SEO

5 Secrets of SEO: Techniques to Boost Organic Traffic + Rankings

August 1, 2023 by Eric Ritter

How tempted are you to throw in the towel with your SEO strategy and jump straight to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising? While PPC might seem like an easy way to draw potential new customers to your website, it’s a short-term digital marketing strategy at best.

Not to mention, you’ll feel like you’ve wasted a bunch of money you could’ve spent elsewhere because once you stop paying for ads, your PPC traffic will stop as well.

So instead, invest in a long-term SEO strategy that will actually drive organic traffic to your website and boost your search engine rankings. Once you invest in SEO, you’ll see results long after your initial investment, making SEO far more cost-effective than PPC in many cases.

By following these five search engine optimization (SEO) secrets, you can ensure your strategy produces stellar results for your business!

What Are the Top 5 SEO Strategies?

The Internet is full of SEO strategies for businesses to get their websites to land on Google’s first search engine results page (SERP). From carefully tracking Google Analytics to going all-in on content marketing, dozens of SEO tools and techniques exist.

Yet, they won’t all benefit your SEO strategy. Here we’ve narrowed down the top five SEO tips that will genuinely enhance your SEO plan. They include:

Keyword research and search intent
Backlinks
Crawling
Presentation
Ranking for multiple keywords through keyword clustering

1. Keywords Are Key

Keyword research is vital to rank on the first page of Google searches. It’s the start of every solid SEO strategy. Yet, how do you know which keywords are best to target for each specific webpage?

Sometimes, you may use head term keywords (more general terms) to target those looking for information in the beginning phase of the sales funnel. These people may or may not convert to paying customers. In contrast, at other times, you may use long-tail keywords to target a specific audience further down the sales funnel. These people have already done their research and are closer to making a purchase.

Regardless of your primary keyword, for on-page SEO, you want the keyword to be in the following locations:

Meta title (title tag)
Meta description
URL
H1

Subheadings
Internal links with optimized anchor texts

However, more importantly than keywords, you must also focus on search intent or why users type their query into the search engine.

Search engines want to provide relevant results for users, so they need to understand the reason for the search query. Creating content with the wrong intent could cause the piece of content not to rank at all.

For instance, if you have an eCommerce store selling pet food, you may not want to rank a product page for your all-natural, organic cat food with the keyword “best organic cat food.” The search intent with this keyword is to research different brands that sell high-quality, organic cat food. The intent is not to buy a specific product.

There are four types of search intent, which are:

Commercial: doing research before making a purchase decision
Informational: learning more about something
Navigational: looking for a specific page
Transactional: want to complete a particular action, like making a purchase

In the case of the cat food example, using a keyword with transactional intent, like “buy organic cat food,” could be better.

2. Backlinks Are the Backbone

Link building is not obsolete and still plays a critical role in helping your website’s ranking and driving more traffic. It is, arguably, the best off-page SEO tactic you can use.

Think of high-quality backlinks as verified endorsements for your website. With them, your search engine ranking gets higher. Plus, you can get nice referral traffic from backlinks and even conversions!

3. Crawl Before Ranking

You can have an amazing SEO strategy, but don’t forget about technical SEO. If search engines can’t crawl your website properly, indexing becomes an issue. When search engines can’t index the content on your website site, no one will ever find it via a search engine.

Thus, when your website is easily crawlable, it doesn’t block search engines from crawling, nor does it block pages from being indexed.

Think of it like this: Easily crawlable website = doesn’t block search engines from crawling, doesn’t block pages from being indexed

To ensure the search engines can properly crawl your website, make sure you are not blocking search engines from crawling or indexing the site via meta robots tags, robots.txt files, and X robots tags.

Also, make sure all the pages that you want indexed are included in the site’s XML sitemap and that it has been submitted to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Keep in mind search engines likely may not index pages for a keyword that already has tons of results. They also may not index poor-quality pages. So if you are having trouble getting your content indexed, look into these issues.

4. Presentation Does Matter

No one enjoys spammy content, especially not your target audience. It completely ruins the user experience and drives customers away.

Regardless of the type of content you create, it must be helpful and unique. You don’t have to become a WordPress wizard or use a dozen plugins to have an appealing and functional website. You don’t even need to understand HTML!

What you do need to do is craft high-quality content that entices viewers rather than turns them off.

Poor quality content isn’t just sore on the eyes. It could also lead your website to have a high bounce rate, the percentage of people who land on your website, then leave.

What qualifies as poor-quality content? It’s content that:

Has too many ads on the page
Lacks a table of contents
Doesn’t have a logical outline structure
Is missing keywords, attractive images, or illustrations

While Google has not confirmed that bounce rate is a ranking factor, many experts feel that it is a factor.

5. One Page, One Thousand Opportunities

Gone are the days when each webpage could only rank for one keyword. Now, a single webpage can rank for several keywords when you create high-quality, intentional content.

This is possible due to keyword clustering, which is basically grouping similar keywords based on how Google groups them in the search results. By researching keyword clusters, you can see just how easy it is for one page to rank for multiple keywords simultaneously.

For example, the primary keyword “queen mattress” may also target similar keywords on the same page, such as:

Mattress queen size
Queen mattresses
Queen size mattress

Unconfirmed SEO Rumors

You’ll come across plenty of other search engine optimization secrets that many say are the magic trick to getting your web pages to rank. While the jury is still out on these rumors, we explore whether they could impact your SEO.

