10 popular options when considering link-building service providers.
Link building is essential. While Google has made numerous advancements in machine learning and content comprehension, links remain a critical element of how Google ranks websites.
We know that Google doesn’t want you to proactively build links. They want you to create high-quality content and hope for the best (i.e., build it and links will come).
Whether you’re a well-known brand or a local SMB, you need to be findable in the SERPs when people are searching for your product, service or expertise. Getting that initial push to get the front page creates a virtuous cycle where the better you rank, the more links you get because of how well you rank.
Enter: link-building services.
While link building is essential, it’s also tedious. It’s time-consuming. And, honestly, it can seem quite boring. (Though we’d politely disagree!)
Luckily, there are companies that can do this tedious and time-consuming work for you!
Link building, done right, can be a win-win – for your website and the site linking to you. The key is reaching out to your own personal network of publishers and bloggers within a niche to offer a piece of content that they can either write about themselves or link to when relevant.
If you haven’t built the types of relationships that can turn into links – this is where link-building services providers become incredibly valuable.
In this article, we will introduce to you to 10 popular options when considering link-building service providers. Choose wisely – there are always risks and rewards when choosing a link-building service to scale your SEO efforts.
We’ll start shamelessly with our own and if you understand the risks and rewards of proactive link building this way, try them.
Link-building services list
The following are in no particular order. We are not claiming anyone is better than any other. This is simply a list of link-building service providers you can choose from.
Here’s what makes us a bit different. We are a team with vast experience in the link-building space and have identified and tried to address the following pain points.
Transparency: Unlike most services, you can pick the right publishers upfront from our marketplace. Metrics like the primary niche they operate in, organic traffic, and DA (by Moz) are filters you can apply to find the right blogs, so there are no surprises after reviewing the report.
Pricing: Unlike most service providers, we will not charge you hefty fees based on the domain metrics. Instead, we take a fixed success fee and pass on the benefit of a low cost of link acquisition irrespective of how big or small that publisher is.
Flexibility: Even with the marketplace model, you are working with us to get the job done and not waiting for the publisher to react despite operating on a dynamic pricing model like other marketplaces that only serve as a platform provider. You also have managed posts and custom link-building campaigns and the option to upload your content, so the number of ways you can get this done is highly flexible.
Now let’s move on to some other notable link-building providers.
Page One Power focuses on giving you a personalized experience. They will sit down with you to discuss your individual needs, analyze your existing website and give you a customized link-building plan. They are willing to do the research and heavy lifting for you, giving you the extra breathing room to focus on other aspects of your business.
To help you get started as quickly as possible, Fat Joe features an intuitive order intake form and a dashboard to monitor active orders and manage them. They seem to be the go-to service provider for agencies that need a lot of links for multiple clients with tight deadlines and provide content services that seem reasonably priced.
If you considered link-building services, there is a high probability you have come across The Hoth already. They are one of the oldest link-building service companies with diverse offerings across various off-page SEO services. Their dashboard is intuitive, and one can navigate through their diverse offerings quite easily; however, given their large-scale link-building services, you might have to be careful in picking the right product for you as some could do more harm than good if you do not understand the product and its risks, so talk to them about your goals before you go ahead.
No BS could have kick-started the transparent approach to link building, where you get to pick publishers upfront that they would suggest based on your requirements. So if you appreciate transparency and would like tighter control on the links you want to acquire, they are another great alternative to look into.
If you’re looking for a tried and true SEO and link-building agency that works with high-profile industry names like Robinhood, Monday, Freshworks, Hotjar, and others, uSERP fits the bill. Working with small businesses and large enterprises alike, they craft and initiate content-based link-building campaigns.
Siege Media is another agency that offers content-driven link building, where they prospect and reach out to authority publishers in your industry with amazing content. Although the specific link-building services they provide won’t give you an exact number of links they can expect to build, they will provide you with a ballpark figure instead.
The folks at Posirank have been at it for a while as well. The team offers both custom campaigns and some large publishers’ lists from which they could secure a backlink for you. In addition, they have an easy dashboard where you can quickly sign up and start your first link acquisition campaign immediately.
Beginning its operations in 2011, this link-building company is a trusted business partner of some of the largest brands, including established names from the Fortune 500 list. The philosophy of their approach is to build relevant backlinks that could stand the test of time.
10. Hire a Freelancer: For many, hiring an experienced blogger outreach and link-building expert from Upwork could work out best, especially if you want to control the process at every level and keep the costs in check at the same time. There seem to be plenty of skilled freelancers for hire with great feedback.
Conclusion
Google is no fan of “link building,” – but who can blame them? For years, links were a commodity that was abused by SEOs.
But proactive link building is incredibly hard. As it should be.
That’s why you should partner with an experienced agency with clear goals and quality control. For that, we highly suggest OutreachZ – but admittedly, we’re biased!
If you are ineterested in original article you can find it here
Know what you might be getting into before engaging with a cheap SEO provider. Here are warning signs to watch for and situations to avoid.
Search engine optimization requires an investment. Look at it as an investment with an expectation of a return on that investment.
