SEO has become a lot more complex over time. By now, it consists of many different aspects and it can be difficult to cover them all by manually doing the work yourself. Thankfully, there are also loads of software solutions that can assist you. They can help you optimize your site more quickly and automate parts of your SEO efforts.

To show you how, in the following, we have compiled a list of tools for all areas of search engine optimization. From the best general SEO tools over analytics, keyword research, content creation and on-page optimization, to link building, local SEO, and beyond.

It’s going to be a long one, so let’s dive right in.

1. Best All-in-One SEO Tools

We are starting off with all-round SEO solutions. These are instruments that offer a wide range of functionality covering different areas of search engine optimization.

SEMrush

SEMrush is one of the most popular SEO tools out there, even among professionals, and for good reason. It offers a lot of functionality to help your site rank better, such as:

• Keyword research
• Backlink analytics
• Rank tracking
• Competitor research
• Site audit and on-page SEO check

For WordPress users there is also the SEO Writing Assistant, which gives you input on the readability, tone, optimization, originality, and more of your online content.

SEMrush offers a free plan with limited functionality. After that, prices for their paid offers begin at $108.33/month for annual plans.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is very similar to SEMrush and offers mostly the same functionality such as keyword suggestions and analysis, site audits, etc.

However, where it stands out is backlink analysis. Ahrefs allows you to see which sites are linking to your competitors and the content that they rank for and you don’t. That way, it makes the tool easier to emulate and beat your competitors’ linking strategy. The tool also warns you of duplicate content and keyword cannibalization.

You can get free access to a limited version of their webmaster tools. The cheapest paid plan is $99/month and you get two free months if you pay for a year ahead.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest allows you to analyze websites (both your own and your competitors’), track where you rank for keywords, do keyword research, and analyze backlinks. It also gives you keyword suggestions. In addition, Ubersuggest has an AI writing tool that can help you create content for the keywords you found.

There is a free limited version and a 7-day free trial for the paid plans, which start at $29/month. However, it also has a lifetime deal where you can buy the forever version starting at $290. In addition, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. Overall much more affordable than the other big names.

2. Site Analysis and Analytics

An important part of SEO is to make sure your site’s technical optimization is on point and that you track what your visitors are doing on your site. Here are some of the best SEO tools to do that.

Google Search Console

This is a free webmaster suite that Google provides. It helps you monitor your website, check if the search engine is indexing your pages correctly, lets you spot issues, learn about Core Web Vitals, and make improvements if something is wrong.

In addition, it shows the keywords that others find you in Google for, where you rank, your click-through rate, and more. This is invaluable information to help your site rank and perform better. To get the most out of it, don’t miss our detailed Google Search Console tutorial.

Alternative: Bing Webmaster Tools

Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows you to monitor what visitors are doing on your website. It shows you the pages they visit, how long they stay, how they found you, the countries they are from, and much more.

Basically, it allows you to understand which of your online content is doing it’s job well and which isn’t. You can use this information to make better decisions about your content strategy.

We have a Google Analytics 4 tutorial for you and also Google Analytics alternatives if you want to check some other SEO tools.

3. Best SEO Tools for Keyword Research

One of the most crucial parts of search engine optimization is keyword research. It helps you find topics that your audience is interested in and that you have a chance to rank for. There are also some excellent solutions to assist you in doing so.

Google Keyword Planner

Google has its own tool for this purpose. Though originally meant for picking keywords for paid ads, you can use the data it provides for organic keywords as well. This is especially good for local businesses because you can limit search to very specific localities.

While Google Keyword Planner provides relatively basic data, you can cross reference it with other tools to get a more comprehensive idea. It’s also free, you only need to create an account and a property but you don’t have to pay anything.

Google Trends

Another tool Google provides for keyword research is Google Trends. However, instead of focusing on a snapshot of how popular topics and keywords are at the moment, it shows you how they develop over time broken down by geography.

Simply enter a topic or keyword you are interested in and Google Trends will tell you how the rest of the world feels about it. It’s also possible to compare different topics and keywords to each other to see what trend to jump on and which to ignore. In addition, it gives you related keywords and phrases to your topic that are also en vogue.

Finally, it’s free as well and we have a detailed article how to use Google Trends for SEO.

KeywordTool.io

This is a great free keyword research tool. It mines the autosuggest function from sites like Google, Bing, YouTube, and Amazon to collect keywords related to your search. Simply enter a seed keyword, choose your language and search engine, then hit start.

You will receive a list of long-tail keywords, phrases, and questions that you can use to better plan your content, come up with additional article topics, or simply find keyword ideas. On paid plans you also get information about search volume, CPC, and other data. Highly recommended!

Alternative: Answer the Public, Mangools KWFinder

Keywords Everywhere

The last of our best SEO tools for keyword research is Keywords Everywhere. It is an add-on you can install in Chrome or Firefox. When you do, it provides you with keyword data on the fly.

For example, Keywords Everywhere shows key phrases related to what you type into Google, historical search data (from Google Trends), and keywords any website or web page ranks for as well as estimated traffic.

It’s also super affordable. The paid edition starts at just $1/month.

4. Solutions for Content Creation

Content is one of main signals that Google judges websites by. In order to use it to your advantage, you need to make sure that yours is of high quality and well-optimized. Here is some helpful software to assist you in that.

Surfer

AI is all the rage now (so much so that people are wondering if AI will replace us all) and it’s finding more and more application in all walks of life.

Surfer uses artificial intelligence for creating SEO-friendly content. It helps with keyword research, analyzes your existing content, and then helps you create relevant articles for your topics. The tool breaks down the content creation workflow into manageable pieces and helps you write articles quicker and easier.

It also has a WordPress integration and plans start at $69/month.

GrowthBar

This is a similar tool as the previous one. It, too, uses AI for scanning your existing content for keyword ideas and providing you with article outlines, including headings, internal links, and more. It can also optimize your articles already on your site and comes with other AI tools such as for writing product descriptions.

You can have all of the above starting at $29/month. There is a free trial.

Clearscope

While Clearscope is also AI-powered and helps you with content creation, it doesn’t do the writing for you. Instead, it creates reports for your target keyword by analyzing the existing SERPs. The tool then lists must-have and related keywords in its editor so that you know what topics and key phrases to include to beat the competition.

It also analyzes readability, can create content briefs, and do keyword research. Plus, Clearscope integrates into your workflow with a WordPress plugin.

However, it has its price. The lowest tier plan is $170/month.

Grammarly

If you are one of those people who doesn’t want to outsource all of content creation to AI, there is Grammarly. Yes, it too uses artificial intelligence. Yes, it also offers generative AI for writing texts. However, Grammarly’s main function is to help you polish your content and check it for errors.

The tool can check spelling and grammar, make suggestions for style, clarity, and tone, and even do complete sentence rewrites. It also integrates with a lot of common tools such as WordPress and Google Docs. Plus, there is a free version for basic error checking and premium plans can be as cheap as $12/month.

5. Best WordPress SEO Plugins for On-Page Optimization

Part of content creation is optimizing what you have written for search engine performance. That means, making sure you have the right keyword density, keywords are in the right places, and everything else that is part of on-page optimization. Luckily, the WordPress sphere offers a number of excellent tools for that purpose.

Yoast SEO

You say WordPress SEO, you think Yoast. It is the gold standard of WordPress SEO plugins.

If you just install and activate Yoast SEO, it already improves your website. In addition, it allows you to configure everything about how your site appears in search results. You can also use it to set SEO titles and descriptions for your content as well as metadata for social media.

The highlight is the on-page optimization guide. Just enter your main keyword and the plugin tells you how well optimized each piece of content is. It also comes with a readability analysis, XML sitemaps, and a lot more.

The free version is enough for most sites, however, there is also a paid version with additional features.

Rank Math

Rank Math is a plugin similar to Yoast SEO and has a lot of overlap in functionality. That includes the ability to set SEO titles and meta descriptions, create an XML sitemap, etc.

However, Rank Math also comes with an AI assistant for creating optimized content. Plus, you get full control over what user roles on your site can do what in terms of SEO and it integrates with Google Search Console so that you can see your keyword rankings in the WordPress back end. Finally you get a 404 monitor, redirection, and a lot more.

SEOPress

Another great WordPress SEO plugin. Of course, it does similar things as Yoast and Rank Math. Yet, its standout features is the clean and easy-to-use interface, which is completely free of ads. It also has heatmaps and session recordings and can automatically set image ALT tags and other data for image optimization.

The premium version is also cheaper than many of the other SEO plugins out there, so if you want to splurge for extra functionality, it’s the most affordable option.

6. Great Options for Image Optimization

Speaking of optimizing images for SEO, that’s also an important area where tools can help your site perform at its best. The most important consideration here is performance since images can slow down page loading time due to their size. It’s something that Google deeply cares about for user experience reasons and take into account when ranking websites.

Smush

This is probably the most popular WordPress image optimization plugin. Smush can do the following things:

• Compress images so they take up less space without altering their quality, both automatically during image upload and in bulk for existing visuals
• Set images to lazy load so only those visible in the browser window actually load
• Resize images and convert them to the WebP format.

All of this aims at making images, and your site, load as quickly as possible and keep users and search engines happy.

Alternative: EWWW Image Optimizer

ShortPixel Image Optimizer

Shortpixel is an an alternative to the above with similar functionality. However, it can also handle PDFs, convert images into WebP and AVIF format, has WP-CLI support, AI-powered smart cropping, and a whole lot of other features. Worth checking out.

TinyPNG

This is an external tool for optimizing images before uploading them to your site. Simply drag and drop files into the upload field and download your optimized images in bulk.

TinyPNG is free to use up to 20 images of 5MB or less (however, you can also use it several times in a row). If you end up taking advantage of it a lot, there is paid plan for $39/year. Plus, they even have a WordPress plugin if you want to integrate it directly on your website.