Clicks on GBP Driving Directions May Help GBP Rankings

Google Maps may use driving directions and popularity signals, such as how often users look up directions for a business location they can visit in person, as ranking factors.

While it’s possible Google solely uses driving directions as a ranking factor, the algorithm could also use driving directions with reviews to rank local search results.

Even though we can’t be sure how Google uses information from Maps in its rankings, it’s best if you embed the correct Google Business Profile listing on your website.

Google Reads the Whole Page Title Even if It Gets Cut Off

Many SEO experts will tell you to keep webpage titles under 65 characters because, beyond this, search engines will cut off the end of the page title, and users won’t be able to read the whole thing.

But the big question remains: can cut-off words in page titles help the page rank even though you can’t see them?

One expert, Joel Headley, performed a test to find out. He added random letters to the end of page titles to make them, on average, nearly 200 characters long.

The results?

The added letters triggered the pages to show up in search results! Despite users not seeing these words, search engines can still read them.

Thus, the lesson here is that you shouldn’t be afraid to write longer page titles when necessary. Longer page titles will still help the page rank even when search engines don’t show the full page title in search results.

Social Media Activity May Impact Rankings

Google has stated that sharing links to social media content doesn’t affect rankings. Yet, evidence suggests otherwise.

Referral traffic from social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, in addition to activity on social media posts that link to your website, may impact SEO.

However, even though some may see an indirect increase in organic traffic from sharing website links on social media, Google has not confirmed this is a ranking factor.

Like social media, podcasts are also becoming a helpful SEO asset to help businesses gain visibility and rank higher via backlinks and referral traffic.

But again, this is not a confirmed ranking factor.

What’s the Secret to Ranking High in SEO?

Ultimately, the secret to ranking high on organic search results is a holistic approach where you address the five SEO secrets discussed above. With proper implementation, your SEO strategy will produce results when you focus on the following:

Keyword research and search intent
Link building
Producing high-quality content
Technical SEO
Using keyword clusters

What Are the Secrets of SEO in 2023?

Digital marketing and SEO are constantly evolving, so strategies must also change.

According to these digital marketing trends of 2023, it’s best to implement the following into your SEO strategy:

Artificial intelligence, or AI, such as:
- Chatbots for conversational marketing
- Email automation
- Website personalization
Increased intelligence level of SERPs
Real-time analytics and metrics tracking
Mobile-friendliness for a better customer experience
Using structured data
Think of the user experience and user intent

What Does a Successful SEO Strategy Look Like?

There’s no one-size-fits-all successful SEO strategy for businesses.

In fact, I, Eric Ritter, have dozens of examples of successful strategies I’ve implemented for various clients.

One client, a personal injury law firm in Tampa, FL, gained over $100,000 of organic SEO traffic per month! Another client in the docking industry saw a 658% increase in organic traffic!

The results from my strategies are beyond outstanding and prove that when you take the SEO secrets discussed into account, your business can seriously benefit. If you want to know more about my successful SEO strategies, explore these case studies.

The Search Engine Sommelier

Don’t get bogged down by all the information floating around about SEO. Simply follow the five SEO secrets discussed here, and your business will start to see improvements.

For assistance building your business’s SEO strategy, contact me. Let’s chat about your goals, budget, and ideas to see how I can help make your business thrive!

How to Use ChatGPT for SEO

April 17, 2023 by Eric Ritter

In today’s digital age, having a solid online presence is essential for any business looking to thrive and grow. Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical in ensuring your website ranks high on search engine results pages (SERPs) and attracts a steady stream of targeted traffic. However, SEO can be complex and time-consuming, so many companies choose to work with a reliable and trustworthy agency partner. If you’re an in-house marketing manager or a small to medium-sized business owner looking to generate more business from your website, you may be interested in exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT can help take your SEO efforts to the next level.

ChatGPT is a state-of-the-art AI language model developed by OpenAI that can generate high-quality content on various topics. In this guide, we’ll dive deep into how ChatGPT and SurferSEO Content Editor work and explore their benefits for SEO. We’ll also provide practical tips and strategies for optimizing your content with these tools and show you how to use them together for maximum impact. Let’s dive in and discover how to use ChatGPT for SEO.

What Is ChatGPT and How Does It Work?

ChatGPT is a cutting-edge AI tool that uses natural language processing (NLP) to generate high-quality content. Additionally, it is built on the GPT-3.5 architecture and can understand human language and generate text almost indistinguishable from that written by humans. Here’s how it works:

1. Understanding Natural Language

The first step in using ChatGPT is to input a prompt or question in natural language. It uses natural language processing to understand the input and create a context for generating the output. You can also input various queries, from short sentences to long paragraphs.

2. Preprocessing and Tokenization

Once ChatGPT has understood the input, it undergoes preprocessing and tokenization. This involves breaking down the text into smaller, more manageable pieces and converting it into a numerical format that the AI can understand.

3. Generating Output

After tokenizing the text, ChatGPT uses its machine-learning algorithms to generate output. It does this by predicting the next word or phrase in the sentence based on the input and the data it has been trained on.

4. Filtering and Sorting

Once the output has been generated, ChatGPT filters and sorts it based on various criteria, such as relevance, coherence, and grammatical correctness. Moreover, this ensures that the output is of the highest quality and is suitable for the intended purpose.

5. Evaluating and Adjusting

After the output has been filtered and sorted, ChatGPT evaluates it to ensure that it meets the desired standards. It adjusts its algorithms and parameters to improve the output quality of output if it does not meet the criteria.