SEO is a long-term discipline and process. It demands a robust plan for strategy development and implementation in the technical, on-page and off-page areas of optimization.
Not all sites are equal. Goals, conversions, starting points, opportunities, and organizational structures are some factors that determine how easy or hard it will be to reach SEO goals.
Over my career, I have worked with hundreds of brands, organizations and sites on SEO. I can definitively say there’s no one-size-fits-all answer for the right SEO plan or the right partner for each company.
A vital variable in SEO ROI is the investment amount itself. If you have it covered by someone on your team or in a role you manage, then you have soft costs. If you’re paying someone outside like a consultant, agency or SEO firm, then you are well aware of the hard costs.
Using “cheap” options is dangerous. Cheap is a relative term, but it will make sense what it is as I unpack the nine risks of cheap SEO.
1. Absence of a strategy and plan
With the short-term tactics and longer-term expectations on ROI, it is critical to have a roadmap for SEO. Yes, it will likely change based on the need for additional content, rounds of optimization, and changes with search engine algorithms.
Yet, when cutting corners, costs or time, you risk getting short-changed when it comes to putting enough time into research, strategy development, and planning out the tactics.
2. Misalignment of goals
An age-old frustration for me is seeing and hearing about SEO reporting that only reports ranking positions, keywords ranked, and clicks. Even some levels of conversion reporting can fall into this for me.
I painfully learned about the misalignment of SEO goals versus business goals firsthand early in my career a long time ago. I can still remember walking confidently into that client meeting with all of my SEO metrics looking great, thinking the client would be pleased. That client walked in thinking the opposite as they saw zero new business from the SEO efforts.
Cheap SEO runs the risk of showing superficial stats and focusing on things that aren’t tailored to your business or that really move the needle.
3. Lack of transparency
If you’re buying $99/month SEO, there has to be something allowing the firm to charge that low of a price. Or, if you’re investing in equally cheap software that promises to deliver results, you’re at risk of not getting a transparent picture of what you’re buying.
One of the things I hate the most about this industry (my industry) is that there are still entities out there taking advantage of small (and even large) businesses.
A lack of transparency is a warning sign that you’re at risk of being hurt by cheap SEO. That can cover:
Who is working on your account.
The strategy.
What will be measured.
How it will be reported.
Or anything related to the effort.
4. Risky tactics
I’m not here to dive into any debates or talk about gray areas or risky tactics. You can find those conversations and debates elsewhere, and I’m happy to have them.
You need to know that cheap SEO can often take shortcuts to make it affordable. That could include:
Buying links from third-party services.
Creating large-scale, low-quality content.
Engaging in many other tactics that might be high risk and high reward.
Again, you can be the judge on whether you are OK with those tactics or not, but know that the risk exists.
That’s especially the case if you experience the lack of strategy, lack of transparency, or other aspects I have shared so far.
5. Poor reporting
Good SEO reporting includes integration with your business metrics that matter and all the aspects that led up to that point. That means the SEO visibility and engagement metrics and the story and insights as to what drove the effort.
How are we doing in meeting our goals?
Where are we in the plan?
Is there anything changing or adapting in the strategy?
What do the metrics mean?
How are they contributing to SEO ROI?
Cheap SEO often leads to skimpy, inadequate or unreliable reporting. It can lead to seeing numbers that don’t make sense or that don’t go deep enough to validate the effort.
6. Not enough communication
Early in my career, I could do a lot more SEO in a silo than can be done now. I think the evolution and blowing up of the silo is a good thing.
That said, whoever is driving the strategy, implementing the tactics and reporting on the plan should be talking regularly. SEO requires alignment of approvers/stakeholders, strategists, UX, dev, IT, content producers, and more.
Cheap SEO often leads to promises to do it all, only for the cheap SEO provider to disappear. They might also over-promise or over-commit without enough communication to collaborate properly and have all resources working together for success.
7. Little action
Again, I hate seeing people being taken advantage of. Yes, cheap SEO is cheap. That means if it doesn’t work, then you’re not out as much money as if you invested in an expensive effort that failed.
However, time lost now pushes out the timeline for ROI and results down the road. If the cheap SEO provider is slow or only does an amount equivalent to their monthly or set scope, it can cost you the speed and velocity at which you can grow through SEO.
Cheap SEO risks wasting months of your time and ability to grow, even if it doesn’t set you back significantly financially.
8. Cookie-cutter tactics
Even if you’re seeing some positive movement with a cheap SEO provider, chances are that your mileage will vary. You likely have someone staying in a shallow strategy area who is working through a checklist.
SEO is much more than a checklist. If you’re getting cookie-cutter tactics, you’ll have a lower ceiling than if you’re working with someone who might be a larger investment but provides a more custom, tailored approach and solution for you.
Cheap SEO is often based on running through simple audits, software, or a checklist that anyone could implement and doesn’t get deep enough to push through for more competitive markets and keywords.
9. Negative ROI
The most important and biggest risk to cheap SEO is negative ROI. Again, maybe you’re not out a large sum of money if the effort doesn’t have an impact.
