DIY SEO (Do It Yourself SEO) [2021]

Ranking of webpages and websites

Google uses RankBrain to decide how to rank the millions of websites out there. 

RankBrain uses Machine Learning algorithms that check many elements on a website that include content, technical elements, keyword density, keywords/images ratio, number of other websites linking to your website, social media shares, etc. 

RankBrain also considers in its ranking calculation what I call “soft” elements like user experience. 

The internet is about not only machines, but also about users, and users are human beings. 

When you have a website, your website is made of a bundle of webpages. 

Those webpages are attributed a ranking by the crawlers.

When we say that a website has a “high ranking,” what we literally mean is: the website has a lot of webpages with high rankings. 

The more webpages have a high ranking, the more authority your domain gains (e.g., neilpatel.com is a domain.)

As you can imagine, if you follow Pareto’s Law, also called the 80/20 rule, most of the time, in general we see that 20% of the webpages on a website get 80% of the traffic. 

The ranking continually changes, so a website that appears in the 5th position in the Search Results today could appear in the 1st position tomorrow… and vice versa. 

The ranking of a webpage constantly changes, which means that for some, their ranking will go up; for some, it will go down. 

There are different search engines on the market, and they pretty much all have their own peculiarities. 

Some are better than others. Google is by far the number one in terms of usage and technology. 

"In 2019 (to date), Google accounted for just over 75% of all global desktop search traffic, followed by Bing at 9.97%, Baidu at 9.34%, and Yahoo at 2.77%. To win at SEO, you have to play by Google's rules.” Source: impactBND

We suggest that you follow Google’s guidelines for SEO unless you do SEO for the Chinese market (where Baidu is the leading Search Engine.) From my personal experience working in the Chinese market, Baidu is really far behind Google in terms of ranking algorithms, if not to say that it is terrible. 

If you do business in North America and Europe, Google is where you should put your focus on. Of course, Baidu is the search engine you would optimize for if you do business in China. If you do business in Japan, Yahoo and Google may be recommended. For Russia, it may be different… and so on. 

So the lesson is: optimize for where your audience is located. 

4 Pillars of SEO: Areas, Locations, Language and Medium

To fully grasp what SEO truly is about, you need to understand the big picture. 

It may look a bit overwhelming at the beginning, but please have a read, and we will go into more detail later on. 

To get a sound basis of what SEO truly is, let’s break it down into 4 elements:

1. Areas
2. Location
3. Language
4. Medium

There are 2 areas where we do SEO optimization: 

1. On-page SEO: on your website, that you can fully control. On-page SEO implies that you need to work on your website, your content, optimize the loading speed, reduce the image size, etc. 
2. Off-site SEO: outside your website (hence the “offsite” wording,) that you can influence, but not fully control. You cannot control, for example, the visitors to your website. You cannot control the other websites and search engines. It also signifies that you need to build authority, relevance, trust, expertise, links from other websites, etc. 

A lot of people believe that SEO is only about keywords and content, which is not true!

SEO is also location-relevant

1. National: country-level (e.g., USA.). It includes International as well. 
2. Local: state, city and area-level (e.g., New Jersey, New York, Brooklyn)

This is the reason why we split National SEO and Local SEO. 

The way they operate is slightly different. 

We have a section dedicated to Local SEO later in our article. 

We will give you all the details you need to know about DIY SEO for small businesses. 

Now you may ask why are National and International SEO the “same.” 

Because when you search on Google, it is always based on the country and the language. 

If you are on mobile, geo-location will even be more critical, but in the end, it is still related to a region. 

If you are a local business or have clients that are local businesses, it makes more sense to focus on local SEO than national SEO. This is especially true for businesses that bring in-store traffic (e.g., cake shop, restaurants, clothing stores, etc.) or operate on the local level (e.g., plumbers, insurance agents, lawyers, dentists, rooftop specialists, etc.) 

The opposite is also exact. If you run an eCommerce store and sell products, you can sell to everyone in the country… and even in the world! So National SEO should be the way to go. 

As SEO uses words, languages spoken around the world are another basis, for example: 

1. US: although English is the official language, we can assume that some users also search for Spanish information. 
2. Canada has 2 official languages: English and French. 
3. Switzerland has 4 official languages: German, French, Italian and Romansch. 
4. UK has only one official language: English

Search Engines will give you different results based on the language, even if you are at the same location. 

The Mediums are what Users use to search the internet: 

1. Desktop: search results will be optimized for someone using a desktop. 
2. Mobile and Tablets: search results will be influenced be geo-location a lot more than desktop computers. Your website needs to be optimized for Mobile phones. 

The significant advantage of using mobile phones is that the search results are geo-located; in other words, the results will depend on where you are physically. If you are using your mobile phone to do searches on Google in Times Squares, when you type in “deli restaurant,” the results will be different than if you are in Brooklyn.

Even if you search for a term like “marketing,” if you are in NYC and drive to Chicago, the results will be different. The difference in search engine results also applies to searches made on a Desktop computer!

The results of search engines are not only based on keywords; they are highly influenced by the pillars mentioned above. 

Types of Searches in Google

There are 3 types of searches online. I have to tell you that other people may add more categories, but for simplicity, I grouped the types of searches into 3 categories. 

User search for the following on Google:  

1. Website: Look for a specific website (e.g., keyword “apple” is probably for the company, not the fruit)
2. Information and Question and Answer: looking to answer a question (e.g., “Can dogs eat ice cream,” “How to use average in Excel,” “What is the best season to visit Japan,” etc.). Information attracts the visitors. 
3. Review and Buy: buy something or read reviews of a service or product (e.g., “Fruit juicer machine” will give you results that include picture and price of products as well as reviews). Review and Buy type of content promotes your service or your product.

The job of Google is to match the User’s Search Intent and the Keywords you used. 

Google also reads between the lines and judges what type of search the user is doing. 

As we mentioned previously, matching the search intent of users is key to success.

Matching content and intent means that you need to use the right keywords.

It also means that as part of your Content Plan, you need to plan for the 2nd and 3rd types. 

Informations and Questions are an excellent way to bring a lot of traffic. 

Reviews and Buy mean that the prospect is getting hot, and may be shopping around, and who knows, might even be ready to buy. 

So understanding human behavior and how we acquire information is key to a successful SEO strategy.

In Marketing there is a concept: User Journey. 

You should have content that talks to consumers at each step in their consumer journey. 

And then, bring them into your sales funnel so that they end up buying your product or service. 

Main Ranking Factors on Google 

Intro into How Google works

A lot of people think that just producing a lot of content, quality content, is enough to rank high in Google. It is true that producing a lot of quality content helps to rank high, but it is not entirely true. 

Let’s find out what the Ultimate Guide to SEO says about the 4 main ranking criteria on Google. 

There are many ranking factors that Google takes into consideration. 

I personally believe that the 4 most important Google ranking criteria for ranking high on Google: 

1. Relevance
2. Authority
3. Utility
4. User behavior

On top of those there are plenty of other criteria: 

• CTR or Click-Through-Rate (people who click on your content’s link in the Search Engine results)
• Bounce rate: % of visitors who close your website without visiting another webpage. Investigate further when the Bounce rate over 80%. 
• Time on website: the longer the visits, the better. 
• Number of backlinks: the number of links to your website, and the quality of the websites linking to your website. 
• Age of the website: older rank higher than younger
• Number of webpages: the more webpages, the better
• Length of content: 1,500-word article is the minimum length to rank high in Google
• Keywords density: a little bit complex, but this means avoiding keywords stuffing
• Number of images and media: it is imperative to use images in your posts
• Font size and color (including background): readability
• SSL Certificate: the certificate is installed on your server (more on this later)
• Direct website visits: the number of people who access your website directly, meaning that they are familiar with your domain name.
• Referrals traffic: ads and other websites that send traffic to your websites, for example by linking directly to your website. 
• Social Media signals: are people sharing your content.

Let’s go back to the 4 most important criteria mentioned above. 

We can ask ourselves a few questions, just like a Search Engine would do:

1-Relevance

Relevance is about the search intent. 

• Is the content relevant? 
• Does the content match the user’s search intent? 
• Is the website’s content relevant among all webpages and posts?

If you have a website about “cycling and health” and you sell “bike tires,” the relevance of your website may suffer. 

At the same time, if you have articles about how “cycling is good for people with knee problems and arthritis,” then your website is relevant for the user’s query. 

Relevance is providing the right answers to the right questions.

The answers that you provide need to be concise, straightforward and well-written.

2-Authority

Authority is related to trust. 

• How authoritative is the website? 
• What are the credentials of people behind the website?
• Does the website have a lot of other authoritative websites linking to it? 
• Has the website been around for long enough to build a reputation?

Even if you have amazing content, it takes time to build a reputation and have people link to your website. One of the most critical ranking factors related to authority is called “backlinks.” 

Backlinks are the number of sites that link to your website and their authoritativeness. If a mom n’ pop store links to your website, you get less “SEO Juice” (we’ll talk about that later) than if Wired Magazine links to your website. 

Same things as on Instagram. If your parents like your picture, it has less effect than if Kim Kardashian likes your post… kind of. 