6. Providing the Final Output

Finally, ChatGPT provides the final output, anything from a short paragraph to a full-length article. The output is generated in natural language and is suitable for various applications, such as content creation, SEO, and customer service.

Benefits of Using ChatGPT for SEO

Using ChatGPT for SEO offers a range of benefits that can help businesses and individuals achieve their digital marketing goals. Here are some of the key benefits:

Improved content Quality: One of the main benefits of using ChatGPT for SEO is the improved quality of the content. By leveraging its natural language processing and machine learning capabilities, it can generate high-quality content that is engaging, informative, and optimized for search engines.
Time-Saving: SEO professionals can use it to save valuable time. Rather than spending hours researching and writing content, it can generate content quickly and efficiently. This can also save time for essential tasks like keyword research, link building, and website optimization.
Customizable Output: ChatGPT for SEO also offers customizable output, allowing users to specify the length, tone, and focus of the content. This helps ensure the content is tailored to the user’s specific needs and target audience. Additionally, it can generate content on a wide range of topics, from technical SEO to product descriptions and blog posts.
Improved SEO Performance: By generating high-quality, optimized content, ChatGPT for SEO can help to improve SEO performance. This includes improving search engine rankings, increasing website traffic, and boosting engagement metrics such as time on page and bounce rate. It can also help identify relevant keywords and phrases, optimize on-page content, and create compelling meta descriptions and title tags.
Increased Efficiency: ChatGPT for SEO can increase efficiency for SEO professionals and content creators. Rather than researching and writing content, it allows users to focus on other essential tasks, such as keyword research, link building, and website optimization. This can lead to improved overall efficiency and better results in less time.

How to Use ChatGPT for Keyword Research

ChatGPT for SEO can assist in identifying relevant keywords and phrases that align with the target audience’s search intent. With its advanced natural language processing and machine learning capabilities, it can analyze search data to generate a list of potential keywords and phrases that can be used for content optimization. Here are the steps to follow for effectively using ChatGPT for keyword research with search intent in mind:

Step 1. Define Your Topic

Start by defining the topic that you want to focus on. This could be a product, service, or industry-related topic.

Step 2. Generate a List of Seed Keywords

Next, generate a list of seed keywords relevant to your topic. These are broad terms that describe the main topic you want to target.

Step 3. Analyze and Refine the List

Please review the list of keywords generated by ChatGPT and refine it based on relevance, search volume, and competition. Consider user intent and long-tail keywords.

Step 4. Organize Keywords Into Groups

Organize your final list of keywords into groups based on relevance and search intent. This can also help ensure your content is keyword based.

Step 5. Optimize Content

Finally, use your list of optimized keywords to optimize your content. This includes including relevant keywords in titles, meta descriptions, headers, and throughout the body of your content.

Best Practices for ChatGPT Keyword Research

To get the most out of ChatGPT for keyword research, it’s essential to follow some best practices:

Focus on long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific search terms that are less competitive but often have higher conversion rates.
Consider user intent: When choosing keywords, consider the purpose behind the search. Are users looking for information, products, or services?
Analyze competition: Analyze the competition for each keyword and consider factors such as search volume, difficulty, and CPC.
Use keyword research with other SEO tactics: While keyword research is essential, it should be used with other SEO tactics such as on-page optimization, link building, and social media marketing.

By following these best practices and leveraging ChatGPT’s natural language processing and machine learning capabilities, users can effectively conduct keyword research and optimize their content for improved search engine rankings and increased website traffic.

Tips for Optimizing Content Using ChatGPT

Now that you understand how ChatGPT can be used for SEO let’s dive into some tips for optimizing your content using this powerful tool.

Generate title tags: One of the most powerful features of ChatGPT is its ability to generate topic ideas and titles based on a given keyword or phrase. Use this feature to create new ideas for your content and ensure your titles are optimized for SEO.
Create engaging introductions and conclusions: The introduction and conclusion of your content are critical for engaging readers and driving conversions. Additionally, use ChatGPT to generate ideas for these sections and ensure they are optimized for search engines and readers.
Optimize your content for readability: Readability is critical to SEO, impacting user engagement and search engine rankings. Use ChatGPT to optimize your content for readability and ensure that it is easy to understand and enjoyable to read.
Optimize your content for search engines: In addition to optimizing your content for readers, you should also ensure that it is optimized for search engines. Use ChatGPT to generate relevant keywords and phrases and ensure your content is structured in a way that is easy for search engines to crawl and understand.
Create meta descriptions and tags: Meta descriptions and tags are critical for SEO and user engagement. Use ChatGPT to generate compelling meta descriptions and tags that accurately reflect your pages’ content and entice users to click through to your site.
Optimize your content for voice search: As more and more users turn to voice search, optimizing your content for this new search format is essential. Use ChatGPT to generate long-tail keywords and phrases optimized for voice search and ensure that your content is structured in a way that is easy for voice assistants to understand.

ChatGPT vs Traditional SEO Tools

Many traditional SEO tools are designed to help businesses improve their online visibility. However, ChatGPT stands out from these standard SEO tools in several ways.

1. Natural Language Processing Capabilities

Traditional SEO tools rely on specific keywords and phrases to analyze content and provide recommendations for optimization. However, ChatGPT uses natural language processing capabilities to analyze content and provide more accurate recommendations.

2. Ability to Generate Content Ideas

While traditional SEO tools can help with keyword research, ChatGPT goes a step further and can generate content ideas based on a specific topic. This can be especially helpful for businesses that struggle with content creation.

