How to Rank on Google?

Ranking on Google involves a combination of factors, and it’s important to note that Google’s algorithms are complex and constantly evolving. However, here are some general tips to improve your website’s chances of ranking well on Google:

Quality Content

Create high-quality, relevant, and valuable content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience. Use proper grammar, spelling, and formatting to help improved your SERP rating.

Keyword Research

Identify relevant keywords related to your content and target audience, and this can be done by using tools like Google Keyword Planner or other keyword research tools to find keywords with reasonable search volume and competition.

On-Page SEO

Optimise your content for search engines by including relevant keywords in your titles, headers, meta descriptions, and throughout the content. Use descriptive and SEO-friendly URLs.

Mobile-Friendly Design

Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. Google prioritises mobile-friendly websites in its rankings as this creates better customer engagement and improved usability.

Backlinks

Build high-quality, relevant backlinks from reputable websites. Quality is more important than quantity. You can build back links through various ways like, using directories, publishing your content on other sites through guest posting and reaching out to journalists.

Good Quality Content

Create a positive user experience by having a well-designed website with easy navigation. Reduce bounce rates by providing valuable and engaging content. This can then also be shared via your social media platforms to increase your online presence and potentially drive traffic to your website.

SEO

Ensure that your website is easily crawlable by search engines. By using a sitemap and submitting it to Google, along with fixing any broken links and redirects as this will help your SEO and give you that all important exposure to online audiences.

Updates

Keep your content fresh and regularly update your website. Websites that regularly publish new, relevant content and do not have old content, are more likely to rank higher in search engines.

Remember that SEO is an ongoing process, and it takes time to see results. Additionally, Google’s algorithms can change, so staying informed about updates and adapting your strategy accordingly is crucial. It’s also a good idea to monitor your website’s performance using tools like Google Analytics and Search Console.

Creating Content that Ranks Well on Google

This process involves following several key strategies. While Google’s ranking algorithm is complex and constantly evolving, here are some practices we have put together for you to consider:

Understanding user intent

Research and understand what users are searching for when they look for content related to your topic. This will help you align your content with their needs and intentions. Identify relevant keywords and phrases that users are likely to search for. Use keyword research tools to find popular and less competitive keywords. Incorporate these keywords naturally into your content, including the title, headings, and body.

High-quality content

Create well-written, informative, and engaging content that provides value to the readers. Google aims to deliver the best possible results to its users, so focus on creating content that is comprehensive and unique. Include relevant internal links within your content to guide users to other relevant pages on your website. Finding opportunities to earn high-quality external links from reputable websites is also a useful tool. Both internal and external links help Google understand the relevance and authority of your content.

Proper formatting

Organise your content using headings, subheadings, and bullet points. This helps Google understand the structure and hierarchy of your content, making it easier for users to read and navigate. Optimise your meta title and meta description tags to include relevant keywords and accurately describe the content. These tags are displayed in search engine results and can influence click-through rates.

Accessibility

Ensure your website and content are mobile-friendly and responsive. Google prioritises mobile-friendly websites in its search results, considering the growing number of mobile users. By improving your website’s loading speed by optimising images, using caching techniques, and minimising unnecessary scripts, will also help. A faster loading website provides a better user experience and is favoured by Google.

Social signals

Promote your content through social media channels to increase visibility and generate social signals. While social signals may not have a direct impact on search rankings, they can indirectly contribute to increased traffic and engagement.

Remember that search engine optimisation (SEO) is an ongoing process, and it’s essential to stay up to date with the latest best practices and algorithm changes, along with keeping your own content fresh. Regularly reviewing and updating it demonstrates to Google that your content is current and relevant, increasing its chances of ranking well.

Continuously monitor your website’s performance, analyse user behaviour, and make improvements accordingly.

The Difference Between Good and Bad Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website. They are an important factor in search engine optimization (SEO) because search engines view them as a sign of credibility and relevance. However, not all backlinks are created equal. There are good backlinks that can boost your website’s ranking and bad backlinks that can harm it.

Good backlinks

Good backlinks are those that come from reputable and relevant websites. They are usually obtained naturally because other websites find your content valuable and want to link to it. Good backlinks are typically:

  • Relevant: The linking website is in the same or a related niche as your website.
  • From high-quality websites: The linking website has a good reputation and high domain authority.
  • Diverse: Your backlink profile includes links from a variety of different sources, such as blogs, news websites, and social media platforms.
  • Anchor text: The text used to link to your website is descriptive and includes relevant keywords.