7. Schema Structured Data

Structured data allows you to add extra information to your web content such as images, price, rating. This can result in rich snippets being displayed in search results that include this information, which can lead to better click-through rates.

Many of the all-in-one WordPress SEO plugins above offer this functionality out of the box. However, you can also implement it manually using one of the plugins below. For more information, read our article on Schema.org structured data.

Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP

This is one of the most popular WordPress plugins for implementing structured data. It supports more than 35 schema types from Blog Post over News Article to Recipe, Product, and more. The tool is also compatible with Google AMP plugins as well as easy to use.

Structured Content (JSON-LD)

This is an alternative for the above. While it doesn’t support as many schema types currently (FAQPage, JobPosting, LocalBusiness, Person, Event, and Course), Structured Content is Gutenberg optimized and allows you to configure Schema markup right in the block editor.

8. Link Building and Link Analysis Tools

If the Internet had an official currency, it would be links. They are a coveted resource since they represent a very strong ranking signal for search engines. Therefore, most successful SEO campaigns also involve a link building strategy. You can make this easier on yourself by using tools for this purpose.

Moz Link Explorer

First up is this semi-free tool to analyze any site’s link profile – yours or your competitors’. It allows you to see the number of links to a site, find broken links, check the link spam score, find new opportunities to earn links, see won and lost links, and a lot more. Plus, Moz can do keyword research.

There is a free plan with limited queries per month. Paid accounts with additional features start at $79/month for yearly and $99/month for monthly plans.

Majestic

Majestic is a link analysis tool. It shows you the number of inbound links and domains, gained and lost backlinks, and other data similar to Moz.

Unfortunately, the free plan is even more limited than its competitor. On the other hand, premium plans are more affordable, starting at $49.99 per month.

Internal Link Juicer

Links are not just important in terms of incoming links, also when it comes to links between pages on your website. Internal linking not only helps search engines and visitors navigate your site and find relevant content (notice all the internal links in this post), it also clarifies the relative importance of different pages on your site and their topics. For that reason, it should definitely be a habit of yours.

Internal Link Juicer helps you with that by automatically inserting internal links and using anchor text according to keywords. If you struggle with adding internal links to your content, give this plugin a try.

9. Solutions for Local SEO

Local search optimization is especially important for businesses with brick-and-mortar locations who want to show up for local searches in Google.

BrightLocal

BrightLocal is a complete SEO suite for local visibility. It reports search ranking in search results and Google Maps and helps you rank for the right local keywords.

In addition, it provides audits for your website and Google My Business listing and tools for taking care of your local business profiles. For example, it can help you generate reviews and answer them faster.

There is a 14-day free trial, after that you need to pay $35/month for the entire suite.

10. Best SEO Tools for Competitor Research

Ranking number one in search results could be so easy, if it weren’t for all the other websites trying to do the same. Sometimes SEO doesn’t just come down to doing your best but also to beating the competition. In those cases, it’s good to know what you are up against.

Besides the general SEO tools at the beginning of the page, here are some specialized solutions to spy on your contenders.

SpyFu

SpyFu offers a lot of the same functionality as your SEMrushs and Ahrefs. That includes things like rank tracking, keyword research, etc.

However, what it does best is help you with competitor analysis. Spyfu helps you figure out what your competition is doing better than you, understand, emulate, and beat their backlink strategies, learn their PPC keywords, do backlink outreach, see historical SEO data, and much more. This is invaluable knowledge to leave competitors in the dust.

SpyFu plans start at $16/month and there is a 7-day free trial and 30-day money-back guarantee.

SEOQuake

SEOQuake is a browser extension that provides an entire SEO toolbox. It’s free to use and available for Firefox and Chrome. Simply install and activate, then go to any web page that you are interested in, and it will provide your with SEO data about any website.

What kind of data? Anything from links and backlinks over estimated traffic and social shares to indexed pages and a lot more. The extension also displays this kind of information in Google search results. Great for quick overview of your own site or that of competitors.

Similarweb Browser Extension

Another browser extension that provides a lot of information about any website. Rank, visits, traffic sources, visitor locations – you name it. Another great option to spy on your competitors.

11. Performance Plugins and Tools

As mentioned, website speed is one of the factors that search engines like Google look at to determine website rank. For that reason, using tools that help you improve website performance is also best for SEO.

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is a free software made by Google to speed test your website. It shows different Core Web Vitals markers for the mobile and desktop version of your website. In addition, it gives detailed input on how to best fix any issues it finds and also checks for accessibility and SEO problems in the same way.

Alternatives: GTmetrix

WP Rocket

There are many free performance plugins for WordPress out there (see below), however, WP Rocket is often considered the best one, even though it is a paid extension. Simply install, activate, and you have a faster website right away. The plugin offers multiple caching layers, Gzip compression, deferring JavaScript, removing unused CSS, lazy loading and many more features.

A single-site license is $59/year. If that is too steep for you, can also achieve great results with the alternatives below.

Alternatives: W3 Total Cache, Autoptimize, LiteSpeed Cache, Jetpack Boost

12. SEO Utilities

Finally, here are some of the best random SEO tools that didn’t quite fit any of the categories above.

Redirection

Redirecting your pages is an important tool to help your website run properly. It allows you to eliminate 404 errors for pages that no longer exist by sending people trying to visit them to other relevant parts of your site.

This plugin not only monitors whenever someone tries to access a non-existent page on your site, it also provides you with a simple interface to create relevant redirect rules.

Broken Link Checker

In order to fix your broken links, you first need to find them. Doing so manually can be very tedious, especially if you have a very big website. That’s where this plugin comes in.

Broken Link Checker automatically scans your site for links that are going nowhere and reports them to you so you can solve the issues.

Alternatives: Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free up to 500 scanned URLs)

Really Simple SSL

Running your site on HTTPS is something that visitors increasingly expect for security reasons and it’s also something that search engines take into account when ranking your pages. If your hosting provider does not offer it out of the box or you are having trouble implementing it, this plugin can help you switch your WordPress site to SSL encryption.

XML Sitemap Generator for Google

If you don’t use any of the SEO plugins mentioned above, which automatically create XML sitemaps for your website, you can also use a dedicated solution just for that. Doing so allows you to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and other webmaster tools in order to give search engines a better idea about what pages exist on your site so they can index them.

What Are Your Best SEO Tools?

With organic search continuing to be one of the main sources of website traffic, search engine optimization remains a central tool for any website that wants to be successful. Luckily, by now there are many tools to help you ace this part of running a website.

Above, we have discussed some of the best tools for different areas of SEO. As you could probably see, there are free tools, free limited plans, and free trials for most parts. Consequently, you don’t necessarily have to spend money to bring in traffic. We hope you find some good solutions for yourself!

What do you consider the best SEO tools for WordPress websites and beyond? Tell us about your favorites in the comments!

The post 40+ Best SEO Tools of 2023 (For WordPress and Beyond) appeared first on Torque.

Besides content, they are the most important ranking factor that Google considers. The search engine uses links to gauge the relevancy of you pages for different topics and also to discover new pages to index.

Usually, Google is not super forthcoming about their algorithm and how exactly they judge websites, however, they recently published a guide for link building best practices. The earlier version only contained information about how to make sure your links are crawlable. However, the new edition also talks about making sure your links are understandable and relevant.

To make it easier for you to know what that means for your website, we have gone through the guide and summarized the most important points for you below. That way, you can get all the crucial information with examples and some extra explanations without having to do the work yourself.

1. Ensure Crawlability By Using the Right Format

This is what the original document was mainly about. For this topic, the guide says to only provide links in the form of HTML anchor tags with an href attribute. In case you don’t know that looks like, here’s an example:

<a href="https://yoursite.com">anchor text</a>

In HTML an <a> element creates a link and is called anchor tag. The href attribute defines where the link points to and the part between <a> and </a> (the opening and closing anchor tag) is called anchor text. This will become relevant soon.

For now, the important part to understand is that this is the format the Google prefers. It does not crawl links in most other styles, e.g. links created with JavaScript.

2. Anchor Text: Make It Clear and Relevant

If you are still not sure about what exactly anchor text is (because you don’t know HTML), think of it as the part of text in your content that gets highlighted when you add a link to it.

This, too, has relevance for helping Google understand what your content and the pages you link to are about.

One of the best practices Google talks about in their link guide is to use rich anchor text. That means, people and search engine should be able to guess what you are linking to from looking at the link itself.

For example, here is a bad link:

<a href="https://yoursite.com></a>

This link does not provide any information about what you might find at yoursite.com. On the other hand, here is a link with good anchor text:

<a href="https://yoursite.com/seo-services>Our SEO services</a>

Immediately, you have an idea where a click on this link would lead you, don’t you? This is both good for your visitors’ user experience and so the Google crawler can figure out the topic of the link target.

If, for some reason, you can’t add anchor text, at least provide a title attribute:

<a href="https://yoursite.com/seo-services" title="seo services page"></a> 

According to Google’s document, the search engine is also able to understand that.

For images that link elsewhere, and also generally for image SEO, be sure to include descriptive ALT tags with information what the visual contains, like so:

<a href="/seo-services.html"><img src="service-page-call-to-action-banner.jpg" alt="a banner image leading to the seo services page"/></a> 

How to Write Good Anchor Text

Ok, so your links should contain anchor text. So far so good. But what exactly does Google consider good anchor text?

Well, besides being descriptive, the search engine asks it to be concise and relevant to both the page the link is on and the one it links to. That means, avoid generic text like “read more” or “click here”. Instead, make sure the link itself provides enough context for anyone coming across it:

• Are you trying to rank better in Google? Get in touch with us about our link building services.

One of the best practices the Google guide gives is to try and read the link out of context and think whether you would still be able to understand what it links to without the surrounding text.

In addition, use natural, precise language. That means, don’t keyword stuff your anchor text or you’ll get penalized. Google has enough technology (see BERT, RankBrain) to understand proper language these days. Simply keep the reader in mind and what kind of information they would need to decide if a link is interesting to them or not.

