Tactics for Local Businesses and Ecommerce

Keyword Research for Local Businesses

Google has an algorithm for its local map results that is independent from the algorithm it uses to rank standard web results Those two algorithms have become more closely aligned with recent updates (and that trend is expected to continue), but it is still possible to rank well in local results but not in the main results (or vice versa).

Ideally though, you want to show up in both places. The best way for a local business to go about doing that is to start out by focusing on the local results. It seems to be easier to rank locally first and then cross over to the normal results than the other way around.

This can have a powerful impact. A very successful example of this is a business aptly named Audi Tulsa. They are one of a few Audi dealerships in the Tulsa, OK area. As of this writing, a search for “audi tulsa” brings up their dealership in the number one organic position.

That is the power of local search optimization. Normally, unless you happen to be Audi itself, it would be incredibly difficult to rank anywhere on the first page of results for such a high-volume, broad search like that. But because of Google’s increased focus on returning localized results, it is possible to own those searches, at least for people searching in your area.

Part of Google’s reasoning behind that sort of ranking choice is that mobile has become an important component of local search. A huge percentage of local searches are coming from mobile devices, and mobile users are generally used to searching without location qualifiers and expecting the search engine to know where they are.

Using Google Keyword Planner to Get Local Keyword Data

The process for getting localized keyword data from Google Keyword Planner is fairly straightforward.

When starting out with a search, enter your keywords as usual and then edit the location targeting option in the Targeting section of the search form (the default is set to ‘All locations’):

Pro Tip: If you select a city, Google will restrict your search to the exact boundaries of that city. It is generally a good idea to expand the boundaries a bit by hitting the “Nearby” link and adding surrounding areas, like so:

Once you have your locations dialed in, simply proceed with the regular process of keyword research. Keep in mind that the search volumes you see in the tool will probably be significantly lower than you are used to. Don’t be too discouraged. This is due in part to the way that Google normalizes and averages the data. If you are in a reasonably sized metro area, the searches are probably there.

Finally, don’t forget to include locally modified versions of your main keywords in your list. Here is what those keywords generally look like:

Typical local keyword patterns

“Keyword” + “city name” - i.e. auto mechanics phoenix
“City name” + “keyword” - i.e. phoenix auto mechanics
“Keyword” + “city st” - i.e. auto mechanics phoenix az
“City st” + “keyword” - i.e. phoenix az auto mechanics
“Keyword” + “city state” - i.e. auto mechanics phoenix arizona
“City state” + “keyword” - i.e. phoenix arizona auto mechanics

Ecommerce

Keyword research is critical for ecommerce sites. From your homepage onward you want to align the language on your site to the language your customers use for your products. That includes internal navigation links, category and subcategory divisions and names, individual product names, and the text in your product descriptions.

If you are selling your own original products your keyword research should focus on the words people use to look for similar products.

If you are selling products made by other manufacturers, your research will focus more on how people refer to those products and what exactly they call them. Electronics is a good example.

Many electronics, like TVs, have somewhat complicated naming conventions in order to differentiate all the makes, models, sizes, and features (e.g. Vizio E24-C1 24-Inches 1080p Smart LED TV). In order to capture specific searches for a particular model, you will need to make sure you are including the full (and most common) name on the product page.

You can also break down those complicated product names in order to generate higher level keywords. Using the above Vizio example you get:

• Vizio - the brand (related keywords include ‘vizio tvs’, ‘vizio led tvs’, ‘vizio smart tvs’)
• E24-C1 - the style (related keywords: ‘vizio e24-c1’, vizio e24 c1 tv’, etc )
• 24-Inches - the screen size ( related keywords: ‘24 inch tvs’, ‘24 inch led tv’, ‘vizio 24 inch tv’, etc)
• 1080p - the resolution (there are now three common screen resolutions, 720p, 1080p, and 4k. It would make sense to provide sub-category pages for each.)
• Smart LED TV - Smart designation and display type (related keywords: ‘smart led tvs’, ‘led tv’, ‘smart tvs’, ‘vizio smart led tvs’, etc)

Once you have come up with a good set of variations you can drop those into Google Keyword Planner to check search volume data and discover even more alternatives.

Another handy feature of the Google Keyword Planner can help generate keyword variations for sets of products with common options for colors, sizes, or accessories.