Bad Backlinks

On the other hand, bad backlinks are those that come from low-quality or spammy websites. They can harm your website’s ranking and reputation, and may even lead to a penalty from search engines. Bad backlinks are typically:

  • Irrelevant: The linking website is not related to your website’s niche.
  • From low-quality websites: The linking website has a poor reputation, low domain authority, or is a known spam site.
  • Manipulative: The backlink was obtained through manipulative tactics, such as buying links or participating in link schemes.
  • Anchor text: The text used to link to your website is generic, spammy, or includes irrelevant keywords.

Benefits

Good backlinks are an essential component of any effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are links from other websites that point to your website.

  • Increased visibility and traffic: Good backlinks from authoritative websites can help to increase your website’s visibility and traffic. When other websites link to your site, it can drive referral traffic to your website and improve your search engine rankings.
  • Improved search engine rankings: Search engines use backlinks as a signal of the popularity, relevance, and authority of your website. The more high-quality backlinks your website has, the more likely it is to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
  • Increased credibility and trust: Good backlinks from reputable websites can help to establish your website’s credibility and trustworthiness. When other authoritative websites link to your content, it signals to search engines and users that your content is high-quality and relevant.
  • Enhanced brand visibility: Good backlinks can also help to enhance your brand visibility and recognition. When your content is linked to from other websites, it can help to increase awareness of your brand and improve your reputation in your industry.

Overall, good backlinks are an important factor in improving your website’s visibility, traffic, search engine rankings, credibility, and brand recognition.

Make sure your backlinks come from reputable and relevant sources which help to boost your website’s ranking, and watch out for those bad backlinks!

Content Creation

When making a guest post and publishing your content online, naturally the better your content is, the more interest and traffic you will generate. Now you have seen examples of guest post platforms and how to publish them, we are going to share some tips on how to create great content to publish…

The Types of Content Marketing

When improving your marketing, it is important to look at the different mediums that can be used to resonate with your audience. It is a good idea to see what forms of media are most used and that will be of interest.

Types of marketing that are popular across many industries today are:

  • Blogging
  • Video
  • Podcasting
  • Infographics
  • Email
  • Visual content
  • E-books
  • Newspapers
  • Presentations
  • Quizzes’/tools
  • Checklists
  • Courses
  • Webinars
  • Free apps
  • Social media posts

With social media, blogging and vlogging having a large increase in popularity, sharing your guest post articles across your social media channels and including the links to the post may generate even more traffic.

Writing SEO

Creating content is not so easy when there is quite a lot to think about in terms of SEO. Search Engines, like Google, rank content highly based on the following factors:

  • High-quality content
  • Relevance
  • Context

These three points are the main reasons for content to be ranked higher over other sources. It is important that the content that is shared on the domain share a certain relevance in context and is written well. However, this can be affected by other factors to be truly successful!

Mobile-friendliness: It is important that sites are responsive for apps and digital mobile use

High-quality backlink: Having these links boosts SEO authority and Google is seen to rank higher

Domain authority: A higher domain authority is influenced by your total number of links and the age, size and popularity of the domain and will help your SEO

On-page SEO: Important on-page SEO components include title tags, meta description, header tags, URLs, and image alt tags and will all help to boost your overall SEO

How to start writing

When writing content, you will either have a topic in mind or need to find a topic to write about. You can attack your content either way by asking questions like, how you can increase the demand around the topic you have, or figuring out what you are looking for from your customers. Set yourself key points to research to help with your marketing based around SEO, so you can keep track of how successful these are. For example…

  • Keywords to use within your writing and the volumes of this search
  • Is your content going to be relevant to what the audience want?
  • Look into competitiors, does someone else provide this content?

Using your keywords effectively, also known as on-page SEO, will help optimise your content and demonstrate expertise, authority and trust with your audience. Keeping your audience in mind when writing, will also be key to the success of your writing. Look into vocabulary and the style of how you want your piece to come across, and make sure it is meeting your target audience.

When creating a lot of content, it is a good idea to research what has been already written so you can bring fresh ideas to your audience. With the help of screenshots, charts, images, and videos you can bring diversity to your posts and a sense of engagement with your audience.

Getting the basics of content creation right, will help you to make better article and make the most of your guest posts!

