The web has a content problem. There’s just too much of it.
Search Google for literally anything, and the total number of results will be in the hundreds of millions – and it’s an everyday thing.
What’s more, nobody expects all of those results to be good.
However, users expect to see something good on the Page 1 of Google.
Can you imagine digging through those millions of results to find only a dozen that deserve to be displayed there?
That’s what Google does every day, over 79,000 times per second.
Now, users might not occupy themselves with how Google is getting it done. But you, as a website owner, are different: you need to know the ins and outs of online search because you have content to promote.
How does Google decide which pages deserve to be at the top?
There are over 200 major ranking factors, but it all boils down to one thing: who’s the best at being helpful to users. Or, in SEO terms, at satisfying user search intent.
So how do you pull that off?
Have a Clear Grasp of What Exactly You Are Offering to Your Users
There was a reason you created your site in the first place. This reason is the foundation of your entire plan.
It could be selling products, or spreading information such as news and research, or maybe entertaining visitors with your original content.
What makes the “why” behind your creation so important?
If you can name it with clarity, then it brings you to the next step of the plan: the kind of people you want to come to your site.
Your relationship with them is going to decide your site’s fate – they are your target audience.
Once the “why” and the “who” are decided, they are followed by the “how”. The reason there are many different types of websites is because some of them are better suited for specific tasks than others.
For example, ecommerce stores are the best for selling products, and blogs are great for sharing articles.
If you aren’t using the best way to present your content to users, you should rethink this part before everything else.
Many site owners stumble on this first step because they don’t think about what they are doing.
Be better than that.
Pick Keywords That Will Lead Users to Your Content
Users try out all sorts of search phrases in Google, and only a precious few of them will be any good for your site.
The trick is to find those few phrases and turn them into your chosen keywords. So, how do you know you’ve found what you need?
They clearly reflect what you have to offer. Short, vague keywords like “buy boots” won’t be of any use to you. Even if a miracle lets you outrank the big brands, you’ll still risk bringing in users who don’t want the kind of product you have. Try optimizing for more specific phrases like “winter boots for women”.
They have a high search volume. The more people use a search phrase in a given area, the more people you can turn into your users. Keywords with a low search volume can also be useful, but only when you use many at once to make up for their individual low potential.
In spite of how hard it is, people are getting better at making great content, and the quality standards keep rising.
Fortunately, the core principle remains the same: give users the best version of the thing they are looking for.
How do you make such content?
Research what the users want, as accurately and in-depth as you can. Users always want more details. If they can get those details from you, then you already have an advantage.
Make your content visually appealing. As humans are visual creatures, you should know how to make a good first impression and make it last.
Provide the best user experience you can. Let nothing on your site get on the users’ nerves. You are supposed to be helping them and making them feel welcome.
Address the users’ pain points. If you revive their problems in their heads, it will make them hungrier for the solutions you are about to offer.
Give detailed solutions to the users’ problems. Often users don’t know about all the pitfalls they can encounter on the way to their goal. Be sure to include solutions to those issues too: that’s what real experts do.
Seal the deal with a call-to-action.
And if you connect relevant pieces of content on your site with links, you can turn the user journey into a cycle, ensuring they’ll keep using your site (at a later time, if not immediately).
It will be even easier for them the next time, since they are already familiar with the whole process. Example: “people also buy” on ecommerce sites.
2. Keyword Research & Optimization
Have you figured out how to make your users’ dream content?
Great job! You have a good reason to be proud of yourself if you have pulled it off.
Now it’s time for the next step: helping users find your content in search engines. This part requires keywords.
In the previous section, it was said that your content needs to be tailored to users’ search intent. The same applies to keywords.
Phrasing reflects what exactly users are looking for, so keywords phrased with a specific intent in mind are the best at bringing in the audience you need.
Examples:
Plumber in my city: Your site is for users from your city who need plumber’s services.
How to remove rust off my sink: You provide instructions for removing rust stains from metal surfaces in bathrooms and kitchens.
Sell my old books: You buy books (and likely other things too) from people who don’t need them anymore.
What’s the best way to find such keywords?
Most likely, you will be starting with some ideas of your own. But you won’t know if those ideas are good unless you somehow test them out.
That’s where SEO tools come in. This is a job for a keyword finder like Get Suggestions.