When you start a search, or modify an existing search, select ‘Multiply keyword lists to get new keywords’. You can then add up to three sets of keyword combinations. The tool will combine all of those sets of words together and check traffic levels for all of the permutations.

Here is a simple example:

When you click ‘Get search volume’ Google will show you a list of all the combinations of those keywords (so, ‘mens motorcycle helmets’, ‘mens motorcycle helmet’, ‘mens helmets’, ‘mens helmet’, etc). The tool will automatically filter out any keyword combinations that don’t get enough traffic.

One issue that ecommerce site owners run into is that their potential keyword lists are so large. Rather than attempting to create pages/content focused on every single minor keyword variation, combining very similar keywords into groups can help manage the overflow.

For example, you might create a ‘mens motorcycle helmets’ group that includes:

• ‘mens motorcycle helmets’
• ‘mens motorcycle helmet’
• ‘men motorcycle helmet’
• ‘men motorcycle helmets’
• ‘motorcycle helmets men’
• ‘motorcycle helmets for men’
• ‘motorcycle helmet for men’

You can then look up the search volume for all of those terms and focus your page on the most commonly used version (and potentially work the second most common version into the copy on the page as well).

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Inferring Keywords from Traffic Patterns

We have discussed how to use keywords to guide the content you create and how to track and maintain rankings for your target keywords. Now your site is bringing in search engine traffic. What comes next in the keyword game!?!

There is a wealth of keyword data available to existing sites that are getting traffic from search engines. Unfortunately, not all of that data is as easy to come by as it once was.

In the past finding out which keywords were sending you traffic was as easy as opening up Google Analytics and checking the Organic Traffic report. Today, however, most of that data is unavailable because search engines like Google provide the majority of their search results on secure (https) pages and no longer pass keyword data along in the referring URL when someone clicks on your site.

The most common keyword in that Analytics report is now the disappointing but accurate: (Not Provided). Luckily, there are a few ways to work around this limitation and we’re going to show you how.

Find your landing pages

Using Google Analytics, or your preferred web analytics software, bring up a report of all the landing pages from organic search sources.

To do this in Google Analytics, bring up the Reporting screen for your site. Then, in the left-hand navigation, go to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages. The report that comes up will show all the pages people landed on for your site from all sources.

To narrow that down to just the landing pages from organic searches we’ll need to filter the data. First, add a Secondary dimension of ‘Medium’ to the report:

Second, click the ‘advanced’ link by the search box on the right to set a search filter which will include only medium dimensions containing ‘organic’:

Your homepage (i.e. “/”) will likely be at the top of the list. It’s less useful than specific topical pages for inferring keyword intent, but it can still help you discover keywords you’re ranking for.

Your interior pages should provide some more context. If you’re using keyword-rich URLS (which you should be!), you’ll be able to easily see the topic of each page.

The next step will be to download this report into a spreadsheet (like Excel or Google Sheets) so you can easily copy the URLs.

Find out where your landing pages rank

Now we’re going to take that list of URLs and go to a tool like SEMRush that keeps a massive database of search results pages. With SEMRush, we can then search for our site URLs in the database and the tool will show us the keywords that return those pages.

Take this blog post URL from the AuthorityLabs blog for example:http://authoritylabs.com/blog/how-to-use-your-visitors-favorite-keywords-throughout-your-marketing/ Search for that URL using the SEMRush search box on the homepage and then scroll down and look for the Top Organic Keywords box.

Click on the blue ‘View full report’ button.

That will bring you to a page with a list of all the keywords that blog post has shown up for, with specific ranking data for each keyword:

Based on the first two columns, position (Pos.) and volume, you can make some educated guesses about which of these keywords might actually be sending traffic to your site. Of course, higher positions and higher search volumes would be the most likely.

Rankings of 10 or higher can effectively be assumed to be sending some traffic. Lower rankings in the 11-20 range might send a little bit of traffic, especially for high volume keywords. Beyond that, the traffic potential drops significantly. On the other hand, keywords that are close to those thresholds represent low hanging fruit for your SEO efforts.

The only issue with this method is that it’s fairly time consuming and speculative. Thankfully, AuthorityLabs solved those problems by creating the Now Provided Report.