However, if the cheap SEO option did harm, you may have some hidden costs that push you into further negative territory.
Having to undo risky tactics that might have gotten you penalized or pushed into negative SEO territory, trying to regain lost time and money, are big risks of cheap SEO that fall into the negative ROI arena.
Conclusion
I’m not saying that expensive SEO is good. That’s a topic for another article (along with how to ensure you fully understand what you’re getting without over-investing and putting yourself into a negative SEO ROI position).
Knowing the risks of cheap SEO, though, can help you know what you might be getting into and fully understand the questions to ask, warning signs to watch for, or situations to avoid. Much like other areas of life and business – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
If you are interested in original article by Corey Morris you can find it here
As more retailers look to eCommerce, and the opportunities of online shopping, it’s valuable to note the latest online store trends, to get a benchmark as to how your business is placed, and what the industry norms are in terms of product listings, advertising approaches, etc.
This new report from DataFeedWatch provides some perspective on this, based on analysis of over 15,000 shops in more than 60 regions.
As explained by DFW:
“The Feed Marketing Report 2022 has been created with one goal in mind: to provide every eCommerce marketer – a marketing agency professional, an in-house PPC specialist, an online store owner – with actionable insight into the very foundations of eCommerce campaigns.”
There’s a heap to take in, which could help you shape your eCommerce strategy.
You can download the full ‘Feed Marketing Report 2022’ here, or take a look at the infographic overview below.
If you are interested in original article by Andrew Hutchinson you can find it here
Leverage JavaScript in the most effective way possible while upholding your site’s ranking in the SERPs.
JavaScript (JS) is extremely popular in the ecommerce world because it helps create a seamless and user-friendly experience for shoppers.
Take, for instance, loading items on category pages, or dynamically updating products on the site using JS.
While this is great news for ecommerce sites, JavaScript poses several challenges for SEO pros.
Google is consistently working on improving its search engine, and a big part of its effort is dedicated to making sure its crawlers can access JavaScript content.
But, ensuring that Google seamlessly crawls JS sites isn’t easy.
In this post, I’ll share everything you need to know about JS SEO for ecommerce and how you can improve your organic performance.
Let’s begin!
How JavaScript Works For Ecommerce Sites
When building an ecommerce site, developers use HTML for content and organization, CSS for design, and JavaScript for interaction with backend servers.
JavaScript plays three prominent roles within ecommerce websites.
1. Adding Interactivity To A Web Page
The objective of adding interactivity is to allow users to see changes based on their actions, like scrolling or filling out forms.
For instance: a product image changes when the shopper hovers the mouse over it. Or hovering the mouse makes the image rotate 360 degrees, allowing the shopper to get a better view of the product.
All of this enhances user experience (UX) and helps buyers decide on their purchases.
JavaScript adds such interactivity to sites, allowing marketers to engage visitors and drive sales.
2. Connecting To Backend Servers
JavaScript allows better backend integration using Asynchronous JavaScript (AJAX) and Extensible Markup Language (XML).
It allows web applications to send and retrieve data from the server asynchronously while upholding UX.
In other words, the process doesn’t interfere with the display or behavior of the page.
Otherwise, if visitors wanted to load another page, they would have to wait for the server to respond with a new page. This is annoying and can cause shoppers to leave the site.
So, JavaScript allows dynamic, backend-supported interactions – like updating an item and seeing it updated in the cart – right away.
Similarly, it powers the ability to drag and drop elements on a web page.
3. Web Tracking And Analytics
JavaScript offers real-time tracking of page views and heatmaps that tell you how far down people are reading your content.
For instance, it can tell you where their mouse is or what they clicked (click tracking).
This is how JS powers tracking user behavior and interaction on webpages.
How Do Search Bots Process JS?
Google processes JS in three stages, namely: crawling, rendering, and indexing.
Image from Google Search Central, September 2022
As you can see in this image, Google’s bots put the pages in the queue for crawling and rendering. During this phase, the bots scan the pages to assess new content.
When a URL is retrieved from the crawl queue by sending an HTTP request, it first accesses your robots.txt file to check if you’ve permitted Google to crawl the page.
If it’s disallowed, the bots will ignore it and not send an HTTP request.
In the second stage, rendering, the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files are processed and transformed into a format that can be easily indexed by Google.
In the final stage, indexing, the rendered content is added to Google’s index, allowing it to appear in the SERPs.
Common JavaScript SEO Challenges With Ecommerce Sites
JavaScript crawling is a lot more complex than traditional HTML sites.
The process is quicker in the case of the latter.
Check out this quick comparison.
Traditional HTML Site Crawling
JavaScript Crawling
1
Bots download the HTML file
1
Bots download the HTML file
2
They extract the links to add them to their crawl queue
2
They find no link in the source code because they are only injected after JS execution
3
They download the CSS files
3
Bots download CSS and JS files
4
They send the downloaded resources to Caffeine, Google’s indexer
4
Bots use the Google Web Rendering Service (WRS) to parse and execute JS
5
Voila! The pages are indexed
5
WRS fetches data from the database and external APIs
6
Content is indexed
7
Bots can finally discover new links and add them to the crawl queue
Thus, with JS-rich ecommerce sites, Google finds it tough to index content or discover links before the page is rendered.