3. Time and Cost Efficiency

Traditional SEO tools often require significant time and money to set up and use effectively. In contrast, ChatGPT is a cloud-based tool that requires minimal setup and can be used immediately.

4. Customization and Personalization

Traditional SEO tools often provide a one-size-fits-all approach to SEO, while ChatGPT allows for customization and personalization based on specific business needs and goals.

5. Dynamic and Continuous Learning

Traditional SEO tools rely on fixed rules and algorithms, while ChatGPT uses machine learning to improve its recommendations continuously. This means that it can adapt to changes in search algorithms and provide more relevant recommendations over time.

Working With a Reliable and Trustworthy SEO Agency

To ensure the success of your SEO efforts using ChatGPT and SurferSEO Content Editor, it’s crucial to partner with a reliable and trustworthy SEO agency. Below are some key factors to consider when selecting an agency:

Reputation: Choose an agency with a solid track record of success in SEO and digital marketing. Check their client testimonials, case studies, and online reviews to ensure they have a proven track record.
Experience: Choosing an agency with expertise in your industry or niche is essential. They should know your target audience, competitors, and industry trends to provide the most effective SEO strategies.
Transparency: Look for an agency that is transparent about its methods and can provide regular reports on its progress. This will also help you track your SEO efforts and ensure you get a return on investment.
Communication: Make sure the agency is responsive and easy to communicate with. They should be able to answer your questions, provide updates, and address any concerns you have promptly.
Customer Service: Choose an agency that prioritizes customer service and goes above and beyond to meet your needs. They should proactively identify opportunities for improvement and provide recommendations to help you achieve your digital goals.

Can ChatGPT Content Rank on Google?

With the growing importance of search engine optimization (SEO) in digital marketing, businesses are constantly seeking innovative ways to improve their rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). One such innovation is using ChatGPT, an AI-powered content creation tool, to produce content optimized for search engines. However, the question arises whether its content can rank on Google.

The ability of ChatGPT content to rank on Google depends on several factors, such as the content’s quality, the keywords’ competitiveness, and the content’s relevance to the search query. Let’s explore some of these factors in more detail:

1. Content Quality

The quality of the content produced by ChatGPT is a crucial factor in determining its ability to rank on Google. While it can produce high-quality content, it is ultimately up to the user to ensure it is well-written and error-free. Poorly written content with grammatical errors and awkward phrasing is unlikely to rank well on Google.

2. Keyword Competitiveness

Another critical factor is the competitiveness of the keywords used in the content. ChatGPT can generate content optimized for specific keywords, but if those keywords are highly competitive, it may be difficult for the content to rank well on Google. Conducting thorough keyword research and targeting less competitive, long-tail keywords is essential to increase the chances of ranking.

3. Relevance to Search Query

Finally, the relevance of the ChatGPT content to the search query is crucial for ranking on Google. Google’s algorithm is designed to provide the most relevant results to the user’s search query. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that the content it produces is relevant to the target audience’s search intent.

How Will ChatGPT Affect SEO?

ChatGPT, as a language model, can significantly impact SEO. Here are some ways in which it may affect SEO:

Improved Content Quality: ChatGPT can help creators produce higher-quality content by suggesting outlines, topic ideas, and critical points to cover. This could result in more informative and engaging content that satisfies user intent and ranks higher in search results.
Enhanced Keyword Research: ChatGPT can assist in keyword research by generating related keywords, suggesting long-tail keywords and phrases, and analyzing the language used by target audiences. By leveraging this capability, content creators can produce content that is more closely aligned with what their target audience is searching for.
Increased Competition: ChatGPT can also lead to increased competition in the content creation space. As more content creators utilize the language model’s capabilities, more high-quality content targeting similar keywords and topics may be produced.

Tips for Maximizing the Benefits of ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a powerful tool for SEO content creation that can provide significant benefits when integrated into an overall SEO strategy. To maximize its benefits, consider the following tips:

Start with a clear understanding of your target audience and their search intent.
Use ChatGPT to generate content ideas that align with your target audience’s search intent.
Optimize the generated content for SEO by incorporating relevant keywords and phrases naturally.
Use the SurferSEO Content Editor tool to analyze the generated content and ensure it meets on-page SEO best practices.
Monitor the performance of the generated content using analytics tools and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Using ChatGPT

Avoid using ChatGPT as a replacement for human-written content. It should be used to augment and enhance your overall content strategy.
Don’t rely solely on ChatGPT to generate all of your content. Incorporate other content creation methods and sources to provide a diverse and comprehensive content portfolio.
Be mindful of the tone and voice of the generated content to ensure it aligns with your brand and messaging.

Enhancing User Experience and Engagement on a Website Using ChatGPT

Use ChatGPT to create content that addresses common questions and concerns of your target audience to provide value and improve engagement.
Generate content that is easy to read and visually appealing to improve user experience.
Use ChatGPT to create interactive content like quizzes or surveys to increase engagement and encourage user participation.
Incorporate call-to-actions (CTAs) within the generated content to guide users to take specific actions on your website.

By following these tips, you can effectively integrate ChatGPT into your overall SEO strategy, avoid common pitfalls, and use it to enhance user experience and engagement on your website.