Another element to consider about authority is about the person(s) behind the website. Authority is critical for medical and financial websites. If a doctor writes an article about diabetes, it has a lot more authority than if your part-time blogger neighbor writes the article. 

An attractive way to build personal authority is to have your name and website appear on other authoritative websites. In the case of a medical blog, this would be, for example, a medical magazine interviewing the doctor who wrote the article about diabetes. 

The same logic applies to other industries: if you are a marketer, having other authoritative websites mention your name, and your website will boost your authoritativeness. 

Not complicated right?

3-Utility

Utility is the technical aspect.

• Is the website’s utility useful? 
• Does the website load fast?
• Is the content structure in a logical manner? 
• Is the website mobile-friendly?
• Are the images optimized and compressed? 
• If you write your blog post in brown on a dark green background, it is hard to read?

If a website has 80% of traffic coming from mobile pones, but is not optimized for mobile users, then its utility is low and does not deserve high ranking.

If you have a 24MB heavy picture on your website and it takes 13 seconds for the page to load… people will not wait, and they will just go elsewhere. You will get a bad ranking too. 

If your website is not secured with an SSL Certificate, making the connection “https,” you will get a lower ranking. 

Utility is made of different criteria that affect how crawlers rate your website.

4-User Behavior

User behavior is the human element. 

• How users acquire information when looking at your webpages?
• How long do they stay? 
• Do they read the whole webpage of quit after looking at a few lines?

Even though Google uses machines, its mathematical algorithms find insights on user behavior. 

Google ETA Algorithm Update

Google purged a lot of websites that it deemed lacking authority, choose your niche carefully. On August 1st 2018 Google did an update to its algorithm and the way they rank websites. A lot of people got penalized. 

The update is the so-called Google E-A-T update:

• Expertise: is the writer an expert? (especially if the content is about medical or financial advice)
• Authority: is the website authoritative in its field?
• Trustworthiness: can the website be trusted in terms of content, security, etc.

You can keep in mind that Google judges websites in a 360-degree approach that includes pretty much everything from page loading time to credentials of writers. 

More on ranking:

• SEMrush Ranking Factors 2.0 https://www.semrush.com/ranking-factors/ Search Metrics: Google Ranking Factors https://www.searchmetrics.com/knowledge-base/ranking-factors/ 
• Moz Ranking Factors Survey https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

The Pillars of DIY SEO

The core of SEO can be summed up in the Pillars of SEO.

We believe there are a few Pillars of SEO:

1. Time, Location and Intent
2. Keywords, Keywords and Keywords
3. On-site SEO (aka “on-page”)
4. Authority: Domain Authority, Age of the website and Link Building
5. Technical Optimization 

Let’s go deeper into the SEO rabbit hole. 

Time, Location and Intent

In other words:

• When, Where and What

Time: Search Engines take time into consideration when ranking websites. 

There are 3 elements regarding time: 

• age of the website and date of publication of the webpages
• seasonality 
• trends 

Time tells the search engine when the content was published (side note: it usually takes 6-12 months to newly published content to start bringing proper amounts trafic).

Age of the website: It can be either for how long a website has been around or when a webpage was first published. 

An article about “how to raise German Shepherd” written in 2002 and seen by 18 million people will have more SEO weight than an article written in 2018, which has been seen by 30,000 people. 

In some cases, the content needs to be up-to-date, for example, an article about diabetes written in 2005 may not be as relevant as an article written in 2020. Medical advances have new ways of treating the disease. 

Seasonality: An article about skiing will not see, in June, as many visitors as in November. The same logic applies to American football, if you are looking for football-related information right before the SuperBowl, you will likely see information about the SuperBowl. 

Trends: Keep in mind that trends fade away. A piece of content about a newly released movie may see a massive surge in traffic, but it is likely to drop as soon as the movie is taken out of the movie theater. The same logic applies to products (e.g., widget spinners) and services.

Location: As we mentioned previously, all search results are location relevant. Location means the country, the state/province, the city and possibly even the area/district. 

If you type in “marketing agency” in NYC, then fly to Montréal and do the same search, the search results will be completely different. You are very likely to see French results in the Search Results. 

The language and settings of your Search Engine are also likely to influence the results. When I bought my first Mac in Tokyo back in 2006, I would get Japanese search results even when I flew back home in Canada… because of the settings. 

Location tells the search engine to provide the most relevant location-based results. 

Intent: Search intent is a little bit complex as there is both a machine AND a human element. That’s where the magic of SEO comes in.

When you search for something, you are looking for the best possible answer to your query. Search Engines like Google have a set of complex criteria to deliver the best possible answer. 

So the gist of Search Engines is: the output is linked to the input. 

If you have a cold and you are looking for the best remedy, it would be useless to provide you information about the word “cold: when the temperature is low.” That’s when intent comes in. SEO’s aim is to ensure that users find what they are looking for, and not irrelevant information. 

Search engines have something called “autocomplete.” If you type in “cold,” the autocomplete will provide you with query hints like “cold remedy,” “cold temperature clothing,” etc. the machine is trying to narrow the scope of the search to give you the best answer. 

The best content should match the user’s intent based on his/her query. 

Does it make sense?

Keywords and DIY SEO

Keywords are words.

Keywords are a “key,” hence the word “keyword.” 

In other words, keywords are important words. Duh. 

Words are just… words!

Let’s see a simple example: 

• “how long for paint to dry”
• The words “for” and “to” are not really important. 
• The keywords are “how,” “long” and “paint.”

Those examples do not mean you should not include “for” and “to.”

As you can imagine, many people Google “how long” on a daily basis. 

So the keywords that make the real difference here are “paint” and “dry.”

The Machine Learning algorithms of Google know that, so the fact that Google has insider knowledge is why they can provide us with the most accurate answer to our question. 

If you wrote something like “how long for blue paint to dry,” the keyword “blue” may make a small difference, but it would not be considered relevant in this context… as no matter what the color of the paint is, it should dry at a similar speed. I know that some chemicals can make a difference in the drying speed, but you get the point. 

Another thing to consider is that singular and plural words are considered to be 2 types of words. 

For example:

• singular “how to eat apple” will give you 1,210,000,000 results 
• plural “how to eat apples” will give you 111,000,000 results

Remember that words like “for” and “to” and the list goes on and on, are not considered keywords per se. 

But you cannot ignore them. 

Why are Keywords so Important for SEO 

Keywords are everything. 

We use languages to express emotions, communicate information, share what we think, bond with people, give orders, provide directions, etc. 

Even software and websites are built by using words. If you look at the code of a software, you will see words! 

Here is a small part of the code on our website: font-family:Literata;--g-regular-weight:400;

The code is read by a machine, and rendered as human-readable content. 

The best way to understand SEO and keywords is to ask yourself: 

• When I look for a product or a service, how do I find information about the product? 
• What is my behavior? 
• What do I type into Google? 
• What do I do when I am not satisfied with the Search Results?  

Answer: you use words, and some of those words are keywords. 

Now, try to put yourself in someone’s else shoes. 

• How would that person look for information online? 
• How can users find your content?

You can think of keywords as a big pyramid: the more common a word is, the more chances it is “owned” by a big player (that will be very difficult to beat.)

In other words, there is a free for all fight for keywords. 

For example, let’s say you are a growth marketing agency based in Brooklyn. 

Focusing on the keyword “marketing” would be difficult. 

The further you go down the (inverted) pyramid, the easier it gets. 

• How many search results are under “marketing”?
• And “marketing US”?
• What about “marketing NYC”?
• What about “marketing Brooklyn”?
• Now, there may be tons of marketing agencies in Brooklyn. Or not.

Laser-focus is better than general. 

Another way to search could be to use a more precise topic:

• “Growth marketing Brooklyn” 
• “Growth marketing agency Brooklyn” 
• “Best growth marketing agency Brooklyn”

And so on.

When you get in the keywords battlefield, if you want to win the war, you need to pick your fights carefully! 

Keywords SEO Semantic

The science that studies the meaning of words is called “semantic.”

 I came up with a great example to help you understand semantic: if you are in Tokyo and want to eat sushi, the keywords “tokyo sushi” are more relevant than “tokyo fish on rice.” 

Nobody writes “fish on rice”, people will type “sushi” in Google.  

Semantically speaking, “sushi” and “fish on rice” are the same thing, so for a Machine to understand the difference, and provide you with the right results, Google uses mathematical algos. 

Makes sense? 

Here is another example, you search for the following 3 words:

1. “line” in American English
2. “queue” in British English
3. “queue” in French.

For the American English and British English, Google understands that the words have the same meaning: people waiting in line or queuing. 

If your settings are set on American English, “line” will give you results about a drawn “line,” “people waiting in line” and even a “line of products.”

If your settings are set on British English, “line” should not give you results about “people waiting in line” as Google knows British English uses the word “queue” in this circumstance. 

Now, as context is also vital, if a French looks for this word, the results will be completely different as Google understands that “queue” in French means “animal’s tail” (it also means something else, but we cannot write it here!)

Same with the words “best,” “top,” etc. 

They mean the same thing, but we can assume that the word “best” is more used than the word “top.”

Synonymous words are called LSI (Latent Semantic Index.) More on that later. 