In fact, in a webinar on how to migrate a website to JavaScript, Sofiia Vatulyak, a renowned JS SEO expert, shared,
“Though JavaScript offers several useful features and saves resources for the web server, not all search engines can process it. Google needs time to render and index JS pages. Thus, implementing JS while upholding SEO is challenging.”
Here are the top JS SEO challenges ecommerce marketers should be aware of.
Limited Crawl Budget
Ecommerce websites often have a massive (and growing!) volume of pages that are poorly organized.
These sites have extensive crawl budget requirements, and in the case of JS websites, the crawling process is lengthy.
Also, outdated content, such as orphan and zombie pages, can cause a huge wastage of the crawl budget.
Limited Render Budget
As mentioned earlier, to be able to see the content loaded by JS in the browser, search bots have to render it. But rendering at scale demands time and computational resources.
In other words, like a crawl budget, each website has a render budget. If that budget is spent, the bot will leave, delaying the discovery of content and consuming extra resources.
Google renders JS content in the second round of indexing.
It’s important to show your content within HTML, allowing Google to access it.
Image from Google Search Central, September 2022
Go to the Inspect element on your page and search for some of the content. If you cannot find it there, search engines will have trouble accessing it.
Troubleshooting Issues For JavaScript Websites Is Tough
Most JS websites face crawlability and obtainability issues.
For instance, JS content limits a bot’s ability to navigate pages. This affects its indexability.
Similarly, bots cannot figure out the context of the content on a JS page, thus limiting their ability to rank the page for specific keywords.
Such issues make it tough for ecommerce marketers to determine the rendering status of their web pages.
In such a case, using an advanced crawler or log analyzer can help.
Tools like Semrush Log File Analyzer, Google Search Console Crawl Stats, and JetOctopus, among others, offer a full-suite log management solution, allowing webmasters to better understand how search bots interact with web pages.
JetOctopus, for instance, has JS rendering functionality.
Check out this GIF that shows how the tool views JS pages as a Google bot.
Screenshot from Google Search Console Crawl Stats, September 2022
The crawl stats are sorted into:
Kilobytes downloaded per day show the number of kilobytes bots download each time they visit the website.
Pages crawled per day shows the number of pages the bots crawl per day (low, average, or high).
Time spent downloading a page tells you the amount of time bots take to make an HTTP request for the crawl. Less time taken means faster crawling and indexing.
Client-Side Rendering On Default
Ecommerce sites that are built in JS frameworks like React, Angular, or Vue are, by default, set to client-side rendering (CSR).
With this setting, the bots will not be able to see what’s on the page, thus causing rendering and indexing issues.
Large And Unoptimized JS Files
JS code prevents critical website resources from loading quickly. This negatively affects UX and SEO.
Top Optimization Tactics For JavaScript Ecommerce Sites
1. Check If Your JavaScript Has SEO Issues
Here are three quick tests to run on different page templates of your site, namely the homepage, category or product listing pages, product pages, blog pages, and supplementary pages.
URL Inspection Tool
Access the Inspect URL report in your Google Search Console.
Screenshot from Google Search Console, September 2022
Enter the URL you want to test.
Screenshot from Google Search Console, September 2022
Next, press View Tested Page and move to the screenshot of the page. If you see this section blank (like in this screenshot), Google has issues rendering this page.
Screenshot from Google Search Console, September 2022
Repeat these steps for all of the relevant ecommerce page templates shared earlier.
Run A Google Search
Running a site search will help you determine if the URL is in Google’s index.
First, check the no-index and canonical tags. You want to ensure that your canonicals are self-referencing and there’s no index tag on the page.
Next, go to Google search and enter – Site:yourdomain.com inurl:your url
Screenshot from search for [Site:target.com inurl:], Google, September 2022 This screenshot shows that Target’s “About Us” page is indexed by Google.
If there’s some issue with your site’s JS, you’ll either not see this result or get a result that’s similar to this, but Google will not have any meta information or anything readable.
Screenshot from search for [Site:made.com inurl:hallway], Google, September 2022
Screenshot from search for [Site:made.com inurl:homewares], Google, September 2022Go For Content Search
At times, Google may index pages, but the content is unreadable. This final test will help you assess if Google can read your content.
Gather a bunch of content from your page templates and enter it on Google to see the results.
Let’s take some content from Macy’s.
Screenshot from Macy’s, September 2022
Screenshot from search for [alfani essential capri pull-on with tummy control], Google, September 2022No problems here!
But check out what happens with this content on Kroger. It’s a nightmare!
Screenshot from Kruger, September 2022
Screenshot from search for [score an $8 s’mores bunder when you buy 1 Hershey], Google, September 2022Though spotting JavaScript SEO problems is more complex than this, these three tests will help you quickly assess if your ecommerce Javascript has SEO issues.