Businesswoman sharing ideas during a meeting

Best Use Cases for ChatGPT

ChatGPT has a variety of use cases in various industries. Here are some of its best use cases:

Content Creation: ChatGPT can generate content in different formats, including articles, product descriptions, social media posts, and more. This makes it an excellent tool for businesses looking to save time and resources on content creation.
SEO Optimization: ChatGPT can analyze search engine results pages and generate content that meets the requirements for ranking higher in search engines. It can help optimize website content, blog posts, and metadata for SEO purposes.
Customer Service: ChatGPT can be used as a chatbot to answer customer queries and provide support. It can be integrated with messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger to provide instant customer support.
Personalization: ChatGPT can analyze user data and generate personalized content for users. This makes it an excellent tool for businesses offering personalized recommendations to their customers.
Email marketing: ChatGPT can generate personalized email content based on user data, making it a valuable tool for email marketing campaigns.
Research and Analysis: ChatGPT can analyze large datasets and generate insights on customer behavior, industry trends, and more. This makes it a valuable tool for businesses looking to make data-driven decisions.

ChatGPT is a versatile tool used in various industries and use cases. Its ability to generate content, analyze data, and provide personalized support makes it a valuable tool for businesses looking to improve their operations and customer experiences.

Revolutionize Your SEO Strategy With ChatGPT

ChatGPT can revolutionize your SEO strategy and help you achieve your digital goals. This tool offers powerful insights and guidance for keyword research, content optimization, and overall on-page search engine optimization.

Optimizing your website for search engines is crucial in today’s digital age, and knowing how to use ChatGPT for SEO can give you an edge in the competitive online market. However, it’s essential to work with a trustworthy and experienced agency to ensure the success of your SEO strategy. At Digital Neighbor, we specialize in creating customized search engine optimization plans to meet the unique needs of our clients. Whether you’re a busy marketer or a small business owner, we can help you navigate the intricacies of SEO and achieve tangible results. Book a call today, and let us help you learn how to use ChatGPT for SEO.

Significance of Web Accessibility and Its Intersection with SEO Practices

February 9, 2023 by Eric Ritter

More than a quarter of the U.S. adult population has some disability. Further statistics indicate that 75% of people with disabilities use the internet daily. More demographic-specific figures show that those with a vision disability comprise 4.9% of the population, requiring a screen reader, high-contrast pages for those with colorblindness, and other accessibility features to navigate the websites they visit. Others have impaired hand functions, which can limit their use of a keyboard or mouse, while those with hearing impairments require special accessibilities such as video captions and transcripts. Interested in the interplay of Web Accessibility and SEO? Read on to learn more.

A recent report by The WebAIM Million on the accessibility of the top one million sites’ home pages detected multiple errors on the pages. The report found that 5.3% of the home page elements had an accessibility error. Some detected errors included low-contrast text, missing alternative text for images, empty links, missing document language, empty buttons, and missing form input labels.

Such errors affect the user experience, impacting SEO negatively. In addition, websites lacking accessibility features to aid navigation among people with disabilities can attract serious legal implications. For instance, a recent report by UsableNet showed an increase in accessibility lawsuits, with e-Commerce sites being the highest hit at 73.66% of all the cases.

Generally, every business with an online presence is vulnerable despite the industry. While big brands have been the most hit by lawsuits in the past, recent statistics show a changing trend where companies with less than $50 million in annual revenue have the highest number of cases.

This post looks into the relationship between web accessibility and SEO and ways you can make your website accessible and ADA-compliant while improving your SEO.

Table of Contents

What Is Web Accessibility?
- Principles of Web Accessibility
Benefits of Website Accessibility
- Improved User Experience
- Increased Website Traffic
- Reduced risk of legal risks
- Improved Website SEO
- Positive Brand Reputation
- Annual ADA Tax Credit
How to Create Accessible Websites
Start Optimizing Your Website for Improved Accessibility and SEO

What Is Web Accessibility?

Website accessibility refers to the ease with which everyone uses your website, including people with disabilities such as vision impairment, hearing impairment, motor disabilities, etc. It encompasses all aspects of website navigability, including image alt text, content organization, anchor text, heading tags, and more.

Principles of Accessibility

An accessible website should cater to visitors’ needs without impeding their ability to understand, navigate, perceive, and interact with it. This means it must meet the four POUR principles – perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.

Perceivable – Must remove accessibility barriers, e.g., by supplying alternative texts to be accessible to screen readers.
Operable – Must be operable on all devices.
Understandable – The information and interface must be understandable to the users.
Robust – Must be accessible and easy to be interpreted by different technologies and platforms.

Benefits of Website Accessibility

Making your website accessible enhances its usability for everyone, regardless of their physical limitations or device. This translates to other benefits, including improved SEO and ADA compliance, to name a few.

Let’s discuss them in detail.

Improved User Experience

Improving your website accessibility automatically impacts the user experience. Easy navigation ensures all your visitors find what they’re looking for, regardless of their disability or device. This leads to increased user satisfaction and brand perception, crucial factors in winning their trust and loyalty.

Reduced legal risks

Inaccessible websites pose significant legal implications. Making your website compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) should be a priority.

ADA compliance requires all businesses with an online presence to be accessible to people with disabilities. Specifically, ADA III mandates public services, electronic and information technology to be accessible to individuals with disabilities, and DOJ affirmed in 2022 that websites fall under this classification. Effectively, accessibility has become a web standard like having SSL or GDPR.

Websites lacking essential accessibility features risk costly lawsuits. And while inaccessible desktop websites dominate the cases, accessibility of other digital aspects like the mobile app, video accessibility, and mobile website are also common.

