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SEMRush is the #1 keyword research tool that allows users to compete and win over cooperators. It is an essential SEO tool for bloggers and content creators. Today. I will participate in this SEMRush review; I will tell you how SEMRush made search engine marketing more accessible than ever and even better. After reading this, you will conquer Google search result.

As a content writer and SEO project manager, I have tasted many SEO tools. Moreover, finally, I found the best one tool I needed to rank top on Google, Bing and other search engines. Google webmaster tool might help you a little for keyword research and learn about your site's data. However, that is not enough to dominate to SEM world. There is always a reason for some tools are free, and some are paid or premium. I bet, it is worth paying money for using SEMRush tool. However, you can start using 30-day free premium via this link.

SEMrush Review

SEMrush is an excellent SEO optimization platform with robust tooling across keyword research,  domain monitoring, and crawling. It is the perfect tool, and genuinely innovative features like SEO Ideas can give your business a severe edge.

I am going to show you some things that have been helping me become more productive in keyword research and SEO. For a backlink tool yes, Ahrefs, is the best but you must have SEMrush to dominate Google search! Doing any keyword research, competitor research, keyword volume lookup, I have found SEMrush to be much more reliable.

 Try SEMrush 

1. SEMrush Is Fast

The very first thing I love and appreciate about SEMrush, especially compared to Ahrefs, is that it is always fast! This is my biggest complaint with Ahrefs. If I have to go to another tab and work while waiting for results, well… you pretty much lost my business. I am a pretty good multitasker, but I should not have to switch tabs when doing keyword research. SEMrush is just plain fast.

2. Lookup Current Rankings of Posts

When I go to optimize a post that maybe I have not ever optimized on a site before, the very first thing I do is look up the current keyword rankings. If something is working, you do not want to break it. As they say, if it ain’t broken don’t fix it. If something is already right at the top of page 2 with good search volume, then I simply know I need to focus more on that. In this example, let's take the post I wrote about our “die peacefully.” So I want to see what it is currently ranking for so I under the “Domain Analytics” and “Organic Research” section I paste the URL of the post and hit “Search.”



It then spits out all the keywords that I am ranking for and their search volumes. As you can see some keywords are not relevant because all I tried to help, people to prevent suicide. I never focused on such keywords, but I think I should work on its keywords because it is already getting a good ranking and traffic through search engines.

 Try SEMrush 

While it is not a lot of search volume, you can also see that keyword difficulty scores (in the 69s) are a medium for SEMrush, meaning over time I should be able to dominate them easily.

Improve Upon What is Already Working

So after seeing that information, what do I do next? I just need to improve upon what is already ranking and working. Here are some general guidelines I use to optimize a current post.

• Update title to ensure it reflects the main keyword I want to focus on.
• Update a couple of alt tags on images in the post with the keyword or secondary keyword.
• Update the meta to ensure it includes the main keyword. While the meta does not increase your SERP rankings, it does affect your CTR. Moreover, remember, Google highlights search terms in bold!
• If you have an ugly slug, redirect it (301) to a new shorter one, preferably the slug should match your main focus keyword.
• Make sure the post has at least one link to an external site with high domain authority.
• Add more content. This is usually almost always applicable. It is also an excellent way to ensure you have better keyword density. Moreover, yes, in 2016 keyword density should still be looked at. Don’t spam your keyword.
• Make sure the post has a couple of interlinks.
• Re-share on social.
• Re-crawl with Google to ensure faster indexing/updates in SERPs.

So as you can see, knowing the current rankings of your post is very important. Without using a tool like SEMrush, I would have never identified this information above. Moreover, I could have destroyed some of the current rankings and lost traffic. So when you need to optimize an old post, be smart about it!

3. Grab Keyword Ideas

Now let's say I am writing a brand new post. Maybe about “blogging for money” So I have a few keywords in mind, but I do not know what has the highest search volume or the variations I should be using. So this is where SEMrush’s new SEO Keyword Magic tool comes into play. This is still in beta, but I am so glad they added this. I use it every day.

So in the SEO keyword magic tool, I input “blogging for money, ” and you can see it returns that keyword along with all the variations around it. It also gives the keyword search volume and the keyword difficulty estimation. Now anything in the high 70s is going to be pretty hard to rank for without some work. Especially if you are publishing it on a newer website. This is where domain authority comes into play. Soon a brand new site I would probably skip this topic or go at it from a different angle. However, without using a tool like SEMrush, you would have never known this.

Don’t waste time writing on a topic you might never rank for! It would be better to dig through to lower search volume results and aim for a keyword with lower keyword difficulty. Things add up over time, so writing for things with lower search volume is not necessarily always a bad thing if you push out much content and are consistently ranking high in SERPs.

4. Lookup Exact Keyword Search Volumes

The other day I wrote about Google’s horrible decision to change their keyword planner data to use close variation keywords. This means a lot of keyword data is now grouped, which makes it harder to do keyword research. Keyword tool.Io, LongTailPro, and pretty much any tool that uses the Google API. The current solution though? Well, because SEMrush grabs their keyword search volume from a couple of different sources, including approximations from their database, SEMrush does not have this problem. Note: KWFinder also doesn’t have this problem. If you are looking for a cheaper keyword research tool, definitely a great one. I use both KWFinder and SEMrush for everything that I do.

