Website SEO best staitgy 2019

Only 36% of Small Businesses Have an SEO Strategy in 2019, Even as People Use Search Engines to Research and Purchase Online

https://www.sarkariresullts.comPRNewswire/ -- Thirty-six percent (36%) of small businesses have an SEO strategy, and 38% more plan to invest in SEO in the future, according to a new survey from Clutch, the leadings B2B research, ratings, and reviews company.

Social media marketing (63%) and mobile-friendly websites (54%) are the most common SEO activities small businesses spend time and money on.

Graph - Small Business SEO Resources Graph - Do small businesses have an SEO strategy?

Having a mobile-friendly website can help small businesses rank in search results, especially because of Google's mobile-first index.

Clutch's data shows that as more small businesses invest in SEO, choosing which SEO efforts to prioritize will remain a challenge.

Small Businesses Invest in Content Marketing for SEO

Nearly half of small businesses (48%) invest in content marketing for SEO. Content marketing helps small businesses attract potential customers and guide them through their purchasing journey.

The quality and clarity of online content is important as optimizing websites for voice search becomes a priority for small businesses.

Clutch found that only 21% of small businesses invest in voice search optimization for SEO. 

Other SEO activities small business pursue include keyword research (51%) and link building (28%).

Small Businesses Depend on In-House Staff for SEO

Small businesses rely on in-house employees (54%) for SEO nearly twice as much as they hire an SEO agency (28%).

In-house staff are less expensive than an SEO agency and offer small businesses more control over their SEO strategies.

"In-house offers more control over planning, content creation, and budgeting," said Jaykishan Panchal, who manages SEO strategy for digital marketing agency E2M. "The in-house SEO team probably has the best understanding of the brand voice, company culture, and availability of resources."

Internal employees may lack the expertise of SEO agencies, however.

Small Businesses Use Website Traffic & Leads to Measure SEO Success

The top two SEO metrics small businesses track are website traffic (25%) and leads and conversions (19%). Small businesses value these metrics over backlinks (14%) and keyword rankings (13%).

Tracking website traffic and leads and conversions demonstrates that small businesses tend to invest in SEO to generate revenue. These metrics, though, don't fully capture SEO success.

More Small Businesses Turning to PPC Advertising to Achieve Search Visibility

Sixty percent (60%) of small businesses with an SEO strategy also invest in PPC advertising. An additional 17% of small businesses plan to invest in PPC in 2019.

PPC advertising guarantees placement at the top of search engine results pages, which helps earn clicks and impressions. These immediate returns appeal to small businesses with limited budgets.

Clutch's 2019 Small Business SEO Survey included 529 small business owners and managers in the U.S.

Read the full report here: https://clutch.co/seo-firms/resources/small-business-seo-2019.

For questions about the survey, a comment on the findings, or an introduction to the industry experts included in the report, contact Grayson Kemper at 210997@email4pr.com.

About Clutch

A B2B research, ratings, and reviews firm in the heart of Washington, DC, Clutch connects small and medium businesses with the best-fit agencies, software, or consultants they need to tackle business challenges with confidence. Clutch's methodology compares business service providers and software in a specific market based on verified client reviews, services offered, work quality, and market presence.

Media Contact:Grayson Kemper 210997@email4pr.com (202) 470-0491

SOURCE Clutch

02

SEO Guide 2019: Your Strategy for This Year

If you did the smart thing and designed an efficient structure as seen on the picture, the next step is to turn it into an even more powerful SEO asset. How?

Use anchor texts with keywords. It helps the linked pages to rank for the keywords you use.

Don’t have orphaned pages. An orphan page is any webpage on your site that no other page on your site links to it. Users and search engines alike will have trouble finding it, and it won’t rank well.

Don’t have dead-end pages. A dead-end page doesn’t link to any other pages, making it unable to pass authority, or help any other page rank higher.

Don’t nofollow your internal links. Users can click on any links they can see, but the same is not true for search engines. They can’t “click” on the links marked as nofollow. It’s all right to do this with the outbound links on your site, but not with the internal ones: the linked pages will not be crawled and ranked.

Navigation Bar

Your navigation bar has links that point to every major page on your site. It’s normally placed at the top of the screen. It’s also common to put it on the left side, but this option is less mobile-friendly.

Footer Bar

It’s just like the navigation bar, but at the bottom of a page. Note that this doesn’t go well with infinite scrolling: if more content keeps appearing as you scroll, it pushes down the bar away out of view.