Just enter what you have in mind and press Search. The Google global searches column will show the search volume for every keyword in the table.
Sort the table by this column to make it easier to find the best keywords.
If you plan to rank in and get traffic from a particular region, you can narrow your keyword search down to a specific geographical area in the Settings (or by clicking on Add location).
In this case, the Google global searches will be called Google local searches.
Note the All keywords filter. Clicking on it opens a menu where you can opt to show only regular keywords or only question keywords.
The Question keywords filter is particularly useful if you want to optimize your site for voice search.
There are a couple more ways to find keywords.
From Google Search Console: If you have connected your WebCEO project to your Google Search Console account, it will start drawing data from Google. Then you can check out the Keywords from Google Search Console tool for all the various queries that bring your website traffic after being found in search. It will also show the usefulness of each query through statistics such as click-through rates and average ranking positions taken from global data over the past 30 days.
From your competitors: This is a two-step process. What keywords do your competitors use to optimize their sites? First, enter their URL address in the Spy on Competitors tool to find out. Add the keywords you’d like to rank for yourself to the keyword basket, then open the Competitor Rankings by Keyword report to check their rankings for those keywords. If you see someone rank poorly for a good keyword, start using it yourself – it’s an easy way to outrank them.
That covers keyword research.
Once you have a list of keywords you want to use, it’s time to optimize your site for them. Make sure to include everything from your list at some point!
Page URL addresses.
Titles.
Meta descriptions.
Image filenames, ALT attributes and captions.
H1-H4 headings.
Anchor texts of internal links.
Other text.
3. Competitor Research
How do you measure a site’s success?
You can judge it by its rankings, traffic, conversions, and the revenue it makes.
Ultimately, this SEO strategy is supposed to make you more successful than your rivals in the niche.
I bet you already have your eye on a few competitor websites that you want to beat. And that will be much easier if you can view their metrics whenever you want, too.
There’s also the possibility they aren’t really your rivals, and you need to be fighting someone else.
What’s the word for beating someone at their game only to find out you have won nothing?
“Awkward” is the nicest thing that comes to mind.
Let’s remove all awkwardness from your path to stardom.
Keywords tab: Enter the keywords you intend to rank for.
Search engines tab: Select the search engines where you want to rank.
Mirrors & Subdomains tab: Enter the URLs of your site’s mirrors and subdomains (if you have any). It will let the tool know that they shouldn’t be considered competitor sites.
Competitors tab: Enter the URLs of the competitors you already know.
Search results tab: Check the boxes of all types of search results you want to scan.
Local searches tab: Select regions like states, counties or provinces to show keyword demand for (if you want to rank somewhere in particular and not just globally).
Once you’ve finished filling everything out, click Save.
The tool will generate a graph and a table. Look for the sites that are above yours in the table. They can be your real, most dangerous competitors.
Note the “most likely” part. To be completely sure, visit those sites personally and see if they really specialize in the same field as you.
Irrelevant sites may appear if they happen to rank for the keywords you’ve entered without actually sharing a target audience with your site.
With this, you have discovered your true rivals. Fight them with every trick in the book:
Creating content.
Promoting content.
Providing a superb user experience.
Building a cordial relationship with users.
Optimizing your site.
And watch the metrics which reflect your progress: there’s no better way to find out if something is wrong.
Rankings: compare your ranking positions to theirs for your chosen keywords in the Competitor Rankings by Keyword
Backlinks: check the Competitor Link Profile report for everyone’s link profile statistics, including the total number of backlinks and domain authority.
Traffic: the Competitor Traffic report has everyone’s traffic data for the last 12 months.
Another hugely important matter: competitor backlinks.
If you can look them up, you can find a huge number of sites where you can build backlinks to your own site.
Then sort the table by the Domain Trust Flow column to put all the best potential link sources where you can see them.
4. Page Speed Optimization
Something has been bothering me for the longest time. So, electricity travels at the speed of light, right?
The Internet runs on electricity, and data packets move at the same speed. Then how come there isn’t even a single website which can load at the speed of light? It’s unfair.
Of course, humans cannot comprehend such tremendous speeds anyway. So we are perfectly fine with the next best thing, which we usually describe as “in the blink of an eye”.
