Competition for the top spot in search engines is becoming increasingly fierce, with new websites popping up all the time. To make matters worse? Competitors aren’t the only thing you’re…well, competing with. Thanks to Google’s ever-changing algorithms, you have the search engine itself to contend with, too!
Staying ahead of the field can be a full-time job, so when it comes to building a solid SEO strategy it pays to make the most of the tools available to you. From researching your site’s keywords and monitoring its traffic, through to finding relevant content ideas and building high-quality backlinks, here is our list of the top twenty-five (free) tools you should be using right now:
Keywords are an essential component of SEO. They tell the search engines what you, your website, and its content is about so that it’s found when people search for these terms. Google Keyword Planner shows how different keywords perform, their search volumes, and competitiveness, making it easy to choose the right keywords for your site.
Broken links lower the quality and usability of your website and, in turn, your SEO. Apps like Integrity help you identify, find, and repair these broken links so you can improve your site’s performance and ensure users aren’t left staring at a 404 Error Page.
Have you ever wondered how Google views your website? Spider View Simulator allows you to see your website exactly as Google does by simulating a search engine spider. This allows you to see the source code of a page, your inbound and outbound links, main keywords, and phrases.
Google Analytics is one of the most well-known SEO tools, and rightly so. This allows you to track and report on conversion rates, search traffic, and pageviews from a variety of sources. To name just a few! It’s a super handy tool to have in your digital toolkit.
Backlinks are the hyperlinks that point back to your website from another webpage. High-quality backlinks build authority in the eyes of Google and improve your rankings.
Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker makes tracking these links easy. You can easily check the number of backlinks and referring domains to your site, as well as monitor important metrics like Domain Rating, URL Rating, and AHREFS rank.
Over optimizing can be as detrimental as under optimizing. Over-optimizing the links back to your site is now seen as a spammy, black-hat practice by Google which is harmful to your SEO. Remove’em makes it easy to identify and then remove these over-optimized links that may be damaging your site’s rankings.
If you think local SEO isn’t important, you should think again! Google My Business is the holy grail for local SEO. You can claim your listing, share your location, respond to reviews, and connect with customers across the web.
If your page load speed isn’t up to scratch, then your visitors are going to leave. So too will the search engines! Page Speed Insights from Google analyses the load speed of your webpages and generates suggestions that you can use to speed up the slow ones.
Mobile phones serve as the largest platform for searching and browsing the internet, so it pays to make sure your website is performing at its best. MobileMoxie allows you to search for individual terms on different devices, see results for specific locations, and view page variations by location.
Looking for another option? If MobileMoxie isn’t what you’re after, you can also use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to put your site through its paces and test its usability across a range of mobile devices including tablets and phones.
Master the basics of SEO with MozBar, the industry’s leading SEO toolbar. MozBar provides you with SEO research on the go, so you can quickly and easily view page metrics, authority scores, and so much more while you’re browsing the web.
Do you need insights for SEO, paid campaigns, social media, content, and PR, or marketing research? SEMrush can help with it all. This versatile site runs the gamut, providing tools for everything from checking keywords and traffic through to analyzing competitors and their content.
Want to visualize your webpage’s snippet in Google Search before it goes live? Portents SERP Preview Tool shows you your proposed meta title, description, URL, and bolded keywords in a preview SERP. It’s a great way to measure your ‘clickability’!
Yoast is one of the most popular WordPress plugins around, and for good reason. It provides a sweeping range of tools that plug right into your WordPress website that makes managing your SEO, simple.
Google Search Console allows you to check your site’s ranking as well as which of your web pages aren’t indexed so you can improve and track your SEO performance.
Images are the top culprit for slow page load speed due to large file sizes. Smush is a great plugin for WordPress which helps compress, resize, and optimize images so you can speed up your site and improve performance.
Do you want to create content that people are actually interested in? Answer The Public provides you with queries that people are searching for in search engines like Google, which can help you create content that users are actually interested in within your industry or niche.
View your webpage in plain HTML as a search engine does without the distractions of styling and CSS with BROWSEO. It’s the perfect way to check your page’s structure, and ensure that it’s set up in such a way that makes it easy for search engines to see what you’re all about.