In the case of words that have the same spelling, they can:

have the exact same spelling but different meanings, they are homonyms (for example “Apple” for the brand and “apple” for the fruit)

and in some cases, different words can have the same meaning, they are synonymous (we call those LSI: Latent Semantic Index)

3 types of SEO keywords

The 3 types of keywords for SEO are: 

short: 1-2 words with high search volume (e.g., “blogging,” “monetize blog”)

medium: 2-3 words, with moderate search volume (e.g., “make money blogging”)

long-tail: four or more keywords, usually have a lower search volume (e.g., “how to make passive income blogging”)

In SEO terms, we sometimes call the short keywords “Fat Head” keywords. 

The long keywords like “how to bake an almond banana rum pie” are called Long-Tail Keywords. 

“how to make passive income blogging” is a keyword made of many different keywords, but it’s still a unique keyword!

**Note that the vast majority of searches on Google are long-tail keywords!

The shorter the keywords, the more competition and the more traffic it generates (hard to rank for, especially for new websites.) You should avoid those keywords. Sorry, you’re too late to the game. 

The longer the series of keywords, the less competition and less traffic it generates (so the higher chances for you to rank for those keywords.) Here is where your opportunity comes in; you have a chance to leave a dent in the SEO Universe. 

This is why a good SEO keyword strategy will take into consideration all types of keywords. 

When you build your Content Plan and do your Keyword Research, either for yourself or on behalf on your clients, you need to select keywords that are not “owned” by other people. We’ll go into more details later on. 

Long-tail keywords for SEO Ranking

Long-tail keywords are probably the most significant opportunity for beginners and newly established websites. 

Long-tail keywords are the area where you should focus most if you built a new website. We will repeat it again: to be successful in the 2020 decade, you absolutely need to focus on long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are a series of keywords, usually more than 3 keywords. There is less competition with those keywords. “Marketing” is a high competition keyword, “Marketing agency” too. But “Cheap Marketing Agency Austin” is a lot less competitive. 

“Marketing agency austin for real estate” is, I assume, low competition. So if there are some people are looking queries related to marketing and real estate in Austin, then investing in the Long-tail Keyword “Marketing agency austin for real estate” may be a good idea (if there are no queries, do not lose your time!)

The cool thing with Long-Tail Keywords is that each different combination counts as a keyword. So the below are all different keywords combinations.

• “Marketing agency real estate austin”
• “Marketing agency austin for real estate”
• “austin Marketing agency for real estate”
• “real estate Marketing agency in austin”

Another example of Long-Tail Keyword: a health-conscious website that lists recipes. If you write an article about “banana tart recipe,” it is unlikely to rank and bring traffic. But if you write an article “how to bake banana tart without sugar,” you may bring traffic. 

Of course,”banana tart recipe” may bring 1,000 visitors per month, and “how to bake banana tart without sugar” may only bring 100, but there is no way around it. You need to build your spider web around the big keyword first.

Building around a Main Keyword also indicates that you may have to produce 10 pieces of content to bring as much traffic as the websites that rank high under “banana tart recipe.” You could write another article about “banana tart recipe for kids” if you find out that the keyword has low competition. 

Those are the rules of the game. If you try to break the rules, you will end up losing time producing content that does not perform. 

There is a Keyword Strategy that is called “skyscraper.” It means that you focus on Long-Tail Keywords first to build traffic. Once you reach a good momentum, you can start “stealing” your competitors’ high-value keywords. Doing so means that you will also hijack some of their traffic. 

The SEO world is a jungle!  

LSI Keywords

On top of the short, medium and long-tail keywords, we need to consider LSI keywords. 

LSI stands for “Latent Semantic Indexing.”

I believe that LSI Keywords are significant for 2 reasons: 

1. Intent: the context the keyword is used in.
2. Synonymous: some keywords mean the same thing or almost the same thing (e.g., “create” and “build.”) You will see below why understanding LSI keywords is critical. 

In the first case, intent, it essentially means that Google and other search engines, show you results based on the relevance of your search intent. 

If you are on your mobile phone in Times Squares New York and you type in “Cats,” search results will display information about the Theater Musical. Not results about the animal. 

If you are in Cheyenne Wyoming, and you type in “cats,” you are very likely to get information about the animal. Not the Musical. 

In the latter case, when it comes to synonyms, you need to understand that using synonyms is very helpful when writing content. Let me explain. 

As we saw, LSI also means that some words are synonymous, for example, “site” and “website.” So the search “build a site” will not give you results about a “building construction site.”

As we have demonstrated above with the “apple” and “apples” example, different keywords, even if they are similar, will give you different results. So make sure to keep that in mind when you build your keywords-based Content Plan. 

But most importantly, you should use LSI keywords to ease the reader’s experience AND to avoid “keywords stuffing.” The best way to demonstrate this is to give you an example. 

Read the 2 examples below and tell us which one is nicer to read: 

1. Example A: Want to build a website? We help you build your website. Building a website is easy. We built many websites in the past 10 years. You can build your website because building websites can be done easily. 
2. Example B: Want to build a website? We help you create your website. Designing a website is simple. We developed many websites in the past 10 years. You can build your website because making your websites can easily be don.

Do you agree that “Example B” is much nicer in terms of experience? Imagine having to read a 6,000 word post that repeats “build website” 100 times! LSI keywords are necessary to please the humans and the machine!

You can leverage LSI keywords to provide a better reading experience to your visitors without affecting your SEO! 

If you use too much of the same keyword you may face 2 issues:

1. Google will consider this “keywords stuffing” and penalize you for using the same keywords repeatedly
2. Visitors will leave your website without going to the whole content due to feeling annoyed

Good to know right? 

Keywords Competition vs. Search Volume (=Keyword Difficulty)

There are 4 scenarios when it comes to Keywords:

1. Low competition, High Search Volume (lots of opportunities)
2. High competition, High Search Volume (avoid; you are fighting against Goliath)
3. Low competition, Low Search Volume (is it worth it? short answer: yes, maybe)
4. High competition, Low Search Volume (avoid; don’t lose your time)

Competition: the number of other websites who rank in the SERPs for a given keyword. The more authority the website has, the stronger the grip it has on the keyword. 

Search Volume: the number of monthly searches for a keyword (remember: “how to eat litchi” counts as a keyword)

Keyword Difficulty (also called “KD”): a rating system that Keywords and SEO tools give to keywords. It means that many domains are competing for a given keyword.

Ahrefs, an SEO tool, compiled data and estimates Keyword Difficulty as shown below. The below data is just a reference and should not be taken literally. I use KWFinder by Mangools, which has a similar system. SEMRush, another famous tool, has its way of setting Keyword Difficulty. 

Keyword Difficulty for DIY SEO 

• 70-100 is Very Difficult (more than 200 domains are competing)
• 50-70 is Difficult (50 to 200 domains)
• 20-50 is Possible (11 to 50 domains)
• 0-20 is Easy (less than 10 domains)

*Note: depending on the tool you use, the calculation to attribute a Keyword Difficulty to a specific keyword may be different from one tool to the other. Please refer to their indications. 

As you can imagine, the shorter the keyword, the more likely it falls into the Very Difficult and Difficult categories. Avoid those keywords if you have a brand new website. 

The 4 types of Keywords above help you figure out Keyword Difficulty, and thus, influence your Keyword Strategy. 

Keyword Difficulty helps you determine if a keyword is worth your attention or not. 

Keywords Competition and Ads

This part is a short segment to talk about ads. This article is about SEO, not about Ads spend, but we cannot ignore the topic. 

The exact same principle applies to Keywords and Ads. 

High competition keywords will have high CPC (Cost-Per-Click.) Unless you are loaded with cash, avoid spending on high competition keywords. 

Low competition keywords are where you could invest for your DIY SEO stragegy. Remember my “spider web strategy” to build by using alternatives to High competition keywords? Well, it can come in handy for ads as well. 

Invest wisely, set goals, measure, test and iterate. 

Hint: invest in purchase-drive keywords about Reviews or Purchases that follow the consumers along with their Consumer Journeys. 

Position in SERP (Search Engine Results)

If a keyword is competitive or super competitive, and even just “competitive,” it should rank within the top 3 results on the 1st page. 

If a keyword is medium-to-low competitive, then it is worth trying, as it could potentially appear in the first Search Results.  

Opting for Long-Tail Keywords is the right strategy, because Long-Tail Keywords have different combinations. You can make many keywords variations with Long-Tail Keywords. Long-Tail Keywords allow you to juggle around and build a “spider web.”

So when you select your keywords, make sure you stick to medium-to-low competition keywords. 

In some cases, even is Search Volume is low, you can get a lot of traffic is you laser-focus on making content that targets specific keywords AND create a lot of content to have a snowball effect. 

A good example would be creating 3 pieces of content for a Low Competition, Low Search Volume keywords… instead of creating 1 piece of content for 1 High competition, High Search Volume keyword.

I would like to say that there are a lot of Low Competition High Search Volumes out there, but that would be “dreaming in colors” like we say back home. There are not many left; established players already own those keywords. 

The main thing to consider about keywords is their Search Volume. 

The more a keyword is searched, the more traffic it will bring. 