That’s how fast we want websites to load, and we get really upset when it doesn’t happen.
Fortunately, some people are slow blinkers. That must be why most users are comfortable with a couple of seconds of loading time. Any more can cause a problem.
Scan your site with the Page Speed Insights tool to check its loading speed. If the score is low (100 is excellent), there are plenty of ways to make your site load faster:
Host your site on a fast server.
Host your site on a CDN.
Optimize your images’ dimensions.
Save your images in the right format.
Compress images.
Use fewer elements.
Merge elements.
Use gzip compression.
Leverage browser caching.
5. Technical Audit
Errors are a nuisance no matter where you encounter them. Users won’t be appreciative if you let your website go.
Would you let garbage pile up in your office where everyone can see it?
Of course you wouldn’t; it would be disrespectful to the people who visit you.
The place where you receive your customers should be kept clean and run like a well-oiled machine. Websites are the same.
What kind of issues on your site could be hurting user experience?
Broken links
Broken images
Broken redirects
Server errors
Missing meta tags
Indexing issues
Crawling issues
Orphaned pages
Dead-end pages
Schema markup errors
Look at how many things can go wrong when you are not even looking. But you can’t possibly keep an eye on your site every waking hour.
Good thing there are fully automated tools for such tasks, isn’t it?
I can recommend a couple. The first is the Technical Audit tool.
You can use it to detect the most common technical issues with your site, and then you can just proceed to fix them.
To make your job easier, you can (and it’s heavily recommended) set this tool to scan your site automatically as often as you want.
Once a week is good, but if you’d rather do it more or less often, it’s up to you. It’s all in the Scan Schedule.
You can even set the tool to send you alerts when you get site errors.
For that, click on Reports -> Email Alerts in the top menu.
This tool detects SEO errors on your site, such as issues with meta tags (short, repeating or outright missing). It, too, can be set for automatic regular scans and email alerts.
What else do you need to keep your site free of errors?
The Robots.Txt File
If you don’t have one in the first place, the On-Site Issues Overview tool will tell you, but there may also be issues with the file itself.
Be sure to check that it’s formatted correctly and that it allows search engines to crawl your site’s content, and prevents them from crawling pages you don’t want to appear in search.
Sitemap
If you haven’t uploaded a sitemap, its absence can be picked up by the On-Site Issues Overview, too.
Use a validating tool to make sure your sitemap is formatted correctly.
Also, if your site has more than 50,000 pages, you are going to need at least two sitemaps.
Schema Markup Validator
If you are using structured data on your site, you should always test your marked-up pages for errors before rolling them out.
This guide was created exclusively for WebCEO users who wish to make the next decade one of their biggest triumphs. Sign up now to enter a bright future!
Although no one likes a know-it-all, they dominate the Internet.
The Internet began as a vast repository of information. It quickly became a breeding ground for self-proclaimed experts seeking what most people desire: recognition and money.
Today, anyone with an Internet connection and some typing skills can position themselves, regardless of their education or experience, as a subject matter expert (SME). From relationship advice, career coaching, and health and nutrition tips to citizen journalists practicing pseudo-journalism, the Internet is awash with individuals—Internet talking heads—sharing their “insights,” which are, in large part, essentially educated guesses without the education or experience.
The Internet has become a 24/7/365 sitcom where armchair experts think they’re the star.
Not long ago, years, sometimes decades, of dedicated work and acquiring education in one’s field was once required to be recognized as an expert. The knowledge and opinions of doctors, scientists, historians, et al. were respected due to their education and experience. Today, a social media account and a knack for hyperbole are all it takes to present oneself as an “expert” to achieve Internet fame that can be monetized.
On the Internet, nearly every piece of content is self-serving in some way.
The line between actual expertise and self-professed knowledge has become blurry as an out-of-focus selfie. Inadvertently, social media platforms have created an informal degree program where likes and shares are equivalent to degrees. After reading selective articles, they’ve found via and watching some TikTok videos, a person can post a video claiming they’re an herbal medicine expert. Their new “knowledge,” which their followers will absorb, claims that Panda dung tea—one of the most expensive teas in the world and isn’t what its name implies—cures everything from hypertension to existential crisis. Meanwhile, registered dietitians are shaking their heads, wondering how to compete against all the misinformation their clients are exposed to.
