Google Autocomplete: How to Generate More Keywords

Here’s something I bet you’ll be glad to hear: you don’t have to invest in expensive SEO tools to get a list of keywords that convert. Google is vast and has an unfathomable amount of data. It also has a range of tools aimed at helping users. One of these if Google Autocomplete.

Most people only use this to complete their searches quickly. But business owners and SEO experts can use this feature to find awesome long-tail keywords. In this post, we’ll show you how to do the latter.

Google Autocomplete

Google Autocomplete was first launched in 2008. It is also known as Google Suggest. The tool works because of an algorithm that works out what the searcher could be looking for and then presents them with a list of suggestions. It’s important to be aware that these suggestions are personalized based on where the searcher is and what they have searched for before.

How to generate keywords using this tool

Step 1. Think of your base keyword

You’ll need some base keywords to start that center around your business. This might be “wedding photographer”, “pizza restaurant” or “yoga mat”, for instance.

Step 2. Add your location if it’s relevant

If you only operate in a particular region, you may want to add your location to the base query. This will help to make sure that only suggestions relevant to your location will be shown. As an example, you might search for “Wedding photographer in Chicago”.

Step 3. Shuffle word orders

If you want even more suggestions, shuffle the order of the words in your query. Using the above example, you could also use “Chicago wedding photographers” and “wedding Chicago photographers”.

Step 4. Choose from the suggestions at the bottom of the results

Enter the phrases you have created using the steps above into Google and scroll down to the bottom of the page. You’ll find a list of suggestions based on your keywords. You can even click on these suggestions and get even more by doing the same thing.

Step 5: Type through

There’s another technique you can use if you aren’t searching for keywords that center around a location. Go to Google and start typing a base query into the search bar. You’ll notice that Google will start to suggest long-tail keywords for you. Make a note of all of these as people have searched for them in the past. You can keep typing to get even more or you can click on one result, scroll down to the bottom of the page and get even more recommendations.

Additional tip: Use Soovle.com if you want to generate keyword suggestions for Bing, YouTube, Amazon and other search engines. It’s free and very easy to use.

Create a keyword list

If you want to keep track of all these keywords, we recommend creating a spreadsheet and adding in each suggestion as you go. That way you can filter out the ones that are good and the ones that don’t work.

Can I use all keywords from Google Autocomplete?

There’s nothing stopping you from using all of the keywords that Google serves up, but we highly recommend checking them on by one. That’s because many will have a very low search volume and others will be very competitive. You don’t want to waste your time on keywords that don’t get any traffic or that you’ll never be able to rank for.

Final words

Google Autocomplete is one of the best, free keyword generators around. Make sure you start using it to find more keywords for your website today.

Things Website Owners Should Know When Creating a Sitemap

Sitemaps are a core part of search engine optimization. Having one will ensure that search engines can properly index all of your pages in their results. Even so, a lot of website owners don’t bother creating a sitemap, foolishly thinking they don’t need one. You do. So if you don’t think it’s worth creating a sitemap or if you haven’t created one yet, it’s important to read the following points.

XML isn’t the only sitemap format

Many think that XML is the only sitemap format, but it isn’t. There is also Google News Sitemap, a sitemap that is used exclusively by the media.

There are also RSS feeds, which are used by websites like blogs that post regular content. There is also the mRSS feed, which is used by large websites with loads of video content. There is even an alternate language sitemap, also in XML, which is used when your site is in more than one language.

You’re not supposed to add all URLs

When you create an XML sitemap, you really don’t need to include every single page of your website in it. You may have duplicate pages, redirection pages and error pages. None of these should be included. You also don’t need to index pages that are hidden behind a paywall or pages like your privacy policy.

Sitemaps don’t always apply for all websites

Okay, so while sitemaps are essential, not every website needs one. They should always be used by large websites or any site that has a blog, for instance.

However, if your site doesn’t have a lot of multimedia content and is intensively linked internally, a sitemap may not be needed. Also, websites with a simple site hosting, say Wix, need not create a sitemap. And if your website has a few indexable pages, a sitemap isn’t a requirement.

You should keep your sitemap private

You don’t need to make your sitemap searchable in Google. That may seem strange at the outset, but think about it, only Google needs to access it. And Google can access it without ranking it. The only thing you do by making it searchable is help competitors dissect your site more easily.

If you have a large content-based website, having a private sitemap can be a big advantage. One way to achieve this is to change the URL from something default, like /sitemap.xml. If you use this strategy, you’ll need to resubmit your page to Google so it knows where to look.