At the same time, don’t make your links too long, focus on what is most relevant.

• So, if you want to learn more about our SEO services including site audits, on-page optimization, link building, and performance improvements, get in touch!

Remember the part about being concise? The link above is too descriptive, a better solution would be this:

• So, if you want to learn more about our SEO services including site audits, on-page optimization, link building, and performance improvements, get in touch!

So, what’s the right number of words to use in your anchor text? A good goal is to shoot for between two and five words. This allows you to find a good balance between brevity and sufficient detail.

3. Space Out Your Links

Another guideline that Google’s document on linking best practices contains is to provide enough space between individual links on your pages. Avoid having many of them in a row in the same sentence.

• We offer a wide range of SEO services, including on-page SEO, link building, site optimization, keyword research, and more.

Instead, be sure to place at least a few words or sentences in between. Here is a better example:

• We offer a wide range of SEO services. We can help you with on-page SEO to improve your search performance. Link building is also part of our service. In addition, we do keyword research as well as site optimization.

4. Use Both Internal and External Links

Google uses both internal links (to pages on your own site) and external ones (links to other websites) to understand what your page is about and should rank for. Therefore, they want you to use both kinds.

External links are also not something that takes away value from your own website. In fact, they can make it more valuable by establishing trustworthiness, such as when you use them to cite your sources.

Exceptions are links that you have been paid for. You should mark those with the sponsored or nofollow attribute. Also use nofollow when linking to pages you don’t trust or don’t want to endorse. However, avoid using them for all external links on your site, that’s not in accordance to Google link best practices.

As for internal links, all your important pages should have at least one link pointing to them. This is necessary for Google to even be able to discover them naturally. In addition, use internal links to provide additional relevant resources for the page that your visitors are on.

What’s more, be sure to follow the same practices as discussed above and include descriptive and relevant anchor text and don’t overdo it with linking. While there is no right or wrong number of internal links on a page, keep it so they don’t detract from the content and make it hard to read.

If you are not sure how to best do this, check our article on internal linking strategy (notice the anchor text?). That way, both Google and your visitors can understand better what the rest of your website is about.

In a Nutshell: Google Link Best Practices

Google is not always forthcoming when it comes to information how to better optimize your web pages. However, in their new guide on best practices for links, they provide some concrete information how they would like you to use links. Let’s summarize the main points once more:

1. Use HTML anchor tags to ensure crawlability
2. Make your anchor texts rich, meaning informative and relevant
3. Be precise and don’t keyword stuff anchor text
4. Space out links to ensure readability
5. Include both internal and external links, the same rules apply to each of them

Follow the above to provide Google with all the information it needs to better understand what your pages and links are about. Besides that, follow general best practices for linking, especially making sure that what you link to is high-quality content and relevant to what you are talking about.

What’s the most surprising lesson you have learned from Google’s new link guidelines? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Google Link Best Practices Guide: What It Means for Your SEO appeared first on Torque.

Since search engines and websites are both in the business of answering users’ search for information, it makes sense to ask if artificial intelligence will take over their job as well. In the future, if someone wants to know the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci or how to cook a three-course gluten-free menu, won’t they just type it into ChatGPT?

To answer this and many other questions, in this post we will take a deep dive into the topic of AI in search and SEO. We will look at why artificial intelligence will likely have an impact in those areas and predict concrete ways the technology will change how we do online search and optimize our websites.

Why Would AI Impact Search and SEO?

If you haven’t been paying attention too much to this topic, you might be asking yourself how artificial intelligence and search engines are even related. Why would one affect the other?

Considerable Service Overlap

As already alluded to in the introduction, artificial intelligence and search engines intersect in major ways in what they do. Two of their main functions are answering questions and delivering information. Only that generative AI is arguably way better at it.

Think about it. When you enter a query into a search engine such as Google, it shows you the usual blue links and other SERP elements with content that relates to your query.

Depending on your question or the information you are looking for, you might even find it already answered in the results themselves.

However, especially when trying to learn more complex things, you often have to go through one or several web pages before you find all the information you’ve been looking for.

Generative AI like ChatGPT, on the other hand, directly delivers exactly the information you requested and only that.

(It also doesn’t tell you long-winded stories before giving you a recipe in order to please the Google algorithm.)

In addition, if you have follow up questions or need clarifications, you can pose those right away and have them delivered to you as well — all in the form of a conversation. It’s basically a shortcut to finding out what you want.

On Opposite Ends of the Content Equation

In addition, generative AI also dabbles in one of the other main areas that Google is interested in: content. We all know that content is one of the main ways Google ranks web pages, which is why content marketing has been one of the go-to techniques for building traffic for websites for a long time.

Content creation is also one of the main ways that humans are currently using AI. ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) are able to string words together and create written content faster than humans.

Therefore, it’s not unreasonable to expect a flood of new AI-written content to hit the web, creating more work for search engines to index and additional competition for those who wish to rank in them. In some corners of the Internet, the fear is that this could greatly dilute the quality of search results.

Is AI the End of Search Engines and Organic Traffic?

Understandably, many of those who depend on Google and other search engines for their website traffic look at this development with skepticism. It seems that both of of generative AI’s main functions have potentially the same outcome: less traffic from organic search for websites. That’s both because fewer people will use search engines and because they will have a harder time not drowning in the amount of content out there.

And there are good reasons to think that:

• Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, predicted on Twitter that ChatGPT will completely disrupt Google’s main business within two years.
• When Google introduced its own AI assistant, Bard, its stock fell by seven percent (a cool $100 billion). Granted, this was mostly because the AI gave a wrong answer but it did not seem like a good sign at the time.

And it is a valid question how Google will adapt to the change. 80 percent of its revenue comes from its ad business and a large part of that from search results. It’s also not that they don’t know how to build AI, they have been working on it for years.

Their problem seems to be more about how to monetize AI and integrate it into their existing business model. If there is no more need to visit search results, how will they continue to make money? That currently seems to be the biggest impact AI has on the search engine.

These Kinds of Predictions Aren’t New

On the other hand, predictions for the end of Google and other search engines aren’t something we haven’t heard before.

• When Alexa, Siri, and other voice activated assistance came out, some people predicted their ability to directly answer user questions would greatly impact the traffic that Google and other websites receive. As we know now, that didn’t happen.
• When Google started answering questions directly in the search results, resulting in more zero-click searches, there were fears that it would stop sending actual traffic to websites, making them obsolete. That didn’t happen either.

Sure, both of these technologies have had an impact on how much traffic goes to websites from search. That’s especially true for those specialized in answering simple questions. However, the reality is also that Google keeps sending billions of visitors to websites every day.

In addition, in the past, the rise of new technologies simply changed the way we search instead of doing away with it. See voice search from virtual assistants, people adapted to that by doing voice SEO.

Finally, one of the the strongest arguments that the Googlepocalypse isn’t upon us right this moment is that Google’s market share remains flat. And that’s even though ChatGPT has been around for a while now.

The Future of Search and SEO With AI

However, even though the changes we are seeing might not be as drastic as some predict, it is unlikely that the emergence of generative AI will have no impact on search engines at all. So, to get a better understanding of what to expect, here are some predictions for what will change with the rise of AI.

1. Search Engines Will Offer Their Own Generative AI

One way that AI will have an impact on online search is that it will increasingly integrate with it. Microsoft, the owner of the Bing search engine, is not only one of the biggest investors into OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, but is already offering generative AI in their search (the downside is, you have to use the Edge browser to use it).

Plus, as mentioned above, Google recently announced their own thing, called Search Generative Experience.

In addition, the Chinese search engine is Baidu apparently working on a ChatGPT competitor of their own. So, one change we can expect to search from AI is that we will interact with it on search pages.

It’s also important to note, however, that AI in search is not a new thing. Google has been using RankBrain for years in delivering search results. What’s going to be new is that AI is going to be front and center and you will directly interact with it instead of it just running in the background.

2. Easily-Answered Content Will Perform Worse

The writing’s been on the wall for quite a while but if your website only contains content about questions that are easily and quickly answered, it probably won’t survive the age of AI. There are fewer and fewer reasons for people to visit these types of websites. We can already see that with zero-click searches and Google answering questions directly in the SERPs.

This isn’t going to get any better with generative AI. Both standalone AI products and AI in search engines will answer these kinds of questions with ease. Therefore, purely informational content geared at answering singular questions is probably not a good long-term strategy for building website traffic.

Of course, you can include this type of information in your content for context and additional value. However, as standalone content it’s not really a good option and will become less so over time.

3. Quality, Above All, Remains King

Yes, generative AI makes it easier to generate content. Yes, that means we will likely see an influx of new content on the web, meaning more competition for keywords. However, for a while now, ranking hasn’t been about content quantity but quality.

Google is already pretty good at filtering out the noise and delivering quality content to its users. That means, if you want to rank well, you have to continue to create high-quality and relevant content. That also includes the usual suspects like E-A-T, structured data, and other quality markers.

Whether you use ChatGPT to do so or not doesn’t matter. What matters is the end result, if it delivers what users want and are happy to link to.

This isn’t very different from the way it has been for a while. Only the bottom has been raised now that ChatGPT allows people to write “original” articles who would otherwise simply have scraped and plagiarized existing content. To paraphrase an expert panel of copywriters I recently watched, “you are only in trouble if you were already creating content that is worse than what ChatGPT can do.”

4. Generative AI Results Will Continue to Struggle With Credibility

The problem with AI content is the extra work you need to spend on fact checking. Currently, ChatGPT does not have access to the Internet. It is relying on its training data for answers, which only goes until October 2021 at this point. After that, it doesn’t have any knowledge of current affairs.

Why don’t its makers keep it up to date? Because training it is a cost and labor-intensive endeavor and can’t be done all the time. Therefore, ChatGPT is an unreliable source of knowledge for certain information.

