Tag Archives: content

On-Site vs. Off-Site SEO: What’s the Difference?

The post On-Site vs. Off-Site SEO: What’s the Difference? appeared first on HostGator Blog . Search engine optimization (SEO) comes in many shapes and sizes. It’s not limited to one technique or a single tool. If you’re just getting started with SEO , you will want to know the difference between on-site and off-site SEO. Each type offers benefits to help your business acquire more website visitors. While some strategies take a few hours to execute, other tactics will involve extra time to plan. Take this opportunity to attract people to your site. Learn the difference below. On-Site SEO Strategies On-site SEO focuses on optimizing individual pages to earn organic search traffic. By implementing these techniques, it’s easier for search engines to categorize your content.   1. Keyword Research All businesses desire more website traffic. To gain those visitors, it starts with understanding keyword research. Consumers enter keywords in search engines to find specific information. They search for everything from holiday gift ideas to cute puppy videos. Knowing your potential customers’ search intent will help you craft content with targeted keywords. That way, you receive qualified visitors, not just every curious person online. Keyword Planner and Moz’s Keyword Explorer are effective platforms for conducting keyword research and keeping track of trends. Garnering this insight gives you an edge over your competition. Stay away from broad terms. For example, if you sell women’s clothing, stick to distinct, longer-tail keywords that describe your products. Aim for “high-end winter plaid skirts,” rather than “women’s skirts.”   2. Internal Linking When an individual lands on a web page, it’s quite likely that she will want to learn more about the specific information mentioned. Internal linking gives you the chance to act as a tour guide, sending the visitor to another appropriate page. Linking boosts your SEO performance. Serial entrepreneur Neil Patel outlines the advantages: “One of the corollary benefits of internal linking is that it improves user engagement on your site. When a user sees an informative link that truly matches the context of the content, they are likely to click on that link. It can be an external link, as long as it’s something that the reader will be interested in.” Internal linking helps search engines crawl your site. So, direct visitors to another relevant page on your site.    3. Page Speed A few years back, search engines announced that a site’s page speed would impact its ranking. This guideline still influences SEO today. As a result, you should monitor your pages’ load time. According to Google , it takes on average 22 seconds for a mobile landing page to load.  However, “53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.” Their free PageSpeed Insights  tool analyzes the content of your web page and generates suggestions to make your page faster. It’s user-friendly and only takes a few seconds to receive your speed score. Large image files can negatively impact page speeds. You can solve this problem by using a tool like TinyPNG to reduce the file size and following image SEO best practices . Consider the number of widgets connected to your site, too. Excessive social buttons, comment areas, and pop-up ads can slow down page speed.   Off-Site SEO Strategies Off-site SEO is the process of improving your search rankings through referral traffic. These techniques include driving brand awareness and creating remarkable content.   1. Public Relations The perception of your business informs customers’ decisions. Public relations coupled with SEO serves the purpose of increasing your inbound links and brand recognition. Earning coverage in online publications and news outlets starts with developing an enticing story around your business. Jeremy Knauff , founder of Spartan Media, explains: “[Public relations] focuses on getting real humans who work at legitimate, authoritative publications genuinely interested in and talking about your story. It’s about truly adding value, which in turn tends to generate inbound links, as opposed to simply producing garbage links on websites that no one visits.” To catch an eye of a journalist, you’ll want to highlight a newsworthy activity. Maybe you’re partnering with a charity to donate funds, or you’re releasing groundbreaking research that supports your brand. You can generate buzz by writing a press release and initiating a social media campaign with a unique hashtag.   2. Guest Blogging Content writing is another way to obtain backlinks for your website. Through guest blogging, you can become a thought leader in your industry as well as maximize your SEO potential. Guest blogging involves crafting content for non-competitive sites with similar audiences. You’ll gain powerful relationships and site traffic. When guest blogging, it’s key for you to follow the rules described by the specific website. Below is an example from Mention , a social media monitoring tool. You’ll also want to choose a topic that will resonate with readers. If possible, tell a narrative about a recent experience, spotlight a customer story with humor, or even grab people’s attention with stunning statistics. Guest blogging is a perfect time to add your expertise to a larger conversation. You should aim to satisfy the publication and its readers.   3. Influencer Outreach You’re only as good as the community around you. To upgrade your circle and earn inbound links, influencer outreach offers a step in the right direction. Influencers are individuals who shape consumer buying habits. They can persuade people to visit websites, try products, and join social communities. For businesses, this engagement transforms into a huge benefit. Michael Quoc , founder and CEO of Dealspotr, gives his insight: “When your business engages with a new social audience, it unlocks the potential for more followers and engagement. This can lead to more site traffic, backlinks, and other factors that improve SEO.” Do your research when selecting influencers. It’s important that their values match your brand and their audience possess some interest in your products. Influencer partnerships will build your brand reputation faster. Plus, it gives bloggers another reason to link back to your website.   Focus on SEO Knowing when and how to apply on-site and off-site SEO strategies matters. Each type holds a different solution for your website to attract more visitors. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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The Right Way to Tag Your Blog Posts