Know the limits

Sitemaps are not limitless. For instance, they can’t have more than 50,000 URLs and they can’t be bigger than 50MB. Of course, most site owners will never have to worry about this. But if you do, then the good news is that you can split your sitemap into two. You should be aware, however, that Google only allows you to submit 500 sitemaps. But, once again, most people will never have to worry about this limitation.

Everything Site Owners Need to Know About Site Analysis

Site analysis is an important part of the SEO process. While you won’t be optimizing your website when completing site analysis, you will be gaining a better understanding of it so that you can optimize it in the future. You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve come from, as they say.

Today, we’ll take you through exactly what site analysis is and what you need to know about it.

An introduction to site analysis

The whole point of site analysis is to understand where your website stands from an SEO point of view. As part of this, you can also look at your competitors’ websites to see if yours is better or worse.

So for website analysis to succeed, you need a complete SEO audit. This way, you can have a bigger picture of what you need to improve, what pages are performing better, and so on. Through this, you can regain your SERPs ranking or even outrank your competitors.

On top of some of the SEO aspects, site analysis will also include testing the site performance, its speed, looking at the competition and analyzing website traffic. Just because you have a lot of traffic doesn’t mean that it is high-quality, high-converting traffic. After site analysis, you may be surprised at just how bad your traffic is.

As well as SEO elements, you’ll also want to look at your site’s performance, its speed and its traffic, as well as that of your competitors. You might be surprised about the quality of your traffic after a site analysis. just because you have a lot of traffic doesn’t mean that it is any good.

Tips for site analysis

Check website speed

One of the first things that you need to do when completing a site analysis is to analyze your website’s speed. If it takes longer than three seconds for your page to load, you have a lot of work to do. The good news is that there are several things you can do like reducing file sizes or using a CDN. Remember, site speed is becoming an increasingly important Google ranking factor. The faster your site, the better your chances of ranking highly.

Conduct competitive analysis

Competitive analysis involves going through your competitors’ websites with a fine toothcomb. You’ll want to do this from a business perspective, so you can understand what they are doing and how they are making money. But you’ll also want to do this from an SEO perspective, so you can work out how to beat them in Google.

Audit your SEO

You’ll want to look at your site’s SEO as part of your site analysis. Look at how many backlinks you have and where they come from, analyze your off-page SEO, your keyword rankings and your content. You can also look for new opportunities to create more content.

Know your traffic

It’s essential to understand your website’s traffic. You’ll want to look at how many visitors your site gets every month, where they come from and whether they convert. Don’t be worried if you don’t have much traffic if it converts. At the same time, don’t boast about having lots of traffic if no one converts.

Know more about behavior analytics

As part of your traffic analysis, you’ll want to look at how your visitors behave. Analyze which pages they look at, how long they stay on pages and how they move about your site.

Final words

It’s essential that you know what’s going on with your website. You want to do this at least once a year if you are serious about growing your business.

What Are the Best Link Building Techniques to Use in 2020?

Link building is a key part of any SEO strategy. But it isn’t easy. Don’t get confused or distracted. Below we have listed some of the very best link building tactics that you can use right away.

Linking through guest posts

Guest posting is probably the most time-consuming tactic on this list, but it is one of the best ways to get real and genuine links to your website.

Make sure that you write for the website’s readers and not just to please Google. High-quality content is key here. Make sure that you write a range of different posts, too. Submitting the same content to multiple sites will only result in a penalty.

Educational content

Educational content is some of the most widely searched content on the internet. It is the most effective way to provide huge amounts of value to users without being salesy. As such, website owners are very likely to link to it.

However, just like the first technique, this one is quite time-consuming. You have to craft informative and unique copies every single time.

Internal linking

Don’t just focus on getting links from other websites. Linking between your own web pages is also important to spread link juice throughout your site.

Take note that internal linking is a must. Just avoid overstuffing a page with too many internal links. About 2 or 3 internal links per page should be enough and not every page needs an internal link if it doesn’t merit.

Offer an affiliate program

One way to get loads of links with just a bit of upfront work is running an affiliate program. It can take time to set up by you’ll be creating tons of links on autopilot.

You just have to prepare a commission system, affiliate rules, and affiliate products. Through this, you can attract fellow website owners who want to earn an extra income to promote your pages.

