SEO Resources
SEO Resources that help websites to be analyzed, optimized, and organically ranked.
The competitive nature of today’s online market makes placement on a search engine a top priority for any business, especially those without a traditional brick-and-mortar store. The resources and tools reviewed will highlight top-ranked Search Engine Optimization (SEO) resources for businesses. Other topics covered will include the importance of SEO and practices to avoid.
SEO and Why it’s Important
Before we dive into the importance of SEO, it’s necessary to have a good understanding of what SEO is. Search engines like Google and Bing use robots to “crawl” or scan web pages. This data is then analyzed and stored in a database. When a user searches for a topic using a keyword or phrase, the search engines pull this data from their database. This information is then displayed to the user via search engine results pages (SERPs).
Search engine optimization can be defined as customizing a website based on a set of practices that, in turn, help you appear higher on the SERPs. An example would be using keywords or phrases in your content, links that are easy to read by search engines, or images and even videos that relate to your content.
SEO is an essential tool when it comes to marketing any business. Optimizing the website to appear higher on search engine results pages will drive more organic searches to the website. Unless the company pays for top placement, the page or content will likely not appear at the top of the search results list. That’s where Organic searches come in. Organic searches are non-paid search results. For any online business, organic searches are crucial to succeeding in today’s competitive business world.
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Top SEO Resources Available
Many SEO resources are available to digital marketers, web developers, and entrepreneurs. The most popular search engine by far is Google. Hence, SEO resources follow the practices outlined by Google’s guidelines and policies.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs was founded in 2010 as one of the most significant commercial web crawlers, 2nd to Google. In addition, the Site Explorer tool with Ahrefs is a handy tool and seems a fan favorite for most entrepreneurs. This tool allows clients to check their site’s organic search traffic and provide analytics on their competitors’ paid traffic searches. Ahrefs’ ability to constantly adapt and change with the needs of the industry has also set them apart from their competitors. As if Ahrefs wasn’t popular enough, in 2020, they released their WebMaster Tools as a free tier option to help websites optimize and improve rankings.
SemRush
This tool came into the market in 2008 with only two SEO tools available and has since grown into an SEO powerhouse with 50 different SEO tools. SemRush is one of the most popular SEO resources available to entrepreneurs in 2022 and boasts various services and features. It is ranked among the top SEO resources in the US and the UK. One of the features that sets SemRush apart is its ability to allow users to compare their site to their competitors with accurate analytics easily.
Google Search Console
Of course, we can’t exclude Google Search Console. Offering free SEO resources to entrepreneurs and professionals, there’s no wonder it is one of the most popular resources available. By providing users with accurate analytics based on real-time data, entrepreneurs and professionals can monitor things much more closely. One of the reasons it is a favorite amongst entrepreneurs is because Google will send notifications if the site has any indexing, spam, or other issues so you can quickly address it saving valuable time.
Ubersuggest
Another excellent SEO tool is Ubersuggest, a free keyword finder tool to help marketers identify keywords and phrases to help their SERP rankings better. This tool allows users to search for keywords and short and long-tail terms. A couple of the analytics this program provides are seasonal patterns for keywords or phrases, ideal for holiday promotions, and keyword volumes.
AnswerThePublic, a child company or sister company of Ubersuggest, is another free SEO tool designed to help users find content to write about. It does this by searching keywords and phrases for which people are currently searching to allow for a more targeted approach to their content. For example, suppose a user sees a lot of questions for a specific topic they can help with or a service they specialize in. In that case, they can write a blog using the keywords and phrases provided by AnswerThePublic to help them rank higher on the SERPs.
Vital SEO Resource Features to Consider
Knowing the competition
Finding the right search engine optimization resources can take time and effort. But one thing is sure; clients need to be updated on their competitors’ actions. This can be done with competitive analytics, one of the many features offered by Semrush. This feature allows users to dissect their competitors’ online presence to understand the marketing landscape better.
For example, a marketing agency could use organic research and traffic analytics tools to learn about the estimated total traffic and top traffic sources and identify any keyword gaps in their competitor’s marketing campaigns. With this information, users can specifically target keywords and phrases to gain a leg up on the competition.
SEO Resources Identify Back Linking
Another essential feature to consider is the Backlink Checker. This is one of the features offered free by Ubersuggest and also offered by Ahrefs in their Site Explorer feature. This is an essential feature because one of the most important Google rankings doesn’t come from the web page. It comes from backlinks from other websites which link to your page.
Google uses relevant backlinks to help assign ranking and determine positioning on the SERPs. You can think of this as a vote of confidence, and the more votes a site has, the more likely that site will rank higher for that specific topic. The backlink feature analyzes the users and their competitions page to help identify any unnecessary backlinks and potential backlink opportunities to help boost rankings. Once the user has identified likely backlink websites related to their topic, users can reach out to these individual sites to request they link to theirs and vice versa.
Website Speed
In today’s society, people don’t like to wait. Think about the last time your computer froze or the car in front of you didn’t start moving when the light turned green. How long did you wait before you began honking or restarting that computer? We live in an age where people want immediate gratification. This couldn’t be more true with customers and websites.
Customers wish to fast, easy-to-use sites, not slow and complicated ones. Studies have shown that websites with a load time of over 6 seconds lose 43% of customers, and that’s because 47 percent of customers expect the webpage to load within 2 seconds. Using features like the SEO Analyzer can help identify load speeds and provide tips and insight on improving your website to provide a better experience which will ultimately help increase your rankings.
Practices to Avoid with SEO
Finding the right SEO Resources to help rank higher is essential, and sometimes you may even have to hire a third party to help. Regardless, it’s necessary to understand the technical requirements and follow the guidelines of Google. This helps avoid being ranked lower or omitted from search results due to bad practices.
Spamming
Link spamming is an easy way to be placed on Google’s naughty list. This approach purposely places out-of-context links in blog posts or purchases backlinks to other websites. There are SEO companies that will buy backlinks. Still, it’s essential to beware of these practices as they can hurt the ranking. Significantly if the websites linked have been previously penalized or if the site were to receive a large number of links in a short period. In this case, quality relative links are better than quantity.
Hiding Links
Another practice to avoid is hiding text or links within the site to add more keywords or phrases to rank higher. This can be done by hiding texts or links of the viewable page, using CSS, or even hiding it behind images.
Sneaky Redirects
Misleading functionality and sneaky redirects are both practices to avoid. Deceptive functionality is advertising one thing and doing another, while a sneaky redirect sends the user to a spam site they didn’t expect. For example, advertising a link to an app to perform a specific function like a mobile scanner instead redirects to a spam site to promote irrelevant items for sale.
The critical thing to remember when optimizing for search engines is to make content that is useful, helpful, and designed for people, not computers. Keep in mind Google’s bots are analyzing human behavior on the web to determine what’s popular and purposeful.
Takeaway on SEO Resources
SEO resources are a must for digital marketers, developers, and website masters to understand better and target a suitable customer base. Whether it’s an SEO expert using an online resource or a small business owner, the benefits and productivity are bound to increase.