Tag Archives: google
SEO Success Story: From a local factory to a regional distributor
In June 2013, we added a new project to our portfolio: Crystal Chocolatier. The task assigned to our web agency and SEO company was to build a website that will make it to the first results on Google and generate business leads to the chocolate factory. It was a challenge as Crystal Chocolatier was, back then, a small chocolate factory located in a Lebanese mountain serving mostly individuals in the neighborhood. Wanting to expand their reach to the region, they decided to have an online presence that targets retailers. So our job was to create and optimize a website that targets chocolate shops in the MENA region searching on Google for a chocolate provider. Challenge accepted!
A year after developing the website and setting up the SEO strategy for specific countries, we witnessed an increase in traffic of around 350%. About 88% of these visits were generated by Google and other referring sites. For those that are not familiar with the term, referrals are a source of traffic coming from manually placed links on other websites. Furthermore, less than a year later, the websites visits witnessed a growth of 65%.
The challenge wasnt simply to generate traffic, but to attract quality visits of potential business leads. Therefore, the keywords our SEO experts carefully chose corresponded to the mostly searched expressions on Google by chocolate shops. Today, the new factory is competing with established brands, like Patchi and Souchet, by appearing on Googles first page of search results. Terms like “chocolate factory Middle East” and “chocolate Lebanon” became the main source of visits to the website in several targeted countries. Consequently, traffic from the entire region increased, for example, visits from UAE grew by 200%.
As a result of this positioning on Google and the increase of relevant traffic, more businesses started contacting the chocolate factory to request their products. Crystal Chocolatier experienced a growth of more than 100% in leads directly from the website. The number of phone calls and emails from prospective clients also increased since the SEO strategys implementation.
Google recently updated their search algorithm to make mobile-friendliness a ranking signal. So, to maintain their ranking, the factorys website was amended to adapt to mobile screen sizes. Today, Crystal Chocolatier reached their goals by competing with well-known brands. So, when done properly, SEO helps businesses achieve their business objectives.
Heres the power of SEO! Contact us now to create your own success story.
Trading Links – Is It Still A Strong Marketing And Advertising Method
Just about everybody in the Internet marketing field know that backlink building really can make or break their online business. And a few years ago, trading links together with various other websites was looked upon as being a great way to build backlinks. But with all the modifications that Google has made over time, is this still thought to be a good marketing method? If you want to know if it is still an effective practice, keep reading and you will find out the answer.
So basically a backlink is a link that points from one site to another site. These backlinks are usually viewed as votes for your site by the major search engines. Which means that your Internet site will rank higher in the search engines when you have more inbound links to your website. When it relates to the value of each backlink you’ll find that some backlinks have better value than others. Let’s just say you have a link on a Internet site that has a page rank of 3, if the link is on the home page of the site you will find that it has more value than if the backlink is found on a sub page of that website. In order to determine the value of the link you’ll want to look at the page the link is on, instead of what the page rank of the home page is, even though the home page rank will probably still help a little.
When men and women trade links with other sites normally those other websites have a separate page on their site where they place the link for your site. So you’re not getting the same results from that backlink, that you would from the home page of that site. Another thing you should remember about these link web pages is that your link may be surrounded by hundreds of other links. I am sure nearly all of you already know that Google frowns upon this and generally these backlinks don’t even get counted.
Something else you may or may not have heard is that Google does not give the same authority to links that are exchanged as they do to one way links. For those of you who are unaware a one way link is actually when you don’t have to link back to the Internet site that has your link on it. When Google views one way links they provide that link more strength than a link that has been exchanged. You could also find websites that Google has de-indexed and if you end up trading links with them it is possible to hurt your own rankings. Of course it is not your aim to have Google hate you, however it can happen if you trade backlinks with the wrong websites.
The only time trading inbound links can provide advantages for you is when the web page where your link is has a very good page rank and a great deal of visitors. If your link ends up getting hidden on some deeper page of the site there is a great chance that the page where your link is, is not even indexed by Google. The problem is that most Internet sites that trade backlinks actually have some sort of links page that doesn’t get indexed. To sum up, when you are able your better off building one way links and there are lots of ways to accomplish this, but swapping links is a thing that is going by the wayside.