Let me show you a comparison below. So first I look up the following keywords in Google keyword planner and here are the results. As you can see below they all match. Well, this is not helpful at all!

cdn: 27,000 searches
content delivery network: 27,000 searches
content distribution network: 27,000 searches

Сontent plan for a month in 10 minutes: possible or not?
We all are suffering from the creative crisis from time to time, especially while creating a content plan at the beginning of the month. It’s a common problem of every person who is involved in the process of writing. Let’s try to withstand it.

In this post, I’ll show one method which helps me to automate the creating of a content plan. Okay, it may take you a bit more than 10 minutes, but I can guarantee that you’ll find dozens of ideas.

Where we usually find it 

It’s not that difficult to come up with 10 random topics. It’s much more difficult if you remember that the article should always be relevant to reader’s interest and need. Only this way you’ll get traffic, likes, and shares.

So how to find such topics? I think the most logical way is to find what questions people ask at Google, but there are other ways as well. I’ll describe the most common ways and sources to do that.
Forums

Check the forums and find questions people ask right now. Pay attention to the questions that haven’t been answered fully so far. Be the one who saves people from this pernicious ignorance.

I use Google operators to find such forums. For example: yourkeyword inurl:forum




Check all your queries with this method and follow the discussions. Also, after publishing the post, you can get back to this forums and leave a link to your article there.

Even simpler way is to find lists of the best forums. There are a lot of such lists like this.

Question-and-answer sites 

Use resources like Quora, Reddit, etc. You can sort the results by type and time.



The method is the same: find interesting questions, check the answers and choose few of these ideas to cover in your future posts. 

Competitors

Go and find some inspiration on competitors’ blogs. You shouldn’t rewrite their posts, just pick up some ideas from the most popular posts and write your own opinion on it.

For instance, if your competitor has a post on how to carry out the link building issues, write that content marketing is much better and show how to do it.

Also, you can check most popular articles in your niche using tools like BuzzSumo.


You can type your keyword and filter your results by date. You’ll get the list of most shareable articles so that you can assume what people would like to read.
Also, here are a few useful tips to write better.

Some other hacks

• Take a look at the discussions in the topical social media communities;
• Read the comments under the articles in your niche and get out the readers’ problems from there;
• Type your keywords into the Google search box and check related queries suggested by Google;
• Ask friends and experts in your niche and find out what they would like to read;
• Track Google Alerts and Google Trends;
• Ask your readers through some questionnaires.

Automate the creation of a content plan

All these ways I’ve described are efficient and useful, but imagine how much time it takes. It’s obvious that content marketers are trying to automate this process.

For this purpose, I use Serpstat — an all-in-one SEO tool. It consists of 5 features, one of them is a keyword research. The most interesting section here is Search Questions.

This feature performs people’s queries in forms of questions. It’s taken from Google, Amazon, and YouTube in real time. Serpstat arranges them in groups by the question word. Let’s try it.

In action

Imagine that you’re running some beauty blog and you lack the ideas. First of all, create a list of your main keywords. For example — makeup, manicure, hair styling, hair care, skin care advice, etc.

Open Serpstat, type your keyword into the search box and choose the database. Serpstat has 17 regional databases, including UK, US, Canada, and Germany. Tew days back it launched the French base.

Then go to Keyword research > Content Marketing > Search Questions.



Here you see the most popular words which are related to the query, and graph of question words.

And here is the best part — a huge list of questions that real people are searching for in the search engines.



What is it? It’s a list of topics for your articles. Now you have to do some work manually. Filter this list, choose the ones that fit your blog and create a plan. Mine looks like this:



You can find some useless or completely stupid questions but you should think wider. Even these questions can be used for the article. For instance, ‘the most strange users’ questions about SEO of this month’.

Conclusions

There are a lot of ways to find users questions, but it takes a lot of time.

With the help of SEO tools, you can get hundreds of questions from the real users in a few minutes. Answer it in your posts, and next time Google will return your article for this queries.

Share your own hacks on how to handle content plan issues faster in the comments below!

About the author:
Anna Rud is a Content Marketer at Serpstat. Developing rich and quality content and implementing brand strategy are her key responsibilities.
https://twitter.com/anathewriter

A blog with an awesome looking web architecture can significantly affect your SEO rankings and thus, influence your business. A blog is a reasonable approach to actualize, and its arrival on venture or ROI is frequently gigantic. The blog writing is an incredible method to assemble thoughts regarding the themes that individuals might most want to peruse about, which will help your blog grow. It just expects you to be dynamic on it a few hours or a week or month.

Blogging is a vital piece of the SEO and now it ought to be considered as a primary segment of your marketing strategy. To keep your reader intrigued, you should consider writing your content in a particular way.

Here some tips to follow for great blog writing.