Improved Website SEO

Accessible websites perform better in SEO for apparent reasons. Making the website user-friendly to everyone opens it to more visitors, translating to increased traffic. In addition, improved user experience has a positive impact on dwell time. A low bounce rate signals to the search engines a page provides value to the visitor, hence is likely to be crawled and ranked more. The more the site receives traffic, the better it performs in SEO.

To support this, Semrush partnered with AccessibilityChecker.org and BuiltWith in a study that analyzed 847 domains to find whether digital accessibility improves online discoverability. According to their findings, upon installing an accessibility solution, the domains’ organic search traffic increased by 12%. Overall, 73.4% of the domains had an increase in organic traffic, and 66.1% recorded a boost of up to 50% in monthly traffic.

Positive Brand Reputation

Having an accessible website complete with an accessibility statement can help your brand reputation. Besides being inclusive and giving everyone a satisfying browsing experience, your visitors (especially those with disabilities) are more likely to recommend your website to their connections (family and friends).

Annual ADA Tax Credit

If your business has less than 30 full-time employees and has generated less than $1 million in revenue in the previous tax year, you can qualify for an annual ADA tax credit. You can claim 50% of expenditures incurred in web accessibility and ADA compliance practices up to $10,250. Examples of qualifying expenditures may include the installation of accessibility solutions on your website, initial and ongoing remediation files and media, native accessibility, etc.

How to Create Accessible and SEO-Friendly Websites

The average settlement for small businesses sued for ADA non-compliance is $10,000, without factoring in the legal fees, usually charged at about $250-300 per hour. This means if someone sued you for non-compliance, you risk losing multiple times the amount you would spend to create an accessible site. Not mentioning the other benefits you miss when your site is inaccessible. Think of the poor user experience and its impact on SEO performance and conversions.

In most cases, optimizing your site for accessibility requires some simple interventions. For instance, you can increase contrast ratios to make the text easier to read for the vision impaired, make the buttons larger for those with impaired hand function, or put captions on videos for those with hearing impairment.

Generally, here are some elements to focus on when creating accessible websites.

Page titles provide context on what a webpage is about. When you open multiple tabs, page titles differentiate the content. Creating page titles with the user experience in mind is essential, as those using screen readers rely on the title information to navigate between pages or tabs.
Heading structure – Assistive technologies rely on headings to navigate and understand the different sections of a page. Using relevant heading tags is crucial to increasing page accessibility.
Anchor text provides insight into what the linked content is all about. Optimizing anchor texts to make them highly relevant to the landing page content is an excellent way to increase a page’s accessibility and improve user experience. For instance, when a screen reader comes across a link, it reads the anchor text, then the user can decide whether they want to visit the page.
Image alt text – In the same way image alt text help crawlers understand the images, they also provide a textual alternative to website visitors with visual impairments. Optimizing your website images by including alt text is crucial to making it ADA-compliant.
Video captions and transcripts – Ensure your video content has appropriate captions and transcripts to cater to users with hearing impairments.
Sitemap helps visitors find content more easily. Providing a sitemap allows visitors (including those using a screen reader) to access content quickly, especially on a site with complex navigation.

There are many other elements of your web pages you can optimize for improved accessibility besides the ones we have highlighted. In all these, one thing you will realize is the intersection between accessibility and SEO. Generally, the practices you use to optimize web pages for accessibility also benefit SEO.

Start Optimizing Your Website for Improved Accessibility and SEO

Investing in web accessibility goes beyond compliance. It’s a robust digital marketing strategy you can leverage to improve your SEO, increase website traffic, enhance your brand reputation, and ultimately boost conversions. Optimizing page titles, heading structures, anchor texts, image alt text, and providing video captions and sitemap are some elements you can start working on to get your website accessible and SEO optimized. But don’t forget these are just a few examples. There’s a sea of other page aspects that require addressing to make your website fully compliant.

If you’re unsure how to handle this, don’t worry. Your SEO Sommelier is here to help. Whether you need assistance with UX, search engine optimization, or even content creation, talk to us and let’s design a custom solution for your website.

Ready to get started today on your own? I recommend accessiBe as your accessibility solution. They offer an easy-to-install widget on your website.

Interested in learning more? Get in touch now and book an appointment.

A Quick Guide to SEO for Lawyers

January 25, 2022 by Eric Ritter

Employment in the legal profession is expected to go up by 9 percent in the coming year! This means that if you are a lawyer you have to stay competitive.

Have you been thinking about how you can grow your law practice and bring in new clients? SEO should be a the top of your list of strategies.

However, SEO can be complex and there are a few things you need to bear in mind before you can effectively use SEO to drive traffic to your site.

Here is a look at what you need to know about SEO for lawyers.

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization and it involves using different strategies to get search engines to rank your web pages so that you will receive visitors to your website. The higher you are on the search engine results page the better chance you will have of getting someone to click on your link and go to your website.

Getting on page one means that you are in the top ten results. However, it is even better to get into the top three positions. With Law Firm SEO you have the chance to ensure that you get the best result possible.

Local SEO

To succeed you need to focus on your local SEO strategy. Your local SEO strategy will help you to attract the attention of people in your area who are searching for law firms. To attract the attention of potential clients in your locale, you need to select the right keywords.

The keywords that you select need to be what people are typing into Google to find local law firms. You can find out what keywords people are using to search for lawyers in your area by using a keyword research tool.

There are several keyword research tools on the market and many of them have varying prices. It all depends on what you can afford.

However, you should bear in mind that when it comes to keyword research tools you do get what you pay for. Generally speaking, the more expensive the tool, the more comprehensive the information, although there are some exceptions.

