We all know a healthy backlink profile will keep your website be at the top of the game. After Google added the Penguin algorithm update, it became more apparent that link quality is essential, and not just the hefty quantity.  Fortunately, it is easier to evaluate and to study  backlinks because the tools available online.

If you are already curious, here are they:

1. URL Profiler

• If you need to process bulk data and you need an all-in-one tool, URL Profiler is created to provide just that. URL Profiler is not just designed for backlinks, but it can also know Google penalties, audit content and links, track keywords, and look for new backlink opportunities.
• With its backlink analyzer, it can help you to go easily through a series of links. Then, you will know the destination URL, the link type, the anchor texts used.
• So, you can really see if a link is merely created to cause spam and disrupt the organic flow of keywords.
• Once you get the data you want, you can export the important figures to an Excel file. With this detailed report, you can clearly understand the analysis, know the link score, get the contact details of the websites that provided backlinks, and many more.
• You are sure that every single backlink is accounted for. To wrap up, URL Profiler is an advanced tool for your growing needs. For only $19.95, you can avail of its solo plan. Moreover, there’s no need to subscribe to multiple services because URL Profiler gives you everything that you need.

2. Monitor Backlinks

• For this tool, you are given a 30-Day FREE trial to see if Monitor Backlinks fits your needs. The starter plan is available for as low as $25 per month.
• As the name suggests, Monitor Backlinks is made to check for backlinks on your website or even on a rival website.
• What can you do with Monitor Backlinks?
  • Search and monitor backlinks
  • Get the Google keyword rankings
  • It lets you know of your own backlink profile
  • Lastly, this tool helps you to generate reports and give you insights on the competing sites.
• When a competitor is ranking for a new keyword, you will know right away and you can immediately take action. You will know what topped the search results. So, you will NOT fall behind.
• Monitor Backlinks does not only strengthen your backlink profile, but it also has a clean interface. The dashboard is not complicated to navigate. There are graphs to help you create a visually appealing report so that your clients can easily understand what you are trying to point out.

3. Mention

• The great thing about Mention is that it has a free version. Though it’s not entirely focused on backlink analysis, Mention really is more of a social media brand analysis tool. However, it does not mean it is terrible.
• To be honest, Mention actually enables you to know good backlink opportunities. With the free account, you can monitor 250 mentions in one social media account. That gives you a good start already!
• For the paid version, you can login to multiple accounts and monitor countless of mentions. If you choose to pay $83 for the starter pack, it will allow you to see results of 5,000 mentions on both web and social media. Additionally, Mention can help you find keyword-based mentions in real-time.
• Not only that, Mention has an influencer discovery tool. So, it means that can help in searching for digital influencers and other people who can help spread the word.
• If you want to monitor keywords on social media and focus on social media campaigns, then, Mention is the right tool for you!

In part 1, I talked about the many crucial changes that will happen to Google Search and how it will affect SEO. The tools that mentioned were Google Discover and Google Assistant.

Today, I will share more changes for you to know. Here they are:

Google Is Going to a New Direction

 During Google’s 20^th birthday celebration, Google announced a new opportunity for everyone to simplify search. It hopes to give a new internet experience to users.

 Yes, good things were added, but there are still the old principles that Google kept. Here they are:

1. Giving the most applicable and relevant data delivered to the user as fast as Google can.
2. Utilization of the algorithmic approach.
3. Emphasizing on the user’s concerns.
4. Vigorously examining each change and identifying the search goals of each user.

This equates to continuing the following:

1. Placing the user as the priority.
2. Knowing algorithms.
3. Being precise and recent.
4. Making sure to follow Google’s rating specification on quality.

In contrast to that, here are the principles that will embody the strikingly new route for Google Search are as follows:

• Knowing the journey.
  • Google is increasingly improving its latest features. Users can go back where they stopped. Google is not just giving answers, but it is also providing its users the ability to continue where they left off.
  • This is looking at the bigger picture. What pages the user visited? What questions searched? Thus, Google will recommend what to read next in accordance to the user’s unique search history.
• Moving to a queryless journey.
  • What we should observe is Google’s continuous means to make sure to assist users even if they don’t inquire.
  • Google Discover is focusing on giving more evergreen content, and this shows the mind set of Google when it comes to content recommendation.
• Moving from mere texts to more visuals.
  • Google is doing vital changes and that is adding new visual functions.
  • Image search is now improved so that the content with relevant images will be shown more. Thus, these pages ranks well.
  • Google Lens permits you to do visual search. Google’s AI can now detect the visual captures by the camera. Users can scan and translate texts in real-time.

