar mistakes, spelling mistakes as well as plagiarism, thus making content readable.

23. Drafts – Similar to Google Docs, you can use this “Uber for copyediting”tool to edit your content, share it with any one, and manage your friends’ suggestions.

24. Cliché Finder – This web based application helps you find anything you missed, just like the words need to be replaced, based on the keyword you place.

25. Listly – This tool helps you to call audience to contribute to your list. The community in this tool can then vote on list items to move them up the list.

If you think there are more tools for content writing other than the ones mentioned above you can post them in the comments section.

What is the Scope of Content Writing in India

Posted on September 20, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Although content writing is the buzzword for some years now, it is not something new. Content is communicating information and we have been communicating for eons in many forms.

Our ways and platforms of communication have changed drastically over the last two decades. Content writer is anyone who develops original content and puts it in a form understandable by others.

If you have created posts for Facebook or written a blog or tweeted, then you are a content writer too! Of course being a professional content writer entails something more. But we all do what a content writer does in a professional way.

Content for business marketing was implemented as far back in the eighteenth century by Benjamin Franklin when he published his yearly paper. In early 2000s search engines gave birth to SEO copywriters who finally evolved into content writers.

As Google rewarded quality content and penalized spammy content people now wanted professionals to write content.

What do Content Writers Do?

Content writers research on the topic they have been given. Information gathering and research is a big part of content writing and takes up more time than writing the article.
Content writers may also conduct interview and read through academic papers for information not available online. Sometimes content strategy may also be a part of their role.
Content writers also have to be content curators. This means that they have to know all the sources of interesting and credible information. They can either re-post them or arrange it at one place for readers.
Content writers can specialize in various platforms. A content writer could write for business blogs, websites, corporate communication, PR articles, product descriptions etc.
Content is also developed for videos and podcasts as they are popular forms of media now.
One can also hire content writer based on his or her knowledge on a particular topic. Some content writers specialize in ecommerce, technology, health & beauty, finance etc.

Importance of Quality Content

Digital marketing has changed the rules of traditional marketing. A professional content writer has to develop content that is engaging and drives people to the desired action. Content is the foundation of digital marketing.

Marketers no more invest in invasive marketing like distracting banners and print ads as people totally ignore them. The focus is rather on providing value added content to attract target market.

Content is at the heart of this new strategy. Businesses want to provide a lot of value content to their prospects before asking them to buy their products.

Scope of Content Writing in India

Because of the reasons stated above, ever increasing number of businesses are hiring content writing agencies to manage their content. Consider the below stats to understand the scope of content writing and its importance:

1. Content leaders drive 7.8 times more traffic than others according to Neil Patel

2. 56% of marketers believe that customized content leads to higher engagement rates and increases brand recall. (IBM Digital Experience survey, 2015)

3. Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing is three times more effective (DemandMetric)

4. Brands that invest in content marketing have a six times higher conversion rate.

5. 73% of organizations hire content strategist to manage their content.

These statistics makes clear that content is in high demand and the opportunity for a content writer is tremendous.

Attributes of Quality Content

Following are indicators of good quality content. Great content is:

Simple and understood by the people. A good content writer explains even the most complex concept in a lucid style.

Credible – All information must be factually correct and free of any plagiarism. Sources of all statistics and data must be given.

Interesting – It must grip the audience and command their attention

Personalized – Content is always directed towards a target audience. The content must represent the brand it speaks for and speak directly to the visitors.

Engaging – Audience engagement is measured by shares, likes and comments on the post. For this the content must be valuable to the readers and worth sharing with their friends who have similar interests.

Additional Skills

There are some additional skills that are helpful for website content writing. Knowledge of SEO and link building will ensure that the content written will rank better on search engines. Skill of copywriting will also give better results for content marketing.

Content writing is part of content marketing as a whole. The more the content writer knows about marketing, strategy, social media and inbound sales funnel the better it is.