If you are lucky and find such a keyword, and it is not yet “owned” by anyone, jump on it!

However, this does not mean you should only focus on high search volume keywords. Far from it. 

If you are a beginner or even an intermediary in SEO, you should build what I call “spider web” Keyword Strategies. 

To go back to our “growth marketing agency” example, the keyword “marketing agency” has a higher search volume. 

But the field of marketing is diverse, and under “marketing agency,” a lot of different types of agencies will pop-up in the search results: digital marketing agencies, direct, B2B, branding, etc. 

You can think of this as a funnel. The top is wide, the bottom is narrow. 

The more laser-focus you go, the deeper you get into the funnels, and the better you will be able to rank for those keywords. 

If someone is looking for an agency that would help grow a business, the keyword “growth marketing agency” may have less search volume, but it is more relevant to the business. It is very likely to be more relevant to the user’s intent as well. In this case, the user is explicitly looking for a “growth” agency, and not a “B2B, branding, eCommerce…” agency. 

Websites who rank high in the search engines “own” the keywords, and it may be difficult to rank as high as they do for the same keywords. Trying to rank for “marketing agency” will not give you results, but aiming to rank for “growth marketing agency” could well pay off. The concept of websites that own keywords apply to pretty much ALL websites and businesses in all niches. 

Keywords Difficulty

As we mentioned, the more frequent a word is, the harder the keyword will be to “own.”

In the future, more and more content will be created, and the accumulation of content will make it harder to own new keywords. 

The money is in niches with low competition keywords, at the bottom of the funnel; not in general keywords high competition, at the top of the funnel. 

I like to say: start NOW! If you need help, feel free to reach out via the Contact form. 

An excellent example of Keyword Difficulty and relevance would be the keyword “apple.” If you type in “apple” in Google, the first few results will not be about the fruit, they will be about the company. If you tried to own the word “apple” it would be extremely difficult… 

A growth marketing agency could rank very high in the search results by investing time and resources to “own” the “growth marketing” or “growth marketing agency” keywords. It will be much more difficult for the agency to rank high in the high-competition “marketing” and “marketing agency” keywords, if not impossible. 

In conclusion, keywords have a quantity and a quality that influence the weight they give your website. Depending on your business model, targeting the right keywords can be very beneficial to build a stronghold in your niche. 

Keyword density

Keyword Density is the number of times a keyword appears in a webpage’s content. 

If you overdo it, Google will penalize you. 

So you need to find the right balance.

If you have a 2,000-word article about the “best pizza crust recipe,” and you use the keyword “best pizza crust recipe” 20 times, the keyword density is 1%. 

You can also have other related keywords, that we call Secondary Keywords, like pizza crust, pizza, crust, etc. 

Content on webpages is based on written content, build around a series of keywords. A blog post should focus on 1 primary keyword and 2-4 secondary keywords. 

As a general rule, do not go over 3% Keyword Density for your Primary keyword.

You can go up to 6% for Secondary Keywords.

The above rule does not tell us anything about the distance about keywords and where they should appear. A good practice is to have your Main Keyword in the Title (a H1) of the webpage or post. The Main Keyword should also appear in the URL as well as at the beginning of the webpage. 

Where are keywords used

This is a good question. 

Keywords are used everywhere:

• In the URL, also called the “slug” in WordPress. The slug is the link of your webpage where the content appears. The Title of the webpage or Post is tagged as an “H1” in coding terms.
• Meta Title: the title that appears in the Search Results
• Meta Description: the description that appears in the Search Results
• Content: the content that you write and publish
• H2 and H3: the subtitles and sub-subtitles in your content
• Comments: yes, even in the comments

Search engines crawl written content: words. They can also crawl images, but images need a small written description to be crawled. 

That makes keywords extremely important pretty much everywhere on your platform.  

And also here (we will see more in details in the later segments of this article):

• images titles
• images filename
• image alt text 
• image caption
• inbound links
• outbound links 
• anchor text used to create inbound links
• anchor text used to create outbound links

How to use keywords for DIY SEO

As a general rule, we follow those basic guidelines when using keywords in content:

Focus on one keyword per post

Add LSI keywords among post (to make the post more comfortable to read for humans)

Avoid duplicating content (you could get penalized, but eh, 20% of content online is duplicate, just do not play with fire)

Focus on Long-Tail Keywords. 

Use Keywords everywhere, like magic spells!

Keywords Ranking and Content Creation

It will be hard for a new blog to rank high for “marketing” because established players have a lot of weight, but it may be easier to rank high if you combine keywords where there is less competition, like “marketing florida” or even better “marketing tampa”

You should always research your keywords before starting content creation!

Keyword Content Gap Analysis

To see which keywords have more value, who owns the keywords, where there are opportunities. 

Best Content Length for SEO

The best content length for SEO is debatable, but I like to have a Content mix that includes the following lengths:

• mini less than 1,000 words
• short between 1,000 and 1,500 words
• medium between 1,500 and 4,000 words
• long between 4,000 and 10,000 words
• ultra long 10,000 words and above

As a rule of thumb, we recommend to publish only articles that are 1,500 words and more. 

Articles under 1,500 words tend not to get picked up for indexing and ranking in Google. 

Where to get ideas for DIY SEO keywords

There are plenty of sources to be inspired:

• Your competitors
• Industry news websites
• Blogs and niche websites
• Youtube
• Pinterest
• Amazon (look for books about the topic, a great source of ideas)
• Podcasts

What is On-page SEO

There are 2 areas of SEO: done directly on your website (aka “on-page,” “onsite”) and operated externally of your website (“offsite.”) 

The SEO done directly on your website is often called “onsite” or “on-page” SEO. 

You own your website, and thus, you have full control over the SEO tactics you leverage. 

Of course, the most explicit on-page SEO is your content, so let’s start by having a look at the content topic. 

Websites vs. Blogs

A blog is part of a website or a blogging platform. 

A website is standalone. 

That’s it.  

So what’s the difference between a website and a blog?

A website can have a blog section or not. 

A blog will always be part of a website or be part of a blogging platform (that hosts tons of other blogs.)

If you take a platform like WordPress, which is the most popular CMS (Content Management System, used to build websites and blogs, and publish content,) it was initially built as a blogging platform. 

After social media appeared and became popular, blogs as platforms to distribute content were slowly overshadowed. It does not mean that blogging is dead; it just means that it shifted. 

Blogs were used by people to communicate with their audience, express emotions, tell stories, publish travel experiences and much more. Now that social media has taken this chunk of blogging; blogging recently became a way for content publishers to deliver content related to specific niches.

There are thousands of niches out there like gardening, marketing, pets, cooking, health, finance, relationships, etc. 

We could say that blogs became a new form of website. 

So as we speak, WordPress is used to build websites. It is the most popular CMS that powers millions of websites on the internet. You have visited plenty of WordPress websites, probably without even realizing it. 

I like to think of blogging as a medium to deliver fresh content on a regular basis, be it monthly, weekly or daily. 

And I like to think of websites as a way to publish static content. It does not mean that building a website limits you to static content as you could also append a blog to your website. 

So do not get confused, websites and blogs are just mediums to deliver content and build an audience.  

The ancestor of blogs were BBS forums for those who are old enough to remember them!

Webpage vs. Posts

We cannot talk about the topics of websites and blogs without mentioning webpages and posts. 

In a platform like WordPress, you can publish 2 types of Content: Pages and Posts. By the way, I use WordPress for pretty much all my personal projects. 

To make things simple, let’s say that:

a webpage is for static evergreen content related to your company, your team, services and products

a post is for time-sensitive content like news, articles, press releases, reviews

Webpages and Posts SEO Weight 

• webpages tend to have more value in terms of SEO (this may or may not be accurate, depending on the circumstances)
• posts tend to have a little bit less value in terms of SEO  

When you build a website, you will build what I call the “usual suspects.” Webpages like “About Us,” “Homepage,” “Contact Us,” “Terms and Conditions” and “Our Services” appear on all websites. 

The webpages of a website are updated on a quarterly or yearly basis, for such infrequent updates, we say the content is “static.” The content of webpages is about yourself and your company and your services (or product.)

On the other end, if you have a blog on your website, you should publish regularly (daily, weekly or monthly.) The content of the blog post can be related to your services (or products,) but it can also be related to things that happen outside. 

If you publish content on your platform, you should focus on posts. 

It is common to have a website with 8 webpages and 200 posts. 

Posts length

There are different theories and point-of-views regarding the ideal length of a post, but what we could say is that a good blog should have:

• A handful of extra long posts (10,000 words and above)
• A majority of mid-size posts (1,200 words)
• A handful of long posts (3,000 to 5,000 words)
• A small amount of short posts (200-300 words, which usually bring more engagement with users)

Keywords Density

Again, there are a lot of different opinions on the amount of keywords you can use in a post, but generally speaking:

• You can have 1-2 primary keywords, and each can be used in 1-2% of your content (for a 1,000 words articles, use the keyword 10-20 times maximum)
• You can use 3-4 secondary keywords, each should be less than 1-2% of your content 

Avoid keywords stuffing as it will penalize your website. Also, diversify your keywords, do not use the same keywords in different posts. 