Apart from that, generative AI generally has a bit of a problem with delivering false information. For example, OpenAI’s flagship has been found to simply make up citations.

You also need to keep in mind that AI’s answers are highly dependent on the data it has been fed. That’s its entire horizon, it can not do additional research in order to check its statements for truth. Therefore, any biases or factual errors in the training data will be part of the output.

Finally, there is the problem of plagiarism. We don’t know where AI is getting its information from and if it’s inadvertently stealing the content elsewhere. So, until that is fixed, you still need to rely on other sources of information and fact checking before AI assistants can fully replace search engines or create flawless content. Seeing as search engines still struggle with showing irrelevant or false information, it’s probably something that won’t fully go away.

5. Originality Becomes a Big Plus

Something that’s important to keep in mind is that AI tools don’t have their own knowledge base. Instead, they get trained on content that already exists and can base their responses only on that.

As consequence, by definition, these tools can only rewrite what is already out there. They are incapable of original thought, doing their own research, or other creative tasks. Therefore, originality is always something you can use to your advantage.

That’s doubly so because of what we talked about earlier about AI training data. Because of the costs and effort involved, it’s likely going to be real-time data, at least not for a while. Therefore, if you can conduct and publish original research, it will remain exclusive to your site for quite a bit.

Again, this is not anything new. It has been relevant since E-A-T and will likely continue to be with AI in the mix.

6. Content Promotion Remains Key

Another thing to keep in mind is that content creation is just one part of the equation. Promoting your content and getting it in front of people. While organic search is the main traffic source for many websites, it’s not the only basket you should put your eggs into.

Already pre-AI, you needed a content promotion strategy to earn links and get the word out. This is not going to change with artificial intelligence in the mix.

However, what might grow in importance is platform diversity. As can you see in the Google video above, search engines of the future pull content from a lot of different sources including TikTok and YouTube. Therefore, it’s a good idea to branch out to different formats for better visibility and engagement.

What will also become an interesting question is how to get AI to use your content for their answers and possible citations. That’s very hard to answer at this point and really depends on how LLMs will evolve. In the future, they will likely become just another source of traffic that you need to try and optimize for.

7. AI Will Help With SEO

On the content end, we likely to not only see artificial intelligence on the side of search engines but also those who wish to rank in them. AI has the potential to take over many tasks related to search engine optimization. There was actually an interesting discussions at WordCamp Europe 2023 on that topic (the video below starts at the right time for it).

Tools like SEMrush already use artificial intelligence for keyword research, competitor analysis, and other SEO measures. However, it can also help with content optimization, do grunt work like filling in image ALT tags, and provide proofreading.

In addition, AI can help create visuals, including charts and graphs, to further improve the content. What’s more, in the future we will likely use AI to better understand our analytics, spot trends, and analyze user behavior and search intent. Google Analytics 4 already has some machine learning capabilities built in for that.

Finally, AI could help improve overall user experience by analyzing your site and making recommendations for how to improve it.

8. Vertical Search Will Become a Thing

One way to address the shortcomings that generative AI still demonstrates as a search tool is to use it in a more targeted fashion. That means training models in datasets for specific topics and topical areas.

This is called vertical search because it is deep rather than broad. It makes it easier to select the right sources and keep bias out of the knowledge base because of the more limited set of information. You can also more easily adhere to things like copyright, privacy laws, and other regulations.

Areas that are highly suitable for these kinds of AI assistants is medical research, finance, or even coding and development. So, while generative AI might not replace Google anytime soon, you can expect specific AI-powered search tools that are limited but highly knowledgeable in certain areas.

How Do You Think Generaitve AI Will Impact Search and SEO?

The effect of generative AI on search and SEO is hard to predict with absolute certainty. We are only at the beginning of the development. AI has only recently hit the world stage, so we don’t know where we are going from here.

Like other technologies before, it’s unlikely to eliminate search engines and leave websites without traffic. More likely, it will change the way we search online and website owners will need to find new ways to optimize their sites for that.

With search engines integrating with AI, certain types of content will likely die out. Back in the day, it was keyword-stuffed articles, now it will be content whose information can simply be answered directly. What stays the same is need for quality and fulfilling the needs of your audience in order to stand out.

Then, you have to have a solid promotion and marketing plan in place. The good news is that you will also have more and more AI tools at your disposal to help you create and execute it. And this is only the beginning. There are probably a number of other ways AI will impact search and SEO that we don’t even know yet.

What’s your prediction for the changes that artificial intelligence will bring to the areas of search and SEO? Please share your insights below!

The post 8 Ways Generative AI Will Have an Impact on Search and SEO appeared first on Torque.

In the following, we cover what exactly Cumulative Layout Shift is, how it’s calculated, how to test your website for its performance in this area, and what’s a good value to aim for. After that, we give you step-by-step instructions for tackling any CLS problems that might exist on your WordPress site to improve upon them.

When finished, together with the other two posts in this series, we hope that you feel ready to make your website fit for Google’s stamp of approval.

What is the Meaning of Cumulative Layout Shift?

As usual, let’s start off with a definition. In one sentence, CLS measures when something changes on a web page that causes the elements on it to move (or shift if you will) without a user interaction.

It can be that a form or an ad in the article you are reading loads late and moves down the paragraph you are reading so you have to scroll to find your place again. Or worse, it changes the position of a button or link at an inopportune moment so you end up clicking something you didn’t want to.

Consequently, it can be anything from mildly annoying to outright infuriating. Cumulative Layout Shift is the metric that captures this behavior in order to understand the problem so you can correct it.

Why Is It Important?

A jumpy website completely disrupts what you are currently doing and might even have annoying real-life consequences. As you can imagine, that’s really bad for user experience and can cause visitors to leave. This is especially true on smartphones where, due to the screen size, small shifts have a bigger impact than on desktop machines.

Because it’s so disruptive, Google puts a lot of focus on this metric, making it one of the core values that it judges websites by. So, if you want to please both your visitors and the people (I mean, robots) that decide where you appear in search results, do your best to eliminate Cumulative Layout Shift on your website.

What Causes CLS?

The cause of shifting website elements is usually because a web page’s files load at different speeds. Another factor are page elements that are added dynamically during or after page load. Typical examples include:

• Visuals like images or videos without correctly defined dimensions
• Third-party content like ads, banners, embeds, or iframes
• Web fonts that are smaller or bigger than the initially shown fallback fonts

Another source of CLS can be conflicting CSS and JavaScript markup. When they block each other, it stalls the loading process of web pages.

How Is Cumulative Layout Shift Calculated?

In contrast to its predecessors, the calculation of Cumulative Layout Shift is a bit more complicated. To understand it, we need to settle on some terms first:

• Layout shift — That’s when an element already visible on the page moves from its starting position after already being rendered. These kinds of elements are called unstable elements (creative, I know).
• Expected vs unexpected layout shifts — Layout shifts are only negative if the user isn’t expecting them. There are also layout shifts that are expected and welcomed, such as after an interaction with a web page (e.g. submitting a form). CSS animations and transitions are other examples for expected layout shifts. To account for that, CLS considers all layout shifts that happen within 500ms of a user interaction to be expected.
• Impact fraction — The percentage of the viewport (the visible part of the website on screen) that a moving element impacts as decimal number (e.g. 0.5 if it impacts 50% of the screen).
• Distance fraction — Distance as the percentage of the screen that an unstable element moves during a shift. Also given as a decimal number.
• Layout shift score — This is calculated by multiplying the impact fraction with the distance fraction (e.g. 0.4 x 0.15 = 0.06). As a consequence, large elements that move a large distance result in a higher score than small elements moving a short distance.

CLS captures the largest occurrence of unexpected layout shift scores during a five-second interval. Obviously, lower is better.

In the end, you don’t really need to know the specifics. All you need to know is how to measure CLS and what value your site should strive for.

What is a Good Layout Shift Score?

A good score is to have a CLS value of 0.1 or less. Up to 0.25 needs improvement, anything above that is bad and will likely result in reduced search performance.

How to Test Cumulative Layout Shift

In order to be able to improve the CLS score on your website, you first need to know where you stand. It’s difficult to know if it even happens, because web pages don’t always behave the same way on different devices. Therefore, you may not see it on a development site but visitors can still encounter it. For that reason, it’s best to test it.

There are several ways to check if Cumulative Layout Shift is a problem on your WordPress site. They are pretty much the same as for the other Core Web Vitals metrics. Your first port of call should always be PageSpeed Insights, which shows the metric on its results page.

Note that it uses both lab results as well as real-life data from the Chrome User Experience Report. It even shows images of the layout shifts and the source element. That way, you have a better idea what the problem is and where it occurs.

Additionally, PageSpeed Insights gives you the ratio of how much each element contributes to the CLS score. This allows you to prioritize what has the biggest negative impact.

Aside from that, you can also use the following:

• The Core Web Vitals report inside Google Search Console
• Chrome browser developer tools
• Lighthouse
• web-vitals JavaScript library

There is also a Chrome extension called CLS Visualizer. It highlights shifting elements on your web pages. For Firefox, try SpeedVitals.

How to Reduce Cumulative Layout Shift on Your WordPress Site

If you notice that CLS is a problem on your WordPress site, you probably want to fix it. This is what the rest of this article is all about.

Provide Media Dimensions

A lot of solutions already become clear when you have a look at the causes Cumulative Layout Shift above. As mentioned, one common culprit of CLS are images and other media without defined width and height values. Without fixed dimensions, the browser doesn’t know how much space to reserve for them. That’s especially true for media appear on the page later, such as in lazy loading.

Unfortunately, it’s common practice of responsive design to not give specific image dimensions. Most often, images are set to width or max-width: 100%; and height: auto;. Then it’s up to the browser to figure out what the actual dimensions are when it downloads the image.

In the past, that often led to exactly the type of behavior we are trying to avoid. Images suddenly popped into existence, moving everything else around. Therefore, you should always provide dimensions for your visuals or at least a CSS aspect ratio.