By integrating your Google Analytics account with their tool they can pull all the organic landing pages and cross-check them against their search results databases (including the SEMRush data set). They can then present all the most likely keywords driving traffic to your pages, as well as highlight your top keyword opportunities.

This is valuable data all business owners need. By having the right keywords and topics to focus on you save money because your marketing efforts are targeted correctly.

Speaking of targetting your marketing efforts, in the next email we will dive into two critical areas for many business owners. We will tell you how to find local keywords and keywords for e-commerce.

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Ongoing Research and Maintaining Your Rankings

The web is always changing. New pages are being created, and old ones removed or changed, at a pace that is hard to comprehend. In addition, search engines like Google are always adjusting their algorithms to keep up with changes on the web.

It’s not too surprising then, that the keywords your rank for, and where exactly you rank, are going to be in a state of constant flux. It is possible to maintain certain rankings long-term, but to do so generally requires some preparation.

In order to maintain good rankings for your top performing keywords you need to continue to develop content around those keywords, update and maintain your internal links within the site, and continue to draw in links from external sources.

How exactly do you do that!?!

• Draw on your collection of related keywords to create new content. In our last email about blogging we discussed motorcycle helmets. You could write multiple posts that include several keywords from your collection. Ex: “How Much Should a Motorcycle Helmet Cost?” and “How Safety Features Affect Motorcycle Helmet Prices”.
• Periodically review your site to make sure your internal links are accurate and functional. That won’t take long for small sites, but if your site is larger, you may need to use a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider (sounds scarier than it is). The SEO spider can crawl through all the content on your site and help you identify issues.
• Promote your site online and offline (getting press certainly never hurts).
• Share your content on social media, using relevant keywords, as always.

Tracking your keyword rankings and which pages are being ranked, is an important part of ongoing keyword maintenance.

One issue that you can run into as you add content to your site is that two pieces of content can step on each other’s toes. It is possible, for example, to have your ‘motorcycle helmets’ category page ranking for ‘mens motorcycle helmets’ instead of the ‘men’s motorcycle helmets’ sub category page. Of course, that’s still in the right ballpark, but ideally you want your visitors to land right on the exact products they are looking for.

Potential ways to resolve such issues:

• Update page titles to be more clear and differentiated.
• Add or remove keywords from one page or the other.
• Adjust the wording of your internal links.
• Add meta data or other clarifying information to the page (check out schema.org).

It’s likely that whatever your industry, there are going to be new buzzwords, new product types, and new language that will be used to describe your offering.

Beyond simply maintaining your existing keywords, you need to periodically return to your keyword research to make sure that you aren’t missing out on any opportunities that have come up since you last checked.

How to Track Your Keyword Rankings

AuthorityLabs allows you to track rankings in Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Most people are concerned with Google rankings, but keyword rankings are hard to track yourself because results given to users are based on several factors – location, search history, being logged in, etc.

This is where the AuthorityLabs tool can help. Users can add keywords and have the tool track their keywords by country, city and zip code. Also, users can track mobile results as well. By seeing where you rank before marketing and SEO efforts and seeing where you rank after you can determine what is working and what is not. Additionally, you can determine which rankings return an ROI via analytics.

Track, maintain, then expand.

The process of tracking and maintaining your keyword rankings by adding additional content to your site has a side benefit. Not only will you preserve your existing rankings, but you will probably start ranking for related keywords, as well as others you did not anticipate. In the next email we will explain how to find out what those new keywords are so you can target those as well.

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Keyword Research for Blog Posts

Before we start in on today’s topic, we want to make a little disclaimer. The point of blogging, or any content creation on the web, should not be to draw in search engine traffic. You are creating this content, whatever it is, for people. Keyword research and other SEO considerations are secondary to the purpose of entertaining, informing, or otherwise helping real humans.

That said, let’s talk SEO!

Depending on the type of blog post you’re writing, the focus of your research will be slightly different. For an informational post that seeks to educate and answer potential customer questions, you will be trying to figure out what kind of questions people have with regards to your products (probably things like price, quality, options, availability, alternatives, etc.). For a news-focused blog post you will be trying to discover what type of news people are most interested in. For a lifestyle focused or personal post you may want to look for popular queries within your area of experience (fashion? home remodeling? personal development?).