The Future of Content Writing

This is what the future holds for content writers in India

Visual Content

People today prefer to consume content in visual format. Videos and infographics are preferred over text. Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world and gets more than 3 billion searches a month! Infographics are three times more likely to be shared on the social media.

This is the reason why all of the major blogs are shifting to short videos or podcasts instead of text post. This is only a change in the presentation of content and the content developed by content writers remains same.

However, having knowledge of video production and storyboarding will help content writers to write for visual formats.

Artificial Intelligence

There is no doubt that AI is going to replace many job functions in near future. AI also has solutions for content writing. There are already software like Spinnerchief that write complete articles within minutes for you. They even scan web articles for best keywords to come up with search optimized article.

Serious content marketers are not using these software currently as they are not up to the mark in human readability and quality. However, some content writers are using such software to support their writing in research and SEO efforts.

We may see AI supporting or even completely taking over content writing in near future. Content writers will have to grow their capabilities to creative content strategy and storytelling in such a world.

5 Benefits of Featured Snippets in Google SERPs [Infographic]

Posted on September 18, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Researches show that almost 30 % of Google search results have featured snippets. According to Hubspot, content highlighted in featured snippets are more likely to be clicked over the first position on the search engine results page. Content displayed in featured snippets are generally referred as ‘position 0’ in SEO terms. Normally this position is used to answer search queries or topics in a brief manner. Nowadays it matters obtaining the desired ‘position 0’ in the SERPs.

How about obtaining ‘Position 0’ in Google SERPs? Here is an infographic illustrating the benefits of featured snippets in Google SERPs.

How to Do Keyword Research for Content Marketing [10 New Strategies]

Posted on September 13, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Most bloggers and website owners constantly have queries such as “How to increase traffic to my blog” and “How do I get more readers for my blog”. Search results to such queries often include experts sharing valuable tips, techniques and strategies to increase traffic. But how many of those techniques genuinely bring you traffic?

From the experience of dealing with Jointviews content marketing clients, the big takeaway is that picking up the right topic can bring in lot of traffic naturally. So here we share what the Jointviews team has learnt about choosing blog topics to bring more traffic to your website.

Figure 1: Popular Google searches for increasing blog traffic

Take time to understand the business properly – No matter whether it’s your own or that of a client, take time to learn what your business is actually dealing with. Not how you understand it, but how the masses understand it.

Study it like you used to study subjects back in school before an exam. It will help in understanding the different elements of the business very clearly and naturally you will get numerous topic ideas.

For example, if you have a website selling cakes, you could generate topics such as “How to make a cake?” “Which are the best cakes in the world?”

You could also talk about “cakes and culture”, about the “individual ingredients” used to make cakes, countries where cakes are more popular, and so on… A deep understanding of your business thus provides you an extra edge in presenting effective content.

Talk to your sales team –Once you get a good idea of the business, talk to the sales team to understand what actual conversations they have with prospects and customers.

They will offer a completely different view from what you formed by studying theoretically about the business. You would be able to understand easily and the sales perspective will give insights to real world problems.

Taking the above example of cakes, your sales person might be able to say “people ask for white forest much more often than black forest” whereas you might actually be concentrating more on producing black forest.

Also, people might want something specific – like personalizing the cake when getting it delivered. In short, it helps in understanding what your audience specifically wants from you.

You could even prepare a FAQ section on your website to address the questions that your audience keeps asking your sales team.

Look at Google popular searches – once you have a good theoretical and real world understanding, it’s time to start Googling. Search for common industry terms, queries, etc and look at the ‘Related searches’ and ‘People also ask’ sections.

The terms mentioned here are pure gold. You can also look at Google’s predictive search terms. Note the ones which frequently appear in multiple searches.

Such terms can be used to generate blog articles with good traffic, also these could provide ideas for Big Rock Content (A comprehensive blog about a particular topic answering a wide range a queries about a particular topic). They can also provide you infographics and video ideas.

Look at Q&A sites such as Quora – Once you are armed with a decent number of search terms, it’s time to cross check them in popular Q&A sites such as Quora.