External links

When you write a post, always link to other websites in your niche. 

When you link to another website that is authoritative, do it early in your post.

Then, you can sprinkle some external links here and there within the content of your post. 

Internal links

Link to your own content within your own website!

Internal linking shows the Search Engine that your website’s content is mutually inclusive and overall relevant to a specific topic (e.g., “pets” if your website is about animals.)

Authority 

Authority is one of the most significant elements to rank high in Google’ Search Results. 

Domain Authority

The more quality you provide to visitors, the more perceived value your website will have. 

You need all the ingredients to bake a pie, well, the same principles apply to websites. 

Sometimes you may be missing one critical element, and it affects your performance. 

The more authority you have, the more likely other people will link to your website. 

It takes time to build authority. 

Age of the Domain Name 

Older domain names tend to perform better than more recent ones. 

The reason is simple: when Google sees that a website has been around for a while, it is a sign that the website is relevant and legit, and that the website owner is persistent and serious. 

It is possible to rank relatively high for new websites, but our experience shows that it takes anywhere from 4 to 12 months for content to start ranking in the SERPs (Search Results.)

Google will know that you have a good website when users:

• spend a lot of time on the website
• scroll from top to bottom
• visit multiple pages
• link to the website

You create value by having a website that:

• answer people’s queries
• has original and well-written content
• has a right balance with text, tables, images, videos, GIFs, etc.
• make use of formatting elements like bold, italic, bullet points, quotes, etc.
• having a website that is pleasing to the eyes (not a website that looks like the internet in 1998) 
• structure content in a manner that makes it easy for users to navigate and acquire information
• the website is mobile-friendly
• has an SSL Certificate to encrypt the connection (a requirement since 2018) 
• loads fast

Link building or SEO Juice

Backlinks (also called “backlinks”) are basically the number of other websites that link to a website. 

The more relevant and authoritative a website is, the more people will link to it. 

And the more authoritative are the websites linking to your website are, the more benefits you gain from the link. 

Search Engines calculate the authority of a website by the number of “backlinks” it has. 

The reverse scenario is real as well when you link to another website, you give that website some “SEO Juice.”

One of the SEO strategies to leverage is called “Link Building.” You need to reach out to other websites to build links, be interviewed and featured on other websites, publish on Pinterest to get traffic, etc. All those methods are used to build links. 

Quality of Backlinks

Websites that have high ranking are considered to be of high quality. 

We call links coming from authoritative websites “SEO Juice.” The more authority a website that links to your website has, the more “SEO Juice” you get. 

When you link to external websites, best is to link to relevant and authoritative websites, that may link back to your website in exchange. 

Quantity of Backlinks

The more backlinks you have, the higher are the chances for you to appear at the top of the search results. 

That’s all. Nothing else to say!

Link building tactics

Why is Link building so important

That dirty little secret no one wants to tell you about link building

We all have limited time. It is a fact. 

Everybody has 24 hours in one day. 

If you want to do link building, you will more than likely have to reach out to other people. It is feasible, but for 100 people you will reach out to, how many will be willing to “give” you a link? 

Probably 2-3. Maybe even 0. 

You need to provide value to people for them to accept to link to your website. 

Now, if you have the time and the energy, it is worth it. 

Keep in mind that if you create fantastic content, eventually, you will start accumulating links. People will link to your website. This natural growth approach takes time, but that’s the way it is!

There is no magic trick, otherwise, everybody would be using the same tactics. 

We do not recommend purchasing links. Why? Because you will, sooner or later, get penalized. 

We do not recommend link trading either. Google sees it and penalizes you in the end. 

The same logic applies to leaving comments on other people’s blogs. It’s spammy and unwarranted. 

You could “repackage” existing content into other forms. An extraordinary example of repackaging content would be to take a table of data and make an infographic. 

Link building is like bodybuilding: there is no shortcut. 

You must do the heavy lifting. 

Go the natural way. 

Guest Posting

If you decide to invest time trying to exchange links with other websites, you should do it in a legitimate manner. 

It is time-consuming, and you should always build relationships that are within your field. For example, it would be counter-productive to exchange links with a website that talks about cars if your website is about baby products. 

Intelligent SEO experts, marketers, content produces, entrepreneurs… spend time making content collaborations with other websites to exchange links and get more “SEO juice.” 

One tactic to do Links Exchange is via Guest Posting. You publish one someone’s else platform in exchange for a commission, a fee or a post that they publish on your platform. 

Tips for successful outreach campaigns:

• Personalize emails
• Bring value!
• start with commenting first with a relevant question in comments to catch attention, then email
• You can use automation that mimics personalization, but people see through fake personalized emails!

If you buy fake links, sooner or later, you will be penalized.

Keep in mind that Google has a set of guidelines to regulate link building via outreach campaigns.

The guidelines are to avoid having too much duplicate content on the internet and spammy practices. 

Tools to use for prospection of outreach 

hunter.io

ninjaoutreach.com

mailshake.com

buzzstream.com

pitchbox.com

https://www.outreachplus.com/

buzzsumo to see how publishes in your niche 

Anchor text

What's all the fuss about anchor texts?

First and foremost, what is an “anchor text”?

Very simple: text with a link!

When I write click here to read my bio.

The word “here” is the anchor text, and the link is artofgrowhmarketing.com

If I say: Want to know more about the Art of Growth Marketing?

The word “the Art of Growth Marketing” is the anchor text, the link is the same, artofgrowhmarketing.com 

Anchor texts are important as in the past, they used to give a lot of “SEO Juice.” 

People abused, so they are no longer as important as they were before. 

However, they are still relevant. 

When you use anchor text, you must diversify the Anchor Texts. The link is the same, but the text itself needs to be different. 

Best practice means that you do not create 300 anchor texts that are the same. 

A good example of diversification: 

• about us
• the story behind the Art of Growth Marketing
• about the Art of Growth Marketing
• and so on. 

Diversification applies when you link internally within your website as well are outbound links to other websites. 

Pingbacks

Pingbacks are a form of link exchange, and when you mention a blog, they will link back to your website. 

The link usually appears at the bottom of one of their blog posts. 

It is a common feature of WordPress websites (that you need to add manually.)

Pingbacks are interesting as they bring a lot of traffic, without much effort. 

It does work! I got a lot of traffic with pingbacks. 

Testimonials

Give and take. 

Give testimonials to other website owners. 

Gather testimonials from your audience. 

Gathering testimonials from your audience and your clients is a pain in the ****.

If you use the Thrive Themes suite of tools, they have a plugin called Thrive Ovation. 

I use the whole suite of Thrive Themes to build websites and gather leads with Thrive Leads. 

You should consider getting Thrive Themes (it is not a theme per se, but a whole suite of tools from website builders, templates, pop-ups, etc.)

I built tons of websites with Thrive Architect. Love it. 

Thrive Ovation let you collect testimonials from your audience in an automated way. 

You can also publish testimonials easily from the testimonials your gathered in your testimonial bank. 

Encourage discussions 

Engage your audience and reply with personal and insightful comments

Always use SPAM filters

Aways approved comments before they appear

If you see wrong keywords and words being used, delete them as it can affect your page ranking. 

Directory links 

Directory links are great places to start. 

Depending on your niche, you can consider: 

• business repository (e.g., business listings in your country, state, city, industry associations)
• Yelp, Foursquare, etc. 
• Linkedin
• and why not throw in Pinterest

Charities and Associations

Another way to get links is to invest money through donations. 

Think of the charities and associations related to your niche, industry or topic.

You can also track when your brand is mention online with Google Alerts and Mention. 

mention.com/en

https://www.google.com/alerts

User behavior optimization

Boost engagement and traffic by leveraging:

• CTR (Click-Through-Rate) to make people click (adjust Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions which appear in the Search Results) 
• Time on Website to make visitors stick and spend more time (tell stories, write compelling content, mix long and short sentences)
• Add 3-4 internal links to other content on your website (to hook users and make them click to consume more of your content)
• CTA (Call-To-Action) to bring users to engage (e.g., let us know what you think, leave a comment below)
• CTA to bring visitors to action (e.g., Free PDF download, contact us, buy, etc.)
• Use media that catch different types of attention (e.g., videos, surveys, slideshows, etc.)
• Add videos, infographics and other types of media to your posts

Link building practices to avoid 4 things 

1. dishonest paid or spammy link building practices
2. having duplicates of the same article spread across multiple websites
3. using plenty of keywords stuffing links to your own website (in the articles you publish elsewhere)
4. if a lot of your content is duplicated elsewhere, refer to original article by using “canonical url” and “nofollow” tags

Local SEO for local businesses

As we previously mentioned, there are 2 types of SEO strategies: National SEO and Local SEO. 

Even “International” SEO falls into the National SEO. 

Why use Local SEO

Local SEO is great for local businesses. 

Local SEO helps brick-and-mortar stores get foot traffic. 

The list goes on and on: physicians, restaurants, cafés, lawyers, car repairs, bakeries, etc. 

Local SEO helps service-based companies cater to local populations. 

Differences between Local SEO and National SEO 

Local SEO relies more on:

• localization
• geo-targeting 
• UGC reviews (User-Generated Content)
• images and videos

And less on:

• traditional link building
• content length
• keywords planning

How to rank high with Local SEO

Many elements influence how a local business will be ranked in Google Search Results. 