The post The Right Way to Tag Your Blog Posts appeared first on HostGator Blog . It’s easy to overlook the humble post tag when you’re setting up your blog. But tags are worth a second look and then some. These little labels can deliver a lot of value when you know what they do and how to use them wisely. Tags on your blog posts can make it easier for readers to find what they’re looking for. They can help search engine crawlers understand the content that’s on your site. And tags can help you organize, update, and repackage your archived posts. With the right tracking tools, your tags can even show you which direction your new content should take. What a Blog Post Tag Is—and Isn’t Tags are similar to a lot of other site elements, and it can get confusing. Let’s start by clearing up what a tag is and is not. First, blog post tags are not hashtags. They have similar functions, but hashtags work across an entire platform, which is why you get results from about a million different accounts when you search for #puppies on Instagram. Post tags work within your site, so clicking the puppies tag will return only your posts about wee puppers. Post tags also aren’t the code snippets used to track marketing campaigns with Google Tag Manager. Two totally different things. Post Tags Complement Categories Tags are optional, but WordPress automatically sorts blog posts into categories. If you don’t set up your own categories and use them, your content will be “uncategorized.” That’s not helpful for your readers, you, search crawlers, or people using search engines to find the topics you write about. So please, use your categories. Some bloggers don’t tag their posts because they feel like categories take care of all their sorting needs. That can work if you have a small blog that you don’t update that often, but the more content you have, and the more varied your topics are, the more useful tags will be. Here’s why: Categories sort your posts into a top-level groups that provide a general outline of your content. For example, baking blog categories might be cakes, pies, cookies, and brownies. But you can tag posts in any of those categories with specific labels like Christmas, gluten-free, and so on, so readers can find all your Christmas or gluten free recipes in one tag search. Category and tag management menus in WordPress Post Tags and Meta Descriptions Have Different Jobs Meta keywords show up in a search results snippet for your post, and they get scanned by search engine robots. They can share some of the same words you use in your post tags, but tagging your posts doesn’t automatically generate meta descriptions. You need to enter them in the meta description box for your post. 4 Ways Post Tags Make Your Blog Better 1. Tags can help your SEO. Before you start freestyling your tag names, check out your Google Search Console data to see what keywords people are using to find your blog. By tagging with keywords, you help search engine bots find and categorize your posts. That helps new readers find your blog more easily. 2. Tags make a big blog more manageable and appealing to readers. Consider the tags on a TechCrunch post about robot food delivery . TechCrunch has been around for more than a decade, so they’ve got a huge archive. But they limit the tags to a few relevant labels. Seven of these tags lead to lists of related content that readers can scroll through. The Berkeley SkyDeck tag only applies to the Kiwi story for now. But as the startup accelerator gets more coverage, that tag may appear on more posts. You’ll notice one tag that’s not on this post is food delivery. Even though it’s central to the story, most TechCrunch readers are not there for food delivery stories. Their focus is tech. So keep your tags tied to what your readers are looking for. Resist the urge to toss in oddball tags, because you’ll end up with a bunch of one-off tags that make your site navigation harder instead of easier and don’t help your SEO. 3. Tags relate your blog posts to one another. Once you have a few posts with the same tag, you’ve got a little niche within your content that readers can explore. Behind the scenes, you can also use your tags to find related blog posts you might want to link to in new posts. You can do this manually or you can use a WordPress blog plugin that will automatically surface related posts for you. Once you have a few posts with the same tag, you’ve got a little niche within your content that readers can explore. Behind the scenes, you can also use your tags to find related blog posts you might want to link to in new posts. You can do this manually or you can use a WordPress blog plugin that will automatically surface related posts for you. You can review your tags to see if it’s time to put together a mega-post that updates and combines related content from several different posts in your archive. Tags can also help you pull together material for an eBook quickly. 4. Tags can show you which blog topics your readers like most. You can track metrics for your tags, and even your categories, but you’ll have to do a couple of workarounds for Google analytics to make it happen. One option is to create custom dimensions for your tags and categories in your analytics dashboard . If you do this yourself, you’ll also have to modify your tracking code, too. If you’d rather not mess with your tracking codes, you can use a plugin to set up your custom dimensions. The MonsterInsights Pro plugin has an add-on for exactly this purpose. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP by ExactMetrics also lets you set up custom dimensions for tags and some other post elements. Ready to set up your blog and start tagging your posts? Get started with HostGator’s managed WordPress hosting. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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4 Best Free WordPress Themes for Food Bloggers