This is done to confirm these are popular topics and also to see if there are valuable content available on the given topics. Save the Q&A’s if there is valuable content.

There would also be related content which might give further ideas about new topics. At times, you would be able to write on exactly same topics given in related content sections with a lot more research around the web and in real life.

Also, if you go through the answers, you can digest information and generate new topic ideas which can be exceptionally good.

Prepare for Voice Search – Voice search is touted to be the next big thing in online marketing. Most voice searches come in the form of questions. Talking to sales team and looking at Q&A sites would help this to a large extent.

You could also use tools such as AnswerThePublic to find out even more queries that the public audience have regarding your industry. Forums are another source of good questions people are asking about.

Some characteristics of voice search are

Search queries are conversational in nature and hence lengthy
Most voice searches are local searches. People are looking for a place to hangout, do some shopping, a restaurant, etc
Short, straight to the point answers are expected. People are mostly on the go while doing voice search. So they are looking for direct answers.

Beyond proving to be a good source of content, these questions can also help you find gaps in your business or industry, and by addressing them, your business could grow a lot more.

Connect with entertainment – Having gone through Google and Q&A sites, you would probably have a stash of relevant topics with good search volume. Now, if you are looking to increase the traffic to your site, using entertainment topics related to your industry can be highly useful.

The audience would be dormant. They will not actively convert. But, it offers good branding opportunity.

For example, look at the search results of “movies about marketing and sales” given below. You can see Hubspot ranks first. Not IMDB, Hollywood reporter or even Wikipedia, but Hubspot – a marketing software company.

The topic need not be related to movies alone. It can be games, sports, health, etc. You just have to do enough research to find the right topic and collect enough information.

Search for emerging technologies – New, interesting technologies often experience a mass curiosity wave. If you keep your eyes and ears open for new technologies and find out as much as you can about them and how they can be applied to your business, it will help generate great topics that will bring in significant traffic over time.

For instance, there is VR. A Google search for a long tail keyword like ‘uses of virtual reality in entertainment’ will reveal there aren’t many relevant results. So, it is an opportunity to rank quickly if you produce the right content.

Continuing with the earlier example of cakes, you could talk about how VR can help your customer have a much more realistic shopping experience from wherever they are.

They could look through the menu, check different cake designs and make a far better choice than just ordering online from your website. Talking about such concepts which spur human imagination to unchartered territory can gain a lot of attention.

Keep Tab of Latest News – You can use Google alerts and Google trends to identify latest news that are popular with users in your industry. This would help identify trending topics, and if you can quickly get relevant content created, the benefits are going to be immense.

Use tools such as BuzzSumo, THEHOTH, RankReveal– Marketing tools are dime a dozen these days. It can be very difficult to pick the right ones for the right tasks. For choosing the best topics, tools such as BuzzSumo, TheHoth and RankReveal can help. BuzzSumo helps you find the most social blogs written on a particular topic on the web.

The free version is very limited, but can be helpful when you are out of topic ideas. RankReveal and TheHoth’s free search engine ranking tools both reveal keywords for which you are ranking. When used wisely, both can help you make surprising topic discoveries to boost traffic to your website.

Use site search and Google Analytics queries – If you already have a good amount of visitors to your website, looking at popular site search and Google analytics queries will help understand what people are looking for.

Once you understand these, you will be able to create topics on exactly the same topics or even modify existing ones for more traffic.

How to approach once you get the topics

Each topic should be the best available answer in that particular niche. If it’s a low competition keyword, even an average blog would rank. But if the competition rises in future, you will slowly lose traffic. So maintaining quality language and information is very important for the success of your blog.

While ensuring it is the best answer, also ensure it is user friendly. Add relevant images, videos, infographics and if possible add a personal touch by relating to everyday circumstances.

If it is a competitive keyword, you can go that extra mile and include other resources such as downloadable files and videos.