More disturbing are individuals obsessed with evangelizing their beliefs or conspiracy theories. These people write in-depth blog posts, such as Elvis Is Alive and the Moon Landings Were Staged, with links to obscure YouTube videos, websites, social media accounts, and blogs. Regardless of your beliefs, someone or a group on the Internet shares them, thus confirming your beliefs.
Misinformation is the Internet’s currency used to get likes, shares, and engagement; thus, it often spreads like a cosmic joke. Consider the prevalence of clickbait headlines:
You Won’t Believe What Taylor Swift Says About Climate Change!
This Bedtime Drink Melts Belly Fat While You Sleep!
In One Week, I Turned $10 Into $1 Million!
Titles that make outrageous claims are how the content creator gets reads and views, which generates revenue via affiliate marketing, product placement, and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Clickbait headlines are how you end up watching a TikTok video by a purported nutrition expert adamantly asserting you can lose belly fat while you sleep by drinking, for 14 consecutive days, a concoction of raw eggs, cinnamon, and apple cider vinegar 15 minutes before going to bed.
Our constant search for answers that’ll explain our convoluted world and our desire for shortcuts to success is how Internet talking heads achieve influencer status. Because we tend to seek low-hanging fruits, we listen to those with little experience or knowledge of the topics they discuss yet are astute enough to know what most people want to hear.
There’s a trend, more disturbing than spreading misinformation, that needs to be called out: individuals who’ve never achieved significant wealth or traded stocks giving how-to-make-easy-money advice, the appeal of which is undeniable. Several people I know have lost substantial money by following the “advice” of Internet talking heads.
Anyone on social media claiming to have a foolproof money-making strategy is lying. They wouldn’t be peddling their money-making strategy if they could make easy money.
Successful people tend to be secretive.
Social media companies design their respective algorithms to serve their advertisers—their source of revenue—interest; hence, content from Internet talking heads appears most prominent in your feeds. When a video of a self-professed expert goes viral, likely because it pressed an emotional button, the more people see it, the more engagement it receives, such as likes, shares and comments, creating a cycle akin to a tornado.
Imagine scrolling through your TikTok feed and stumbling upon a “scientist” who claims they can predict the weather using only aluminum foil, copper wire, sea salt and baking soda. You chuckle, but you notice his video got over 7,000 likes, has been shared over 600 times and received over 400 comments. You think to yourself, “Maybe this guy is onto something.” What started as a quest to achieve Internet fame evolved into an Internet-wide belief that weather forecasting can be as easy as DIY crafts.
Since anyone can call themselves “an expert,” you must cultivate critical thinking skills to distinguish genuine expertise from self-professed experts’ self-promoting nonsense. While the absurdity of the Internet can be entertaining, misinformation has serious consequences. The next time you read a headline that sounds too good to be true, it’s probably an Internet talking head making an educated guess; without the education seeking Internet fame, they can monetize.
TORONTO – A new survey says a majority of software engineers and developers feel tight project deadlines can put safety at risk.
Seventy-five per cent of the 1,000 global workers who responded to the survey released Tuesday say pressure to deliver projects on time and on budget could be compromising critical aspects like safety.
The concern is even higher among engineers and developers in North America, with 77 per cent of those surveyed on the continent reporting the urgency of projects could be straining safety.
The study was conducted between July and September by research agency Coleman Parkes and commissioned by BlackBerry Ltd.’s QNX division, which builds connected-car technology.
The results reflect a timeless tug of war engineers and developers grapple with as they balance the need to meet project deadlines with regulations and safety checks that can slow down the process.
Finding that balance is an issue that developers of even the simplest appliances face because of advancements in technology, said John Wall, a senior vice-president at BlackBerry and head of QNX.
“The software is getting more complicated and there is more software whether it’s in a vehicle, robotics, a toaster, you name it… so being able to patch vulnerabilities, to prevent bad actors from doing malicious acts is becoming more and more important,” he said.
The medical, industrial and automotive industries have standardized safety measures and anything they produce undergoes rigorous testing, but that work doesn’t happen overnight. It has to be carried out from the start and then at every step of the development process.
“What makes safety and security difficult is it’s an ongoing thing,” Wall said. “It’s not something where you’ve done it, and you are finished.”