The post 4 Best Free WordPress Themes for Food Bloggers appeared first on HostGator Blog . Got a taste for food blogging? A good blog theme is a key ingredient in your food blog’s success . The right theme showcases your food posts, recipes, and photos beautifully, and it can also do more. A theme that supports WooCommerce or another e-commerce plugin for WordPress makes it easier for you to earn money from your blog. An SEO-friendly theme makes it easier for new readers to find your blog. And a theme that’s designed to be lightweight and responsive will load fast, even on mobile phones, to ensure that the people who find your blog will stick around and enjoy your content. If your current food blog theme isn’t doing all those things, it may be time to replace it with something fresher. Here are four WordPress themes we like for foodies because they serve up great features for free. Best WordPress Themes for Food Blogs Is your food blog’s theme past its expiration date? Here are four fresh, free options.   1. MH Food Magazine This food-focused child theme of MH Magazine gives you the visual equivalent of a beautifully laid out buffet, with a three-column home page that features an array of five featured post images above the fold, topped by a 4-column header with thumbnail images and post headlines. The mobile display is a single column that alternates between full-width featured images with post excerpts and smaller thumbnail images in columns or arrays. MH Food Magazine is a visually busy theme, but if you have a lot of content already in your blog archives or if you’re generating new posts at a rapid pace, this theme will let you show off a lot of it to your readers at a glance. Add the Contact Form 7 plugin, customize your widgets, or display ads with the tools in the free version. The premium version is the parent theme, MH Magazine ($49). It offers fully customizable design elements, 26 widget locations, a news ticker, and extensive support.   2. Recipe Lite Recipe Lite from SKT Themes is a Gutenberg-compatible theme that serves up a professional look with modular editing capabilities so you don’t need to code to get the look you want. Recipe Lite’s desktop display features a three-image slider banner over a row of three featured images for your posts. Category sections follow, along with a newsletter sign-up form, a recent posts image grid, and a sidebar with a bio section and social media links. The display switches to a single column for smartphones. The free version of Recipe Lite is a good-looking theme that’s well suited for bloggers who have a lot of recipes or posts to archive. The pro version ($39) adds hundreds of Google font options, color and layout options, email and Skype support, and shortcodes you can use to add photo galleries , testimonials, flipboxes, and other elements.   3. Food Recipes This image-heavy theme from Faster Themes skips the trendy slider banner in favor of a two-column desktop layout that features four images above the fold next to the sidebar. The background is customizable, so you can use an image or keep things plain to make your featured post images stand out more. Food Recipes really shines on smartphones, where its single-column, uncluttered display makes it a good choice for bloggers whose readers use their phones to display recipes while they cook. The pro version of Food Recipes ($39) adds 1-click updates, six color scheme options, super-fast page loads, WooCommerce compatibility, and Google Fonts.   4. Foodies Foodies from Indigo Themes keeps the focus on the food. The homepage displays an array of 3 or 4 columns (single column on smartphones) of featured photos that invite readers to explore your recipes and posts. The recipe image grid calls to mind the vintage photo recipe cards of the 1970s, although the theme’s tone is fresh and modern. The free version of Foodies is SEO-friendly and designed with affiliate marketing in mind. It gives you full control of theme colors, supports left-to-right language translation, and is responsive and fast-loading. Foodies Pro ($49) adds an SEO-friendly recipe post template for easy formatting, filters for sorting posts and recipes, and AJAX-powered posts that display individual recipes over the homepage or category page quickly, without taking time to refresh the whole page.     Choosing a Food Blog Theme that Suits Your Taste Most theme publishers offer a live demo view of their themes, although you may have to view them on both a computer and a smartphone to see how they’ll look on each type of device. (Some, but not all, live previews will let you choose different device display options on your computer.) If you like the way a theme looks in live previews, the next step is to download it and try it out with your own blog content on as many devices as you can access. It’s a wise move to do this with a few themes you like before you make a decision. That’s because you can’t get a true sense of how the theme will work for your food blog until you try it with your posts and photos. While you’re trying out your shortlisted themes, ask yourself how well they support your goals for your blog, how well they support the way your readers use your content, and how fast they load your content. If most of your readers follow your recipes at home on their phones, a theme that displays recipe posts clearly, without requiring multiple taps or slides, is a must. If you plan to sell subscriptions or products on your blog, your theme needs to be compatible with WooCommerce or other plugins . And every blog needs to load fast for SEO and readership. Once you pick a theme, ask your readers what they think of it and listen to their feedback. Like a recipe that needs adjusting to taste just right, your new theme may need some tweaks to keep your readers happy. Keep listening and adjusting as needed and your fans will keep coming back to see what you serve up next. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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5 Best Practices for Business Blogs