As local SEO is based on geo-tracking, it is essential to adopt a mobile-first approach.

Plenty of other elements are important to rank in Local SEO: 

• Website is mobile-friendly and loads fast
• Mobile phone visits, Mobile CTR, etc. 
• Contact information is listed on website (phone, address, email)
• Listing on Google My Business (with images, videos, reviews, star ratings)
• Listing on review websites (e.g., Yelp)
• Quantity and Quality of links 
• Consistency of citations on business listing websites (e.g., “Joey’s Snackbox” is not cited as “Joe’s Snatchbox”)
• Reviews, testimonials, social media engagement
• Awards, certifications and associations (e.g., ISO 9001, diplomas, etc.)
• Other standards elements like keywords, domain authority, trustworthiness…

Getting started with Local SEO 

Local SEO is highly dependent on what other people say about you. 

You are what they say about you, not what you say about yourself!

I see massive opportunities in Local SEO. 

Why? 

Because many business owners do not think about SEO; or want, to invest time, money and effort in SEO. 

The fact that a lot of people do not invest in SEO leaves a vast opportunity gap to be filled.

In Google, type in the name of a restaurant that is close to you. Or even better: just type in the area where you are and the word restaurant. You will see a list of restaurants. Then try the same thing and type in “Chinese restaurant” withe name of the city you are in. You should see the most relevant searches to your query.

When your business information appears on another platform, you get more “Local SEO Juice.” 

An excellent way to et more SEO Juice is to leverage the power of reviews and use consistent business information. 

Let’s see the elements that make Local SEO important.

The best element for citations is your company’s NAP. It is a good starting point. 

What is NAP?

NAP is your business Name, Address and Phone Number. 

Yes, listing your phone number makes a difference! 

Business information listing also applies to your clients. If you do digital work for a client that includes SEO, your clients’ websites should.

If you or your client do not want to get direct calls, you can get a phone number with a voicemailbox and callback people afterward. 

Why is NAP important for Local SEO? 

The NAP acts as a unique identifier for your company. 

Companies generally have a unique name, address and phone number. 

The NAP acts as a Unique Identifier. 

In the case of a chain, for example a coffee shop with 20 shops in a city, the NAP will help with geolocation. 

When consumers look around using their mobile phone, the NAP information will help them locate the closest coffee shop to where they are. 

Remember that SEO is always about giving the most relevant search results to users. 

This is the reason why NAP is so relevant for Local SEO. 

It would not make sense to display a coffee shop that is 30 min driving distance if there are plenty of coffee shops within walking distance. 

NAP consistency

Consistency is crucial with NAP: you should always show the same information everywhere without typos. 

This is especially important for the name of the business. 

For example: 

“Joe’s Pizza” should always appear as “Joe’s Pizza,” not as “Joes Pizza” or “Joey’s Pizza” or “Joe’s Pizzeria.”

You would be surprised to see how many business do this basic mistake. 

In a case where there is inconsistency, fix what you can fix. 

If you find any typos or inconsistencies on 3rd party platforms, simply approach the listing platforms and ask them to use the correct information.

Where should the NAP be displayed?

On the website, for example, in the Footer, and the Contact Us page. You can also list the NAP in the content. 

On 3rd party platforms like google.com/business (a must,) and other business directories like Linkedin, Yelp, and Foursquare are good places. 

If you are based in a country where consumers use other platforms, the same logic applies! 

So no worries, you do not have to focus solely on the directories I mention in this article.

Let’s get back to the gist of Local SEO. 

How to get Local SEO juice?

• Register your business on google.com/business (I remember getting a postcard from Google with a code that I had to implement in Google to verify our business address.)
• Build citations
• Register and maintain information on 3rd party platforms
• Gather testimonials
• Leverage visual content like images and videos

Why all of the above? Because Local SEO is based on what people say about you or your clients’ businesses. 

You can think of Local SEO (and pretty much all SEO types) as a spider web: all threads links to the business.  

Building citations

Every time someone cites your business, you gain a citation. 

The more citations you gather, the more SEO juice you get. 

Building citations is not only good for SEO, but it is also great for other potential customers of the business. 

One important detail: citations should include the NAP as much as possible. 

For example, if the cook at “Joe’s Pizza” is interviewed by the local newspaper, the NAP information should be displayed at the bottom of the interview. 

We can assume there are many pizzeria name “Joe’s Pizza” in the same state. Listing the NAP will help Search Engines attribute the citation to the right pizzeria.

What is Google My Business

Google My Business is a platform provided by Google where you log in to add information about your local business or your clients' business. 

Every local business can create a profile on Google My Business, whether you are a plumber, a clothing store or a restaurant. 

If you do SEO work for a client, the client can give you access to their account. You could also give the client the elements that he or she needs to input into the business' Google My Business account. 

What information can I add to Google My Business?

Google My Business lists plenty of relevant information: 

• NAP
• description
• category
• images
• videos
• CTAs (call-to-action) so that

Why are testimonials and reviews so important for local SEO

Let’s answer this with a question: How often have I decided not to choose a company because there were no reviews? Countless times!

That pretty much sums it up!

It is called the power of Social Proof. 

Seeing other people do something that is likely to bring us to do the same things. 

There is also a technical aspect to it, the more reviews and testimonials you get, the higher you will rank. 

What should testimonials and reviews include?

• Written title
• Written text
• Star rating
• Image 
• Video 
• City
• Name of the customer
• Image of the customer

How to get more testimonials

Ask, ask and ask!

A few ways to get more testimonials:

1. You can jumpstart the directories by publishing your business images on directories (e.g., building from the outside, indoor, menu, services, staff, previously done jobs, etc.)
2. Put a sticker in your window that says you are listed on directories (e.g., Yelp)
3. Put a poster inside the business that shows the directories you are listed in
4. Put a sticker of the directories you are listed on directly in front of the cashier
5. Offer incentives for reviews, like discounts or freebies (if legal in your jurisdiction)
6. Engage consumers who left a review funnily and positively, the atmosphere of warmth will entice other consumers to do the same
7. Your staff could take pictures with your customers and publish the reviews (check the legality of doing so in your jurisdiction.)

Use images and videos for Local SEO 

Think about your own behavior online. 

When you look for a local business, what do you look at? 

Reviews, number of stars… and most likely, images and videos. 

If there are not many images and videos on a listing, you may tend to distrust the review. 

When I look for a hotel, if there are no reviews, I will not book the room, no matter how good it looks. 

But if there is a room with 50 reviews, and let’s say 2-3 negative reviews, I am very likely to book the room. 

Is what I experience the same with you? 

As the saying goes: a picture is worth a thousand words. 

We, human beings, are very “visual.” 

The proof? Just look at Instagram. How many food pictures do you see? 

Other keywords: food, desserts, coffee, sightseeing, leggings, cars, cats, dogs, etc. 

Having a lot of images is not only good for SEO (It IS a ranking factor.) It also entices users to contact you and experience your service or product. 

You can shoot photos by yourself or hire a professional photographer to take pictures to jumpstart your profile—we all carry around famed photography equipment: our mobile phone. 

Adding the images is very easy via Google My Business. Simply log in and click photos, then upload your photos. Et voilà!

Damage control for local SEO

It is important to assess negative feedback in an honest and open-minded manner. 

I see so many brands make the mistake of not replying to negative comments.

Even worse, not replying to positive ones to build a stronger relationship!

What to do with the negative reviews?

Own it. Take ownership. 

If it is your business, then take ownership.

If you are doing SEO work for a client with negative reviews, make the client aware that:

• are you aware that there are negative testimonials about your service or your brand?
• giving a personalized and honest response to the issue will be beneficial to your brand
• addressing issues and providing solutions will create trust with your audience
• you will remove friction and mental barriers that some customers may have when searching for a local business.

I see so many businesses make this rookie mistake:

they are either not aware that they have negative feedback

they ignore the negative feedback

they respond to negative feedback in a rude, negative and unprofessional manner. 

Marketing fact:

Consumers who are dissatisfied or felt offended are more likely to leave a (negative) review than consumers who are satisfied. 

Never forget that most consumers look at reviews! 

How many times did I decide not to walk into a business because of negative reviews?

Many times. Especially when the answer to the negative reviews was rude and infantile. 

Resources for Local SEO 

Directories for listing NAP, citations and gather testimonials: 

google.com/business

linkedin.com

yellowpages.com (for people in the US and Canada)

facebook.com/business

biz.yelp.com

foursquare.com/business

Local SEO ranking checklist and essential resources

Customize the schema information on your website, for intermediary and advanced SEO users, more information here: https://schema.org/LocalBusiness

If you want to learn more about Local SEO: 

https://www.localseoguide.com/

moz.com/learn/local

https://www.brightlocal.com/local-search-results-checker/

Let’s jump into another important topic. 

Content Planning and Keywords Research

Keywords research is the most essential aspect of SEO, especially if you create content to grow your audience. 

What is Keywords Research

Keywords Research is the act of researching the best keywords for your content and your audience. 

You need to find the right keywords for your niche and find keywords that you can eventually “own.”