Private Blog Networks (PBN)

PBNS have been an effective link building tactic for a long time, but there is an ongoing argument as to how legal they are in the eyes of Google. Technically, Google bans PBNs, so if you use them, you need to make sure your links look as natural as possible. PBNs can be time-consuming and difficult to manage, too. So be warned.

Offer a free tool

Have you ever wondered why websites create tools and give them away for free? It’s because it’s a goldmine for backlinks and a great way to make sure you always have traffic coming to your website.

Be a guest on a podcast

A final tactic is to become a guest on a podcast. This may seem a bit left-field, but let us explain. Podcasts are incredibly popular at the moment and a lot of people listen to them. This makes them a great way to get your name out there. What’s more, if your host links back to your website in their show notes, you’ll earn a great link, too.

On-Page SEO Basics

On-page SEO is a key part of the process of getting your pages to rank well in Google.

On-page SEO is different from off-page SEO in that you focus on optimizing your own site, as opposed to getting other people to link to it.

Today, we’ll take you through the basics of on-page SEO so that you know all you need to get started.

Why is on-page SEO important?

On-page SEO is a key part of the whole SEO process. When you optimize your website, you make it easier for both readers and Google to navigate.

The good thing about on-page SEO is that you have full control over the results. Also, it’s a preparation for off-page SEO, which will direct traffic to your website.

On-page SEO factors

On-page SEO consists of various strategies, including 12 factors that Google and other search engines use to determine your site’s rankings.

This includes a crawlable website, site architecture, outbound links, website speed, mobile-friendliness, and the use of an SSL certificate. Aside from that, on-page SEO also includes click-through rates, readability, image optimization, quality content, and easy-to-use URLs.

Keyword optimization is probably the most important part of on-page SEO. You have to optimize all aspects of your page with relevant keywords if you want your content to rank well.

How often should you do on-page SEO

You have to keep coming back to your on-page SEO if you want to continue to rank well. However, not every part needs to be optimized regularly. You only have to buy an SSL certificate once, for instance.

There are many factors that you have to complete regularly, such as creating and optimizing content. Whatever you do, make sure to include on-page SEO as part of your annual SEO audit.

Should I perform on-page SEO?

Even if your website is ranking really well, you should still perform on-page SEO regularly. It’s the only way to make sure that you continue to rank well in the future. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be an SEO expert to do it, either.

If you are a website owner, make sure that you dedicate time to on-page SEO as well as off-page SEO. You can never do too much.

Some on-page optimizations are also ranking factors in Google. These include having an SSL certificate and improving your site’s speed.

Don’t neglect optimizations that aren’t ranking factors, however. Every optimization plays a part in your overall ranking.

On-page SEO is just as important as off-page SEO, even if it isn’t as sexy. The better you optimize your own website, the more your off-page optimization efforts will pay off in the future.

What You Need to Know about Content Optimization

Content is king as the SEO experts love to say. But it’s not just enough to create great content on your website, you need to make sure that you optimize it so that people can find it. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter how good your content is, it will never get read.

Keyword research is essential

The most important thing to do before writing anything is to search for keywords. As well as helping you to find keywords with which to optimize your content, research can also help you learn more about your target audience. It will help you understand who your customers are, what they are interested in and how often they search for it. You can then tweak your content to reflect this.

Keyword optimization improves both on-page and off-page SEO. The better optimized your content is, the more likely it will show up in Google. At the same time, the more your content shows up in Google, the more likely it is that it will be linked to.

Use a focus keyword

A focus keyword is one single keyword that you optimize your entire piece of content around. It is the main keyword that you will include in the page title, in some of the headings and in the meta data.

When you use a focus keyword it doesn’t mean that you have to omit other keywords — far from it. This is where Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords are important. LSI keywords are keywords that are related to your focus keyword, although they are not necessarily synonyms of that keyword.

Search intent is the best approach

When writing content, make sure that you write for humans and not for Google. This is why it is essential to understand search intent.

Google has become so advanced in recent years that it can now understand exactly what users are searching for. That means that only websites that fulfill their intent will be shown in the results pages. This is because Google wants to provide the best user experience possible for customers.

Optimize your meta data

As well as the body copy of your web page, you should also optimize the page’s meta data. You’ll want to use your focus keyword in the title tag, the page’s meta description, the alt tag of pictures and everywhere else it is relevant. This includes the page’s URL. It should contain the keyword without being overly long, complex or ugly.

Use headings

Make sure that you use lots of subheadings in your content. A wall of text looks very intimidating. Besides, no one wants to search through a sea of text to find the one thing they are actually looking for. It will also make your content much easier to read and more engaging, too. Besides, subheadings also create an opportunity for you to use your keywords.