How to Make a Guest Post?

Making a guest post can be very simple but you will need to find the right place to publish your article. For your guest post to be successful, the placement of it needs to be somewhere visible to your desired audience.

Choosing a platform

There are now many sites which can help you make a guest post and offer suitable placements for your article. Here is just some platforms that can help you in your guest post journey:

  • AI Guest Posts
  • UK Linkology
  • Authority Builders
  • In Front Digital
  • NO BS Marketplace
  • Skale

These companies all work differently with SEO and guest posts, and bring their own style to the process. With lots of industry options available it makes choose where to place your guest post much easier!

AI Guest Posts

With our own guest post platform, AI Guest Posts, we have created a very self-sufficient platform to ease the process of publication and help make the management of the following factors:

  • much less admin heavy
  • give a choice of payment methods
  • flexibility within your articles with the number of links, images and word count you can include
  • choice of your own publication date

When creating a guest post, we first recommend that you create an account as this will help to eliminate VAT, if not applicable, and allows access to manage your posts and payments efficiently. You can log into your account to see the progression of your article. If there should be any changes made to your article, you will also be notified, and the amendments can be made here.

Our 12 brands that accept guest posts are based across a range of industries and regions around the world, covering a range of topics, so you are sure to find a suitable placement for your content, including:

  • Business
  • Technology
  • Finance
  • Construction & Engineering
  • Design
  • Logistics
  • Employee relations
  • Corporate & Social Responsibility
  • Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel and Retreats
  • Style
  • Art & Entertainment
  • Small Business

We then have our region-specific brands:

APAC – APAC has more of a focus on The Asian Pacific region including East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South Asia, and Southeast Asia

EU Business News – Based on content relating to European Countries

MEA Markets – Content specific to the Middle East & Africa

New World Report – Content specific to The United States, Canada, Mexico, South America and The Caribbean

If you would like some more information on these brands you can take a look on AI Guest Posts or drop us an email on [email protected].

The next edition of The Ultimate Guide to Guest Posting we will be sharing some tips on content creation and some of our most viewed guest posts!

What are the Benefits?

At AI Guest Posts, we believe that guest posts are a key tool and have many benefits that can help improve your marketing, across many different levels and here is how:

  • Improves brand awareness – Writing guest posts can expose your brand to new audiences and let more people know who you are and what you do.
  • Drives traffic – If guest posts are created often and completed successfully, they can be a valuable source of referral traffic for your website.
  • Builds links – Guest posting can be a great way to build links to your website so that you can improve search engine rankings.
  • Develops relationships – By branching out to different people can be a good way to start and progress good working relationships.
  • Builds presence – Guest posting gives you a way to share your expertise with your audience, which helps cement your authority within the industry.

How will this benefit my business?

All of these factors mentioned above will help your business progress in the right direction, but the question is why are all of these important? Exposure, traffic, desired audiences and industry presence will validify your business and grow your online presence. The more exposure you have, the larger the audience you will reach. When customers have recognised you online, they will feel comfortable using the brand and choose you over competitors. With many businesses based solely online and more people shopping online, the competition is greater than ever. Being able to stand out against your competitors through search engines and marketing is what is going to bring you success!

Most people who work within the SEO (search engine optimisation) industry will know of or heard of the ranking process and the ‘algorithm’ in how it works. Different algorithms can include number of pages, views, clicks, comments, likes, shares. With new advancements happening every day, Google’s method to rank these if very efficient and it creates decision on the content and usefulness of the page using hundreds of factors included in the algorithm.

Through the help of guest posts, building your brand awareness and driving traffic will improve your SEO and boost your above all of your competitors. It will also help with any email marketing, or social media campaigns that your are working on.

In the next edition of the Ultimate Guide to Guest Posting, we will be sharing the process of uploading your content to AI Guest posts, and how to get your article looking great!

5 Reasons Why Content Marketing is Important

Here are our 5 main reasons why content marketing is such a vital part of your business.

1. Content marketing can help enhance your online presence

Using content marketing within your business does boost website in many ways including functionality, appearance, and a higher domain authority score. If you can create a good, interesting website for your audience, the more likely they are to revisit your website and trust in your brand. With a better website comes more web traffic, helping you to rank higher in search engines for better visibility.