Follow these tests with a detailed JS website audit using an SEO crawler that can help identify if your website failed when executing JS, and if some code isn’t working properly.
For instance, a few SEO crawlers have a list of features that can help you understand this in detail:
The “JavaScript performance” report offers a list of all the errors.
The “browser performance events” chart shows the time of lifecycle events when loading JS pages. It helps you identify the page elements that are the slowest to load.
The “load time distribution” report shows the pages that are fast or slow. If you click on these data columns, you can further analyze the slow pages in detail.
2. Implement Dynamic Rendering
How your website renders code impacts how Google will index your JS content. Hence, you need to know how JavaScript rendering occurs.
Server-Side Rendering
In this, the rendered page (rendering of pages happens on the server) is sent to the crawler or the browser (client). Crawling and indexing are similar to HTML pages.
But implementing server-side rendering (SSR) is often challenging for developers and can increase server load.
Further, the Time to First Byte (TTFB) is slow because the server renders pages on the go.
One thing developers should remember when implementing SSR is to refrain from using functions operating directly in the DOM.
Client-SideRendering
Here, the JavaScript is rendered by the client using the DOM. This causes several computing issues when search bots attempt to crawl, render, and index content.
A viable alternative to SSR and CSR is dynamic rendering that switches between client and server-side rendered content for specific user agents.
It allows developers to deliver the site’s content to users who access it using JS code generated in the browser.
However, it presents only a static version to the bots. Google officially supports implementing dynamic rendering.
Image from Google Search Central, September 2022
To deploy dynamic rendering, you can use tools like Prerender.io or Puppeteer.
These can help you serve a static HTML version of your Javascript website to the crawlers without any negative impact on CX.
Dynamic rendering is a great solution for ecommerce websites that usually hold lots of content that change frequently or rely on social media sharing (containing embeddable social media walls or widgets).
3. Route Your URLs Properly
JavaScript frameworks use a router to map clean URLs. Hence, it is critical to update page URLs when updating content.
For instance, JS frameworks like Angular and Vue generate URLs with a hash (#) like www.example.com/#/about-us
Such URLs are ignored by Google bots during the indexing process. So, it is not advisable to use #.
Instead, use static-looking URLs like http://www.example.com/about-us
4. Adhere To The Internal Linking Protocol
Internal links help Google efficiently crawl the site and highlight the important pages.
A poor linking structure can be harmful to SEO, especially for JS-heavy sites.
One common issue we’ve encountered is when ecommerce sites use JS for links that Google cannot crawl, such as onclick or button-type links.
If you want Google bots to discover and follow your links, ensure they are plain HTML.
Google recommends interlinking pages using HTML anchor tags with href attributes and asks webmasters to avoid JS event handlers.
5. Use Pagination
Pagination is critical for JS-rich ecommerce websites with thousands of products that retailers often opt to spread across several pages for better UX.
Allowing users to scroll infinitely may be good for UX, but isn’t necessarily SEO-friendly. This is because bots don’t interact with such pages and cannot trigger events to load more content.
Eventually, Google will reach a limit (stop scrolling) and leave. So, most of your content gets ignored, resulting in a poor ranking.
Make sure you use <a href> links to allow Google to see the second page of pagination.
For instance, use this:
<a href=”https://example.com/shoes/”>
6. Lazy Load Images
Though Google supports lazy loading, it doesn’t scroll through content when visiting a page.
It resizes the page’s virtual viewport, making it longer during the crawling process. And because the “scroll” event listener isn’t triggered, this content isn’t rendered.
Thus, if you have images below the fold, like most ecommerce websites, it’s critical to lazy load them, allowing Google to see all your content.
7. Allow Bots To Crawl JS
This may seem obvious, but on several occasions, we’ve seen ecommerce sites accidentally blocking JavaScript (.js) files from being crawled.
This will cause JS SEO issues, as the bots will not be able to render and index that code.
Check your robots.txt file to see if the JS files are open and available for crawling.
8. Audit Your JS Code
Finally, ensure you audit your JavaScript code to optimize it for the search engines.
Use tools like Google Webmaster Tools, Chrome Dev Tools, and Ahrefs and an SEO crawler like JetOctopus to run a successful JS SEO audit.
Google Search Console
This platform can help you optimize your site and monitor your organic performance. Use GSC to monitor Googlebot and WRS activity.
For JS websites, GSC allows you to see problems in rendering. It reports crawl errors and issues notifications for missing JS elements that have been blocked for crawling.
Chrome Dev Tools
These web developer tools are built into Chrome for ease of use.
The platform lets you inspect rendered HTML (or DOM) and the network activity of your web pages.
From its Network tab, you can easily identify the JS and CSS resources loaded before the DOM.
Screenshot from Chrome Dev Tools, September 2022
Ahrefs
Ahrefs allows you to effectively manage backlink-building, content audits, keyword research, and more. It can render web pages at scale and allows you to check for JavaScript redirects.
You can also enable JS in Site Audit crawls to unlock more insights.
Screenshot from Ahrefs, September 2022
The Ahrefs Toolbar supports JavaScript and shows a comparison of HTML to rendered versions of tags.