The post 5 Best Practices for Business Blogs appeared first on HostGator Blog . Blogging can be good for your business, if you start with a plan. A blog can boost your website’s SEO, build relationships with prospective customers, and position your company as a trustworthy source of expertise. Sounds good, right? So, what are the best practices for starting your business blog ? Let’s dig in. 1. Blog for Your Customers, Not You What should you write about on your business blog? The big difference between business blogging and personal blogging is this: Business blogging is all about your audience, not all about you or your business. What that means is you’ll need to stick to topics of interest to your potential customers. Write for your customer personas , include keywords they search for, that you want to rank well for, and try to answer customer and reader questions with your posts. For example, does your business sell custom replacement windows? Use your posts to answer the questions customers ask you about energy efficiency, design, durability, energy rebates, and more. Remember that a blog is supposed to be a casual conversation. Readers come to you because they’re looking for information. You build trust and authority with them by giving them the information they want. That means don’t get too salesy on your blog. Yes, you can post about new products and sales, and share user-generated content like customer photos of their new windows. But don’t turn every post into a full-volume sales pitch. A call to action at the end of each post is enough. Vary the format from time to time. Maybe throw in an interview with a customer or supplier, use Canva to make some infographics with facts and stats your customers can use, shoot some tutorial videos, or make a slide deck with PowerPoint that your readers can download and share. 2. Include an Image with Every Blog Post Why? It’s simple. People love pictures. Pictures pull your visitors into your story before they read a single word. Look at the home page for Gardener’s Supply’s blog. For gardeners, these pictures are catnip, because they show what’s possible—and they show what the company’s customers want for themselves. Images also make social media posts more engaging. Tweets with images get 34% more RTs than tweets with only text, according to social media scheduling service Postcron. And Instagram posts without images? Just not happening. So take the time to create original photos or graphics for each posts. 3. Decide on Your Posting Schedule Hamster wheel or lazy river? How often should you post? Business blogs that turn out a post or more each day, like HostGator, have teams of writers and editors dedicated to creating that content. But as a small business owner, you wear many hats, and your most important one is running your business, not cranking out blog posts. If you must choose between fewer high-quality posts and more low-quality ones, go with less frequent, better-written posts. You can get good results from a slower posting schedule, if your content gives readers and prospective customers information they want. The key is to use the search terms your audience is looking for and the questions they are asking. To make an infrequent posting schedule go farther is to promote the heck out of each blog post on your business’s social media channels . If you’ve done your persona homework, you already know where your target audience hangs out online. Meet them there with your posts. 4. Keep Your Posts Fresh with Regular Blog Updates Every post you create is a resource you can edit and update as your business grows and your customer base evolves. When you update an old post, save that update in WordPress or update the publication data so that Google knows it’s been freshened up with new information. It’s a good idea to build regular updates into your content schedule. Changing out quarterly or yearly updates of statistics is an easy way to freshen up old content. Adding new feedback from customers to product-focused posts, or updates on new features, can also extend the life of your posts. For more tips, follow our step-by-step guide to running a content audit . 5. Get Organized with Blog Categories and Tags Keep your business blog categories simple and limited. Here’s how HostGator does it. Give your categories names that are search keywords, when possible. HostGator’s customers search for phrases like web hosting tips and marketing tips and tricks. Your business may have very different categories. Whatever they are, they should line up with what your market wants. For example, let’s say you’re in the dog training business. You might have categories on dog behavior, obedience training for dogs, socialization for dogs, and exercise with your dog. This keeps your blog focused on the stuff your customers are interested in. It also makes it easier for readers to home in on the information they need. You can tag your posts, too. This is different from assigning a post to a category. Maybe you write a series of posts on socializing and behavior training for rescue dogs, and another on senior dog behavior and exercise. The categories for these are clear—socializing and behavior. But you can tag them with “rescue dog” or “senior dog” so your readers can search your whole blog, not just individual categories, for content that matches their situation. Like with your category names, tag with phrases your readers search for. Here’s what the category and tag control panels look like in WordPress. Be sure to fill out the slug and description for each of your blog’s categories and tags. That information helps search engine crawlers understand what your post is about. Tags and categories can also help you when it’s time to update your content. Is there new research about senior dog health you want to add to your old posts? Call up the “senior dog” tag and you can rework all the relevant posts in a snap. Build Your Business Blog with HostGator Ready to get started? You can set up your business blog today with a WordPress hosting plan . Add on HostGator Domain Privacy to shield your personal domain registration information from public view to protect your business from spam. Not familiar with WordPress? You can still get started today, too. Gator Website Builder gives you drag-and-drop tools to help you snap together your business blog in minutes, with lots of mobile-friendly templates to make it look great. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading

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Copied (stolen?) content – what can I do?

I found a website that copy/pasted content from my website. Within the content, I put a few hyperlinks to other pages on my website. How… | Read the rest of http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1768257&goto=newpost Continue reading

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