Fortunately, if you are using WordPress, your website automatically sets image dimensions. Therefore, the problem usually does not come into play.

If that is not the case for a specific image, you can correct this in the Gutenberg editor.

Dealing With Ads, Embeds, and Similar Content

Third-party content loaded into pages is often one of the biggest sources of CLS. These are cases where you are not necessarily in control of the size of the end product. Nor do its publishers know in advance how much space is available on the site it appears on. Therefore, you need to declare its size the same way as for images.

Fortunately again for WordPress users, when using the Gutenberg editor to auto-embed content from social networks, video portals, or similar vendors into your content, the editor automatically adds appropriate width and height declarations.

That way, even if the content takes longer to load than rest of the page, it already has its correct size reserved. As a consequence, the layout doesn’t shift around when it appears.

For other types of content that you add manually, be sure to add width and height by hand. If you don’t know the exact height that an ad or other element will take, at least add a min-height property to it. That still allows for larger elements but reserves some space and can eliminate or at least reduce CLS on the page.

Another technique to minimize Cumulative Layout Shift in WordPress for third-party content is to avoid placing it high on the page. The higher up it is, the more content below it can push down, and the higher your CLS score. Therefore, if you can, place it in the middle or bottom.

Optimize Dynamic Content

Dynamic content are page elements that get added to a page after it has already been loaded. The example before were lazy loaded images but it typically also includes stuff like banners, forms, or even related products that show up on scroll.

Naturally, if you don’t properly plan for those, it can also leads to layout shifts. Here are some ways to avoid that:

• Reserve space beforehand — Similar to the above, if you have a container with a fixed size that you can load the content into, it keeps the layout steady even if it comes in later. A fixed container can also be a carousel or something similar.
• Connect it with a user interaction — If content loads dynamically after a user action, it carries no penalty for CLS, even if the layout shifts. Keep in mind the 500ms cutoff though.
• Load content off screen — If you load content outside of the viewport and then provide the user with a notice that it’s available and an option to scroll to it, there is also no CLS. Social media platforms like to do that for new updates.

Improve Web Font Handling

Web fonts can also cause layout shift. The two common forms are that you either see unstyled text first before the web font comes in (Flash of Unstyled Text or FOUT) or see no text at all at first and then it comes in together with the web font (Flash of Invisible Text or FOIT).

Both can lead to layout shifts and here is what you can do about it:

• Use the right font format — If you load custom fonts into your WordPress website, be sure to use the WOFF2 or WOFF format. Those have the smallest footprint, load the fastest, and help avoid the problems above.
• Use the right fallback font — If you are using a fallback font that is very dissimilar to your actual font, the moment the switch happens will likely lead to layout movement. You can avoid that by using a fallout font that is close to the end product. The Font Style Matcher can help you find one.
• Preload fonts — Place web font resources early in the document and add rel=preload to them. That way, browsers will prioritize them.

It also helps to host fonts locally or at least use a CDN to make them available to users as fast as possible. That way, you reduce the likelihood of switching fonts late during load and causing layout shifts.

Don’t Let Cumulative Layout Shift Throw Off Your WordPress Site

Cumulative Layout Shift is one of three metrics that Google regards as vital and the last one in this in-depth series. It’s an important indicator for user experience as it measures the stability of page layout during and even after loading.

Like the other metrics in Core Web Vitals, it not only matters to users but also counts toward search ranking and is therefore important for the success of your website.

By now, you know what it is, how it is calculated, what’s causing it, and how to test and deal with it. May your layout forever be solid, my friend.

Do you have additional tips for how to prevent Cumulative Layout Shift in WordPress? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) in WordPress: How to Eliminate It appeared first on Torque.

As you can imagine, this has greatly changed SEO and paved the way for Semantic SEO, which improves organic traffic by providing search engines with the information they need to properly understand a search query and clearly respond to a specific search intent.

By building a precise data set rich in information and links between them, search engines can understand the content of web pages and make it more visible across areas that were previously exclusive to advertisers (like Google Shopping), or that cannot be reached by paid advertising (think Google Lens or voice assistants). The key to doing this is structured data. 

What is Structured Data in SEO?

Structured data allows search engines to understand the content of your website. To speak the same language as Google, you need to translate the content of a website into information it understands, using  a specific vocabulary, Schema.org. This huge shared vocabulary, introduced by Google in 2011, allows you to describe web pages in a way that gives search engines all the information they need to understand what you are trying to say with your site.

When search engines clearly understand who you are trying to reach, they can respond to users’ search queries in a relevant and unambiguous way. In addition, search engines use structured data for rich snippets (such as People Also Ask, Knowledge Panel, Carousel, FAQ, etc.), which improve the user experience on the website by displaying a range of information that makes it easier for users to search and, in the case of eCommerce, make purchases.  

Why is Structured Data Important in SEO?

If SEO focuses on bringing more organic traffic to your website via search, then structured data is indispensable, especially in this new scenario. 

Google is becoming more and more of a semantic search engine. This means that it needs to know what makes up a web page in order to display it in search results. Using structured data is like talking to Google and telling it what your content is about. That’s why structured data is essential for SEO. 

By facilitating a dialog with the search engine, structured data helps your content rank better and get more organic traffic. This is true for both editorial and eCommerce websites. In both cases, structured data contributes to visibility and ranking in SERPs and changes the appearance of search results with rich snippets. This way, you provide more relevant information to users and increase traffic and conversions. As a result, your ranking gets better and better, and your website flies!

What is the Benefit of Using Structured Data?

Now you know what structured data is, let’s dive into the benefits of adding it to your website content.

1. Improve your visibility. Structured data helps search engines understand the nature and relevance of your website content. Once Google understands what you are talking about, it can easily display your website in search results. This makes your products and services more visible to users, who are more inclined to click through if they have relevant information that matches their search intent. 
2. Increase your organic traffic. As a result of increased visibility of your brand and products, you will see an increase in organic traffic to your website. Structured data allows Google and other search engines to optimize the results displayed in SERPs and become more relevant to users’ search queries. Not only that, structured data allows you to get rich snippets that encourage users to visit your website. An increase in organic traffic from the right audience will also bring you business results. 
3. Optimize your content. Using structured data also allows search engines to optimize content for other formats and devices, such as voice search and Google Lens. This gives you the advantage of making your content accessible to everyone, reaching more people, and generating more organic traffic to your website. 
4. Expand use of your data. By using structured data you can reuse your data and access conversational AI to build intelligent systems that can enhance the dialog between search engine and user, such as chatbots. 

What is a Knowledge Graph in SEO?

“The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more—and instantly get information that’s relevant to your query. This is a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do.”

Introducing the Knowledge Graph: Things, Not Strings by Amit Singhal

Google introduced the Google Knowledge Graph in 2012. It is a knowledge base through which Google learns the general facts of the world, organizes the information together, and understands how it is connected. This information is organized into entities that describe a thing or concept and allow the machine to interpret what we know about a person, organization, place, or anything else described in a document.

Why Creating Your Own Knowledge Graph Improves SEO?

Think of the Knowledge Graph as the dynamic architecture behind your website that allows crawlers to access content more intelligently and efficiently.  Google uses a Knowledge Graph to interpret the entire web, and the same happens when you create one for your site. 

That’s why building your own Knowledge Graph in SEO helps make content easier to find and more accessible. The more metadata you can provide to semantic search engines, the easier it is for those search engines to understand the relevance of your content in relation to a specific intent. This results in the search engine showing your website as a result every time that intent is searched on Google, which boosts its visibility and increases organic traffic to your web pages.

How Can You Build Your Knowledge Graph? 

The secret weapon to improving the SEO of your website is to create a knowledge graph that is openly accessible to crawlers and linked to your content via structured data. 

How can you add structured data to your web pages? You can add the code in your web pages using Microdata, RDFa, and JSON-LD. Google officially recommends using JSON-LD markup over any other wherever possible. If you want to add structured data to your website without requiring technical expertise or the intervention of the development team, you can use an SEO automation tool. 

Using AI, WordLift identifies topics most important to your business, organizes them into entities, and then stores them in a vocabulary. The tool then relates the entities in the vocabulary and converts the information into linked data. This way you add structured data to your content and build your Knowledge Graph, getting more visibility and more organic traffic to your website. Not only that, by using WordLift you create and strengthen internal links that positively affect your website’s ranking in Google’s SERP and increase the time users spend on the website, growing your business.

In addition, you can collect and analyze data and results from your work with entities, by using the WordLift Looker Studio Connector. By combining data from Google Search Console and the Knowledge Graph (as well as any other desired sources), you can build semantic reports, evaluate your performance, and improve your strategy.

Structured data and knowledge graphs are often overlooked in daily SEO practice, but by using a reliable tool, you can start harnessing their power and bringing more, engaged users to your site.

The post How You Can Take Your SEO to the Next Level With Structured Data and Knowledge Graph appeared first on Torque.

In order to help you better understand what it is about and what it means for your WordPress site, in this article we will take an in-depth look at the update. You will learn what it entails, its impact on your content, and also some (well-deserved?) criticism.

Let’s go.

Quick Facts: What is the Helpful Content Update?

The best way to give a definition of what this algorithm update is about, is to quote Google’s announcement:

[…] we’re launching what we’re calling the “helpful content update” that’s part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.

[…]

The helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations won’t perform as well.

In short, the update aims to weed out low-value and unhelpful pages from the search results. If that sounds very similar to the E-A-T update, that’s not accident. It goes very much in the same direction. However, what does the above mean in particular?

Diving Into the Details

If you keep reading the announcement post, you find out that the Helpful Content Update particularly looks at the following signals:

• Does your content work for your intended/primary audience and site focus?
• Do you provide first-hand expertise and in-depth knowledge?
• Is it aligned with the users’ search intent?