In any case, you are providing information to an audience. What does your audience want to know? What do they need to know? What words are they using to try to find that information?

Here’s how you figure that out:

• Start with the basics - For most products or services, the most common questions will revolve around how and where to get it, and how much it costs. Answer those questions clearly.
• Use your own analytics - It’s not uncommon to see traffic coming to your site from people searching for information related to your products even when you aren’t specifically providing it. You might see people searching for a helmet sizing chart, for example, even when you only provide some basic sizing information. That is a clear opportunity to create the resource people are looking for and capitalize on traffic you’re already getting.
• Check out your industry’s main news sources - Where do insiders in your field go for news about the industry? Chances are, there are blogs, online magazines, and other industry publications available online. What are the hot questions or customer concerns being addressed there?
• Visit forums or other online communities - Search Google for, “your topic” + “forums” should uncover a good number of online communities dedicated to your area of interest. BoardReader.com is another good option for finding active groups. Checking forum threads for questions and active topics is a great way to develop content ideas related to a niche industry.
• Look at what the competition is providing -  There are probably more than a few companies blogging or otherwise creating content in your space. An easy way to analyze their content and see what is playing well with their (potentially your) audience, is to use BuzzSumo. Just input the site you would like to research and it will show you the posts that are getting the most social media exposure:

Titles Carry Weight

You want to put your most important (relevant) keyword right in the title. A lot of people just type their question, or at least an abbreviated version of it, right into the search box. Using their question as your title is a good way to match up with those searches (and it implies to the reader that you are going to answer that question - making them more likely to click).

Returning to the motorcycle example from past emails, let’s say you sell helmets and you want to write a blog post about how much someone should expect to spend on a new one. Two good titles for that post would be:
“How Much Should I Spend on a Helmet?” OR “How Much Should a Motorcycle Helmet Cost?”

A quick check with Google Keyword Planner shows the people don’t really use the word ‘spend’ very much when searching for helmet pricing info (and more extensive research would bear this out):

Using that information as a guide, you would probably want to use the second title: “How Much Should a Motorcycle Helmet Cost?”

Of course, there’s a good chance that people are also searching for question phrases like “how much should I spend on a helmet”, but they just don’t get enough traffic in an average month to appear in Google’s tool. In this case, adding that phrase as a subhead (and using an H2 or H3 tag in the HTML of the page to highlight it) in your post would be a good way to include that keyword.

By doing this your post would address the issue of helmet prices in general, and also include advice on how much people should be looking to spend depending on the performance and safety levels they are looking for. That way all of your customer questions, and keyword bases, are covered.

Within a blog post you have a number of options, aside from the title and subheads, to work in a few keywords. Within the body of your content is probably the most obvious. But you also have things like tags (if your blogging platform supports them), and image names and alt text.

If you happen to include a link to another piece of content you’ve written within your post, linking to that page using relevant keywords is another good opportunity (just don’t go link crazy and over do it - use natural language).

As we mentioned in the last email, generating ongoing blog content like this is a great way to target new keywords. But how do you make sure you are maintaining the rankings you already have?

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Cribbing from the Competition

In our last email we explained how to assess the level of competition for your keywords. Now we're going to look a little closer at the content of your competitors' sites...

Let's start by doing a few searches for your main keywords.

Note the competitor sites that come up. Visit each one and ‘view source’ on their pages to look at the ‘keywords’ meta tag. The ‘keywords’ meta tag isn’t actually good for anything any more, but most people still include it, and the keywords there can give you an idea of what your competitors are going for.

While you’re visiting your competitor’s sites, pay attention to titles they use for blog posts and other content.

If they are paying attention to SEO and doing keyword research (which it’s possible that they aren’t), you should see relevant keywords being included in page titles, blog post headlines, sub-heads, and elsewhere in the content.

Using Spyfu

Spyfu is an SEO research tool that can be very helpful when it comes to researching the competition. Enter your own site URL and select the ‘Competitors’ tab in the ‘SEO Research’ section and it will show you a list of competitor sites related to yours.

Click over to the ‘SEO Keywords’ tab and you will find a selection of the keywords your site is ranking for:

Switch over to a competitor's domain and you can see the keywords that they are ranking for:

That report provides estimates for how much traffic those keywords get and how much they’re worth to you or your competitors.