Another important part of local SEO is submitting your website to important website directories such as Google business. This will ensure that you are found for local searches. Always ensure that the name and address of your business are listed correctly, for best results.

Content Creation

Once you know the keywords people are searching for it is time to create content around them.

The key is to create as much legal information as possible so that you can make your website a hub for finding accurate and informative legal content. When selecting keywords you have to bear in mind that popular keywords may be difficult to rank for based on the authority of your domain.

If your website is relatively new then it will not have a lot of authority. You will not be able to rank for content that more established sites are currently ranking for.

This is why you need to select what is known as long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords have four or more words in them. They are usually easier to rank than shorter phrases.

These keywords are perfect for a website that has low authority because they are usually not targeted by sites with higher domain authority.

While long-tail keywords do not carry as much traffic as shorter phrases, if you can rank for several of them you will find that your traffic will increase dramatically.

Your keywords should be sprinkled throughout the content that you are publishing.

You must place your keywords in your title, URL, and as a header on your content page. You also want to make sure that you use the keyword a few times within the content.

Be sure you don’t overdo it as Google penalizes you for overstuffing your content with keywords.

Backlinks

Backlinks occur when another site finds your content valuable and links back to it. It sends a signal to Google and to search engines that your content is valuable. However, if your website is new it is hard to acquire backlinks for your website, yet they are extremely critical in getting Google to rank your pages higher.

One solution for this is to start doing posts on other websites, when you guest post a link is provided from a site with a higher authority than yours to your website. This will give your website more authority, and help you to rank for more difficult keywords.

Over time if you continue to write valuable content you will get links to your website organically but this can take some time. One thing you can do to speed up the process is to provide original statistical information and even infographics. Providing this information about legal content is a great way to inspire others to link to you.

SEO for Lawyers in 2022

If you’re trying to find the right digital marketing strategy for the next year then the tips presented here will help to take your business to the next level.

SEO for lawyers does not have to be difficult as long as you take the time to choose the right keywords for your business. Selecting the right keywords will help you to get to the top of the search engine results.

However, this is all a part of a larger strategy so make sure that you take the time to create a comprehensive digital marketing plan for your law firm.

If you would like to help with search engine optimization please do not hesitate to contact us.

Use These 7 Tips to Improve Customer Experience on Your Website

April 13, 2021 by Editor

Does your business have a website which you aim to provide a lot of your sales? Are you worried about the customer experience from using the site?

82% of the top-performing companies pay close attention to online business’s human experience. Why not join these companies and make your customer experience a priority?

Modern technology is changing the world with each passing year. More people buy things online these days, over going to the store.

You might not realize it, but your website might be hurting your business. Here are 7 tips to improve customer experience on your website.

Make Checking Out Fast and Easy

Online stores can lose 75% of their sales due to people abandoning their digital cart. You can avoid the abandoned cart by making your checkout process more straightforward.

Offer your customers the choice of continuing as a guest as well as signing up for an account. You may not gain as many members, but you will have more sales and a higher potential revisit number.

Why not offer those who have already signed up the option for a speedy checkout. Such as a buy it now button.

Offer Multiple Payment Options

I’m assuming you have at least the minimal methods of payments through your site. Having these are great for some, but not everyone.

Offer your customers the security of paying through companies such as PayPal. A considerable number of customers use PayPal. By not offering this option, they may abandon their cart and go elsewhere.

Look into joining companies that allow customers the option to buy now and pay later. These companies allow your customers to spread out their payments across a set amount of time, which will make them more likely to have larger shopping carts each time.

Make Your Content Personal

Give the customers who have signed up to your site a personalized experience. Show them that you care.

Give each one a home page with options such as ‘What other people have bought’ or ‘Recommended for you.’ This tactic will improve your sales and keep your customers coming back.

If you need help to improve your website experience, hire a digital marketing consultant. A digital consultant can help make your website the best it can be.

Include the Best Search Bars

Most online shoppers tend to go onto a site and use the search bar to find what they came to your site to find. The chance that customers come to your site with the intention of what to buy is high.

Allowing them to go directly to a product will keep their attention on your site. The modern-day attention span is slowly diminishing. Adapt to this

Why not add some digital branding or pictures of other products near the search bar. Once your customer has added their choice to the cart, this may help convince them to add more products.

What’s Your Website’s Speed?

Have you ever visited a site and quickly closed it due to the time it takes to load. Having a slow-loading webpage will cause a lot of customers to leave and go elsewhere.

By finding a company to run a website speed test, you will learn your page speed. Knowing this will help you to find methods to improve the load time of your page. Having a faster loading site will keep your customers on your site.

Another thing to look into will be working out if your website is outdated or not? If you have had your site for a while, you may want to look into updating it. Having an obsolete site could also be a reason why customers venture elsewhere.

Reply to Your Customer’s Reviews

Let’s say a customer is unhappy about something regarding you or your website. Your customer reviews will be where you hear about it. People are far more likely to go to leave a bad review than a good one.

Make sure you are going through each review and finding what the problem is. Your next challenge is to solve this problem to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

If you manage to fix the problem, get in touch with the customer who brought it to your attention. Even if you cannot solve it, still get in touch. Make sure to keep in touch with their customers. You are more likely to maintain the customer’s business through simple communication.

Have a Live Chat About Customer Experience

As you may have worked out from previous tips, the world’s attention span these days is short. Some customers may send a review but go elsewhere before they get a response.

Add the option for customers to get in touch with a sales consultant live. Live chats offer an immediate response to their problem. Live chats will keep the customers on your site while they wait. They may even view your other products while they wait.