As a consequence, here is what it (most probably) targets:

• Overly optimized content
• Content very much outside of your general content strategy
• AI-written/spun content
• Content that does not help users achieve their objective
• Clickbait (e.g. content talking about the release date of a movie or console when there is none)

Not a lot of surprises there. Even without Google spelling it out, you probably knew that this type of content wasn’t really that helpful.

Observable Impact of the Rollout

Although, like all major core updates, the Helpful Content Update caused ripples across the SEO sphere, curiously, its impact on search ranking has been relatively small.

Many of the websites that track rank fluctuations showed its effects were relatively minor. At this point, it seems like it only affected the worst offenders but was not a huge shake-up across the board. Definitely less impactful than many would have anticipated.

However, Google also stated that the effects may become more apparent over time. Plus, it’s important to keep in mind that this is just one signal. It works together with a whole host of other factors and might also be further amplified in future updates. Therefore, it’s possible that it won’t go into full effect until later.

Nominally the Helpful Content Update only affects English search queries, other languages will follow after Google further refines it. However, there have also been a number of reports of non-English sites feeling its effect.

What Does the Update Mean for You and Your WordPress Website?

Alright, now that we know the purpose and content of it, let’s go over what you should take away from the Helpful Content Update for your own site and content.

1. Focus on People First

At the core of the update is basically Google’s old adage to create content for people, not search engines. The algorithm update simply reiterates it.

Google’s stated goal is to serve its users the best possible content for what they are looking for. In addition, the search engine is by now way too sophisticated to be fooled by any technical trickery. Consequently, to rank highly, your only choice is to try and be that best possible result.

One of the main steps toward that is to understand and satisfy search intent. When choosing a topic, make sure you intimately understand what the searcher is trying to accomplish and help them do so. We have compiled an entire article on that topic where you can learn more.

Satisfying search intent will keep users on your site longer. This, instead of sending them back to the SERPs for more information, is sending positive signals to Google that you are giving visitors what they want.

2. Keep Focusing on E-A-T

In case you don’t know, E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It was the focus of an algorithm update of the same name some years back.

The E-A-T update specifically targeted YMYL (“your money or your life”) pages. That means types of pages that have potentially great impact on the future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety of Google’s users. However, it applies to everyone.

In the Helpful Content Update announcement, Google makes some specific allusions to these markers of quality. For one, they suggest to stick to your area of expertise. That means, don’t simply create content for search queries where you hope to get traffic. Instead, make sure you create a valuable resource for your primary audience and subject.

Sure, you can always branch out and open up new topical areas that are related to your main topic. For example, you might get into other wellness topics like meditation while running a fitness blog. However, don’t go wildly off track just to try and get traffic (e.g. writing an article about Bitcoin on a site that is usually about gardening).

It also means writing about things that you have first-hand experience in.

How do you demonstrate that?

First of all, don’t write about a product you have never used in order to try and get affiliate commissions. Secondly, provide original insights and images. Go beyond summarizing what is already out there, add information that readers can find nowhere else.

For more information on E-A-T, refer to the article above and also take a look at search quality rating guidelines.

3. Follow Guidelines for Product Reviews

Something specifically mentioned in the update announcement (and, thus, likely targeted) are product reviews. If that’s a lot of what your content is about, it’s good idea to go over Google’s guidelines for writing high-quality product reviews.

If you want to save yourself a click, the gist is as follows:

• Show the expertise that qualifies you to review the product
• Provide visuals, links to other sources, and first-hand quantitative data to underline your opinions
• List pros and cons and compare the product with similar entries
• Provide key details for what makes the product good or bad and give evidence for your opinion

Basically, it’s E-A-T allover again.

4. Do a Content Audit

Another interesting tidbit from the update announcement is this:

Any content — not just unhelpful content — on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that’s better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.

The message is pretty clear: If your website has a lot of content that is deemed unhelpful, the ranking of your entire site could suffer, not just that of the low-value content itself.

In addition, the post says that this is a weighted signal. The more unhelpful content you have, the stronger its effect will be. For that reason, you not only have to step up your content game but also take a look at the material already on your site.

That’s where a content audit comes in. Have a look at your existing articles and decide what will stay, what needs to go, and what needs an update. If you experience ranking losses from the new update, this is what can help get you out of the hole. But beware, the announcement also says it might take a while to get back to where you were before, potentially months.

5. Don’t Neglect SEO Best Practices

While the most important part to adhere to the Helpful Content Update is to focus on creating the most helpful content possible for your users, at the same time, you should not neglect basic SEO best practices.

What does that mean?

Basically, taking care of your technical SEO and on-page SEO:

• Ensuring fast-loading website speed (speed testing can help with that)
• Having a mobile-friendly website
• Creating a clear website hierarchy
• Including structured data
• Lack of technical errors like 404 pages and robots.txt problems
• Placing keywords in the locations that Google uses to understand page topic (title, headings, URL, ALT tags, etc.)
• Interlinking between your pages and linking to outside sources
• Providing an SEO title and meta description

Basically, most things that a good SEO plugin would tell you.

SEO best practices also include the overall user experience. It’s not just about the information but also how you present it. Here, you need to think about your web design and UX of your site as a whole and also each individual content piece. It means using good formatting, images, and other readability factors.

Community Criticism

There was also criticism from some SEO professionals, saying that the rollout of the Helpful Content Update was not just a technical update but also a PR campaign.

Unlike for other updates (e.g. Panda, Penguin), Google announced it beforehand and explicitly got in touch with influential SEO professionals to spread the news. That, in combination with the negligent observable effect, led some to believe that this was more about improving Google’s PR and sending a message to content creators.

At the same time, as mentioned above, the update is part of an ongoing effort. Its effects might only be truly felt with future updates as Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liasion, said in a couple of tweets.

The Google Update in a Nutshell: Keep Creating Truly Helpful Content

The latest Google update marks another step towards the same direction that Google has been moving for a while now: promoting user-centric content. It further cements the need for closely listening to what users want and giving it to them, while also adhering to SEO best practices.

The update is also surely something aimed at the surge of AI-created content. If that’s something you are using, always make sure that you review your content from a person’s perspective and make any changes necessary to make it helpful for your actual readers.

While the update itself did not have the biggest impact at rollout, it further shows where things are going. If you want to invest in the future success of your website, heed its lessons now.

What is your greatest lessons from Google’s Helpful Content Update? How will you implement its lessons on your website? Tell us in the comments!

The post Google’s Helpful Content Update: What It Means for Your Website appeared first on Torque.

If this is news to you and you are unaware about how this part of SEO can help your site, this is the right post for you. In the following, we will explain what internal linking is, how it helps your website, how to do it right, as well as best practices to employ and pitfalls to avoid.

Sounds good? Then let’s get to it right away.

What is Internal Linking?

Defining internal linking is relatively simple. It means setting up links that point from one page on a website to another page on the same domain. For example, if I link from here to my TorqueMag post on how to write meta descriptions, that’s an internal link.

External linking, by contrast, is when a page links to or receives a link from an outside website. Frequent examples are backlinks from guest posts, a social media share, or just a link from another site.

Internal links matter for several reasons. Most obviously they help users navigate your website and go from one section to another. Aside from that, internal linking also helps SEO because it lets search engines understand the content on your site. This, in turn, helps them rank your pages more accurately. We will talk about how that works in detail further below.

There are several kinds of internal links. For example, most websites have them as part of their navigation menu, sidebar, or inside footer elements.

Then, there are contextual links. These are in-post or in-page links such as you can see in this piece of content. These are what you usually use to point out other relevant content to readers or move them to another page. However, internal links can also take other forms such as part of a related posts plugin or in breadcrumbs.

How Does Internal Linking Help SEO?

Just like for human visitors, internal links help search engines navigate your site and understand its structure and content.

Unless you submit your site via webmaster tools like Google Search Console, external links are the only way search engines will discover your site. Once there, internal links help them find more pages than just the one they landed on. Therefore, if you want Google to index as much of your site as possible, internal linking is a must.

In addition, search engines also use internal links when ranking pages. For one, it helps them understand what content is most important on your website. The more links point to a particular page, the more value it has.

Finally, internal links put pages into context. For example, if a page is located under the URL yoursite.com/crane, it’s not clear to the search spider if that means crane the bird or a construction crane. However, if said page is interlinked with a bunch of content pieces that have the topic, /types-of-birds and /migratory-birds it becomes clear very quickly which of the two options it is. This helps search engines understand the topic of your pages better and thus rank them for relevant queries.

Internal Links Form Your Site Structure

What’s important to note is that how you link from page to page determines the structure of your website. In most cases, this will resemble the form of a pyramid with the homepage at the top (because it’s usually the page with the most backlinks/authority) and then going down in levels in order or page importance.

This structure is literally built by internal links going from one page to another. It guides visitors and Google to pages you think are important and also determines their authority. Google divides the value assigned to a page by the number of links it contains to determine the value of sub-pages in turn and it cascades down from there. That’s how it establishes a hierarchy.

Ideally, you have thought about this order in order to construct a user journey that makes sense. After all, it’s up to you to decide what content is most important. However, it often also happens naturally when trying to determine the right path for users to take through your site. If you have no idea how to even get started, let’s go over a simple linking strategy.

How To Properly Use Internal Links for SEO

A successful internal linking strategy can be broken down into the following six simple steps.

1. Identify Your Most Important Pages

These are the main pages that you want users to click through to. They are typically static pages on your website, but can also be something like detailed content guides.

How do you decide which pages matter the most on your site?

Think of the content that forms the core of your business. The stuff that you want to show up in search when people look for your area of expertise or products that you sell. That’s what you want to build the most authority for.

2. Link to Those Pages From Your Homepage

Once you have identified your most crucial pages, link to them from the homepage. We have already established how websites usually have a pyramid-shaped structure and this is the second level of that pyramid.