The Top 10 Technical SEO Ranking Factors
Not all search engine optimization is keyword
research and link building.
The technical aspects of your website, from the structure of your content, down to the cold hard code, are as important, or even more important, than building links and keyword optimization. If your site isnt search engine friendly, or doesnt adhere to Googles Webmaster Guidelines, then it will be continually penalized, and will never rank to its full potential.
According to Mozs 2015 Ranking Factors Study, these are the top 10 technical SEO ranking factors in order of importance.
Hreflang Declaration
The hreflang declaration tag (seen as rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” in HTML code) is an html tag that tells Google what language your site is written in. It is used to signal to search engines which version of a page to look for, depending on the location and language of the searcher. For example, if you have an English and a Spanish version of a page, and the prospect is searching from a Spanish speaking country, Google will choose the page with the hreflang= “es” (Spanish) over the the page tagged hreflang= “en”, as the tag helps Google infer which version is more appropriate.
This is what the snippet looks like for an English site in the Unites States:
Number of Internal Links
Internal links, or links from one page on your site to another page within your site, are important for SEO for several reasons. First, they allow you to pass on authority from your highest authority pages to your lower authority ones. Second, they provide more paths through which Google can crawl your site. The more links from your main pages to your sub-pages, the easier it is for Google to discover these deeper pages and index them.
Use this internal link to check out our blog on backlink tools.
URL Structure
URLs should be kept simple: short, and hyphen free. Thats what Google wants, as long URLs with excessive use of hyphens have proven to perform worse than short and easy URLs. This makes sense, as Google continues to stress user friendliness and the user experience, and having a short and easy to remember URL fits that criteria.
www.you-dont-want-a-url-that-looks-like-this.com
Link to Content Ratio
Google likes content, we know this. They also hate link spam, we know that too. Which is why it makes sense that if you have a ton of links on your site but not much content, Google will think youre trying to pull some kind of link scheme and de-rank you. Thats why its good to keep the link to content ratio low, to make sure youre not raising and red flags.
Code to Content Ratio
As with the link to content ratio, the code to content ratio is best kept low. Lots of code paired with little content again will raise spam flags with Google, as it makes the seem as though the site isnt being used. The excess code can also greatly hinder your page speed, which also negatively affects your rank.
Google Analytics Tracking Code
According to the study by Moz, websites with a Google tracking code installed performed better than those without. Perhaps this is a signal to Google that the website is run by a webmaster who is actively involved in monitoring it, and therefore likely to be more trustworthy.
For those of your who dont know, this is what the Google Analytics Tracking code looks like in HTML.
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push([_setAccount, UA-1337H@X0R-1]);
_gaq.push([_trackPageview]);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement(script); ga.type = text/javascript; ga.async = true;
ga.src = (https: == document.location.protocol ? https://ssl : http://www) + .google-analytics.com/ga.js;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(script)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
Robots.txt
Robots.txt are important as they tell search engine spiders like Googlebot how they should interact with the pages and files of your web site. If there are pages, files, or images that you do not want Google to index, you can block them with the robots.txt. Without a robots.txt, Google will indiscriminately index everything on your site.
URL is HTTPS
Secure websites, or websites with SSL Security Certificates, are shown to do slightly better in the SERPs. This is likely a signal to Google that your site is safe, secure, and real. Once again, the better the user experience, the better you will rank.
XML Sitemap
A sitemap is essentially a map of the pages on your site. This map contains metadata and information about the organization and content of your site. Googlebot and other search engine web crawlers use sitemaps as a guide to more intelligently crawl your site. Having a sitemap can help your pages get indexed, and allows you to highlight content that you want search engines to crawl.
Schema.org Markup
Schema markup is a way to change the appearance of the meta information presented about your site in the search engine pages. By using a schema.org markup, the meta description under your search engine listing can be modified to present information like reviews, employee profiles, etc. Having proper schema markup for certain information can even land your content in the Google answer box, which is a guaranteed way to drive traffic to your site.
So, if youre trying to rank your site up and arent seeing much success, these elements may be holding you back, as they are essential to earning Googles trust. Keep your site content oriented, user friendly, and easily able to be crawled by the Googlebot, while simultaneously ensuring your site is search engine friendly.