2. It can rapidly grow trust with your audience

Having a website that is filled with good quality content suggests a well-established, robust business. Including more helpful, useful, and engaging content for its audience will encourage them to return to the sites. If they are continuously pleased with your business and product, they are more likely to trust your company and buy from you. Search engines also approve of the good quality content and will rank your website at the top of search results for this.

3. Content marketing builds authority

By producing good content marketing and growing your website in a positive direction is a great investment into your business. Not only does it build your brand’s authority and establishes relationships with your audience but, it is your own content. By publishing your own website means you own all the content that belongs their – it is your content assets. Unlike social media marketing, where the platforms are not your own, they do not hold any priority to your content and are run by large corporations who have their own business to grow. (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.).

4. More attractive to higher-quality leads

By achieving the right content, you will see that there are 2 types of leads that will be looking at your website and targeting these can be managed through SEO.

The two types of leads are the ones who already know about your business and familiar with what you do, and the people who have encountered an issue and needs a solution to it.

By using SEO (Search engine optimisation) you can carefully choose the correct terminology to entice both types of leads. Research keywords and what is popular for both areas and it will help to attract in higher quality leads.

5. More manageable cost and better rewards

If you have used more traditional marketing techniques in the past you will know that it tends to rely on advertising with a charge. As soon as you stop paying for it, the adverts are no longer their and neither is the visibility of your company. Content marketing costs are more likely to be one initial cost at the beginning, particularly if you invest in SEO or a platform that will publish your content. As soon as your content has gone live, this will then stay online and spread, you don’t have to keep paying for it.

Content marketing, if executed correctly, can have many positive attributes which could then lead to a domino effect through to other aspects of your website, marketing and business strategy. By implementing some key techniques of content marketing, you can make huge benefits to your business, as listed above!

How to Make Seasonal Content Marketing More Effective

The calendar year is something that rarely changes, so why not play on the annual/every few years seasonal activities and events? Things like Christmas, Easter, Sporting evets like Wimbledon, The Masters, F1, the London Marathon, and numerous endless tournaments, Black Friday events, Festivals like Glastonbury, the list really is endless. But how can you work these into your marketing schedule and include current seasonal content? See some of our tips below….

Get Prepared

While the focus is usually on the upcoming events and although this is important, taking that step ahead is also a great strategy. Take the time to start your preparation for the coming year early and plan which of your calendar events could be the most successful for monopolise on for your business. Using tools like Google Trends will help with what aspects have been/are popular and will be a good indicator for what will really take off next year. Think about content marketing research that you already have and figure out:

  • Be specific and keeping in mind your target audience decide what is the best way to grab their attention
  • Use tools like Semrush for keyword analysis
  • Look at your site’s traffic in previous years and the data as this may be useful to see how products or posts performed
  • Look at testimonials for inspiration

It’s all about the timing

If you are going to create relevant holiday content and make the most of it, it is best to plan when. You do not want to wait too late to pitch it and end up missing the key time slot for this! It is better planning to get articles written early and scheduled out for a future date, rather than rushing them and missing the deadline. To get your content done before time and effectively, use these tricks below:

  • Look back and analyse old content around seasonal topics and start developing ways you can advance it and use it again
  • Whilst building your seasonal products, think about how your content will sit alongside this to help boost your sales
  • Avoid adding dates to URLs around seasonal content so that it can be recycled for the following year
  • Refresh any seasonal content as new, develop it bringing it into the new year. You do not need brand new content for the same events every year

Market each platform effectively

The holiday season is always a difficult time to capture the attention of clients so if you can be prepared with what you would like to publish across each different platform this will be more effective for your audience, and less stressful for you. Knowing who and what to market on each platform is key. Keep in mind:

  • Lists on Pinterest are very popular and a great way to share gifting ideas, your favourite recipes and décor ideas
  • Instagram is great for sharing visual inspiration about gifts, and what seasonal outfits are trending
  • Facebook is great for running competitions for your followers and you can make this interesting and helpful for consumers instead of making it just about your product or service
  • Guest Posts are a great way to advertise to a large audience that you would not necessarily reach in your day to day marketing

If you can prepare in advance and make sure your content is visible and live on multiple platforms, you have the best chance to get in front of your audience. Make the most of creating seasonal content to make it personal and giving the best chance for it to get noticed!