So Keywords Research helps you identify:

• Keywords that fit your niche, topic and audience (to help you write attractive content)
• Keywords that have appropriate Search Volume AND the right Keyword Difficulty
• Alternative variations of Keywords to other hot Keywords owned by competitors
• Keywords Gaps among your competitors

The 3 main Keywords Research metrics to look for are:

1. Search Volume
2. Keyword Difficulty
3. CPC (Cost-Per-Click) and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) pricing, in the case of ads

Keywords Research is always part of a smart Content Plan.

Not having a Content Plan and not doing any Keywords Research is a recipe for disaster. 

You may end up writing content and never see your content indexed by Google. 

Content that is not indexed by Google is not “findable” via search.  

Believe me, it did happen to me!

What is a Content Plan

A plan of the topics you will write about.

Your Content Plan should include: 

1. Topic
2. References (based on your research)
3. Main Keyword
4. Secondary Keywords
5. Length (e.g., about 2,000 words)
6. Outbound links (websites you will link to, based on your research)
7. Publishing date (publish as soon as ready, do not drip content)

Why is keyword research so important 

You could end up spending lots of time and effort, only to discover the keywords you have targeted:

• do not bring the right traffic
• do not gather an audience ready to buy
• are owned by well-established players
• or worse, do not bring any traffic at all.

If you have not investigated the competitiveness of your keywords, you could end up investing lots of time for no results. 

How to find keywords that send traffic to your site

I must warn you: keywords research requires effort and creativity. 

The best way to find keywords is to look at what your competitors do:

• the topics they write about
• the keywords they use

Here is how to do find keywords:

• use Screaming Frog software to crawl their website and get the list of all their pages and posts (check if it is legal in your jurisdiction before doing so)
• use a tool like Ahrefs, SEMRush or KWFinder to analyze their website (based on domain name) and their Keywords (based on Keywords)
• identify potential keywords (more details below)
• do a manual search on Google to see what autofill proposes (search bar in Google) and alternative searches (bottom of the Google search results)

I would say that for a newly established website, you should aim for keywords that have:

• Keyword Difficulty under 35
• Search Volume between 50 and 350 (if you are very lucky and see a Keyword with 5,000 monthly search volume and low Keyword Difficulty, jump on it!)

When you use a tool like KWFinder or SEMRush or Ahrefs, you can import the lists in Google Sheets and use Conditional Data to automatically colorize the cells that fit you data requirements (e.g., cell with Keyword Difficulty under 35 become green.)

I personally use KWFinder. I used SEMRush in the past and it is also an amazing tool with plenty of great features, but it is a bit on the pricey side. 

Finding keywords with Google’s autosuggest

Check the “Also looked for” (bottom of the webpage on Google) 

Here is an example of how I would do this for the keyword “best seo software”

• best seo software 
• best seo software a {look at what autocomplete proposes}
• best seo software b {idem}
• best seo software c {idem}
• Then, look at the bottom of the search results to see alternative Google suggestions

Now, this is the hard way of doing the search. 

The smart way to do Keywords Research is to use a tool that does it for you. 

KeywordSnatcher is a great tool.

Time is money, so for 47$US, the software is dirt cheap. 

Keywords and Website Scanning Tools

You need to use professional tools to have detailed data like “Search Volume” and “Keyword Difficulty.”

There are plenty of paid and free tool to do Keywords Research

Some are paid, some are free. 

SEO Suites Tools

• Screaming Frog (free, a website crawler, I use it weekly; you can have a look at the number of words per webpage, free version crawls up to 500 URLs)
• KWFinder (paid, I use this one)
• SEMRush (paid, I used it in the past, love it. Probably the number 1 depending on who you ask)
• Ahrefs (probably the number 1 on the market, depending who you ask)

Keyword density

Keywords Density Checker (I believe Screaming Frog can give you all this info)

Search Bar tool 

Keyword Surfer (I use this one, Chrome browser extension)

Now, there is a way to estimate this with free tools. You can simply look at the “Search Volume” and the “CPC” (Cost-Per-Click) cost. If the CPC is low, we can assume that Keyword Difficulty is low. Not super reliable, but if you do not have the budget to invest in a tool, then it is a way of doing it. 

How to generate massive list of keywords

There is no “one-click generate tons of keywords” solution. 

You need to do searches manually. 

Then compile the data.

However, there are ways to find different combinations of keywords. 

For example, “best seo software” could also be:

• best seo software
• best seo tool
• best seo app
• top seo software
• top seo tool
• top seo app

Always check the plural version of the keywords, this is especially true for languages where the prlural has a different form like (e.g., "cheval" and "chevaux" in French.) Include plural keywords for English too (e.g., "dog training tactic," "dog training tactics".)

Keywords List Generators

The tools below are great tools that automatically generate a whole list of keywords. I said there is no one-click solution. Well, this tool gets close to a one-click solution!

Generate a list of Keywords Combinations with the following tools:

KeywordSnatcher (paid)

KeywordShitter2 and Keywordshitter (free, I use this one, sorry for the name haha)

MergeWords

Keyword.io (I use this one too, free, you can also look for Youtube, Amazon, Alibaba, etc.)

Look at the trends and what people are searching 

Remember that trends are sometimes short-lived, always opt for evergreen topics as much as possible. 

GoogleTrends (check for your region and the timespan)

AnswerThePublic (free, I use this one, use both Visualization and Data views)

GoogleAds

If you use Google Ads to check for keywords, keep in mind that the information is for ad spending. Google ads does not reflect the real competitiveness of a keyword. Again, data is for ad spend, so be careful! 

Step-by-step DIY SEO Keywords Research (just like I do it)

I introduce you to 2 scenarios and 2 ways to do Keywords Research: 

1. You want to identify and steal competitors’ keywords that are “stealable” 
2. You want to generate a massive list of Long-Tail Keywords

Steal competitors’ keywords

1. Find 5 competitors for a given industry (e.g., ) or topic (e.g., )
2. Crawl their websites with Screaming Frog SEO (check if legal in your jurisdiction)
3. Crawl websites with KWFinder to see which keywords they rank for
4. In KWFinder, click on “Keyword Difficulty” to see the most difficult keywords are the top (so from harder at the top to easier at the bottom)
5. Look for “related keywords” and “autocomplete” in KWFinder as well
6. Compile the lists into a Google Sheets and use the conditional formatting to highlight relevant keywords that have Keyword Difficulty under 40 and Search Volume under 250

Generate lists of Long-Tail Keywords

1. Create lists of keywords that you think are relevant 
2. Use Keyword Snatcher and keyword.io and Keywords Shitter to generate a massive list of keywords and their alternatives
3. Copy and paste the list in KWFinder, then check for Keyword Difficulty and Search Volume
4. In KWFinder, click on “Keyword Difficulty” to see the most difficult keywords are the top (so from harder at the top to easier at the bottom)
5. Compile the lists into a Google Sheets and use the conditional formatting to highlight relevant keywords that have Keyword Difficulty under 40 and Search Volume under 250
6. Note: if you do not have a KWFinder account, you could “guesstimate” which keywords have potential. If you have an account with Google Ads, you could also check the performance of the keywords in there. A 3rd option would be to use Keyword Surfer to manually check the Search Volume directly by typing the keywords one-by-one in the Google Search. Doing the work manually defeats the purpose of working smart and automating as much as we can… remember that time is money!

Work Smart!

Not all tools are created equal

It is worth paying for tools, even if tools do not have the most acurate data. Google has the most acurate data of all, but we do not have direct access to its data.  

SEO Plan and Content Plan: a Bad Plan is better than No Plan

The web is all about content: text, images, videos, comments, GIFs…

We all consume a lot of written content. 

Tons of content is produced on a daily basis all around the world. 

When you start publishing content, everything seems hard. 

But the more you create, the more you become a Creator!

I do not care if you are creative or not, Creators always trump Creatives!

You need to publish regularly to be successful, but most people stop when they start getting traction. 

To keep publishing in a disciplined manner, and according to a well-thought strategy, you need to have a Content Plan. 

And before making your Content Plan, you should have done basic Keywords Research.

The advantage of doing Keywords Research before starting to write is that you will be able to laser-focus on content that will bring you traffic. 

Sounds good?

Like Paypal’s co-founder Peter Thiel said: “A bad plan is better than no plan.”

Keywords or Topics first

It is like asking the egg or the chicken first. 

Well, let me give you the answer that has been floating in my head: 

1. Make a list of topics based on the content of 5 competitors in your niche (just Google your topic and see the top rankings)
2. Check the keywords they use using the software and tools we mentioned previously 
3. Find keywords gaps
4. Brainstorm a list of topics
5. Use Google Autocomplete to see how many searches there are

You are set to make a list of content now. 

Your Keywords Research, for each individual topics, should include: 

• 1-2 Primary keywords (if possible, Low Competition High Search Keywords)
• 3-4 secondary keywords
• a lot of Longtail Keywords, not just short keywords

Your Content Plan should include:

• List of short, medium and long posts
• Targeted Audience
• Tonality
• Topic
• Title
• Time of writing/editing/publishing (I have a great Excel template for this)
• Number of words
• CTA (Call-to-action)
• Purpose of the post
• Outbound links to relevant websites
• Visual elements like images, GIFs, videos, tables, infographics, etc. 