Optimize pictures

Most website owners neglect the importance of optimizing the pictures on their websites. While this isn’t technically a type of content, optimizing your images can have a huge impact on SEO. Once again, they are another way to get keywords onto your pages.

The Down-Low on Keyword Research in 2020

Keyword research has consistently been a key piece of SEO. For quite a long time, SEO specialists have invested a colossal amount of energy to find the best keywords that convert. The year 2020 will be the same.

Keyword research remains essential in 2020

Keywords help business owners to win organic traffic. In any case, they additionally help site proprietors to more readily comprehend their crowd and expound on things their crowd thinks about.

Keyword research will stay fundamental in 2020, but it will change slightly. Voice search, specifically, will turn out to be progressively more significant and that will change how keyword research is executed.

Keyword research will be much more topical

Keyword research in 2020 isn’t just about finding the highest traffic and most noteworthy keyword phrases. If you’re serious about generating serious levels of traffic, you have to concentrate on the themes your clients are searching for, not the particular words. The reason? Long-tail searches have become even more common, meaning your content can appear in many more searches.

This doesn’t imply that you never again need to search for keywords, however. It actually means you need to do considerably more research.

Keyword research for voice search

SEO specialists have estimated that voice search will represent as much as half of all search inquiries by 2020. This will have a big impact on your keyword research. Voice searches are structured much more like normal conversations than your typical Google search and your keyword research needs to reflect this.

Smart devices and smartphones have AI technology that can decipher the meaning and intent of these kinds of searches. The results they provide mirror this intent. As a result, your content needs to cover all of the possible queries someone could use to find it.

What you need to know about long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are now the key to large amounts of organic traffic. They give sites more opportunities to rank for a wider range of searches. The particular phrases themselves might not drive as much traffic as conventional keywords, however they are a heck of a lot easier to rank for and there are many, many more of them. Long-tail keywords are also a great way to better understand your target market and the kind of things they are interested in.

Maybe what is best about long-tail keywords is the straightforwardness at which you can discover them. For example, you can make a long tail keyword by joining at least two short-tail keywords. Let’s take three keywords as an example. Say you have “best iPhone case”,  “case for iPhone 11” and “clear iPhone case”. You can combine them to create “the best clear smartphone case for the iphone 11” and have a unique long-tail keyword that could rank for each of the three individual keywords as well as many more.

To End

2020 is not the year that you quit SEO research. It’s the year that you spend more time thinking about what your target audience is actually searching for.

Starting Metrics to Look at When Beginning SEO

SEO is tough for beginners. There is a lot of work needed to get a site ranking well in Google. There are also a lot of metrics that need to be tracked in order to make SEO a success.

When it comes to looking at what metrics to track and how to track them, it can be hard to know where to start. That’s why we’re going to be covering the basic metrics you should be focusing on when starting on your SEO journey.

Organic traffic

The aim of SEO is to get more organic traffic; that is traffic from search engines like Google as opposed to traffic from Facebook, from ads or from people who come to your site directly.

The reason that there is a whole industry devoted to SEO is that organic traffic is some of the most valuable traffic there is. It’s free for one thing and users often have a high level of intent. That means they want to find out something specific or buy something. Checkin your organic traffic levels is a great way to see if your SEO efforts are having an effect. If you see traffic levels rising, you can be sure that what you are doing is paying off.

Keyword rankings

Keyword rankings are another absolutely critical SEO metric that you need to be looking at. You are definitely going to have a target list of keywords that you want to rank for, so it is important to understand just how well you are ranking.

A good keyword rankings tracker will be able to handle this automatically, as well as show you the history of each keyword’s rankings and alert you to any pages that have suffered a drop in rankings.

Organic click-through rates

Your organic click-through rate refers to the number of people who click on your page’s link in Google over the total number of people who have seen that search result. It demonstrates how attractive your website looks to searchers. The higher the click-through rate, the better.

Part of your CTR will depend on how well you rank in Google. Obviously, the nearer the top of the page you are, the more clicks you’ll get. But it can also be improved by having engaging and enticing page titles and meta descriptions.

Bounce rates

Your website’s bounce rate is the percentage of people who visit it and then leave without taking any action. Naturally, you want this to be as low as possible as you want people to hang around on your site and eventually buy something.

Pages per session

Pages per session refers to the number of pages a visitor looked at in a single session. This is typically given as an average so you can see how well your site does overall. You can also look at this specifically to see the journey a visitor took when they landed on your website. This can help you to make it more user-friendly and encourage more users to look at more pages.