Make sure to hire enough team members to be at the receiving end of live chats. Your customers will use live chats for quick responses. Having enough staff will ensure the customer’s wait time remains at a minimum.

Also, look into adding a sign showing their wait time to their requests. This way, they will know precisely how long they are expecting to wait.

Give Your Customers the Best Experience

Now you have found many ways on how to improve the customer experience on your website. Are you planning on using them all or just a selection of the best ones?

Follow these tips and keep your customers happy. Make your checkout easy and quick with multiple payment methods. Keep an eye on your website’s speed. Chat with your customers both live and through reviews, and keep in mind that there are many more ways to Increase Your Digital Customer Service.

Check out our other blogs on subjects such as Social Media, SEO, or even Digital Strategy.

This Is the Difference Between SEO and SEM

January 17, 2021 by Eric Ritter

You’ve come here to find out the fundamental difference between SEO and SEM, right? Let’s start with this.

If we’re talking SEO statistics, did you know that 60% of clicks to websites go to the top three results in the search?

With SEM statistics, more than 25% of searchers will click on an ad because it mentions a brand that they’re already vaguely familiar with.

The main difference between SEO and SEM we can see here is paid versus organic, but there’s so much more to it than that. Keep reading to cover the key things you need to know.

What Is SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) involves the tactics that businesses use online to increase their visibility in search engine results. This is done through hundreds of different methods such as keyword research, on-page SEO tactics, meta descriptions, and many more.

The goal of SEO is to drive traffic to your website organically, meaning that you don’t spend money but use the tactics to increase your standing in search engine results.

There are three main categories when it comes to SEO tactics:

On-page SEO is the process of optimizing each page on your website by targeting a specific keyword and is made up of tactics such as keyword research, creating content, and optimizing your pages for those keywords.
Off-page SEO is the strategy that helps you increase your ranking by connecting to other high-quality, relevant websites through tactics such as link building and managing online directories.
Technical SEO is where it can get a bit confusing, the tactics here include optimizing your website for mobile viewing, focusing on the speed of your site, indexing your website, and having reputable security.

An SEO strategy is best done when it combines all three categories in an ongoing effort to increase your search engine result rankings.

What Is SEM?

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) focuses on one thing when it comes to search marketing, and that is the paid tactics a business can use to rank in search engine results.

An SEM strategy is made up of two parts:

The tactics of setting up, creating, and optimizing adverts
Setting a budget for the placement of search engine adverts and managing it

Another term that SEM is sometimes referred to as is PPC Marketing (pay-per-click marketing). Commonly, Google Ads (previously known as Google Adwords) is the most used provider for SEM.

Basically, a business conducts keyword research and then creates SEM campaigns targeting these keywords to produce results for their industry, service, or products. The results come in the form of a click by the searcher, and the business is charged for each click that they receive.

The Difference Between SEO and SEM

When we compare the two to find the difference between SEO and SEM, you’ll find that there are similarities. Understanding these similarities can help you build both a successful SEO strategy and an effective SEM strategy.

Similarities Between SEO and SEM

Both SEO and SEM have the goal of helping a business appear in search results by using specific terms that a user may be searching for
Both, ultimately, have the goal of driving more traffic to a brand’s website through increasing click-through-rates (CTR)
SEO and SEM are both built on a foundation of knowing who your audience is, of understanding them and how they behave online, they then use this knowledge to create valuable content while searching for results your business should show up in
Both are built based on your keyword research, this is done by identifying the keywords that your brand should be targeting through analyzing popular search terms, looking at competitor search terms, and even looking at keywords that are easier to rank for
SEO and SEM target very specific keywords and are not performed on a whim
Both SEO and SEM are not overnight success stories, they require testing to see if the strategy is working or if there is a need for adaptation

The one comfort in knowing the similarities between SEO and SEM is that the foundation for your work in both are done in the same way. So if you put in the right amount of prep work, you should have the basis for a successful campaign in both.

Fundamental Difference Between SEO and SEM

Once the groundwork has been done through the similarities of both strategies, you’ll need to understand how the two differ from one another, to create effective strategies. Neither concept is a one-size-fits-all approach, let’s have a look at why.

SEM placements look different from organic search engine results, they’re usually identified by a small ad icon that appears adjacent to the ad, whereas SEO placements simply appear in the results as a block of text
SEM results have a different appearance to SEO results, for example, SEM results may include things like phone numbers, or call-to-actions, or extra links
With SEM, obviously, you pay each time a user clicks on the link whereas with SEO clicks, the brand would pay nothing
SEM has the ability to show results related directly to a specific, select target audience whereas, with SEO, you’ll be getting clicks from other audiences too, so SEM allows you to focus on a niche audience
SEM can give you results immediately as you’re paying for results and clicks, you will have the opportunity to immediately be in front of your target audience’s eyes whereas, with SEO, your tactics will take more time to generate organic results

As you can see, both SEO and SEM efforts have a considerable amount of similarities which can allow you to build the great groundwork for both strategies, whereas the differences between the two will assist you in creating effective tactics for both.

Choosing Between SEO and SEM

When looking at the difference between SEO and SEM, the one great thing is that you actually don’t have to choose one or the other. In fact, both strategies work seamlessly together to increase your search engine results if done properly.

Simply focus on your keyword strategy, and knowing your ideal target audience, and you’ll be well on your way to success.

Contact me if you need digital consulting to make your SEO and SEM results soar.