1. Your blog is the perfect tool to communicate with your clients:

Try not to attempt to oversell or advance too hard on this stage. In a perfect world, this ought to be utilized to feature a point or some current news. Something else, something that is critical to your business that you figure your customers may discover intriguing.

2. Have Fun When Writing Blog:

Make yourself OK with the blog and appreciate writing the blog so you can get a great and compelling blog as a final product.

3. Maintain a Constant Interest:

When you begin writing a blog, you are extremely eager about it, and after some time, you will lose intrigue, which will serve no profit by any stretch of the imagination. Endeavor to keep up consistent vitality and intrigue, and you will be remunerated.

4. Write Effective Blog Titles:

Website page and blog titles are vital, keep titles necessary and endeavor to coordinate them against what you figure clients will be looking or seeking. A title is the thing that the web indexes read so knowing this ahead of time will be advantageous for you.

5. Write Informative Blog

Continuously blog identified with your business specifically or by implication and furthermore ensure that the blog gives helpful data to the readers.

6. Keep Blog Short and Snappy:

Ensure your blog has at least 450 words. Google like long articles, if your story is too long, then it may frighten off clients. Point of confinement the use of catchphrases to 1-2 %, as Google may crush the locales which are watchword stuffed.

7. Give Hyperlinks

A fruitful and instructive blog will provide movement to your site. A quick thought is to create links between blog articles to support your SEO rankings. A few articles may have comparable data, so it is an incredible plan to interface between these sorts of articles.

8. Avoid Negative Reviews:

Maintain a strategic distance from visitors leave comments, yet if you can't stop them doing as such, at that point make sure to screen and address any spam or noxious blog comments.

9. Increase Guest Blogging:

Guest blogging is an excellent way to improve blog authority and grow an audience. Publishing other writers article can bring you more social share. Also, it gives your blog more link juice which is very useful for SEO.

Also read: 5 Tips on How to Increase Website Traffic Through Google
Top SEO Trends: What is Search Engine Optimization And How it Works in 2017
5 Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate and Increase Your Conversions

10. Update Your Blog Frequently:

Once your blog is live, think to include recordings and more substance after some time. Keep it developing, refreshing and continually invigorating. By ceaselessly putting new material live, you will after some time, turn into an expert in your field and begin to overwhelm your industry on the web.

These are the 10 hints to take after while writing a blog and increment your website's permeability in web indexes.

Getting your content into Google News is a powerful means to increase viewership and build authority for your brand. But transforming your marketing department into a newsroom can be challenging without the proper processes and resources. It requires daily publishing of compelling, relevant news content that adds value to the lives of those you’re trying to reach.

Every day, I receive a slew of Google Alerts in my inbox. These alerts show the latest headlines for keywords related to the topics that I write about. The same blogs appear over and over again in these alerts, which means that they are probably getting a ton of traffic from people who subscribe to their keywords.

So I set out to find how you can submit your blog to Google Alerts/Google News and receive massive amounts of traffic. While the process is easy, your chances of getting in are slim. Here’s why …

Google has strict criteria for what is and isn’t news. Your content must be objective news – no “how to” articles, advice columns or sales pitches. If Google thinks that your site is primarily used to sell products or services, they won’t accept your blog for inclusion in Google News. For a complete list of Google’s criteria and to submit your blog to Google News, click here.

If you don’t meet Google’s criteria but don’t want to remove your advertising from your blog, there are other ways to get noticed by Google. Here are some ideas:

1. Submit articles to blogs that are picked up by Google News.

While an article posted on your blog may not get noticed by Google News, the same article published on a blog that is regularly featured on Google News has entirely different odds. Subscribe to Google Alerts for keywords that you want to be picked up for, and see which blogs appear on a regular basis. Then, you can determine if you want to form relationships with any of these blogs and submit guest posts to them.

2. Publish press releases to major newswires.

If the bulk of your website’s content is ineligible for inclusion in Google Alerts, you can post a press release when you have something that Google may consider newsworthy. Using one of the major newswire services can increase the odds that your press release gets picked up by Google.

3. Follow SEO best practices.

Instead of trying to get picked up by Google News, you can focus on improving your content’s SEO to bring more targeted visitors to your website. Taking the slow and steady approach may seem frustrating at first, but it will give you better results in the long run. For some SEO tips, see “How to Create Google-Friendly Content that Increases Your Conversions.”

Whether you’re trying to get picked up by Google News or want to improve your regular SEO, the quality of your content is essential. In 2012, Google implemented some changes to give high-quality content better rankings. So, the more your target audience finds your content useful, the more Google will reward you.

Getting your content into Google News is a powerful means to increase viewership and build authority for your brand. But transforming your marketing department into a newsroom can be challenging without the proper processes and resources. It requires daily publishing of compelling, relevant news content that adds value to the lives of those you’re trying to reach.

What about you? Have you ever tried submitting content for inclusion on Google News? Do you feel that Google News coverage is essential for your business? Feel free to share your comments below.

What is the Alexa ranking and how can I improve it? Alexa measures a website's popularity and builds a ranking by calculating many web factors including organic search, social share, unique visitor, bounce rate, and users behavior.