What Will Happen to SEO?

We are now starting a new period of search. It’s time to rethink about SEO. As the landscape of technology shifts, we need to have fresh approaches and adapt through the following methods:

• Center your attention on context and not queries.
• How do you develop a content that people would want to bookmark?
• Is it possible to be an affiliate of Google. And if not, what will you do next?
• What kind of content will focused on query-based search?
• How will content marketing work? What happens to SEO during promoting and advertising?

There more questions to ask. However, the bottom line here is you have to acknowledge that the major concern of Google is always to provide relevant content.

Larger Than Life

The different alterations that we are now facing is even larger than Google. Surely, it goes beyond Google. As businesses, we need find ways to connect SEO and algorithm updates.

One of the many roles of the SEO writer is to make sure that the content is optimized for web. If your content caters to the different SEO factors, then, that is considered an effective SEO writing.

Definitely, the search engines’ goal is to give the users the finest and the best result basing from the search word/s they entered. So, if your content is just “faking it,” then, search engines will not consider it as excellent. Moreover, it will not show up on their top search results.

That is the reason why hiring an exceptional SEO writer is extremely important. You wouldn’t want to damage your site, right? Here are the characteristics of an SEO writer:

1. Comprehends the right spelling of words and the rules of grammar.

• This means that a good SEO writer knows how to use comma, semi-colon, apostrophe, and the likes.
• He has a knowledge on when to use “who,” “what,” “which,” “whom,” and so on.
• If your SEO writer does not know grammar, then, you are hiring a person who is not worth a penny. Remember, inaccuracy and errors will decrease the integrity of your content.
• When it does, people will know that they cannot trust the brand or the service of the one who just posted a mediocre content. They simply will refuse to be your customer!

Related: Blog Writing Tips

2. A great SEO writer knows how to professionally deal with your SEO expert.

• The ideal working set-up is for SEO writer and SEO expert to coordinate to reach the same objectives.
• If they work separately, then, there will be no order. Most likely, all efforts will fail.

3. Write for humans, and then, the next is to write for search engines.

• Google expects you to write for people first and foremost. There is no need to stuff your content with redundant keywords.

4. A great SEO writer knows your audience.

• This means, if you write for people, you must who you are writing for.
• What are their concerns? What kind of content has meaning to their everyday lives?
• Remember, if your audience doesn’t need it, they will not bother to read. So, why post it?

5. Knowing the do’s and the don’ts when writing SEO content.

• Having said that, it follows that they have a flair for keywords. The writer must come up with good titles, heading tags, introductory sentences, and so on.
• A good writer does not stuff keywords. If they can’t do these things, then they will just waste your money.

Related: SEO Mistakes You Shouldn’t Make in 2019

6. A great SEO writer should be able to write briefly.

• You have to call their attention. If you do, then, make sure you deliver the message as briefly as possible. No one want to read a lengthy paragraph.
• Also, make it understandable for everyone. Avoid using jargons and highfalutin words.

Related: Blogging 101: 3 Important Writing Tips

7. A great SEO writer knows how to wonderfully tell a story.

• An excellent SEO writer should be able to plot the journey of your customer. It is not about making a one-time purchase, but it is about being loyal to the brand.
• You would want someone who would patronize your products or services to purchase. Investing on effective product description is a start.
• Writing an appropriate piece will transform a visitor into a customer. Sometimes, you don’t need to pay expensive tools. You just need the right word choices for your published content.

To have good traffic, it is important to build a site that considers both the visitors and the search engines. Today, the center of it all are the search engines, and SEO will not cost you a penny. For starting business or small enterprises, this is such a big deal since there are more known companies out there. SEO increases the traffic by organic search as compared to the companies that pay for ads. Remember, 32% of users will always click on Google’s top search results. That makes SEO very vital to your brand or service.

However, optimizing is not that easy especially if you have a lot of things in your plate. Then, check these valuable SEO advice that can help your growing business.