The homepage is the page on your website with the most value, so it will pass on a lot of link juice to whatever you link to from it directly. To do so, you can use the navigation elements in your header, footer, or sidebar. If you have blog content pages among your most important pages, you can also do it in the form of a “most popular posts” widget or a CTA.

3. Build Links Between Them as Well

Besides linking to your important from the homepage, it’s also important that you crosslink in between them. That way, users can easily navigate to the right place if they can’t find what they need at first. You don’t need to add links between every single page, but you should make sure that users have a good way of reaching all relevant information.

This is especially important between articles in the same topical area. Linking them not only helps users find more information on what they are already reading, it also shows Google that these articles are topically related.

4. Link to Supplementary Information

As you can see, the idea is to concentrate most links on your hub pages or cornerstone content. The majority of your content should connect toward those to signal their importance to Google and help them rank better.

However, the opposite is also true. When appropriate, make sure to link to supplementary information from your main pages in subposts and smaller articles. This also avoids you ending up with orphaned pages that have no links going towards them.

5. Build Links from Content to Conversion Pages

The whole idea of content marketing is to attract visitors via demonstrating expertise and then moving them on to your products and services. For that purpose, you should always include calls to action (CTAs) in your content pages that lead users to pages where they can convert. You want people to be able to easily find what you’re selling and buy it (or subscribe, follow, etc.). Strategically placing internal links is the way to achieve that.

6. Include Links to Your Taxonomies

Taxonomies like categories and tags help classify your content and also play a role in SEO. When it comes to internal linking, they also play an important role in helping Google discover and classify content. In order to take advantage of that, make sure your taxonomies appear on the page and link to their archives.

This gives search engines more to crawl and further clarifies your site structure. Not to mention, it lets readers explore more of the topics they are interested in.

Internal Linking Best Practices

Above is a basic internal linking SEO strategy. However, the devil is in the details, so here are some additional best practices when building internal links for your website:

• Optimize anchor text for conversions. The anchor text is the text that appears as the clickable link in your content. Here, always try to use words or phrases that are relevant to the page you’re linking to. Try to go for anchor text that makes it clear what kind of content to expect when clicking it but that also flows naturally with the rest of the text.
• Include the right number of links per post. This depends on the amount of content and your conversion goals. You don’t want to overwhelm users with too many links on a single page. But you also don’t want them to feel lost with nowhere else to go. The best approach is to include just enough links so that the text flows nicely and you move readers to other content pieces naturally.
• Set some links to nofollow. Adding a nofollow tag to a link tells Google to disregard it and assign no value to it. This can make sense for links that are unimportant for ranking purposes, such as a login page. If you have any of those on your homepage, consider tagging them accordingly.
• Use internal links to send traffic to new pages. When publishing new content, take a moment to link to it from pages that already perform well and that are relevant to its topic. You can use the site: operator in Google to search your own website for certain keywords in order to find relevant places to link to the new post.
• Use tools to find orphaned pages. There are a number of tools that can tell you if there are pages without incoming internal links on your site. Yoast SEO has a section for that as do other SEO tools and plugins.

Internal Linking Mistakes To Avoid

Besides adhering to best practices, also make sure that you avoid these common internal linking pitfalls:

• Disregarding relevance. Don’t simply link for linking’s sake. Make sure that when you include a link, it makes sense from a user’s perspective. As mentioned, internal links pass meaning and authority so don’t squander them.
• Using the same anchor text over and over. It can be easy to fall into the trap of using the same exact keyword or key phrase for linking to certain pages in all of your content. This is keyword stuffing and will get you punished. You want to make sure that you vary your anchor text while still making it relevant.
• Placing too many links together. Even if you have a lot of relevant content to link to from one page, you don’t want to stuff a single sentence or paragraph full of links. This can make it difficult for users to read and understand. Try to spread them out a bit.

Final Thoughts: Internal Linking for SEO

SEO is all about creating great content and making it as easy as possible for people and search engines to find. Internal linking is one of the ways that you can help with that. It makes your content structure more user friendly and helps visitors and search engines discover and understand it.

Above, we have given you a basic internal linking strategy to improve your site’s SEO. We have also equipped you with best practices and common mistakes to avoid. The rest is up to you. There will be some trial and error and you may need to make adjustments as your site and content evolves. However, when done right, you will end up with a clearer and more user-friendly website that performs well in search. And that is definitely worth the effort.

What strategies do you prefer for maximizing internal linking opportunities? Please leave a comment below. We look forward to hearing from you!

The post Internal Linking for SEO: How to Use It to Boost Your Rankings appeared first on Torque.

The good news is that you may not have to wait long. There are a couple of things you can do to hasten the ranking process for your products. This can help you start generating traffic and sales right away.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss the importance of getting your products to appear in search results without any delay. We’ll then share five ways to help your new products rank faster. Let’s jump right in!

The Importance of Getting Your Products to Rank Faster

Research has shown that more than 55% of clicks on search results pages go to the first three entries. This means that if your new product ranks highly, it can lead a lot of traffic to your storefront. This can easily translate to more conversions.

Ranking on the first page of Google results also means that shoppers will consistently come across your store when they search for products similar to yours. This increased visibility will make them more aware of your brand, which may help skew their purchase decisions in your favor.

Additionally, when shoppers see your products on page one, they may view your brand as more credible and trustworthy. Therefore, if you’re launching a new product or eCommerce site, it’s important to ensure that you take the necessary steps to help your pages rank faster.

How to Rank Your New eCommerce Products Faster (5 Ways)

To ensure that your eCommerce site ranks above your competitors, you’ll need to optimize both your product and category pages. Here are five things you can do to get your new products on page one as soon as possible.

1. Research Your Competition

One effective way of ranking quickly is researching what’s working for your competitors. This will give you some direction when it comes to designing high-converting product pages.

The first step is finding out who your competition is. Semrush is great tool for this:

You can use the Semrush Market Explorer to identify your competitors. This will give you a list of domains that are doing well in your niche.

Once you’ve identified your competitors, you can try to establish which keywords they are ranking for, using a tool such as Ahrefs:

You can start by doing a batch analysis of your competing domains. This will give you lots of useful data on each website, including the domain rating, estimated organic traffic, and number of keyword rankings. You can then filter the results to find the top competitors.

The next step would be to identify any ‘content gaps’ (also known as ‘keyword gaps‘):

Ahrefs will give you a list of keywords that your top competitors aren’t ranking for. You can target these search terms in your product descriptions to rank more quickly.

2. Make Sure Your Product Pages Are Fully Optimized

Once you’ve identified the best keywords to target, the next step is optimizing your product pages. This will give them a better chance to rank for the targeted search terms.

First, you’ll need to write keyword-rich product descriptions. You can also use your target phrase in the title tags, main content, images, and URL of your page(s). However, you’ll want to avoid keyword stuffing, as this could get you penalized by Google.

Moreover, you’ll want to add a unique, keyword-rich title for each of your products. A descriptive title can help reduce your bounce rate, as users will know exactly what to expect when they click on the link. This increased user retention will not only improve your revenue, but your rankings on Google as well.

You’ll also want to write meta descriptions that appeal to both search engines and humans:

Since you want Google to crawl your site regularly, you’ll need to make sure that each description is unique. It’s also smart to include a keyword that you would like your page to rank for.

Finally, you’ll want to optimize your product page URLs. These should contain relevant and descriptive keywords (e.g., www.myshop.com/waterproof-jackets-for-men).

3. Use Engaging Images and Videos to Showcase Your Products

When it comes to ranking on Google, your content needs to be engaging and helpful. Therefore, it’s important that you use plenty of visuals.

You can take a few different approaches when adding engaging visual content. For instance, you can add videos to highlight your product’s features and benefits. You could also include images of the same product from different angles. This way, shoppers can get a better idea of how it looks in real life.

When optimizing images, you have the option to add alt text. This tells Google and other search engines what your image depicts:

It also explains the content of your photo to users with screen readers. This makes your content more accessible.

The alt text should provide a clear description of the product image without being wordy. You may want to mention some important details, including the product name, model number, and color.

4. Leverage Social Media to Promote Your Products

Since eCommerce giants like Amazon already have a huge slice of the market share, it can be hard to compete with them. You don’t want your product pages to sit idle – you need them to rank well for relevant keywords.

One way to do this is by leveraging social media sites such as Pinterest and Instagram. These platforms can help you get your products in front of the right customers at just the right time. Therefore, they can be incredibly effective for increasing conversions and generating traffic.

Pinterest works like a search engine. You can create pins that will keep ranking and drive traffic for years to come:

Instagram is a bit different, but just as powerful. It can help you gain followers and potential customers with stunning photo feeds:

Additionally, you could set a budget and promote your products with social media ads. This can help increase your click-through rates.

Whatever channel you use, most social media sites rely heavily on visual content. This makes it doubly important that you always have fresh images for your product pages and social content.

5. Use the IndexNow Plugin

Microsoft’s new IndexNow plugin makes it possible for your products to be indexed in Bing and Google as soon as you publish them:

Instead of having to submit URLs manually, the plugin does all the work for you. It will create an API it uses to automatically submit your URLs. This way, Bing, Google, and other search engines will always know when you add, delete, or update information on your product pages. You’ll also be able to view stats on your submitted URLs.

Conclusion

As a store owner, you’ll want all your new products to rank quickly. This will help increase your traffic and conversions without any delay.

In this post, we shared five effective ways to rank your products faster:

1. Research your competition, using tools like Semrush and Ahrefs.
2. Write SEO-friendly product titles and descriptions.
3. Use images and videos to increase user engagement.
4. Market your new products on social media channels such as Pinterest and Instagram.
5. Use Microsoft’s new IndexNow plugin to rank on Bing and Google.

Do you have any questions about how to get your products to rank faster? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post How to Rank Your New eCommerce Products Faster (5 Ways) appeared first on Torque.