Top 6 Black Friday Marketing Strategies

With Black Friday almost upon us, we have put together some tips of how you can get ahead with your socials and email marketing in the weeks running up to Black Friday! Take a look below at how you can put these tips into practice and really make Black Friday promotions work for you:

Social media

With online shopping becoming evermore popular, why not keep your marketing online too and make it easier for your audience. There are so many methods of how to approach Black Friday, but it is choosing the right ones for you and your business that matters. Here are some of our favourites:

Hashtags – Use different hashtags to what you would usually use in your posts to black on the Black Friday audience. There are many different types of shopper, and your usual audience may not necessarily hunt for sales and discount but Black Friday will bring along a range of new customers for you, so tap into this where you can.

Creating time restrictions – By creating a time frame and a little urgency around the discount will encourage your customer to buy quicker. As the Black Friday is only for a day, many shops have already increased this to the weekend, and some have extended it further to monopolise on the event and draw in the customers quicker and for longer. A way to do this could be to add mystery to your offers, like ‘coming soon’. You can potentially give them a preview of what is going to be available so they will know not to miss out, and will remember to come back and buy.

Optimise your socials – With the deals coming up, be sure to use social media to your advantage. Make sure you are dropping constant reminders for your followers about the upcoming deals and that your main products are taking centre stage. Posting regularly will help it stick in your followers minds, and they will be more inclined to buy when the deal is on. You can make your posts varied and include things like your polls, blog posts, and tips will also bring people into your socials.

Email Marketing

A couple of weeks before the Black Friday event, start an email marketing campaign to entice your customers. You will need to give them something that they have not been offered before, like a ‘huge discount’ or ‘your biggest deal yet’. You can do things like:

Online Promo Codes – send out a promotional discount code at the appropriate time. You need to be ahead of the crowds to make sure they are seeing your code first, but alternatively, not too early that they forget to use it. Make sure it is something that they will not be able to resist and will fled to your website, whether that’s ‘Buy one product and receive a free item’, or ‘percentage discount if you spend X amount’, etc. etc….

Incentive for loyal customers – This is a time to recognise your regular customers by offering them an extra kind of incentive. It is a great time to do this while there are already offers on but then they will also feel appreciated and be more likely to carry on buying your products, particularly if you follow up with them afterwards too!

These are simple tips you can add into your marketing that will really elevate your Black Friday experience and grow the exposure of your business.

How to Use Content Marketing Help Grow Your Business?

Content Marketing is a key marketing driver for many businesses to grow their income and to engage a wider audience in a targeted manner. Here are some of the main ways in which good content marketing can help grow your business:

Research

It is a good suggestion to start by collating a good amount of research around your business that is going to help grow and improve growth on:

  • Exposure – What your current online and social media presence is like?
  • Audience – Who is your target audience and are you successfully engaging with them?
  • Content – Is the content across your business cohesive?

Gaining answers to questions like this will be beneficial when deciding how to apply content marketing, and which methods to use. It will also tell you a lot about your current customers and how you can develop what is currently working within your business and monopolise on their buying habits.

Delivery good quality content

When implementing a content marketing strategy, the goal is to deliver interesting and informative content that your audience will want to engage with and then maximise the potential return on investment in this content through promotion across different channels. Thinking about things like brand awareness, SEO benefits, traffic and sales, and combining this with the interests of your audience, should help you to produce exciting content for your audience.

By sharing good quality content and on a regular basis will keep your audience interested in your business and allow them to invest not only time but also money into your business and grow your sales.

Using a range of channels

With social media and digital services now readily available to help grow your communication channels it can have positive affect and in turn grow your business. Good content marketing will use different formats of digital marketing and target certain audiences to engage with them about your business, encouraging interaction. Judging on your own audience and your content market research you will have understanding of which methods will resonate best. This includes, podcasts, infographic, videos, and blogs.

There are also ways to gain exposure through guest posts, which is publishing your content on another successful website that is relevant to your brand. By gaining exposure to the audience they have already got, will instantly grow yours and enable you to reach customer that you previously would not. Take a look at AI Guest Posts, a platform that has multiple websites to choose from and see which would be most suited to and effective for your content.

After focusing some time to try and improve these areas is a good checklist to help your business. By combining these simple elements and implementing them into your existing business will help to grow your sales, exposure and then hopefully customer base. You do not have to struggle your way through this though, there are useful tools like SEMRush and Hootsuite that can help you plan your content more easily and ensure you are getting the most out of your content marketing to improve your business growth!