Founded in 1996, Alexa Internet Inc. is a daughter company of Amazon.com. The company has developed a service that stores the surfing habits of users who have installed an Alexa toolbar. The Alexa rank should then reflect the overall performance of a web presence. Websites with good traffic and regularly updated content will generally also have a good Alexa ranking. Added to this there are also other factors that have an influence directly and indirectly on an Alexa ranking. Some examples of these include the niche, which the website serves, as well as the keywords used in the texts.

Alexa ranking – what is it?

An Alexa ranking, in short, is a representative metric. It grades the performance of your website in comparison to the million most popular websites online. If it is the case that, up until now, you have not taken any conscious steps to increase your ranking, then you undoubtedly still have room to optimize the value and visibility of your web presence.

Ultimately it is both worthwhile and prestigious to improve your Alexa ranking. Given that the ranking list is made publicly viewable, it means that potential advertisers, investors, and business partners can go about researching Alex rankings. Rating the attractiveness of a web presence is often based on its Alexa ranking, meaning that a better placing in the list can be translated into financial gain.

What does the term Alexa Traffic Rank actually stand for?

Your Alexa Traffic Rank is an estimation, which indicates how often your website is visited in comparison to other sites. This means that your web page’s ranking is not only decided by traffic on the page, but also by fluctuations in data traffic on other websites. This means that a ranking is actually a rating that is relative. This also means that if it is the case that you are in a very competitive sector and you wish to assert yourself, then you will require a lot of traffic to achieve a high ranking. If your web presence is in more of a niche sector, then less traffic will be sufficient for boosting your Alexa ranking.

How does Alexa get its data?

Alexa collects data from millions of internet users across the globe. For someone to communicate their data, they must have the Alexa toolbar installed in their browser. Based on the figures from these samples, Alexa then estimates the number of visitors to every page on the internet. The term Alexa ranking then refers to a website’s ranking on this list of the one million most visited domains.

This involves a complex calculation, which also considers sources of error like spam-related traffic and excludes it. Alexa places a high value on the fact that it only includes representative data in its calculations. All data traffic caused by boat-based activities and non-human users is at this moment filtered out.

Alexa estimates the average amount of daily visitors and page views for every website within the last three months. The website which achieves the highest value, a combination of individual (unique) visitors and page views, will be in first place. It should be noted that, in this context, multiple queries by one user on one URL on the same day will count as a page view. The site with the least amount of activity will then occupy the last place. If it so happens that over the last three months a web page has not registered any visitors, then it is entirely removed from the ranking list.

The Alexa Toolbar

Alexa delivers the ranking based on data that is generated from the users of the Alexa Toolbar. Based on these statistics, Alexa then calculates the statistics for every domain. According to Alexa, the data from popular domains are more accurate than those from less popular web pages. The reason for this is that the less frequent visits to the sites lower down the rankings, the less representative data can be collected.

Of course, it is up to every user whether they want to install the Alexa Toolbar. You can also undoubtedly question whether the average Toolbar user is an accurate representation of the average internet user. And we must also bear in mind that the Alexa Ranking is not the be-all and end-all. There are also other possibilities of analyzing your ranking, e.g., with the help of Google Assistant, Protonet Zoe or Lenovo Smart Assistant). But there is no doubting that, as a tool for monitoring trends, Alexa is instrumental. Given that the data is public, you can, for example, use the Alexa rankings to keep an eye on your competitors.

What influence does the number of visitors to a website have on the Alexa ranking?

The Alexa rankings list is very long. However, the best places take up a significant portion of the traffic for themselves. The high density of places around the middle of the table means that a quick rise through the rankings is possible through an increase in visitor numbers. The closer you get to the top of the ranking list, the more complicated it gets to improve your ranking.

Also read: 7 Easy & Effective Ways to Improve Your Alexa Rankings
10 Tips to Improve Your Alexa Ranking [Infographic]

Why is the Alexa Rank important?

Above all, a higher Alexa rank can be very relevant for commercial websites. More visitors bring about more data, which in turn makes it easier to predict the behavior of future visitors. This means it is simpler to assess more accurately what influences the purchases decision of potential customers.

Very often a higher Alexa rank is a recognized indicator for a frequently visited site. There are publicly viewable lists and directories that evaluate website based on their Alexa ranking. Appearing at the top of or towards the top of these lists is advantageous, as it can attract the attention of more visitors as well as potential collaborators. Furthermore, it also makes your website more appealing to advertisers. An attractive web presence can undoubtedly fund itself through the sale of advertising spaces.

If it is the case that you have blog elements integrated on your site, then the Alexa Rank will be of particular importance to you. A higher ranking increases the number of your backlinks, given that many bloggers compile lists of the best websites based on Alexa rankings.

Alexa rankings also allow you to recognize how useful your content has been over a longer time. Given that the figures in the rankings list refer to the previous three months, you can maintain a better overview about the long-term effect of your published content. This then makes it easier for you to undertake the corresponding optimizations.