Fortunately, there are a variety of steps you can take to improve your Core Web Vitals scores and optimize your WordPress website. Doing so will not only enhance the experience for your users, but can also boost your positioning in search engine results.

In this post, we’ll start by briefly discussing the importance of optimizing your WordPress site for the Core Web Vitals. Then we’ll provide you with five key tips you can use to improve your scores. Let’s get started!

The Importance of Optimizing Your Site for the Core Web Vitals

The Core Web Vitals are the metrics Google uses to assess the accessibility, mobile-friendliness, and overall experience of your website. The three most important numbers to be aware of are:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): The time it takes to render the largest content element on a page.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): The number of unexpected layout shifts that occur while the page is loading.
• First Input Delay (FID): The time between a user first interacting with the page and their browser responding to the interaction.

Optimizing your site for these Core Web Vitals is crucial for your SEO. These metrics and your scores help Google analyze your site and determine your search engine visibility. Therefore, measuring and optimizing these metrics can help you reach more customers, drive traffic to your website, and ultimately boost sales.

There are a handful of ways to measure your website’s vitals. One option is to use Google Search Console. You can also leverage PageSpeed Insights:

Simply enter your URL and select Analyze. Then you’ll receive a report that includes an overall grade, as well as details about key metrics, including the Core Web Vitals:

Once you know where your website stands, you’ll be better able to understand where you need to focus your attention. The PageSpeed Insights reports provide specific suggestions that you can use as a starting point. Ideally, you want your site to score somewhere between 90 and 100.

How to Improve Your Google Core Web Vitals Scores in WordPress (5 Tips)

Now that you understand why the Core Web Vitals are so important, let’s discuss how you can optimize them. Below are five key tips you can use to boost your Core Web Vitals scores in WordPress.

1. Optimize Your Images

Images play a pivotal role in the performance of any website. They tend to be large files, which means they can take up a lot of storage and bandwidth.

To help speed up your web pages’ loading times and boost your Core Web Vitals scores, it’s a good idea to optimize your images. One way to do this is through lossy or lossless compression. Another is choosing the appropriate dimensions for images. Images with dimensions that are too big can take longer to load.

We also suggest using an image optimization plugin. There are many options to choose from. One popular, reliable tool is Smush:

This freemium plugin lets you enable lazy loading on your website, as well as compress and resize images automatically. It also comes with a bulk compress feature that lets you optimize up to 50 images at once with a single click.

2. Eliminate Render-Blocking Elements

If you use PageSpeed Insights to measure your site’s performance, you’ve probably seen a suggestion to eliminate render-blocking elements. This refers to static files on your site, such as CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files.

The scripts contained in these files can sometimes block users from seeing content on your web pages. They’re often created by third-party plugins and tools.

Fortunately, there are a handful of steps you can take to eliminate unnecessary scripts, including:

• Minify your JavaScript and CSS
• Combine your JavaScript and CSS files into one file
• Defer the loading of JavaScript

The easiest way to implement these techniques is to use a plugin such as WP Rocket:

This premium plugin caches, compresses, and minifies files to help improve the speed and performance of your WordPress site. It comes with Optimize CSS Delivery and Load JavaScript deferred options that you can easily apply across your entire website. Once the plugin is activated on your site, you can locate these settings by navigating to Settings > WP Rocket > File Optimization.

3. Install a Caching Plugin

Caching can help improve your site’s loading times, with no effort required on your end. Therefore, regardless of the caching options your hosting provider offers, we recommend using a WordPress caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache:

One of this plugin’s benefits is that you can use it to eliminate render-blocking elements. Caching plugins like this can be particularly useful for improving your FID score because they help to optimize file delivery.

However, note that you should never use more than one caching tool, as they can conflict with each other. Check with your hosting provider to determine whether there are specific plugins they recommend using with your plan.

4. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) can help improve your Google Core Web Vitals scores by loading the images and files on your website from the server that is in closest proximity to each visitor. CDNs leverage a network of servers from around the globe to help increase loading times for static files.

If you want to implement a CDN on your WordPress site, two popular options are KeyCDN and Cloudflare:

Cloudflare also comes with built-in firewall protection. If you’re looking for more advanced features, you can upgrade to a premium version.

5. Upgrade Your Hosting

One of the best ways to ensure that you have a high-performing website is to choose a reliable, speedy hosting provider. If you have a medium or large business, it’s worth upgrading to managed, cloud, or dedicated hosting to enhance your server response times.

Many quality hosting providers offer server-side caching, which can help improve Core Web Vitals scores. Upgrading your WordPress hosting can also result in better security.

We recommend looking for a provider that includes features like a CDN as part of its service, such as WP Engine:

This will eliminate the number of third-party tools and plugins you have to rely on, which can further improve your site’s performance. What’s more, WP Engine offers a variety of plans designed specifically for WordPress sites.

Conclusion

If you want your website to perform well in search engine results, it’s important to pay attention to the Google Core Web Vitals. After you measure these metrics on your site, the next step is figuring out how to optimize them.

Let’s recap our five tips for improving your Core Web Vitals scores:

1. Optimize your images using a plugin such as Smush.
2. Eliminate render-blocking elements with a tool like WP Rocket.
3. Install a caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache.
4. Use a CDN such as Cloudflare.
5. Upgrade your hosting to a reliable provider, such as WP Engine.

Do you have any questions about improving your Core Web Vitals scores? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post How to Improve Your Google Core Web Vitals Scores in WordPress (5 Tips) appeared first on Torque.

Local SEO will enable you to get more targeted traffic, and help your site appear in front of nearby users. The closer a user is, the easier it can be to convert them into a customer.

In this article, we’ll discuss the concept of local SEO. Then we’ll go over three ways to optimize your WordPress website for local searches. Let’s get to work!

An Introduction to Local SEO

SEO involves making changes to your website so that it ranks as high as possible in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). In most cases, you want to attract as broad an audience as possible. If you run a blog, for example, it doesn’t matter if your visitors are from the United States or Tanzania as long as they can understand your content.

Casting a broad net doesn’t work as well for every type of website, though. Let’s say that you offer a computer repair service for local businesses and individuals. If you use a website to promote your services, you want to get traffic from the area where you do business.

Getting hits from other countries looks good when you’re checking your website’s analytics. However, if visitors are too far away to consider purchasing your products or services, that traffic isn’t all that useful.

Local SEO involves making changes to your website so you can attract traffic from a specific geographic area. That can mean a neighborhood, a city, or even a state depending on the scope of your business. Let’s talk about how that works in practice.

3 Tips to Optimize Your WordPress Website for Local SEO

If you’re already familiar with SEO basics, optimizing your WordPress website for local searches should be relatively straightforward. In this section, we’ll cover several tips that you can use to improve your site’s local SEO.

1. Target Location-Related Keywords

Location-related keywords offer the perfect way to target users who are looking for services and products in a specific area. To elaborate on our earlier example, if you offer computer repair services in New York, you shouldn’t optimize your website’s pages around broad terms such as “computer repair services”. Instead, you’d want to target keywords such as:

• Computer repair in New York
• Computer repair in Queens
• Computer repair in Manhattan

What keywords you choose to target should depend on the area in which you offer your services and products. You’ll also need to conduct keyword research and planning beforehand, just as with “regular” SEO. That way, you’ll know what search terms have the most potential and which ones aren’t worth targeting:

Focusing on searches with local intent will almost never bring as much traffic as “broader” keywords. However, the traffic that you do get is much more likely to convert, which is ultimately what you want.

2. Include Location Information and Opening Hours

If you have a website for a business with a physical location, you’ll need to include information about how to get there and when it’s open. Those are two of the most common questions that users have when they look up a business online.

There are a lot of ways to include that information in WordPress. You can choose to add addresses using simple text and even embed Maps that show visitors where you’re located:

If your business has more than one physical location, you should include each store’s individual address. The same applies to opening hours – if they’re different for each location, go ahead and make that clear.

When it comes to physical businesses, it also pays to register on Google My Business. That way, if users look up your company, they’ll be able to see information pertaining to it without leaving the SERPs:

Registering on Google My Business might not lead to additional traffic for your website. However, it can result in you getting more social media inquiries and face-to-face sales.

3. Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices

Every WordPress website needs to be mobile-friendly. For most sites, mobile devices account for a higher share of traffic than laptops and computers. However, mobile traffic becomes even more important if you want to woo local users.

If you’re looking for a local service or a store online, you’re much more likely to do it from your phone than from a PC. A lot of local searches are done on the spur of the moment, and you may only have your mobile device at hand.

Optimizing your site for local searches is only the first half of the equation. You’ll also have to ensure that your website offers a fantastic mobile experience. Here’s what that means, in a nutshell:

• The website should be easy to navigate on a small screen.
• Buttons and contact forms should be optimized for mobile devices.
• Your site should have buttons for customers to call your business directly.

Using a mobile-friendly WordPress theme will go a long way towards ensuring that your website is fully responsive. However, we also recommend that you test your website’s forms and any Calls to Action (CTAs) on different mobile devices.

If your website offers a poor mobile experience, your bounce rate will start to climb. This means that even if you’re getting clicks in the SERPs, users aren’t sticking around your website. In our experience, that’s usually a reflection of a poor user experience.

On top of usability, it’s also important to ensure that your website loads as fast as possible. Long loading times contribute to higher bounce rates and they can frustrate mobile and non-mobile users.

Conclusion

If you’re already familiar with SEO best practices, you should have no problem optimizing your website for local searches. When it comes to local SEO, you’ll need to focus on keywords that revolve around specific geographic areas. That way, you’ll come up among the results when users look for products and services related to your niche in that location.

On top of using the right keywords, you should also add your location and opening hours to your website. All of that information needs to be easy to find for visitors using mobile devices, which will account for the lion’s share of your traffic.

Do you have any questions about how to optimize your WordPress website for local searches? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!

The post How to Optimize Your WordPress Website for Local Searches (3 Tips) appeared first on Torque.