The Waterloo, Ont.-based business found 90 per cent of its survey respondents reported that organizations are prioritizing safety.
However, when asked about why safety may not be a priority for their organization, 46 per cent of those surveyed answered cost pressures and 35 per cent said a lack of resources.
That doesn’t surprise Wall. Delays have become rampant in the development of tech, and in some cases, stand to push back the launch of vehicle lines by two years, he said.
“We have to make sure that people don’t compromise on safety and security to be able to get products out quicker,” he said.
“What we don’t want to see is people cutting corners and creating unsafe situations.”
The survey also took a peek at security breaches, which have hit major companies like London Drugs, Indigo Books & Music, Giant Tiger and Ticketmaster in recent years.
About 40 per cent of the survey’s respondents said they have encountered a security breach in their employer’s operating system. Those breaches resulted in major impacts for 27 per cent of respondents, moderate impacts for 42 per cent and minor impacts for 27 per cent.
“There are vulnerabilities all the time and this is what makes the job very difficult because when you ship the software, presumably the software has no security vulnerabilities, but things get discovered after the fact,” Wall said.
Security issues, he added, have really come to the forefront of the problems developers face, so “really without security, you have no safety.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024.
As online shoppers hunt for bargains offered by Amazon during its annual fall sale this week, cybersecurity researchers are warning Canadians to beware of an influx of scammers posing as the tech giant.
In the 30 days leading up to Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days, taking place Tuesday and Wednesday, there were more than 1,000 newly registered Amazon-related web domains, according to Check Point Software Technologies, a company that offers cybersecurity solutions.
The company said it deemed 88 per cent of those domains malicious or suspicious, suggesting they could have been set up by scammers to prey on vulnerable consumers. One in every 54 newly created Amazon-related domain included the phrase “Amazon Prime.”
“They’re almost indiscernible from the real Amazon domain,” said Robert Falzon, head of engineering at Check Point in Canada.
“With all these domains registered that look so similar, it’s tricking a lot of people. And that’s the whole intent here.”
Falzon said Check Point Research sees an uptick in attempted scams around big online shopping days throughout the year, including Prime Days.
Scams often come in the form of phishing emails, which are deceptive messages that appear to be from a reputable source in attempt to steal sensitive information.
In this case, he said scammers posing as Amazon commonly offer “outrageous” deals that appear to be associated with Prime Days, in order to trick recipients into clicking on a malicious link.
The cybersecurity firm said it has identified and blocked 100 unique Amazon Prime-themed scam emails targeting organizations and consumers over the past two weeks.
Scammers also target Prime members with unsolicited calls, claiming urgent account issues and requesting payment information.
“It’s like Christmas for them,” said Falzon.
“People expect there to be significant savings on Prime Day, so they’re not shocked that they see something of significant value. Usually, the old adage applies: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
Amazon’s website lists a number of red flags that it recommends customers watch for to identify a potential impersonation scam.
Those include false urgency, requests for personal information, or indications that the sender prefers to complete the purchase outside of the Amazon website or mobile app.
Scammers may also request that customers exclusively pay with gift cards, a claim code or PIN. Any notifications about an order or delivery for an unexpected item should also raise alarm bells, the company says.
“During busy shopping moments, we tend to see a rise in impersonation scams reported by customers,” said Amazon spokeswoman Octavia Roufogalis in a statement.
“We will continue to invest in protecting consumers and educating the public on scam avoidance. We encourage consumers to report suspected scams to us so that we can protect their accounts and refer bad actors to law enforcement to help keep consumers safe.”
Falzon added that these scams are more successful than people might think.
As of June 30, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre said there had been $284 million lost to fraud so far this year, affecting 15,941 victims.
But Falzon said many incidents go unreported, as some Canadians who are targeted do not know how or where to flag a scam, or may choose not to out of embarrassment.
Check Point recommends Amazon customers take precautions while shopping on Prime Days, including by checking URLs carefully, creating strong passwords on their accounts, and avoiding personal information being shared such as their birthday or social security number.
The cybersecurity company said consumers should also look for “https” at the beginning of a website URL, which indicates a secure connection, and use credit cards rather than debit cards for online shopping, which offer better protection and less liability if stolen.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024.
