Reliable Methods Tested by 411Locals

Google Keyword Planner is an essential tool and it is important to know how to use it. However, you have other options to find new phrases and synonyms for your SEO campaign apart from its basic function. Here are some of the suggestions offered by 411Locals:

Competition Research

Just open a competitor’s site and explore what kind of keywords he has used in his copy (text). Look in the headings, the beginning of the paragraphs, as well as in image titles. You can also check the source of the web page (Ctrl+U). There you can look for “keyword” tag (use Ctrl+F) and check what they have entered. Bear in mind – not everyone is putting their keywords there. Then you can copy/paste those words in Google Keyword Planner (GKP). Do you remember that “Your landing page” section just under the field where you enter the words? Paste the competitor’s URL there. Use the filters and you can get some really neat suggestions.

Google Suggest

Simply type your keyword in Google Search. At the bottom, you will find a few suggestions from the engine. When you find something relevant, go one step forward. There you will find even more synonyms. Then you can check each one of them in GKP to see if the words have value. (more…)

So, your WP website has been launched, you are way ahead of the competition, and you’re starting to make some profit. Staying on top is worth every cent and the wisest move would be to make a well thought out investment. Did you know that buying SEO tools is a sound investment that will yield long-term results? 411 Locals recommends the following platforms you should pay to utilize in 2016:

Tools for Website Monitoring:

Screaming Frog Spider Tool: It is a website crawler with growing popularity among SEOs and digital marketers. It’s a freemium tool, which means charges for full proprietary features and functionality are applied. You will take advantage of fast scanning of your domain’s URLs with checks of redirect loops and issues, 404s and server errors, details about robots.txt and sitemaps. For on-site content strategy, Screaming Frog easily identifies the optimal length of meta descriptions, headings, and more. (more…)

Welcome back to the summary of the most important changes in SEO by the end of September. This part will introduce you to the social media aspects of the latest updates. 411Locals will also give you some insights concerning the current SEO and online marketing trends.

New Rules: Getting a Verified Profile on Facebook

Facebook has implemented new rules for branded content. Evidently, the verification of your FB business page is becoming more important than ever. Verified celebrities, public figures, and easily recognizable brands have blue badges. On the other hand, companies and businesses, especially local ones, receive gray badges. Verifying your FB business page is a smart move since it boosts your rankings and your trust metrics,  as well as widens your audience. Basically, businesses have two options for verification: over the phone or via documentation. The latter takes time since you need to upload business documentation, and confirming your business’ legitimacy is also time-consuming. (more…)

The most popular search engine removed more than 1.75 billion sites from its index and the number is growing. It is a huge purge, happening after a 53% increase in the copyright requests. Another major change is the AdWords Quality score improvement, which is deadly to keywords with insufficient data, new keywords, or keywords with sparse recent history – all of them now getting a zero number. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. 411Locals will summarize all important factors since the latest changes rolled out. You need to know the following in order to survive in the SEO environment for the end of the month:

Copyright Requests Might Get Your Website Hit

With virtually absent pending requests at the moment, it appears that the copyright section of Google is quick at responding requests. The search engine is not the active part in the lookout for copyright infringements – the owners send the copyright takedown requests. The guilty URL will be taken down from the search results after a notification, so beware of such messages when checking Search Console. (more…)

Are you trying to successfully incorporate social content into your blog? Even experienced content marketers like 411 Locals face challenges and struggles when creating content that is meant to engage their audiences. The key factors behind successful sharing of social media content are those that make the art of developing social content. But how to create content that is both educational and touching the emotional side of your readers? Here are some innovative ideas about how to expand your content marketing strategy and make it work for your social media goals.

Customer Spotlights Work Better Than Long And Boring Case Studies

A good part of the content marketing gurus love to point out complicated case studies. In fact, this method of being persuasive has been used so often that it became more of a nuisance than an actual attention-grabbing tool. It is kind of hard to get involved when you see a wall of text that explains the step-by-step struggles of someone you’re not familiar with as a reader. So that’s why the customer spotlight can enrich the reader’s experience with the use of feedback and emotion. It is a more direct approach to prospects – to make them see what your happy customers have to say. With customer spotlights, you’re telling success stories coming directly from the source. (more…)

As an SEO strategy, link building has nothing to do with the spammy process it was five years ago. Most webmasters and SEOs nowadays consider the whole thing to be some sort of a Pandora’s box. According to the last survey 411Locals, link building gets awfully neglected as a strategy. What’s more baffling is that the number of participants not using link building is almost 40 percent. So, how can you put this old and once-great approach to work for you again?

Adapting to 5 Years Of Changes Will Do

Ignoring such a valuable ranking factor is inexplicable, given the fact that Google calculates authority mainly by using backlink profiles. The solution in 2016 is to focus on link quality instead of link quantity. This is the single most relevant strategy since the first Penguin update. Which leads to the second important principle.

Avoiding Penalties Means Building High-Quality Links

The successful approach to link building means that your link building campaign will take time – time you should be spending productively. And building hundreds of bad links just to disavow them if an update penalizes your site is indeed a waste of your precious time. (more…)