The ‘Kombat’ tab is a great way to find keyword opportunities. It will show you keywords where at least two of your competitors are ranking, but you are not.

AuthorityLabs’ competition analysis report provides another method for assessing competitive keyword performance. Input a few of your top competitors and the system will check through the list of keywords you’re monitoring and give you a rankings breakdown like this:

This allows you to see weak spots in your own rankings, the strengths of your competitors, and keywords where a bit of SEO legwork could really put you ahead.

Once you have identified those opportunities you can start looking at ways to put those keywords to work. In our next email we will discuss one of the most common ways to do exactly that.

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How to Prioritize Keywords

In our last email we talked about finding keywords and assessing searcher intent. Now that you have a good idea of what people are searching for in your product space, it’s time to prioritize your list...

Two types of keywords that should probably be at the top of your list:

• Keywords that include your brand name and any variations
• Generic terms for your product

So, for example, targeting both “Kleenex” and “facial tissues”.

Appearing in search results for your own brand is clearly important. If people search for you, you should be the first thing they find. Showing up for your brand name alone is generally fairly simple, since modern search engines can typically tell what your brand name is from your URL and headlines on the site.

Many times people will search for some combination of “brand name + product”, or “brand + reviews”, or “brand + location” (e.g. “Nike shoes”, “Honda reviews”, “Target locations”. You will want to explore those variations in your research.

Once you have that part of your list squared away, you can take a look at the generic terms. To prioritize these, you should be examining three factors:

• Search volume
• Competition
• Intent

The holy grail of keywords are terms with high search traffic and low competition.

Search Volume & Competition

The search volume of keywords is typically reported as the average number of searches per month. Measuring competition can be a little more complicated.

You can get a good idea of both search volume and competition from the Google Keyword Planner tool. Input your keyword list, and it will spit out the average searches per month and a competition rating (high, medium, low) for each term. The search numbers are heavily rounded and should be taken with a grain of salt.

The competition rating is for paid ads, not for organic search engine rankings, but it’s still very useful. High advertiser competition for a keyword is a good indication of commercial value (advertisers wouldn’t keep paying to show up for that term if they weren’t getting a return). By the same token, high advertiser competition also tends to indicate higher SEO competition.

A quick way to assess organic ranking competition is just to do a Google search for the keyword you want to check. If the first page of results is filled with well known brands or authoritative sites (such as Amazon, Wikipedia, major news sites, or for motorcycles, brands like Harley Davidson, Honda, etc) you might be in trouble. If you don’t recognize most of the sites on the page, it’s not a sure bet, but you might have a shot.

Getting a Deeper Look at Competition

One tool you can use to dig deeper into keyword competition is the MozBar. This is a browser extension you can install on Chrome or Firefox that will add in data to the list of sites you see when you do a Google search.

The MozBar will give you Moz’s Page Authority and Domain Authority ratings, which they derive from their own assessments of Google’s rankings. These numbers may not be God’s own truth, but outranking pages with high ratings tends to be rather difficult.

Search result pages with a few high-scoring pages in the list aren’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as there’s a few low-scorers in the mix. Those are the sites that you might be able to bump off.

Intent

If you are selling a product or service, keywords with transactional intent will probably be your highest priority. However, you will also want to include other, more informational variations.

Why? Because part of the purchase process includes a general interest phase, followed by a more focused research phase, followed (hopefully) by a purchase.

Providing informational content, with the appropriate keywords, gives you the opportunity to educate customers early in the process. This builds trust, establishes your credibility, and makes it more likely that you will get the sale.

So, if you were selling motorcycle helmets you definitely want your store to show up when someone searches for “buy motorcycle helmet”, but appearing for “best helmets for cruisers” would give you the chance to educate the customer before they’re ready to make the purchase (and if you play your cards right, they might be ready to buy at the end of your explanation).

High Volume + Low Competition + Right Intent

Now you have what you need to get your keyword priorities in order. In our next email we will revisit the question of competition from a different angle. Specifically, how your competitors can help you.

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Actionable guide to SEO in 2016

The year of 2015 was relatively calm for SEOs. But no matter how peaceful the current SEO landscape looks, it doesn't mean you can lean back in your chair and relax!