19.Keywordit
Keywordit searches and extracts keywords from the popular US discussion site, Reddit. This handy tool generates hundreds of popular keywords and monthly search volumes so you can quickly and easily identify your audience’s major interests.
SEO Web Page Analyser provides a snapshot of your website’s SEO, breaking down the structure of your website and analyzing usability, content, and built quality from a search engine’s point of view. It’s a great way to improve both on- and off-page SEO.
SerpRobot checks your ranking in Google’s search engine quickly and accurately to show you where you stand amongst competitors and how you can best optimize your website for search.
This industry-leading SEO web crawler allows you to analyze your onsite SEO, making it easy to manage broken links, page titles, metadata, redirects, duplicate content, and so much more.
Check the path of your redirects and meta refreshes with Where Goes. It’s the easiest way to troubleshoot and diagnose any problems you might be having with links, as well as ensure redirects are up and working.
Reduce the amount of time you spend researching keywords with Keywords Everywhere. This add-on for Chrome shows you cost-per-click, monthly search volumes, and Adwords competition right there in your browser.
Google Tag Manager is a free tool created by Google that allows you to manage HTML and Javascript tags, without the need for any coding. It integrates seamlessly with a range of Google products, including Google Ads for easy conversion tracking and remarketing, as well as a variety of third-party vendors.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there are a lot of useful free tools out there that can help you master the fine art of SEO, whether you’re just starting out or an industry veteran. By adding one, two, or even all of these to your digital tool belt, you’ll be finding keywords, writing content, and promoting your site more effectively than ever before in next to no time!
Podcast SEO and search
/0 Comments/in Podcast /by Rebecca CaroePodcasts are seriously TERRIBLE at helping your website and brand SEO.
If you are a podcaster, chances are that you have a website page or category in which you list your episodes. But these pages do not perform well in natural search. Have you done a search in your own analytics for podcast pages? Have you done an incognito search for your own podcast in a search engine? Chances are that you were disappointed in the results.
I have done searches looking for past episodes of my podcasts and found that the name of the guest is often a good result for natural search – IF the person is looking for information about that guest. The rest of the time, it’s just been hard graft for precious little return.
3 reasons podcast SEO is bad
The situation is not good at present for three reasons.
What can we do to improve SEO for podcasts?
Luckily for us, Google has also noticed that its results need improving. As announced earlier this year, Google will start indexing individual podcast episodes into its search results. But there are caveats – you have to include the word “podcast” in the search string…. and it is starting (obviously) with already popular content from publishers with “authority” and prioritising US based podcasters [don’t get me started on where the centre of the universe actually is….].
Search results for podcast – that’s mine, RowingChat
The image is of a search I did today for “best rowing podcasts”. And halfway down the page are image link results under a sub-heading of Podcast.
And individual episodes show up higher in the page, as well as results from other distribution services like Stitcher. So far so good.
What can I do to get MY podcast showing up?
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Write a custom 404 error page
/0 Comments/in Copywriting /by Rebecca CaroeCustom 404 pages are a great sign to your readers that you are engaged with your website and want to be helpful.
Here is a sample text I wrote for a client
Custom 404 page text
Oops! That seems to be a broken link.
Sorry.
If you have the time or inclination – please tell us the page it was on by sending us an email. [link Sendto: support@yourwebsite.com Subject: Broken Link on Website]
Maybe you are looking for something like
Add a lightly humorous image – something to show that you thought about it.
I have chosen a capsize image for a watersport brand, a broken stick for a gifts company and a sad looking person for a consultancy firm.
Get on it now….
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How retailers can differentiate customers
/0 Comments/in B2C, Case Studies, Marketing ideas /by Rebecca CaroeThis photo was shared by the famous author, Susan Cain. She noted “There’s an introvert on the customer services team.”
Her world view is all focused on explaining to the majority of the population who are extroverts how the minority (introverts) prefer to be treated.
Treat different customers differently by Sephora retail
Skilful marketers treat different customers differently
Face to face retail is different from online retail. Online, the customer wanders where she wants, unhindered except by popups and tracking cookies – she’s unaware of one of these most of the time.