1. Oversee the changes.

Whatever advice you would like to do first, one thing is for sure. Observe changes. And if you want to do it yourself, then do the following steps.

• First and foremost, decide on the standard you would like to follow when overseeing the traffic. Would you like to look at the number of visitors going to your site or would you rather use newsletter sign-ups as your barometer?
• Do the changes one at a time. If you do everything in one shot, you will not know what is functioning and what is not.
• Use a dependable SEO tool that will boost your ranking for Google to see your development.

Related: Tips in Enhancing Your SEO Strategy

2. Develop a simple site structure.

Easy framework is vital for the search engine crawlers and users to direct. If your company is small and has a new website, you should follow this order.

• Pages
• Categories
• Internal linking
• Headings

Hierarchy is not just for people but for web crawlers, too. Google crawlers will comprehend your content easily and give it a better rank. Also, people will find what they are looking for and stay on your site longer.

Related: Tips in Reducing Your Website’s Bounce Rate

3. Content should come first.

Writing brilliant content is the major SEO trend. Read below in order to learn some tips:

• Google wants high quality content and this means developing contents that complement your headlines, meta descriptions as well as your keywords.
• Content is not purely made up of texts. To make it more attractive to visitors and gain their participation, you can use videos or images.
• Google algorithms uses keywords to establish the ranking but do not stuff your keywords because that is addressing algorithms not humans.

It is vital to try various styles, and then, check your traffic and discover what your visitors needs from your website. This will help you determine the kind of content you need.

Related: 10 Secrets In Writing Content

4. Center your attention on developing external and internal links. 

Structure your links consistently and develop both internal and external links. When you interlink your pages in your site, this helps in making the users stay longer in your site. Also, this assists crawlers to know and have greater ranking. If not, crawlers will not find it, and therefore, may rank lower.

Develop a system of good quality external backlinks. Finance on great content that will bring backlinks by itself and develop interaction with other enterprises in related fields. This will heighten your backlink profile.

In part 1, we have discussed how important it is for your content to be understood by the search engines, and this is crucial to have good ranking and to get organic traffic.

Of course, the question there is how to do them, right? So, we started with trying to improve our on-page elements and took up the terms such as Title Tag, Meta Description, and Bread Crumbs. Today, I shall give you more tips on how to increase your SEO’s effectiveness. Here they are:

Subheads

Let’s face it: people are too busy to have the time to really read. They scan the page and when they find something that catches their attention that is when they start to sink their teeth in it. So the eye-catching thing that you can do is by providing a subhead that immediately allows the reader to know if the topic is what they are looking for. This gives your visitor a stress-free experience. Also, this assists the search engines to immediately know your content by using the position from the first most important to the least.

Lists

Since we are already know that we need to make it easier for our user, then we can consider another approach aside from subheads. You can make a list. You can do methodical detail to be noticed. Let us discuss further.

1. Our intellect is used to patterns, we always spot for patterns.
2. It is the same with numbers or bullets.
3. A little structuring around the content likewise catches attention of the human eyes.

And just like subheads, the lists allows the user to have a great experience.

Images

A picture can say a thousand words than words can ever suffice but make certain that your images have its worth. So, do not use stock photos that does not say anything. You can opt for the following:

1. Image of your product/s or elements.
2. Image of your product being used by a person or a group.
3. Artworks and or schematics.
4. Use photos of maps inclusive areas.
5. Stats and infographics
6. Photos of doing a specific action.

HOW DO WE KNOW THAT SEARCH ENGINES CAN COMPREHEND YOUR IMAGES?

Don’t just put images on your page, search engines will not acknowledge that. You need to be more specific like say something about it. You can do so by naming the image files, sometimes you can make use of title attributes or image alt attributes. Just remember with naming your image files, just say something briefly about the contents. Never use a lot of keywords. A good reminder is to just use five or even three-word file is good enough.

With alt attribute, provide at least one or two sentences to illustrate the image. This is done for visitors with sight impairment. Now, should your image has a clickable link, the title attribute should be able to describe what the visitor could anticipate if they decide to click the link.

One more thing, do not forget to optimize your images to maintain the proper speed. If you need to catch up on part 1, here is the link: How to Increase SEO’s Effectiveness (Part 1)