Penguin and Panda are still out there, as well as the new ranking signals (like mobile friendliness or https). So, to help you catch the wind and brush up your SEO skills, our SEO specialists' team has prepared a list of recommendations SEOs should focus on right now.

Chapters:

1 Be findable

2 Master Panda survival basics

3 Learn to combat Penguin

4 Improve user experience

5 Be mobile-friendly

6 Earn social signals — the right way

7 Revise your local SEO plan

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CHAPTER 1 Be findable

The rule is simple — search engines won't rank your site unless they can find it. So, just like before, it is extremely important to make sure search engines are able to discover your site's content — and that they can do that quickly and easily. And here's how.

1. Keep a logical site structure

 Good practice

• The important pages are reachable from homepage.
• Site pages are arranged in a logical tree-like structure.
• The names of your URLs (pages, categories, etc.) reflect your site's structure.
• Internal links point to relevant pages.
• You use breadcrumbs to facilitate navigation.
• There's a search box on your site to help visitors discover useful content.
• You use rel=next and rel=prev to convert pages with infinite scrolling into paginated series.

 Bad practice

• Certain important pages can't be reached via navigational or ordinary links.
• You cram a huge number of pages into one navigation block — an endless drop-down menu or something like this.
• You try to link to each & every inner page of your site from your homepage.
• It is difficult for users to go back and forth between site pages without resorting to Back and Forward browser buttons.

An example of a logical site structure:

An example of a clean URL structure:

www.mywebsite.com/product-category-1/product-1

www.mywebsite.com/product-category-2/product-3

2. Make use of the XML sitemap & RSS feeds

The XML sitemap helps search bots discover and index content on your site. This is similar to how a tourist would discover more places in an unfamiliar city if they had a map.

RSS/Atom feeds are a great way to notify search engines about any fresh content you add to the site. In addition, RSS feeds are often used by journalists, content curators and other people interested in getting updates from particular sources.

Google says: "For optimal crawling, we recommend using both XML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds. XML sitemaps will give Google information about all of the pages on your site. RSS/Atom feeds will provide all updates on your site, helping Google to keep your content fresher in its index."

 Good practice

• Your sitemap/feed includes onlycanonical versions of URLs.
• While updating your sitemap, you update a page's modification time only ifsubstantial changes have been made to it.
• If you use multiple sitemaps, you decide to add one more sitemap only if yourcurrent sitemaps have already reached the limit of URLs (up to 50 thousand per each sitemap).
• Your RSS/Atom feed includes only recently updated items, making it easier for search engines and visitors to find your fresh content.

 Bad practice

• Your XML sitemap or feed includes the URLs search engines' robots are not allowed to index, which is specified either in your robots.txt, or in meta tags.
• Non-canonical URL duplicates are included into your sitemap or feed.
• In your sitemap, modification time is missing or is updated just to "persuade" search engines that your pages have been brought up to date, while in fact they haven't.

3. Befriend Schema markup

Schema markup is used to tag entities (people, products, events, etc.) in your pages' content. Although it does not affect your rankings, it helps search engines better interpret your content.

To put it simple, a Schema template is similar to a doorplate — if it says 'CEO Larry Page', you know whom to expect behind the door.

 Good practice

• Review the list of available Schemas and pick the Schemas to apply to your site's content.
• If it is difficult for you to edit the code on your own, you use Google's Structured Data Markup Helper.
• Test the markup using Google'sStructured Data Testing Tool.

 Bad practice

• You use Schemas to trick search engines into believing your page contains the type of info it doesn't (for example, that it's a review, while it isn't) — such behavior can cause a penalty.

4. Leverage rich answers

In 2015 we observed the growth in the number of rich answers in Google search results. There are various types of rich answers. Basically, a rich answer is a snippet that already contains a brief answer to the search query. It appears above other organic search results and thus enjoys more exposure.

Any website has a chance to be selected for the rich answers. Here are a few things you may do to increase your chances to get there:

1) Identify simple questions you might answer on your website;
2) Provide a clear direct answer;
3) Provide additional supporting information (like videos, images, charts, etc.).