Also,

At least once in a week, take a look at the traffic your blogs bring in, and keep an eye open for chances to improve the content of the blog. It can be as simple as adding couple of new lines or an image. But keep the blog updated. Your rankings can significantly improve if such updates are good and worthy.

Finally,

Success is not just about passion, techniques and hard work. All these factors matter; But more importantly, you should have the perseverance to go the distance. You should face the reality that results don’t arrive in a short period for most businesses.

So, when you pick these topics and write, you should give it enough time and support by distributing it online through various channels for it to show the desired results.

6 Website Factors That Affect Your SEO Efforts

Posted on September 11, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

A great website is the foundation to SEO strategy. After all, all SEO efforts are towards getting traffic to your website and converting visitors to customers.

It is also usually the end of the sales funnel where your convert your leads into paying customers. Imagine driving all the hard earned traffic to a site that does a poor job in converting those visitors. That would be a pointless effort, right?

So let’s look at 6 website factors that affect your SEO efforts:

1. On page SEO

One of the ways to drive more traffic to your website is by ranking higher in Google for keywords relevant to you. This is why it is important to optimize your website for search engines. Getting more organic traffic to your website will boost your conversions. Here are some tips on on-page SEO to rank higher:

Tip 1: Update the page title, meta descriptions and alt tags in your website
Tip 2: Internal link-building
Tip 3: Make sure you target relevant keywords and have relevant content only
Tip 4: Update your site regularly with fresh and high quality content.

You can install Yoast SEO plugin if your website is powered by WordPress. We will talk about more plugins to improve your site in the last point.

2. Site loading speed

Visitors have shrinking attention spans and expect a site page to load within 3-5 seconds. According to research by Akamai, a one second delay in page load can reduce the conversions on your site by 7%.

Tip: Go to WebpageTest to test your website’s page load speed. This site gives you a detailed report on time taken to load each file.

If your site is slow in loading it could be because of server location and size, excess coding, large image files or unnecessary redirects.

3. Shareability

Social media is one of the top drivers of traffic in SEO. It also generates targeted visitors that are easier to convert. Website content must be easily shareable on social media to support SEO. Here are three ways to ensure this.

Tip 1: Use Visual content such as images, infographics and videos. Visual content is 3x times more likely to be shared. Facebook engagement is highest for posts with photos and videos.

Tip 2: Optimize your images and meta descriptions for social media. Check how the image looks in a social media post. Are the dimensions right? Meta description is the page title and description that shows up in the post. Tweak it to include keywords and interesting lines.

Tip 3 : Have social sharing buttons installed in your website to allow one click sharing and commenting on your content.

4. Web design

The transition for your customers who come to your site from emails, social media or paid ads must be smooth. This means that your web design must be in line with rest of SEO efforts and should give a consistent experience.

Web design is reflected in the website layout, color scheme, pathways of your site. As you may have guessed it drives user experience and branding of your site. It also determines the functionality of your site or how easily visitors can complete tasks they are on the site for.

Tip 1: Optimize your site for mobile devices. Visit Browserstack to check how your site looks on various devices

Tip 2:Use color patterns and themes that reinforce your branding

Tip 3: Keep the layout simple, intuitive and logical

5. Content

This is perhaps the most important website factor that affects SEO.

Content is what attracts new visitors and keeps them coming back for more. You should offer quality content if you want to succeed in your SEO efforts.

Tip: Research deeply on what your audience wants to read and watch. Develop content that solves their needs not yours.

6. Tools

There are many tools that help you to enhance your website. Some of them increase ranking others help you keep an eye on your traffic. Here are some website tools you must use to support your SEO:

1. Get free analysis of your website on Ahrefs and Similar web. You can see the technical glitches, traffic sources and keywords on your website and get a detailed report

2. Install Crazy Egg to know which features on your site are working and track visitor mouse movements . You can also use OptinMonster.

3. Install Hello Bar plugin to convert visitors into leads. This pop up a form to get email IDs or sign up for offers.

4. Install Google Analytics to get key metrics on your website.

5. Install Yoast SEO to create search engine optimized content

6. Schedule your WordPress post for social media with BufferApp. This will save a lot of time and give out content consistently.