To get an Alexa rank that is precise, you can have Alexa certify the metrics of your website. Data from domains with certified metrics are measured directly by Alexa, meaning that your page’s ranking is based on a solid foundation, as opposed to it being just roughly estimated. On top of this, you will also be granted access to a user interface, which makes it possible to have more accurate insight into the traffic data. This certificate ensures a more exact positioning but does not necessarily improve your ranking.

How do I increase my Alexa ranking?

Many website operators frequently ask themselves how they can improve their Alexa ranking on a sustained basis. There are several optimization options; although some of these are more effective than others. Below we explain step by step what measure you can take to improve the Alexa rank of your page.

Create unique content

The priority needs to be to produce valuable and original content that is regularly updated. Having unique content gives you a much better chance of acquiring a loyal following. If your readers find the content of your website to be valuable and informative, they are much more likely to come back and engage with the site in the form of comments and shares.

It is good content that is mostly shared on social networks, which in turn has a positive effect on link building. This way, the number of new visitors will grow long-term, along with your regular readers or customers. Furthermore, search engines like Google reward high-quality content, which means that your web page is more likely to be found in search results. Along with this, users’ average retention time (the time spent on the page) will be increased. This will not just affect your position in the search results, but also your Alexa ranking. In short: unique content will help to increase the amount of traffic to your site.

Also read: 10 Ways To Increase Alexa Ranking Of Your Blog
How to Increase Alexa Rank in Just one Month

Make sure to have a good link structure

Link optimization is an integral part of a successful online marketing strategy. This applies to both external as well as internal linking.

It is important that you make sure that thematically related pages on your website are linked. These sort of links are known as external links or backlinks, and they are the measures needed for link building. They help search engines to explicitly assign an area or sector to each website. Above all, sharp and detailed links ensure that your web page gains credibility. Naturally, for this all to happen you need a solid fundamental groundwork made up of unique and original content.

The same also applies to the internal link structure, with which you can also improve your Alexa ranking. This is why you should integrate links into your texts that lead from one subpage to another. Internal links can be beneficial to visitors to your site as they make navigation much easier. They even mean that the search engine crawlers can orientate themselves better. Well placed internal links can have a positive effect on user retention time and therefore on the ranking.

Both external and internal links help search engines to better understand and analyze the content of your website. These calculations then assist in determining how suitable your content is to the search query made by a user. The links should be spread out reasonably and, above all, should also be organic. An excessive amount of links can reduce the credibility and/or legibility of your website. This is also recognized by search engines, meaning that you will come off badly in the search results.

Find relevant Keywords

An essential component of every successful website are texts with the right keywords. Find out which keywords are used by websites that are thematically similar to yours. A keyword research can allow you to better comprehend what your target audience is searching for and how they are searching for it. However, remember also to use keywords that are not so much sought after. You should look for relevant keywords that correlate well with your content. You can also find out more about keyword research in our digital guide.

Analyze the marketing strategy of your competition

When it comes to analyzing competitors, the idea is to place your website in a larger context. This will allow you to find out what works best and will allow you to gain a better understanding of which strategies could be necessary to your success. Above all, it is crucial that you identify what it is that makes you different from the competition. Once you know this, you can then begin to adjust your website in a way that is fitting. Ideally, you will then be offering visitors and/or customers that, which is not provided by the websites of your competitors.

Step by step, then, you should be able to find out which strategy you should follow to be able to identify and anticipate market trends. Thanks to these newly acquired perspectives, it should then be much easier to rethink your overall strategy. You will be in the position to make future orientated decisions and positively influence your position in the market.

Utilize the SEO tools from Alexa

There are countless tools out there that can help with the implementation of SEO measures. Alexa themselves offer a fee-based marketing package (‘Marketing Stack’), which contains tools for keyword research, comparing competitors, as well as web analytics. As a user of this package, you will also receive specific instructions on how to improve the likes of search engine rankings, usability, performance, backlinks, and more.  

With the keyword difficulty tool, you can find out which keywords have not yet been overly used by your competitors, and with which of these you can then rank. You will gain an insight into the top 10 websites with the most traffic for a particular keyword. Thanks to the handy saving function you can also keep the most relevant keywords for future use.

The competitive intelligence tools allow you to compare websites to recognize trends and identify potential high flyers early. You can find out how much traffic other sites in your industry are generating, as well as what campaigns have been successful. In the extended version, you then also get an insight into the monthly statistics for unique visitors across various websites. The additional features of the competitive intelligence tools also include measurements for time on site, bounce rate, and page views per visitor.

The SEO audit tool allows you to maintain a quick view of your current SEO status. Technical problems, which can undo all your SEO work, can sometimes remain undetected. The SEO audit tool delivers regular reports to help guarantee your SEO status. By designing an individual step for step action plan, this tool can help you to execute the best practices.

Install the Alexa toolbar and the Alexa widget 

The Alexa toolbar provides interesting statistics about visited websites as well as conclusions relating to visitor numbers both nationally and internationally. As has already been mentioned, these surveys stem from estimates that are based on the data from users that have the toolbar installed. One advantage of the toolbar is that it shows links to other sites that are thematically related. This means that you can quickly inform yourself on an individual theme from a variety of sources, without having to spend a lot of time searching for them.