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CHAPTER 2 Master Panda survival basics

"Panda" is a filter in Google's ranking algorithm that aims to sift out pages with thin, non-authentic, low-quality content. This means getting rid of thin content and duplicate content should be high up on your 2016 to-do list.

1. Improve content quality

 Good practice

• These days, it's not enough to keep your content unique in a sense that it passes the plagiarism test. You need to createreally useful, expert-level content and present it in the most engaging form possible.
• You block non-unique or unimportant pages (e.g. various policies) from indexing.

 Bad practice

• Your website relies on "scraped" content (content copied from other sites with no extra value added to it). This puts you at risk of getting hit by Panda.
• You simply "spin" somebody else's content and repost it to your site.
• Your website includes too many pages with little textual content.
• Many of your site's pages have duplicate or very similar content.
• You base your SEO strategy around anetwork of "cookie-cutter" websites(websites built quickly with a widely used template).

Keys4Seo tip tip:
Use WebSite Auditor to check your pages for duplicate content

2. Make sure you get canonicalization right

Canonicalization is a way of telling search engines which page should be treated as the "standardized" version when several URLs return virtually the same content.

The main purpose of this is to avoid internal content duplication on your site. Although not a huge offense, this makes your site look messy — like a wild forest in comparison to a neatly trimmed garden.

 Good practice

• You mark canonical pages using the rel="canonical" attribute.
• Your rel="canonical" is inserted in either the <head> section or the HTTP header.
• The canonical page is live (doesn't return a 404 status code).
• The canonical page is not restricted from indexing in robots.txt or by other means.

 Bad practice

• You've got multiple canonical URLsspecified for one page.
• You've got rel="canonical" inserted into the <body> section of the page.
• Your pages are in an infinite loop of canonical URLs (Page A points to page B, page B points to page A). In this case, search engines will be confused with your canonicalization.

Keys4Seo tip tip:
Use WebSite Auditor to check your pages for duplicate rel="canonical" code

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CHAPTER 3 Learn to combat Penguin

Google's Penguin filter aims at detecting artificial backlink patterns and penalizing sites that violate its quality guidelines in regards to backlinks. So, keeping your backlink profile look natural is another key point to focus on in 2016.

 Good practice

• Your website mostly has editorial links, earned due to others quoting, referring to or sharing your content.
• Backlink anchor texts are as diverse asreasonably possible.
• Backlinks are being acquired at amoderate pace.
• Spam, low quality backlinks are eitherremoved or disavowed.

 Bad practice

• Participating in link networks.
• Having lots of backlinks from irrelevant pages.
• Insignificant variation in link anchor texts.

Keys4Seo tip tip:
Check backlinks' relevancy with SEO SpyGlass

Keys4Seo tip tip:
Detect spammy links in your profile

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CHAPTER 4 Improve user experience

Quite a few UX-related metrics have made their way into Google's ranking algorithm over the past years (site speed, mobile-friendliness, the HTTPs protocol). Hence, striving to improve user experience can be a good way to up your search engine rankings.

1. Increase site speed

There are quite a few factors that can affect page loading speed. Statistically, the biggest mistakes site owners make that increase page load time are: using huge images, using large-volume multimedia or other heavy design elements that make the site as slow as a snail.

Use Google's PageSpeed Insights to test your site speed and to get recommendations on particular issues to fix.

Keys4Seo tip tip::
Optimize your pages' loading time with WebSite Auditor

2. Improve engagement & click-through rates

The Bing and Yahoo! alliance, as well as Yandex, have officially confirmed they consider click-through rates and user behavior in their ranking algorithms. If you are optimizing for any of these search engines, it's worth trying to improve these aspects.

While Google is mostly silent on the subject, striving for greater engagement and higher click-through rates tends to bring better rankings as well as indirect SEO results in the form of attracted links, shares, mentions, etc.

3. Consider taking your site HTTPs

In August 2014, Google announced that HTTPs usage is treated as a positive ranking signal.

Currently there is not much evidence that HTTPs-enabled sites outrank non-secure ones. The transition to HTTPS is somewhat controversial, because

a) Most pages on the Web do not involve the transfer of sensitive information;
b) If performed incorrectly, the transition from HTTP to HTTPS may harm your rankings;
c) Most of your site's visitors do not know what HTTP is, so transferring to HTTPS is unlikely to give any conversion boost.