JetOctopus SEO Crawler And Log Analyzer
JetOctopus is an SEO crawler and log analyzer that allows you to effortlessly audit common ecommerce SEO issues.
Since it can view and render JS as a Google bot, ecommerce marketers can solve JavaScript SEO issues at scale.
Its JS Performance tab offers comprehensive insights into JavaScript execution – First Paint, First Contentful Paint, and page load.
It also shares the time needed to complete all JavaScript requests with the JS errors that need immediate attention.
GSC integration with JetOctopus can help you see the complete dynamics of your site performance.
Ryte UX Tool
Ryte is another tool that’s capable of crawling and checking your javascript pages. It will render the pages and check for errors, helping you troubleshoot issues and check the usability of your dynamic pages.
seoClarity
seoClarity is an enterprise platform with many features. Like the other tools, it features dynamic rendering, letting you check how the javascript on your website performs.
Summing Up
Ecommerce sites are real-world examples of dynamic content injected using JS.
Hence, ecommerce developers rave about how JS lets them create highly interactive ecommerce pages.
On the other hand, many SEO pros dread JS because they’ve experienced declining organic traffic after their site started relying on client-side rendering.
Though both are right, the fact is that JS-reliant websites too can perform well in the SERP.
Follow the tips shared in this guide to get one step closer to leveraging JavaScript in the most effective way possible while upholding your site’s ranking in the SERP.
If you are interested in original article by Serge Bezdorodov you can find it here
Do you want to increase search visibility for your practice? Here are 10 essential local SEO strategies for doctors and dentists.
Google contributes a large percentage of traffic to many healthcare websites.
For doctor appointment bookings, 57% of patients start by using online search. And when patients are searching for a healthcare facility on Google, they genuinely mean business.
SimilarWeb finds that 85% of the traffic to ClevelandClinic.org, 83% of the traffic to HopkinsMedicine.org, and 87% of the traffic to MayoClinic.org comes from organic search.
But ranking on Google isn’t as simple as creating a website. The online world has grown way beyond that now.
Patients today search for doctors in their vicinity. That means you need to rank for your local audience to generate appreciable traffic in your clinic.
This is why local SEO has become necessary for all modern dental and medical practices that want to harness the internet’s potential and use it to grow their profits.
In this article, you will find 10 local SEO strategies that can help you get found by an audience that matters the most to your practice.
What Is Local SEO?
Local SEO is a type of SEO that helps your website appear higher in the search results for location-specific searches.
For example, a Nashville-based dental practice ranking for searches like “dentists in Nashville”.
Sometimes patients also search with key phrases like “dentist near me”. In that case, search engines use the searchers’ IP address or geolocation to connect them with relevant and nearby businesses.
Local healthcare SEO is a powerful tool that helps your medical practice gain substantial online visibility. If done correctly, it can help you get among the top-3 “pack” and help you win the search results even if your website does not appear on the first page.
Why Should Doctors And Dentists Consider Local SEO?
The first thing most patients turn to when they feel like visiting a doctor is, ironically, the internet.
If someone feels they need to see a dentist, they wouldn’t open the yellow pages and search the “D” section of the directory for the local dentist. Instead, they will turn to Google, or some other search engine, type in a key phrase like “dentist near me”, and book an appointment with whoever they like best.
That’s the approach most modern patients adopt. And practices that wish to maintain or increase their foot traffic need to adjust according to this approach so they could be among those that appear in response to location-specific and relevant searches.
Local SEO helps make that possible.
By optimizing your Google Business Profile to rank for relevant local searches, you can diversify your traffic acquisition channels and be where your customers are looking for you.
Once you rank for relevant local searches, your patients will know you as an option they have. And given other factors are met, they would be more likely to reach out and book an appointment.
Increasing foot traffic to your medical practice is just one of the ways local SEO contributes to your revenue.
It also helps you save on costly online ads, which reduces your marketing spend and eventually pushes your bottom line.
Local SEO also allows you to be where your peers are and compete with them on a level playing field. By ranking side by side with your competitors, you would be more likely to get a share of their prospective patients, which would be a million times better than giving up all your online patients to them by not being found in the local search results.
All the benefits that local SEO brings to your practice are increased appointments at your practice and more revenue. Let’s talk about some top strategies to help you get started with local SEO.
10 Practical Local SEO Strategies
After reading all the benefits of local SEO, you may be inclined to assume that it is expensive, time-consuming, and tedious, like regular SEO. However, that’s not the case.
It is true that certain local SEO factors require time and dedication to generate truly viable results but getting started is much simpler. Here are top local SEO strategies that might help you find profit-driving online visibility:
1. List Your Practice On Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business, is the source of local online visibility.
Google Business Profile helps small businesses find exposure and showcase their services or products to the interested audience. It offers all the tools you need to create an optimized, accurate, and descriptive listing that helps your patients learn what they need to know about your practice.
You need to have your practice listed on Google Business Profile to leverage local SEO benefits.