Many users are reluctant to install the toolbar, given that Alexa collects extensive data on a user’s surfing habits. Anyone who places particular value on their privacy is therefore highly unlikely to start using the tool in the first place. However, on its website, Alexa promises not to use the collected data to identify individual users. But in some cases, it cannot be entirely ruled out that that data will not be personally identifiable.

The Alexa widget makes your Alexa ranking directly visible on your WordPress blog. Similar to a social share count, the widget indicates that your website is attractive (if the visitor numbers are high). The widget can also be a visible and active signal for your visitors and potential cooperation partners. Since 2016 however, Alexa widgets cannot be implemented on standard websites. This means that it is now only of interest to WordPress bloggers.

Optimize your website for Facebook sharing 

Due to its enormous reach, Facebook is one of the most important social media platforms. A lot of Facebook traffic will mean a significant boost for your domain. If your content spreads virally, then you have the chance to attract thousands of visitors at no extra charge. Add a social media plugin to your website or manually integrate the Facebook share button if you are not using CMS. Set up your own Facebook page (or adjust it accordingly) and then share your content in the world’s biggest social network. This should provide an increase in both traffic to your website and your Alexa rank.

After you have optimized your Facebook profile, you can concentrate on your new target audience. To make a big leap forward in the rankings, you should create content that will be shared a lot throughout social media. Potentially viral content, e.g., videos, infographics, interesting stories, images, articles to current affairs and themes, should ideally be shared organically amongst your followers.

Alexa Rank vs. Google PageRank 

For years now Google, in its toolbar, has also been offering website operators a PageRank display, with which the relevance of web presences can be evaluated. Following on from the evolution of the Google search algorithm, the significance of PageRank for positioning among the SERPs has noticeably declined. For this reason, the search engine giant decided to do away with public PageRank on 18 April 2016. However internal PageRank data is still available as part of Google Rankings.

Google PageRank goes back to 1997 with the algorithm developed by Larry Page, and Sergei Brin began rating the relevance of a website solely based on backlinks. The major downside of this was that a well-linked website could have a high PageRank, even if it offered no relevant content, or generated comparatively little traffic.

What this then meant is that PageRank did not necessarily reflect the value of a particular website for a user. This left website operators with a significant amount of potential for manipulation to help them achieve a better rank for their domain, and make it quite quickly as well. These days, when it comes to rating a website, the Google algorithm draws on over 200 ranking factors, one of which is PageRank.

Whereas with Google PageRank it is backlinks that are at the forefront, a high Alexa ranking is usually associated with a significant amount of traffic. But it must be noted that this says nothing regarding the quality of this traffic. Bear in mind also that placement in the Alexa rankings should be taken with a pinch of salt. Even a website registering comparably low amounts of visitors can still have quite a respectable Alexa ranking. It will always depend on the particular niche that the site serves. If it is the case that the site is helping quite a small group, then between 200 and 400 visitors daily should be enough to secure a decent Alexa ranking.

Is the Alexa ranking actually relevant?

Appearing high up in the Alexa rankings is particularly attractive to professional website operators. The toolbar is in itself quite a handy tool to assess your site; given that the Alexa rankings make it possible to roughly identify how much traffic your website is generating, compared to other pages.

But remember that the often inaccurate estimates cannot always be taken at face value. In this sense, Alexa is the most suitable as a general yardstick for predicting possible trends. This is also backed up by the fact that the Alexa ranking is always based on the previous three months.

Anchor Text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. In modern browsers, it is often blue and underlined, such as this link to the OLB homepage. SEO-friendly anchor text is succinct and relevant to the target page (i.e., the page it's linking to).

Why should we use anchor text?

Anchor text – the visibly hyperlinked text on a web page – helps to enhance the relevance of the page to which it links. Search engines give substantial weight to anchor text, and therefore the words that you choose to link can make a big difference to the ranking of your site. It’s a good idea to use a keyword tool to help choose the most relevant words to use as your anchor text, to get a sense of what your target users are searching for and how often.

The Google command ‘allinanchor:keyword’ shows only the pages where your keyword is contained in anchor text. For example, searching ‘allinanchor: best restaurants London’ will return only the pages where the anchor text contains the words ‘best,’ ‘restaurants’ and ‘London.' This indicates that Google’s algorithm separately indexes anchor text, confirming that Google uses anchor text to help decide a page’s relevance.

Internal linking and on-page content

When linking to internal pages of your site, don’t fall into the trap of hyperlinking unrelated or unhelpful anchor text, for example linking to ‘here‘ or ‘click here.' Linking instead to popular keywords helps your pages to be indexed for relevant results and therefore improves your search engine performance.

Types of anchor text

Exact-match
Anchor text is "exact match" if it includes a keyword that mirrors the page that is being linked to. For example: 'link building' linking to a page about link building.

Partial-match
Anchor text that includes a variation of the keyword on the linked-to page. For example: 'link building strategies' linking to a page about link building.