4. Get prepared for HTTP/2

HTTP/2 is a new network protocol that should replace the outdated HTTP/1.1. HTTP/2 is substantially faster than its predecessor. In terms of SEO, you would probably be able to gain some ranking boost due to the improved website speed.

On November 06, 2015 John Mueller announced in a G+ hangout that Google Bot will soon be able to crawl HTTP/2 websites. At the time of writing, about 70% of web browsers support HTTP/2. You can keep track of HTTP/2 support by browsers on "Can I Use".

HTTP/2 is likely to become a "must" soon. Thus, keep an eye on the issue and be ready to implement this feature when required.

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CHAPTER 5 Be mobile-friendly

The number of mobile searches may soon exceed the number of desktop searches. With this in mind, search engines in general and Google in particular love mobile-friendly websites.

Mobile-friendliness has become a minor ranking factor for the mobile SERPs. You can test if your website is mobile-friendly using Google's Mobile-Friendly Test.

On October 07, 2015 Google introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP). As the name implies it aims to provide a more streamlined experience for mobile users. The technology consists of three elements: special HTML markup, AMP JavaScript, and a content distribution layer (the latter is optional). The AMP search is currently available only on mobile devices. You may give it a try at g.co/ampdemo.

 Good practice

• Your page's content can be read on a mobile device without zooming.
• You've got easy-to-tap navigation and links on your website.

 Bad practice

• You are using non-mobile-friendly technologies like Flash on your webpages.

Keys4Seo tip tip:
Use mobile-friendly test in WebSite Auditor

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CHAPTER 6 Earn social signals — the right way

Search engines favor websites with a strong social presence. Your Google+ posts can make it to your Google connections' organic search results, which is a great opportunity to drive extra traffic. Although the likely effect of Twitter or Facebook links on SEO hasn't been confirmed, Google said it treats social posts (that are open for indexing) just like any other webpages, so the hint here is clear.

 Good practice

• You attract social links and shares withviral content.
• You make it easy to share your content: make sure your pages have social buttons, check which image/message is automatically assigned to the post people share.

 Bad practice

• You are wasting your time and money onpurchasing 'Likes', 'Shares' and other sorts of social signals. Both social networks and search engines are able to detect accounts and account networks created for trading social signals.

Keys4Seo tip tip:
See your site's social signals in SEO PowerSuite

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CHAPTER 7 Revise your local SEO plan

In August 2015, Google reduced the number of results in the local pack from 7 to 3 and removed addresses and phone numbers. The search engine made it harder for SEOs to get to the local pack; however, a new map view has been added with up to 20 spots for the search results.

What has changed is that local rankings are now more dependent on the IP address of the user. You can read more on how to adjust your local SEO strategy to the new Google's update in this guide.

Keys4Seo tip tip:
Check website authority in SEO PowerSuite

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What's coming in SEO in 2016?

Here are the main SEO trends for 2016, as predicted by our in-house SEO team:

SEO remains part of multi-channel marketing
Customers can find your business through social, paid search, offline ads, etc. Organic search is an integral part of a complex path to conversion. Just be aware of these other channels and get savvy in additional spheres, if necessary.

Google now gets searcher intent & context
The keyword is no longer the gravity center of a ranking. Google now also looks at synonyms, your niche connections, location, etc. to see if you fit the bill (=query). The good news is that you don't need to get too hung up on specific keywords to prove you're relevant to a query.

The end of search monopoly might be near
According to comScore in 2015, both Yahoo! and Bing continued to steadily increase their search market share.

No quick results, no easy SEO
With its latest iterations of Panda & Penguin and the penalties Google dished out to link networks, the search engine widened its net for spam — and became even better at detecting sites with unengaging content or unnatural link patters.

Traffic stays on Google increasingly
Google has definitely stepped up its effort to provide immediate answers to people's searches. And, with the increasing number of rich answers, this tendency for stealing traffic from publishers will likely increase.

Paid search expansion
A few years ago, Google changed Google Shopping's organic model to pay-per-click. It is possible that Google will make yet another organic vertical paid. Local Search is the best candidate for the change, since Local Search results are dominated by businesses selling a product or a service, and this vertical is innately commercial.

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