Sometimes Google automatically creates business listings on GBP. In that case, you would need to claim that listing, verify it, and check it for accuracy to ensure it does not drive your prospective patients away by disseminating incorrect information.
Also, adding the appointment booking link to your Google Business Profile can instantly increase your appointment bookings as one of LoudGrowth’s clients saw a 44% increase after adding the appointment booking link.
2. Double Down On Keyword Research
Keyword research is the heart of local SEO as it tells you what keywords to optimize with so that the search engines can link relevant queries to your listing and potentially drive patients to it.
Local keywords are distinct from regular keywords as they are marked by location-specific phrases like “Dentist near me” or “Pediatrician Nashville”.
To start with local keyword research, you first need to be intuitive and get into your patient’s mind.
What do they think when they are looking for a doctor? What are the words that they may use to search for a doctor?
Brainstorm a bunch of key phrases and create a list.
Once you have a list, find keyword research tools, and search the phrases from your list.
Shortlist the keywords relevant to your phrases and have the right balance between search volume and competition.
It is important to note that the search volume for local key phrases is usually low. Therefore, don’t hesitate to shortlist relatively smaller SV keywords.
You can also use keyword tools to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for. These words are proven to connect searching patients with practices like yours. Therefore, they can also help you find the right kind of visibility.
3. Capitalize On Google Posts
Google Posts is a free tool that offers local businesses a fantastic opportunity to engage and communicate with their audience.
Google Posts allow you to display up to ten of your most recent posts, which, according to some sources, stay live for up to 7 days. You can use this space for announcements, offers, and to promote your services, and explain your features to the audience.
You can display textual content and images both through Google Posts and end it with a CTA that links to your local landing pages.
Pro tip: make sure to use UTM parameters so you can track how much traffic is coming from your Google Posts.
Google Posts are designed to give quick information to prospective patients and convince them to take the desired action.
These can be utilized for many different post ideas such as offers and specials, products and services, events, business updates, etc.
A study conducted on 600 GBP profiles revealed service and discount-related posts bring the highest conversions in comparison to other ideas posts.
It is critical to have a proactive Google Posts strategy because this space is to communicate recent messages with prospective patients, you will need to work on not only sharing Google Posts but also updating them as the situation changes.
For example, your practice is offering free flu shots close to flu season, and you are promoting that via Google Posts. Once flu season passes, you will need to replace this post with something else since outdated content can tarnish your reputation.
To leverage its power and use them to drive results, you will need to write crisp, concise, and to-the-point copy that clearly communicates your value.
To leverage its power and use them to drive results, you will need to write crisp, concise, and to-the-point copy that clearly communicates your value.
Also, keep in mind that though Google Posts have a 1500-character limit, only a few words are visible above the fold. So you have to concentrate as much information as you can in that space.
Google Posts come at zero cost and offer an excellent opportunity for you to engage with your audience and promote your service. However, you will need a verified Google Business Profile to be able to leverage this tool.
4. Health And Safety Attributes
Ever since the pandemic, people want to know the health and safety practices of places before they visit them.
Therefore, Google has included health and safety attributes in GBP listings. Apart from these essential attributes, there are other information nuggets that you can use to be more intuitive and give your prospective patients the information they need.
Apart from the health and safety attributes like temperature checks, mask requirements, staff safety precautions, etc., you can include other attributes as well, like whether patients need to book an appointment beforehand or can they get a walk-in appointment.
These attributes offer peace of mind and trust and give the prospects the information they need without them having to look for it. You can add the attributes directly to your listing through your GBP.
5. NAP And Office Hours Consistency
According to a survey, 62% of respondents said that they use GBP listings to find business contact numbers and addresses.
This indicates that perhaps the number one reason people turn to Google for local businesses is to find out about their office hours, contact number, and address.
We can safely conclude what could happen if any of these is incorrect.
The prospect would be annoyed and likely to leave a negative review.
Imagine your office hour is listed as 9 am to 5 pm from Mon to Fri, as it is by default sometimes. But you practice from 1 pm to 4 pm on alternate weekdays.
Can you imagine the frustration of someone who saw the office hours on Google and dropped by your practice only to find out the timing was incorrect?
Again, imagine the frustration of someone who calls your practice using the contact number from Google but ends up trying for hours without a response.
These instances are likely to lead to a negative review on your GBP listing, which is something we have to avoid at all costs.
Therefore, you have to ensure that your office hours, name, address, and phone number (NAP) are all listed accurately on your GBP.
You also have to ensure that this information is consistent across all your customer touchpoints because even minor inconsistencies can lead to significant downfalls.
6. Local Landing Pages
When doing local SEO, many people are confused about whether they should link the call to action (CTA) to the website home page or have separate landing pages for each distinct keyword.
In this case, the most viable option is to link the CTA on your GBP listing to your local, keyword-relevant landing page.
You can use this landing page as the next step to your communication with the prospective patients and dive into more detailed information concerning the keyword.
For example, your keyword is “Pediatrician Boston”.
You can create a landing page that responds to the common pain points people in Boston have that would concern a pediatrician and communicate clearly how you can solve the problem.