Branded
A brand name used as anchor text. For example: 'OLB' linking to an article on the Moz Blog.

Naked link
A URL that is used as an anchor 'www.onlinelivingblog.com' is a naked link anchor.

Generic
A generic word or phrase that is used as the anchor. "Click here" is a common generic anchor.

Images
Whenever an image is linked, Google will use the text contained in the image's alt attribute as the anchor text.

External linking and off-page content

Your site can gain relevance and improve its ranking for particular keywords by making use of external websites. This can be done using anchor text links in off-page content such as blog posts, articles or infographics.

The key point to remember here is that the anchor text needs to look as natural as possible, both for the sake of your target audience and for Google’s algorithms. It’s also important to make sure that the words that you use for your anchor text are varied and that the destination URLs point to different pages of your site (as opposed to simply the homepage), building authority for each one.

Examples of beneficial anchor text

Useful and varied anchor text for a camping website would be something along the lines of the following:

“Camping equipment,” “Equipment for camping trips,” “Tents and other camping equipment,” “Cheap camping gear” and “Camping gear.”

Search engines understand synonyms and therefore using ‘camping gear’ will return the same results as using ‘camping equipment,' at the same time as building varied authority for both. Since the Penguin update, the variation has become a vital part of successful anchor text optimization.

Anchor text keyword density

With the Penguin algorithm update, Google began to look more closely at keywords in anchor text. If too many of a site's inbound links contain the exact same anchor text, it can start to appear suspicious and may be a sign that the links weren't acquired naturally. In general, it's still a best practice to obtain and use keyword- and topic-specific anchor text when possible. However, SEOs may get better results by striving for a variety of more natural anchor text phrases rather than the same keyword each time.


Along those lines, one important note: Don't overdo it with keyword-heavy internal links. Internal linking is certainly a recommended best practice, but be careful with the anchor text you use to link your own pages together. If too many links to a page all use the same anchor text, even if they're on your own site, Google might sense spammy behavior.

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You never know what to expect launching a new e-commerce project. The most common and efficient way to take stock of the situation and minimize the risks is to pay attention to your competitors. 

In this article, I’ll share some tips on how to take advantage of your competitors learning the sources of their traffic and analyzing their achievements.

Why is this necessary?

In fact, a good SEO specialist will never start promotion without exploring the niche. It’s necessary to:

1. learn the whole subject, the competition within the niche, choose the channels of promotion;
2. identify leaders and outsiders in the niche;
3. compare the structure and usability of competing sites;
4. adopt successful strategies for your project;
5. assess their mistakes and weak spots to prevent them in your strategy;

How to make a detailed analysis of competitors?

So, how to gather all the information about competitors from scratch? 
For this purpose, I’ll use multifunctional SEO-platform Serpstat and analytical platform SimilarWeb or its plugin for Chrome.

I’ll describe every step of the process using an example. Let’s imagine that we’re running an online store selling drones.

Step #1 Analyze the volume and competitiveness of the subject 

Serpstat offers two ways for competitor analysis:

• by keywords
• by domain

The second way is useful when you are already promoting, but want to get the maximum traffic and collect all the missing keywords for your project. 

The first way is suitable for exploring the niche. Since we’re considering competitor analysis before launching, I’ll use keyword research module at Serpstat. 

On the main page, enter the keyword "drone" into the line, choose the search engine and run the analysis.

Here is what you’ll see: 

Image: imgur.com


Analyzing the overview, pay attention to the search volume to find out if there is a demand for your product. As we can see - it’s 550 000 for drones. It’s a promising result. 
Also, check the commercial queries like “buy drone,” “order drone,” “drone for sale.” 

You can also take a look at the Keyword Difficulty feature. This parameter shows how difficult it is to rank high for the desired keyword. It based on backlink analysis, the presence of domains and URLs with your keyword in title, main pages in the SERP. 

Thus you can assess your chances of getting to the top of SERP for your keyword in a few minutes.

Analyzing this number you need to decide if it’s really worth spending valuable time and money. Of course, you can beat every competition, but if you see the highest score, it’s probably not worth efforts.
We can see that KD for our keyword is 32.85. It’s an average score, so there is a big chance.

Step #2 Select the leaders in the top 

Pass to the “SEO Research” section and choose the tool "Competitors." Then sort the results in descending order by common keywords and analyze them by all parameters.



Image: imgur.com

Selecting your direct competitor, pay attention to:

• The indicator in the column of "common keywords" should be as close as possible to "all keywords" indicator. If the domain has 1000 common niche keywords with the general number of 600,000 phrases, this is obviously not a direct competitor. For example, look at the service “best buy” in our list. The difference between two columns is huge because it’s electronics corporation. And we’re looking only for specialized stores.
• If both domains have the closest “common / all keywords” indicators, but a strong difference in the visibility parameter,  focus on sites with higher visibility. It means that they have more needed phrases in the top.
• If there are sites like Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon and so on - just remove it from the list manually. Do the same with informative blogs.

Thus we identify leaders and outsiders within the niche. A bit later we’ll analyze their site structure, assortment, and USP. 