This can be a problem if you actually want your users to click on the links in the footer.

Search Box

An absolute must for all websites with too much content to sift through. Search engines can’t use a search box themselves, but they can definitely acknowledge it as a bonus to user experience.

3. Local SEO

How is SEO for a local business different than for any other site?

Simple: location is a major factor.

Online user traffic isn’t the end goal in local SEO; you want users to show up in person and be your customers in real life.

This is true even when you have the option of delivering your goods to their homes.

What do you need for successful local SEO?

Location-Based Keywords

They are like your ordinary keywords, but with the name of your location included (such as “bowling club in London“).

Keywords with “near me” or “nearest” in them can also work but note that Google will mostly use the phrase “near me” to show users something close to their known location.

Listings in Online Directories

Signing up on Google My Business is an absolute must, but don’t stop there: the Internet has a myriad of directories where your business would fit right in.

Always make sure your business is relevant to the directory and keep your information consistent across them all.

If you change something, you should change it everywhere you are registered!

Backlinks from Local Sites

Backlinks from relevant and authoritative sites are always good, but votes from local sites carry even more weight (not to mention visits from local users).

Research the websites in your location whose backlinks could really benefit you – and then earn those backlinks.

Positive Customer Reviews

It’s as straightforward as it gets: if many customers like you, that means you must be good! Enable customer reviews on your site and always ask customers to leave a review.

Structured Data

If you mark up your site with structured data, Google will be able to display additional bits of information about your business in search results.

Phone number, open hours, customer reviews – all this information helps users decide if you are good enough for them, so it’s definitely good for you as well.

Tracking Your Local Rankings

You need to know the level of your site’s performance in case there’s something that needs improvement – and most of the time, there is.

Check your business site’s rankings with WebCEO’s Rank Tracking tool and remember to choose your location in the settings like in the screenshot.

4. Voice Search Optimization

Have you heard that voice search is expected to be the source of 50 percent of all online searches in 2020?

Only one year to go until we know if that comes true! It’s crazy how fast time flies. Even crazier what the future holds in store for us.

In the meantime, the best we can do is to prepare for that massive change. When it happens, the web will never be the same – and by extension, neither will SEO.

Here’s how you optimize your site for voice search.

Voice Search Keywords

Use long-tail question keywords that start with words like who, what, why, where, when, and how.

For local SEO, you will definitely want your site associated with your location’s name, county, state, and nearest cities (“near Wichita Falls”).

Answer the Questions Right Away

Voice search results usually aren’t very long (around 30 words), but are still concise enough to provide satisfying answers.

Aim for Featured Snippets

Voice search takes the result from the very top, which sometimes is Position 0.

Ranking first is no longer enough!

Raise Your Domain Authority

This is another way to become the top search result. Backlinks from reputable sources are the best means to get there.

Keep yourself safe from poor quality backlinks by using WebCEO’s Backlink Quality Check tool.

5. Mobile Optimization

Mobile traffic rises, and the mobile-first index to meet it.

How did that happen?

While desktop computers remain important, Google prioritizes the web on mobile devices now. All it took was for one to be more portable than the other.

The cell phone industry realized its potential, and now you can access the Internet from almost anywhere.

A mobile device isn’t exactly the same as a PC – it will provide a different user experience. And Google takes user experience seriously.

What does this mean for you?

The key to making your site rank in the mobile-first index is this: make the user experience excellent for mobile users.

That’s in addition to the above-mentioned SEO basics, of course.

And here’s how you do it.

Implement a Responsive Design

Doing so will give your site the ability to automatically adjust its content to a mobile screen, no matter how big or small.

Reduce Your Images’ File Sizes

The fewer kilobytes in them, the faster they’ll load. Do whatever it takes.

Set their height and width yourself.

Save them in the format that will yield the lowest file size.

Compress them.

Keep Your Page Load Time to a Minimum

Optimizing your images is not the only way to affect your loading speed. You can also:

Cache your site’s elements.

Get rid of unnecessary redirects.

Be frugal with how many elements per page you use.

Minimize the HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other code on your pages.

Choose a fast server or a content delivery network for your site’s hosting.

Naturally, there are also things that will hamper user experience. Here are some don’ts in mobile optimization:

Don’t use popups that obstruct the entire screen or a big chunk of it.

Don’t put elements on the pages too closely (such as lines and paragraphs of texts, images, buttons). Leave some room between them.

Be sure to test your site with WebCEO’s Mobile Optimization tool to see how well you’ve done – and what else you can still do.