Think about your user’s problems and try to address them on your landing page. Use clear and to-the-point headlines and arrange your textual information to keep the readers engaged.
Talk about benefits, not the features of your service, and include attractive, appealing images across your page to keep the audience engaged. Also, make sure to optimize your page with the right keywords that are relevant to the service you are talking about on the page.
Try to include social proof, like testimonials and reviews, and trust signals like awards and certifications on the page to make your users trust your practice.
Place a CTA strategically on the page. Choose one action and stick to it if you want your readers to book an appointment, make your CTA “Book Your Appointment” or something like that. Don’t use a mix of CTAs and avoid the paradox of choice.
Embed a dynamic map at the bottom of the landing page, making it easier for the searchers to locate your facility.
Finally, don’t forget to optimize your landing pages for mobile users because half of all healthcare website visits come from mobile phones.
7. Local Link Building
Backlinks are your website’s URLs that are placed within the content of other websites. And the process of acquiring these links is called link building.
Google favors websites with a high volume of backlinks because it sees such websites as trustworthy and authoritative.
People seek out and get backlinks from relevant high authority websites for regular SEO. But for local SEO, you would need to get links from local entities so Google can trust your presence in that locality and rank your website for searches coming from there.
The process of acquiring links from your local websites is called local link building, and there are many strategies through which you can get a link from local websites.
You can create helpful content for doctors and dentists and get it posted on your community blog with a link back to your website.
If your practice makes enough revenue, you can sponsor a local school team or students from the local school or college and get a link from these institutions.
You can also join your local chamber of commerce and post in their news section to get a link from there.
Most cities have local newspapers. You can create PR content for these newspapers, offer advice, or write articles for them and link back to your website. These websites often enjoy high domain authority, so you can get valuable links from them.
You can also find local business directories and get your practices included in them to get another backlink.
These are just a few of the many local backlinking strategies. If you can get creative, the sky’s the limit.
8. Make Good Use Of GBP Calls And Messages
Businesses listed on GBP can get direct calls from google searchers.
Therefore, if you have included your phone number on GBP with the intent to receive calls and messages from your online audience, make sure you have someone to receive and respond to them.
Not responding to internet-driven calls and messages can lead to a bad customer experience, which can manifest as negative reviews and lousy promotion, which can be detrimental to your practice.
9. Local Reviews
Patients want to make sure the person they are going to consult is good at what they do. More importantly, they want the peace of mind that the facility is up to their standards and does not have a bad reputation. Due to these reasons, 98% of people read online reviews.
Therefore, the majority of healthcare consumers say online reviews influence their decision when selecting a healthcare service provider.
Therefore, you need to ensure your GBP listing features enough diverse reviews to win the prospective patients” trust.
Getting reviews, however, is not as straightforward as you may want it to be. Fully 74% of consumers write online reviews.
People would love to leave a bad review, but they rarely go out of their way to leave a good one.
Therefore, you will have to pursue positive reviews for the sake of your profit.
What you can do, in this case, is to follow up every patient’s appointment with a request to leave feedback on your GBP listing.
Make sure to go through all your reviews and remove any personally identifiable information that people may have shared accidentally in their reviews.
Also, while responding to positive reviews is important, address the negative reviews as well so the rest of the world knows you prioritize your patients” experience and work to make it a good one.
10. Multiple Professional Listings At One Address
Google allows you to share an address with various other businesses sharing the same location and have an independent GBP for your business, given that your business is distinct and has its own Tax Identification Code.
So, you can create an independent listing if you have a clinic located within an office building that houses many other businesses.
However, if you have a large hospital with several smaller clinics, it might become challenging to create an independent listing for each hospital.
Because you need to have distinct businesses, each of which files its taxes independently and has its own phone numbers to create a different listing for businesses operating from a similar location.
Final Words
Local SEO can unlock a new traffic channel for your practice. By helping you rank for local prospective patients, it can allow you to generate more bookings and consequently increase profit.
However, before you can enjoy its benefits, you will have to do the hard work of creating and maintaining a healthy Google Business Profile listing.
Once you have an optimized GBP listing, you will be more likely to harness the potential of SEO and garner more appointments for your practice.
If you are interested in original article by Atul Jindal you can find it here
An SEO asked Google’s John Mueller if it is okay or even a good idea to publish blank or empty pages so Google can find those URLs? John Mueller said no, don’t publish empty pages to the web.
The question was “is it a good idea to make a website live even if there is no content on some pages?” I am trying to think why this would be considered a good idea? I am thinking maybe he wants to jump start indexing by feeding Google a URL, even though that page has no content? I mean, that probably will backfire being that if Google sees not content, Google might decide not to check that page again for a while (even classify it as duplicate).
John Mueller of Google responded on Twitter saying “Just make the pages live that have content? It would be annoying as a user to get promised while browsing your site and just not get it. Build it out when you have time, but don’t just publish empty pages.”
So no, don’t publish empty pages as an SEO strategy or any type of strategy…
If you are interested in original article by Barry Schwartz you can find it here
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