To extend your list do these steps with the commercial queries.

Step #3 Select the most visited competitors, investigate their traffic channels and site structure 

Now we should select the most visited sites for the detailed research. Analysis of their traffic sources will show us the real picture and help to choose channels to pay attention first. For this purpose, I’ll use SimilarWeb plugin.

Visit all the sites one by one and check:

• estimated visits
• time on site
• page views
• bounce rate (better if it’s low)

Image: imgur.com

Now pass to the "sources" tab to see where the most traffic comes from. 



Image: imgur.com

In our case, the competitor's site receives the most amount of traffic from the organic search. So, we should pay attention to it. Collect statistics to understand which source brings the most traffic in your niche.

If another competitor gets traffic from PPC and SMM be sure to investigate his advertising campaigns and social networks.

To analyze PPC-campaigns of competitors, you can also use Serpstat.


Image: imgur.com

For SMM-campaigns: SocialBakers, Karma, Rival IQ, Buzzsumo.

At this stage, we also should analyze site structure and usability. Browse their sites and find what they’ve missed. Is site navigation convenient? Is there available all needed information? Do they have any unique proposition? Would you buy the drone at this online store? Why yes? Why not? 
  
Thus you can learn competitor’s mistakes and avoid it creating your own strategy. Also, you can get inspired by their good sides and note something for your site.

Final thoughts

As you can see, competitors analysis is an important step before launching your product. By doing this, you can:

see the niche coverage;
check current traffic channels and know what to focus on;
learn the mistakes to avoid it;
steal some ideas (but like an artist);
and get more traffic as a result.

You always should think critically: even the biggest competitors can be wrong. And if you find their weak spots, it won’t be difficult to surpass them.

There is no doubt that ranking higher than your competitors on Google is the need of the hour to drive more traffic to your website. Whether you are starting a new website or improving an existing one, you will need to use effective tactics to step up your SEO game. Before we move forward with a deep understanding of SEO, let's begin with understanding the basics.


Image: Pexels.com 

What is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO refers to all the activities which you perform on every web page of your website in order to rank higher in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPS). On-page SEO deals with technical aspects of your web page such as titles, descriptions, URLs, etc. as well as the content of your web pages. 
You must learn to speak the language of the search engine in order to help crawlers understand the context of your pages. If you don't have a strong on-page SEO, you will be giving up on brand impressions, clicks and sales.

Make Content your Priority

You should focus to create brilliant content on your website which will become even better with SEO. Always publish original content and publish it on your own website first. For content which has videos, images etc. Substantiate it with text giving a description of the content in the form of text. Make sure that the content is well researched and adds value to your website. 

Title, Description, and Formatting

The ranking of your page is dependent on the page title, the description of the page, the headings and content. Search engines will identify your page with these parameters to understand what the page is all about and rank accordingly in a position in their index.

URL Structure

URL structure is a vital part of On Page SEO. A good URL must be less than 255 characters and use hyphens to separate the different parts. Also, group your pages into categories for the convenience of search engines and the users. 

Linking

Linking is another important part of On Page SEO. Linking is important because it helps the search engine to know about your pages and increase the time users spend on your website.

Now let us try to understand how on page SEO can help you rank higher in the Search Engine Results Page.

The ultimate goal of on-page SEO is to convince search engines to give you better rankings by making them understand what your website is all about in the language they understand. You can achieve higher rankings by giving more signals to the search engine. All these signals are a part of the On-page SEO activities.

The primary aim of On page SEO is to keep users happy with the content of your website so that they keep visiting your website. The majority of websites which we see today have not been optimized for search engines. Website owners should pay attention to on page SEO as it will help in terms of usability and also in terms of driving more traffic to the website.

Benefits of On Page SEO

• On-page SEO will help in increasing performance and visibility of your website for your target audience. 
• On page SEO will help in getting your voice heard by optimising your online presence. It is very important to note that Google is getting smarter so it is important to stay updated with the latest sophisticated on page strategies for higher rankings. 
• On page SEO will help you to see a major boost in traffic and an increase in your search presence. With the right efforts and strategies, you can make the users stay longer on your website with enhanced user experience. 

Now that you know the benefits about On-page SEO, let's move to the practical part. 

With all the sophisticated ranking algorithms like the hummingbird, panda, Rankbrain, etc. it is important to take into account all aspects of the web page which when added together will improve the ranking of your web page and earn more relevant traffic for your website. 
A must read: Step by step guide to find do-follow backlinks 

Epilogue

You must aim at improving the overall experience of the end user by influencing the user with your site to increase user engagement and interaction. 
Last but not the least, always strive to create content that reader love, and search engines will love you too.

Offline and Online Marketing are important factors of advertising for a brand and so, is an important subject nowadays in Marketing Courses. If you have a keen interest in marketing and wish to make a career in the field, keep updated with the latest trends and remember, Content is the king, treat it good!

Author Bio:
Ms. Sahiba Sadana is a professional Content Editor and an avid literature reader. She is the Content Editor at Sharda University and a regular contributor to Business Town, and Munfarid Consulting.