But in shops, it’s different. Many sales assistants are paid on commission – this drives their behaviours. And without a customer to speak to they risk not getting a commission payment.
When I worked the shop floor [Harrods, Burberrys] and now when I go to Trade Shows, I developed a technique which was successful for me.
I would make eye contact with the customer prospect, smile, and then look away first. Sometimes I also said ‘Hi’.
Why did this method customer engagement work?
Firstly, I made the customer aware that I was there and could help if needed.
Secondly, by looking away first I left them in control of any future re-engagement. They could choose to ignore me and I had signalled that this was fine, that they had no obligation to respond or engage with me.
Back to Sephora
A comment under Susan Cain’s post said
And this was my reply
Retail customer segmentation challenge
If you run a retail business, where can you enable simple ways to allow customers to self-identify into different groups who want / need to be treated differently?
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Mid-Sized Business Marketing
/0 Comments/in B2B, Strategy /by Rebecca CaroeThe power of New Zealand business as an engine for economic growth lies mainly in mid-sized businesses. These are under-recognised by many for the power they wield.
Grant Thornton has done a study of the sector which has some interesting findings.
5 solutions for future growth
The recommendations made by GT are rather bland, probably reflecting the diversity of business types in the group and the fact that they want to be paid for custom recommendations.
Here’s what I would add as ways to get your own business started on its future path.
Mid sized business recommendations
Download the report
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Solving B2B marketing challenges
/0 Comments/in B2B, Sales /by Rebecca CaroeI got this question from a client
Marketing Association Training Courses
Common situation – where you know more than the (junior) client marketer, but you need them to be willing to implement your solution.
How to solve for ignorance
Easy fixes.
Find a partner who LOVES those 3rd party seller integrations and agree to collaborate with them. So you can confidently say that “yes we integrate with everything” and bypass these objections. [BTW Zapier does pretty much everything with an open API.]
One thing you can also do is offer deep hands-on training when you implement so you will be up-skilling the digital marketer who doesn’t have a B2B marketing background… leaving them skilled in both using and implementing good tactical campaigns. If this can be aligned with a public certification as well (See the CIM courses or NZ Marketing Association Diploma) then there’s a side-benefit for the individual getting a recognised qualification along the way.
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Why don’t customers buy now?
/0 Comments/in Golden Question, Strategy /by Rebecca CaroeToday I’m working with a client who is finding it hard to get prospects to buy.
We are working through a list of possible reasons. My first view is that more advertising / publicity is probably not the reason. I think that it’s more to do with the offer, the positioning, the brand promise and perceptions of value and immediate need.
Later is an option
Buying now is obviously what the client brand wants.
But for the prospect, why would they?
Deferring risk is part of the prospect’s decision making. And as marketers we tend to presume that our logic, our world view must prevail.
But the reasons people don’t buy can also be
We wrote a list of all the reasons someone would not buy this product. Try it for yourself.
Competitors exist too
Some people will buy from your competitors. Can you find out why they chose them? Do you have anecdotes about customers trying another brand and coming back to yours?
Without publishing it, could you assemble anecdotes about your competitors, classify them and produce a rank order of WHY people choose them over you?
Then compare that to your positioning and brand promise.
Where do you really stand out, where are you broadly the same?
That will give your sales team clues….. I call these “golden questions” and they are defined by Don Peppers as questions whose answers tell you a lot more than the question implies.
So, if the customer is really concerned about something…. what do you ask / tell them?
If they are really concerned about price and only price ….what do you ask / tell them?
Today is later
Now is usually better than later.
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Top 25 Free Tools For Mastering SEO in 2019
/0 Comments/in Marketing, SEO /by Sudip MuttCompetition for the top spot in search engines is becoming increasingly fierce, with new websites popping up all the time. To make matters worse? Competitors aren’t the only thing you’re…well, competing with. Thanks to Google’s ever-changing algorithms, you have the search engine itself to contend with, too!