Want to See Steps 6-10?

For the complete list of the most effective SEO methods, tips and strategies, please download the SEO Guide 2019: Your Strategy for This Year below.

This guide was created exclusively for WebCEO users. Sign up now and make 2019 the year you blow your competition out of the water!

03

Is Link Building Still the Most Effective SEO Strategy in 2019?

From the beginning, backlinks have always been at the crux of SEO.

And I really don’t think 2019 is going to be an exception.

The sheer number and quality of backlinks that a website has managed to acquire over time always has been and can still have a detrimental impact on it’s search engine rankings.

The guys at Google themselves came out to claim backlinks as one of the most important ranking factor in their search algorithms, along with content and rankbrain. Even though they made the claim in 2016, backlinks still hold the same kind of authority in Google’s algorithms to this day and if you are ready to focus all your efforts on them, they can really help you in putting your SEO efforts in top gear.

Also, there are extensive studies that prove backlinks are indeed the most important ranking signal Google uses to rank various websites for diverse search terms.

So, the bottom line is, if you need to climb higher in SERPs, you need more quality backlinks. Period.

Google gives more authority to those websites which have a ton of links pointing to them from various unique domains. Why? Because that’s the algorithm’s way to devise the most useful content out there that’s full of value and Google loves content that provides a lot of value to readers.

Take it this way. See your search engine rankings as Google’s gift to you for providing stellar content to their searchers. You, in-turn, get a lot of traffic and exposure from Google that can make all your marketing efforts worthwhile. It’s a win-win situation.

But, getting on the top of Google is no easy feat and consistent outreach efforts are required on your part to make it happen.

So, here are 3 methods to focus on 2019 that will get you a lot of backlinks and will let you climb the SERP ladder with ease.

Guest Blogging

I know you must have heard this advice a thousand times already but when it comes to link building, guest blogging really is a foolproof way to earn quality backlinks and fresh audiences for your website.

Do it consistently and with various publishers and you’ll soon be on your way to become an authority in your niche in the eyes of Google and your readers.

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But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Your guests posts on websites with low domain authority (authority of a website in the eyes of Google) or guest posts with low quality content can actually do you more harm than good. So, it’s important to check the domain authority and the content quality requirements of a publisher’s website before doing all the work and submitting a guest post to them that is useful to their readers base.

So, take a step back, identify the best opportunities out there and be selective with the publishers you partner with to publish your content and earn links from.

You can use a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush to easily check the domain authority of any website out there.

Competitor Research

Since we’re already talking about these tools, they can be of a lot of use to you other than checking the domain authority of a website. You can also act upon quick backlink building opportunities by looking at the backlink profile of your competitors with the help of these tools.

Also, you can easily have an in-depth view of where your competitors are posting their content, on which directories they have maintained a presence on and who exactly is linking to their content. Which can open a lot of doors as you can easily approach a publisher that your competitor has guest posted on and ask them if they would love to publish some more content on the same topic written by you.

By looking at the complete backlink profile of your competitors, you can stay a step ahead of them by targeting only high authority publishers and directories from their profile and mixing it with your own list of authoritative websites that will help you build an even stronger backlink profile than your competitors.

Tracking online brand mentions

In this age where literally everyone and their grandma is on Social Media, keeping a track of the various mentions your brand is receiving over the web is often overlooked.

By keeping a track of all your brand mentions online, you will be able to turn all your brand mentions into live links for your website. When you keep a track of them, you’ll just have to ask the webmaster to add your website link in your brand mention as well to turn it into a strong backlink.

There is a lot of less hassle in earning backlinks like this as the people who have already taken the effort of mentioning your brand name online will have no problem in placing a link on your brand name as well, given the fact that he is mentioning your brand in a good light.

You can use a tool like Google Alerts or Brand Mentions to track all your brand or product mentions all over the web and turn your simple brand mentions into authority increasing backlinks.

Have backlinks lost their charm when it comes to SEO? No way! They are as important to SEO as they were decades back. If you are looking to ace organic search, backlinks can be your knight in shining armour, even in 2019. It’s no secret that you absolutely need backlinks for your website to rank well in SERP’s but with every marketer out there trying their hands at it, securing guest posts and building links can be a bit of a task. Take the smart road and research the backlink profiles of all your competitors to quickly figure out some authoritative backlink building opportunities and tap on them with quality guest posts. And don’t forget to ask for a backlink wherever your brand is mentioned online to give your backlink profile a serious boost.