Everything You Need to Know About Optimizing SERP Click-Through Rates

The click-through rate of SERP results isn’t discussed that often in the world of SEO. So we’ll forgive you if this is the first you are hearing about it. But optimizing SERP CTRs is important. It’s not enough to just be at the top of Google, anymore. You also need to make sure that users click on your link over those of your competitors.

What are SERP click-through rates

Your page’s SERP click-through rate (or SERP CTR) is the number of clicks your link in Google gets over the total amount of people who see that search result. If loads of people click your link in Google, you’ll have a high SERP CTR. If few do, you’ll have a low CTR.

How do you optimize your SERP CTR

There are several ways that you can improve your SERP CTR.

Start by using a compelling title

The first thing that users see in Google are the titles of all the potential results. Yours needs to be near the top, but it also needs to stand out from other results. That means you should be making your title as clickable as possible. Try to include keywords too so that users know that your page will deliver the information they are looking for.

Be careful not to make your title too long, however. A long title can be cut off by Google or rewritten entirely.

Then write an engaging meta description

The next thing that users are likely to see is your page’s meta description, and it needs to be just as engaging as your title. Good thing you get a little more space than your title to make that possible. You’ll want to tease the content on your page and give users a reason to click on your link over those of your competitors.

Use short URLs

Your page’s URL will also be displayed beneath your page title. This should be optimized so that it is as short and descriptive as possible.

Use emojis

Google has recently allowed brands to start including emojis into their page titles and meta descriptions. This is a particularly effective way to make your listing stand out, particularly on mobiles where their use is common. Try it for yourself by adding an emoji or two into your page title and meta description. Be careful not to add too many, however, as loads of emojis can make your brand look unprofessional.

Use structured data

Structured data is quite technical and complex, but it can be a great way to make your listing clearer in the SERPs. Structuring your page’s meta data helps search engines and other websites to better understand what your page is about. As a result, they can index your website better and help users find exactly what they are looking for.

While you’re at it, make sure that you optimize your page’s content, too. It’s no good having an enticing link in Google if people aren’t going to like what they find when they click on it.

Tracking Your On-Page SEO

Performing on-page SEO on your website is important, but so is tracking what impact your optimization is having on your website’s performance. Otherwise, how are you going to know that what you are doing is working? Don’t leave it to chance, here’s how you can track your on-page SEO.

Start by tracking keywords

Keywords are one of the most important parts of on-page SEO, so it’s obviously necessary to track them. The best place to start is Google’s Search Console, which provides a free and fast way to see which keywords your pages are ranking for.

Aside from Google’s Search Console, there are plenty of paid tools that you can use to track how well you rank for keywords. Thee paid tools will include more advanced features, too, like ranking history, alerts when your rank drops and location-specific ranking data.

Don’t just look at your website as a whole, it’s important to track each page individually. In doing so, you can identify the worst performing pages and then link to them from your best-performing pages in order to give them a boost.

Check your organic traffic

The whole point of on-page SEO is to increase the amount of organic traffic that you get from Google and other search engines. Naturally, it’s important to track this traffic carefully to see how many visitors you are getting, where they are coming from and how long they are staying on your site.

On top of this, you should also be tracking the bounce rate of your website and specific pages individually. Your bounce rate is the number of people who leave a page without taking any further action. A high bounce rate is bad. It doesn’t matter how much traffic you have when you have a high bounce rate as most users aren’t sticking around.

Bounce rates can vary tremendously from website to website and will also depend on the type of page. So you can get an idea of how well your website is performing, the following are some industry benchmarks:

  • Blogs– 65% to 90%
  • Landing pages – 60% to 90%
  • Content websites – 35% to 60%
  • Lead generation websites – 30% to 55%
  • Business to business (B2B) websites – 25% to 55%
  • E-commerce and retail websites – 20% to 45%

Look at pages per session

The pages per session metric measures the number of pages an individual user looks at while browsing your website. It’s a great way to see how easy it is to get around your website and how engaging it is, too.

If pages per session are low, there are several tactics you could use to increase the number. These can include creating more internal links, creating better content and improving your website’s design.

Final words

Tracking your on-page SEO is hugely important. There’s no point in doing all of the work in the first place if you aren’t going to see whether that work is paying off. Bear in mind, however, that it can take a long time to see results when it comes to on-page optimization. So track your results but be patient, too.

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