Your website is your owned asset that converts leads into customers on the internet. Use the tips shared above to make sure it does the job of supporting your SEO efforts.

5 Ways to Optimize Your Content for Google’s Featured Snippet

Posted on September 5, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Have you noticed how Google has changed the way it displays search results over the years. Google is always trying to make it easy for its users to find answers. Google’s featured snippet is one of the ways in which Google has simplified results for its users. In this blog we will share 5 ways to optimize your content and rank in Google’s featured snippet.

But, first let us look at what featured snippet is and how can it help you

What is Google Featured Snippet?

Featured snippet is the answer to user query that Google display at the top of organic results in a box. This is the most relevant answer pulled out by Google and displayed for users. Users can get an instant answer without the need to click on a link and go to another page.

You can see in the above image the post by huffingtonpost.com featured in the snippet. It ranks before the organic results. This is sometimes referred by marketers as position 0 for the result. Featured snippets can be in paragraph, lists or table format.

So why should you eye this position 0? The answer is simple and based on hard numbers. Featured snippets have known to increase traffic to your site anywhere from 30% to 114%.

Ranking in a feature snippet will increase your CTR, give you more space on results page and increase your trust and credibility. What’s even better is that your page authority and brand is not important to rank in a snippet. This means that even small brands can compete with big names and rank above them.

Here are 5 ways you can optimize your content for Google’s featured snippet:

1. Answer Common Search Queries

Pick the most common question in your industry and answer them in your post. Questions starting with ‘how to’, ‘how does’, ‘which are’, ’what to’ etc usually feature a snippet. Phrases such as ‘benefits of’ or ‘uses of’ also draw up featured snippets.

Keywords with more volume will draw more traffic with featured snippets. So it is better to focus on high volume keywords. If you are a small domain with low authority then featuring for low volume keywords can also be a good strategy for you.

You can visit forum threads, user review sections or Quora.com to find the most common questions that users are asking in your industry.

2. Average Number of Words

A study of 1.4 miilion featured snippets by SEMrush has revealed that certain word limits are more likely to be pulled up in a snippet. Here are the findings on the optimal featured snippet length:

The optimal length of a featured snippet in paragraph form is 40-50 words (or 97 characters)
The optimal number of items/steps of a featured snippet in list form is 4-5 items (with 8 being the maximum)
The optimal number of rows for featured snippet in table format is 3-4 rows (with a maximum of 9 rows)

3. Include Search query in header

Make it easier for Google to read that your page specifically answers the search query. Search query that you want to rank for must be under a heading tag<h1> <h2> etc. The answer to that query must be directly under it under the paragraph <p> tag.

4. Answer Logically

Answer the query right away under the header. The answer must be logical, easy to understand by common users. Avoid using industry jargons or giving introduction to the topic if you want to rank in position 0.

Include lists, steps or tables wherever possible. Sometimes Google can just pull up your sub-headings as list to query. For example, Google may feature just the 5 points in this blog for a query ‘Ways to optimize for Google featured snippet’.

5. Learn from Competitors ranked in Featured Snippet

One of the easiest ways to rank in featured snippet is to optimize your current content. Here is how it works:

Draw a list of all the search queries for which you rank anywhere from position 1 to Position 10 but do not feature in the snippet. Invest in some SEO if you are not ranking in top 10 for any keywords.
Then look at the current results in the featured snippet. How is their page structured? Is the content in list format or in a table? How does the answer differ?
Then optimize your page to fit the structure and format of the page that is ranking in featured snippet. Keep the search intent in mind while re-formatting. Simple answers are the best when it comes to ranking in featured snippet.

Google featured snippet is a good opportunity for low authority domains and small sites to rank above the big players. Many times the site pulled up on featured snippet are those ranking lower than fifth position. Following above tips can help you to rank above the big domains and increase your CTR.