Types of Content: It’s all About the Content

Before making a Content Plan, you need to keep in mind that there are different types of content. Not all content is created equal.

Types of Content

A reliable content mix will focus mainly on short and medium articles. Plus, a few long articles. 

• Mini posts: for engaging your audience, those short posts have low SEO value, but they are the most engaging, almost like social media (300-500 words.) Avoid at the beginning, execute when you have an audience.
• Short: to answer a question (1,500-2,200 words)
• Medium: cool-to-share tips, best, top (3,000-6,000 words)
• Long: to go deep within a subject and plant your high-value keywords are much as possible (5,000-10,000 words)

Categories of Content

• Evergreen Content (e.g. always relevant, “how to bake a meat pie”)
• Event Content (e.g. Halloween, Christmas, SuperBowl) 
• Seasonal Content (e.g. ice skating, hockey) 
• Trendy Content (e.g. fidget spinners were popular for 6 months)
• Location Content (e.g.clothes trends in February will be different in Canada and in Florida)

Ideally, you have a lot of evergreen content, backed by other types of content that will use some events as opportunities to bring some extra traffic. 

Do you need help? We can assist you. Just send us an email via the Contact Form. 

Content Structure: Keywords at the Top

Content should always be: 

• well structured
• straight-to-the-point 
• easy-to-read
• mix of short and long sentences

There are a few best practices when it comes to SEO-friendly content:

• Your most relevant keywords should appear as soon as possible
• You should link to relevant websites at the beginning of your post
• Post should be well structured, making use of H1, H2, Bold, etc. (think Title, Subtitle, italic, bullet points, lists)
• The content should match the user intent as soon as possible (e.g. what is the name of KFC’s founder should not be 5,000 words long)

Avoid copy-pasting and rewriting content like the plague!

Some websites may have content that is not as good as the content of another website, but because the webpage is so well structured and easy-to-read, those websites may rank higher. 

That is how powerful SEO is. 

How to boost traffic and rankings with content marketing

Write content. Lots of it.  

I would say that 30 posts and a couple of pages is a good way to jumpstart your website. 

Eventually, you want to grow the size of your content to at least 100 pieces of content. 

Yes, it is a lot. 

But if you spread it over a 1 year period, it is doable. 

If needed, seek help from a freelancer to help you deliver content!

Bringing traffic: use social media to drive visitors to your content. You can use teaser images, videos, short summaries to bring visitors. Pinterest works well. Reddit and Quora may be helpful. I do not use other Social media to drive traffic. I just think that there are better ways to use time and energy. 

Blog syndication: submit your content to content aggregators sites

blogarama

eatonweb

alltop.com

A/B testing: test to find the most performing webpage

A/B testing is when you want to test the performance of 2 different designs of the same page. 

I love Thrive Themes as they have a great A/B testing tool for webpages and titles. 

This is especially useful for webpages with a specific goal, like downloading a PDF, registering for a webinar or buying something. 

Best practice is to add the “nofollow” and “noindex” to your B version. 

Statistical significance, if my memory is good, is around 20,000 visits. Of course, it can be done with less, but a test with a small dataset will just give you an idea of the best performing design. 

Rich Snippets

Rich Snippets are part of every legit SEO strategy.

As part of your Content Plan, you should absolutely aim for ranking for specific Rich Snippets. 

Let’s start from the beginning. 

What are Rich Snippets?

Before we answer the question, let’s have a look at how search results are displayed. 

When you type in a question in Google, the search results are usually displayed in this order:

• paid ads
• rich snippet (sometimes displayed, sometimes not) 
• “People also ask” (idem) 
• organic search results
• paid ads
• “Searches related to” (displays other keywords, other ways to search for your search’s topic.)

Search results formulated as a question will be shown in a big window. 

Without clicking on any link, you usually see the question and the answer, with a link to the website. 

Those search results are called “Rich Snippets.”

In other words, Rich Snippets are short answers to a specific question. 

They provide a specific answer to a specific query without needing to click on the link to read the answer. 

What are the types of rich snippets? 

Rich snippets can take many different forms:

• Only text
• Text and image
• Videos
• Bullet points
• Lists

Categories of Rich Snippets

• Q&A
• Reviews
• Fact Check
• Local Business
• Products
• News
• Books
• Jobs
• Organization
• Product markup
• Music 
• Recipes
• Top Stories
• Events
• and many more.

Most rich snippets take the form of text. However, feel free to compile your own list of data and make up your own lists, images, bullet points lists, etc. 

Why try to get ranked as a rich snippet? 

Yes, we used the word “try.”

If a keyword or a question has low competition and you write the best answer to the question, you have good chances for your answer to be selected. 

So why aim for rich snippets you may ask? Because it puts you in the first position and gives your website more exposure. Some people say that they lost traffic after having an answer selected as a rich snippet, but most people saw an increase in traffic. 

How to get featured as a rich snippet?

3 important elements help you get selected for the rich snippet position. 

1. The first one is the usage of HTML Title Tags. 
2. Use the question as an H2 and the answer as an H3. 
3. The title of your article is an H1.

H1, H2 and H3 are HTML elements. 

Think of H1, H2 and H3 as the Title of a book, the H2 as chapters and H3 as sub-chapters. 

So when you write your article, make the question an H2 by selecting the text, and in the WordPress editor (if you are not using WordPress there may be a way to do this in the panel where you select the size of the text,) select H2, and so on. 

The second element is the length of the answer. 

There are many theories about this, and it is a case-by-case concept, but aim for 30 words if you provide a text answer. 

The third aspect is quality. 

Only the best answer will be selected for rich snippets. 

Of course, if a keyword or an answer is very competitive and already has a rich snippet, you should not try to steal it, especially if you are just starting. 

Never fight for keywords against websites that have high domain authority!

One of the creative ways to get selected is to gather that is publicly available, or gather your own data, and make an image or a data table out of it. Originality pays!

Do rich snippets affect the traffic quantity 

Do rich snippets have an effect on the website selected for the rich snippet?

Yes and no.

Some people see a drop in traffic while others see traffic go up. 

One way or the other, Rich Snippets are amazing and you should focus on them. 

What are the most ranked Rich Snippets? 

• Text answer comes first. 
• Then bullets lists and so on. 
• Do not worry about the type; just do something original and of high-quality standard.

How you can test your webpage for rich snippets?

You can see if your webpage’s schema markup is rich-snippet friendly by using Google’s Rich Snippet tester: https://search.google.com/test/rich-results

Voice search 

What is Voice search?

Just think how Alexa and Siri give answers; they dig up information written on the internet, especially if the answer is provided via a Rich Snippet. Same with Google's Voice search. 

As the internet is going more and more into interactivity and machine learning, voice search will be more and more important. 

How to get featured in voice search?

• Great quality answers.
• Short answers that are straight-to-the-point. 
• Long-articles (go for minimum 1,500 words articles)

You can find more information about “speakable” results here: 

https://schema.org/speakable

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-%20types/speakable#eligibility

Technical SEO 

 How to structure your website for hassle-free SEO ranking!

Google Crawling

• Nothing should blocking crawlers
• Clean and readable URL (for both crawlers and users, if you have a webpage URL that looks like this for your About page “/hb1679nambsi” it looks confusing)
• Avoid pop-ups that kill the user experience 
• Avoid forcing users to do something (e.g., watch a video)

Navigation

Use simple navigation, avoid having more than 7 tabs in your top menu (use submenus, sidebar, footer and links within the content of your webpage instead.)

Only use text for navigation in the menu (a lot of Japanese websites use images, this is purely aesthetic reasons, if your website is not in an Asian language, avoid using images in menus.) 

How to get more people clicking on your ranking in Google

Use natural language!

Remember that both crawlers and human beings will read the webpage. 

If you have a WordPress website, there are plenty of plugins out there that let you customize the:

• Use characters to stand out: [] {} () - (e.g., [2021 update])
• Title: use copywriting that picks curiosity, add dates, add wording such as "updated," "ultimate," "top," etc.
• Meta Title: The title appears in Google and on top of the browser (e.g.Apple iMacs for business, design and education)
• Meta Descriptions: It appears in the search engine’s results as well. It is a summary of what the webpage is about (e.g. Apple iMacs are a selection of top-performing computers designed in California)
• Alt tags for images: this is a description of each individual image on your websites a Search Engines cannot “see,” but they can read text. The description helps them knowing what the image is about. 
• Title of assets and filenames: "funny-siamese-cat-picture.jpg" is better than "asd33gljahksf.jpg"

Do not forget to add your keywords to:

• Navigation
• Headings
• Bolded text
• Internal links
• Images filenames, titles and alt tags
• Video filenames, titles and alt tags

Few DIY SEO tips and tricks:

• Use All in One SEO (or Yoast SEO) to fill in Meta Titles, Meta Description
• Meta Title: max 70 characters (some say 57 is better)
• Meta Description: max 155 characters (some say 160)
• Tip: Avoid using CAPITALIZATION, keywords stuffing and duplicates. Remember, use natural language and original content for each one of them.