Staying ahead of the field can be a full-time job, so when it comes to building a solid SEO strategy it pays to make the most of the tools available to you. From researching your site’s keywords and monitoring its traffic, through to finding relevant content ideas and building high-quality backlinks, here is our list of the top twenty-five (free) tools you should be using right now:
1. Google Keyword Planner
Keywords are an essential component of SEO. They tell the search engines what you, your website, and its content is about so that it’s found when people search for these terms. Google Keyword Planner shows how different keywords perform, their search volumes, and competitiveness, making it easy to choose the right keywords for your site.
2.Integrity Link Checker
Broken links lower the quality and usability of your website and, in turn, your SEO. Apps like Integrity help you identify, find, and repair these broken links so you can improve your site’s performance and ensure users aren’t left staring at a 404 Error Page.
3.Spider View Simulator
Have you ever wondered how Google views your website? Spider View Simulator allows you to see your website exactly as Google does by simulating a search engine spider. This allows you to see the source code of a page, your inbound and outbound links, main keywords, and phrases.
4.Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the most well-known SEO tools, and rightly so. This allows you to track and report on conversion rates, search traffic, and pageviews from a variety of sources. To name just a few! It’s a super handy tool to have in your digital toolkit.
5.Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker
Backlinks are the hyperlinks that point back to your website from another webpage. High-quality backlinks build authority in the eyes of Google and improve your rankings.
Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker makes tracking these links easy. You can easily check the number of backlinks and referring domains to your site, as well as monitor important metrics like Domain Rating, URL Rating, and AHREFS rank.
6. Remove’em Over Optimised Backlinks
Over optimizing can be as detrimental as under optimizing. Over-optimizing the links back to your site is now seen as a spammy, black-hat practice by Google which is harmful to your SEO. Remove’em makes it easy to identify and then remove these over-optimized links that may be damaging your site’s rankings.
7.Google My Business
If you think local SEO isn’t important, you should think again! Google My Business is the holy grail for local SEO. You can claim your listing, share your location, respond to reviews, and connect with customers across the web.
8.Page Speed Insights
If your page load speed isn’t up to scratch, then your visitors are going to leave. So too will the search engines! Page Speed Insights from Google analyses the load speed of your webpages and generates suggestions that you can use to speed up the slow ones.
9.MobileMoxie SERP Test
Mobile phones serve as the largest platform for searching and browsing the internet, so it pays to make sure your website is performing at its best. MobileMoxie allows you to search for individual terms on different devices, see results for specific locations, and view page variations by location.
10.Google Mobile-Friendly Test
Looking for another option? If MobileMoxie isn’t what you’re after, you can also use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to put your site through its paces and test its usability across a range of mobile devices including tablets and phones.
11.Moz SEO Toolbar
Master the basics of SEO with MozBar, the industry’s leading SEO toolbar. MozBar provides you with SEO research on the go, so you can quickly and easily view page metrics, authority scores, and so much more while you’re browsing the web.
12.SEMrush
Do you need insights for SEO, paid campaigns, social media, content, and PR, or marketing research? SEMrush can help with it all. This versatile site runs the gamut, providing tools for everything from checking keywords and traffic through to analyzing competitors and their content.
13.Portents SERP Preview Tool
Want to visualize your webpage’s snippet in Google Search before it goes live? Portents SERP Preview Tool shows you your proposed meta title, description, URL, and bolded keywords in a preview SERP. It’s a great way to measure your ‘clickability’!
14.Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin
Yoast is one of the most popular WordPress plugins around, and for good reason. It provides a sweeping range of tools that plug right into your WordPress website that makes managing your SEO, simple.
15.Google Search Console
Google Search Console allows you to check your site’s ranking as well as which of your web pages aren’t indexed so you can improve and track your SEO performance.
16.Smush Image Optimisation
Images are the top culprit for slow page load speed due to large file sizes. Smush is a great plugin for WordPress which helps compress, resize, and optimize images so you can speed up your site and improve performance.
17.Answer The Public
Do you want to create content that people are actually interested in? Answer The Public provides you with queries that people are searching for in search engines like Google, which can help you create content that users are actually interested in within your industry or niche.
18.BROWSEO
View your webpage in plain HTML as a search engine does without the distractions of styling and CSS with BROWSEO. It’s the perfect way to check your page’s structure, and ensure that it’s set up in such a way that makes it easy for search engines to see what you’re all about.
19.Keywordit
Keywordit searches and extracts keywords from the popular US discussion site, Reddit. This handy tool generates hundreds of popular keywords and monthly search volumes so you can quickly and easily identify your audience’s major interests.
20.SEO Web Page Analyser
SEO Web Page Analyser provides a snapshot of your website’s SEO, breaking down the structure of your website and analyzing usability, content, and built quality from a search engine’s point of view. It’s a great way to improve both on- and off-page SEO.
21.SERPROBOT
SerpRobot checks your ranking in Google’s search engine quickly and accurately to show you where you stand amongst competitors and how you can best optimize your website for search.
22.Screaming Frog
This industry-leading SEO web crawler allows you to analyze your onsite SEO, making it easy to manage broken links, page titles, metadata, redirects, duplicate content, and so much more.
23. Where Goes?
Check the path of your redirects and meta refreshes with Where Goes. It’s the easiest way to troubleshoot and diagnose any problems you might be having with links, as well as ensure redirects are up and working.
24.Keywords Everywhere
Reduce the amount of time you spend researching keywords with Keywords Everywhere. This add-on for Chrome shows you cost-per-click, monthly search volumes, and Adwords competition right there in your browser.
25.Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager is a free tool created by Google that allows you to manage HTML and Javascript tags, without the need for any coding. It integrates seamlessly with a range of Google products, including Google Ads for easy conversion tracking and remarketing, as well as a variety of third-party vendors.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there are a lot of useful free tools out there that can help you master the fine art of SEO, whether you’re just starting out or an industry veteran. By adding one, two, or even all of these to your digital tool belt, you’ll be finding keywords, writing content, and promoting your site more effectively than ever before in next to no time!
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Tracking Dark Social for B2B sharing
/0 Comments/in B2B, Data, Social Media /by Rebecca CaroeDark social is a term used to explain web traffic whose source attribution is unclear – the true origin you can’t find or don’t know. Typically this traffic shows up as “Direct” in analytics because it comes from a copy/paste URL which you do not know where the user acquired it, nor do you know what was said about the link – the visitor just appears on the site.
Dark Social icons Image Credit: Kendesk Digital
There are two distinct parts – the analytics direct traffic – and also the more commonly used direct messaging for social sharing. This can be tracked by brands if the messaging app is part of the social site e.g. Facebook and Facebook Messenger. The source can be tracked even if you do not know the message or its context (because it was a private message).
Sharing apps are often encouraged by site owners – this site still has a share button and I’m sure yours does too.
If your reader chooses SMS, email or WhatsApp share then you have no way of tracking it.
Frustratingly, I have also fallen foul of this – when with a prospective client, I show them a web page on my phone, hit the share button and invite them to put their own email or phone number and to send themselves. I thought I would be able to later save their phone or email to my contacts. Wrong. It’s gone.
Jay Baer checked his own site and found his B2B website got a lot of dark social shares.
Improve your ability to view dark social shares
ShareThis is a much-used social sharing plugin and they have adjusted their code so that they can track dark social shares. The tool is free to install and offers all the popular sites as pre-created.
You can also create custom share buttons which can be designed into your site colourways, have unique, trackable attributes which you define. This allows a “share count” to be generated and logged for your site.
Creating your own custom short URLs (bit.ly or similar) and using UTM markers can help you to track these shares, so that your “direct” traffic is further reduced, tracked and defined.
Resources about Dark Social
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Corporate gift innovations 2019
/0 Comments/in B2C /by Rebecca CaroeEarly birds, it’s time to plan your Christmas holiday gifts for clients. Branded gifts are still good, not naff and definitely give a good return on investment for existing clients and returning client programmes.
I took a look at some of the newer and older products available. Get in touch to discuss your needs – no I don’t do a heavy sales push on this…
Branded bluetooth speaker
Branded water bottle speaker
Branded USB, Key shape pen drive
Padlock shape USB
Branded power adapter plug
USB toy
Waterbottle and bluetooth speaker
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