SEO

Should You Be Spreading out Your SEO? A Look at Google Site Search Alternatives (The Big Ones and the Niche)

When most people think of SEO, they think Google. And to be honest, that’s fair.

Google gets the lion’s share of all search traffic, bringing in 63% of all search traffic. What’s more, looking at the data shows that Google’s market has shown steady growth for well over a decade.

But Google isn’t the only search engine in town. In fact, there are tons of other, smaller search engines that you could utilize to bring in more traffic.

Curious to learn more?

Here’s what you need to know about SEO and Google site search alternatives.

Bing

People like to make fun of Bing as being the redheaded stepchild of the search engine world, but Microsoft’s search site does rather well for itself.

In fact, the site’s image and video functionality may be better than Google’s.

If you’re looking for a search engine with a solid market share and most of the accessibility of Google, Bing is your go-to.

Bing allows search engine marketing through its Bing Ads initiative, as well as traditional SEO strategies. Users can control their budget and performance without having to pay a minimum fee.

Yahoo!

For those looking for even less competition, Yahoo! is a great option.

Though its web searching tools aren’t as powerful as its brethren, Yahoo! still attracts quite a few visitors thanks to its popular mail client.

Yahoo! uses many of the same SEO strategies, including keyword choice, placing importance on alt tags, and metadata.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo champions itself as the search engine of the people. Its main selling point is that it promises never to collect, store, and sell user data to advertisers.

As a result, it, like Google, has shown steady growth over the last several years.

And as the battle for customer data rages on, expect DuckDuckGo to pick up even more visitors.

Baidu

For those targeting an international market, Baidu is a must.

This massive search engine in China’s equivalent to Google, bringing in 8 billion unique search results each month.

And it’s not just for an international market anymore, either. As of a few years ago, Baidu is now available in English, as well.

Though it hasn’t caught on yet in North America, its market value in China alone makes it an easy recommendation.

Ask

If you were around in the late 1990s, chances are you remember toying around with the Internet’s favorite butler, Jeeves, at AskJeeves.

While Jeeves is seemingly gone for good, in his place is a rebranded version of the search engine titled Ask.

It’s smaller, so niche markets should jump on the opportunity to market on Ask.

AOL Search

Like Yahoo! AOL’s search popularity comes primarily from its mail client.

Yet there’s one feature AOL has that its competitors don’t: A partnership with other search engines.

Users who use AOL Search’s ad function can also choose to distribute their ads through Bing, Yahoo, and more.

Check Out These Google Site Search Alternatives

If you’re looking to improve your SEO strategy, consider foregoing Google and choosing one of these Google site search alternatives.

Though they may not have the name recognition, each engine listed has a wide enough audience that they’re worth checking out.

Whichever search engine you choose, make sure your site is ready. Check out our guide on SEO-friendly web designs for more info.

5 Science Blogs that Nail Their SEO Strategy

Do you operate or write for a science blog? Are you wondering how to get your awesome content seen and heard by the masses? Are you utilizing SEO strategies to get higher rankings?

If not, now’s the time to start!

Unfortunately, there seems to be a disconnect between people and science. Brilliant science articles attract fellow science buffs – but what about everyone else? How can you get quality information out to them?

Science blogs need to market their content much like any other blog. An amazing article on the artists’ brain may get lost in the pages of Google. It may get taken over by the latest Kardashian sighting or Apple iPhone release.

And that just isn’t right. We need to reinforce that important connection between humans and science.

Here are 5 science websites that are killing the SEO game. Use them as inspiration for your own!

Science Blogs Worth Looking at

When we say SEO, what are we talking about, exactly? More than keywords (although they’re important, too).

The site should be easy to navigate. It should use click-worthy titles and social media. It needs to use internal and external linking to establish authority.

Take the PBMCs site, for example.

It has clear, click-through sections. It has a helpful FAQ page. They use text and video. 

Here are some others whose SEO techniques are on-point!

1. Scientific American 

This blog knows the importance of using video as well as text. Not only does Google love video, but so do mobile users. It offers an emotional and authoritarian connection, which is great for science writers.

They also have great headlines:

• “There Is No Such Thing as Conscious Thought”
• “A Novel Way to Fight Drug-Resistant Bacteria”
• “How and Why Scientists Redefined the Kilogram”

Are we nerdy, or do those titles make you want to know more?

2. Gizmodo 

This site is great at combining humor and education, bridging that science gap. “There Goes My Dream of a Viking Funeral,” says Bryan Menegus in one hilarious (but informative) article. 

They also know how to use internal linking to their advantage. Click any of their articles and you’ll find them referencing other articles of theirs. Authoritative and (sneakily) promotional.

3. HowStuffWorks

This site is also great at linking. They link back to their own content and cite reputable sources like universities and space.com. This increases their trustworthiness to audiences and the Google bots.

They also have a handy “Related Articles” section at the bottom of each article. This helps keep users on their site.

4. ScienceNews 

Quality is better than quantity – unless you can nail both as ScienceNews does. They post on a regular basis, sometimes even many times a day. But each article is chock-full of relevant, researched info.

They also use the “Subscribe” pop-up, a great way to keep users in touch with their content.

5. Popular Science

This science blog also uses the effective pop-up, offering a “largely ad-free” experience. The ads they do use are smartly placed and not annoying for users.

They have a super navigable page, starting from the toolbar at the top. They have sections such as “Science,” “Tech,” “Military,” and the popular “Video.”

Our favorite feature is the “Roll the Dice” button, which gives you random articles. Within two clicks, we got the articles “Monkeys May Technically Be Able to Talk,” and “The Rise of Personal Computers.” 

Fun, and interesting!

This site is also great at their linking.

Science for the Masses

SEO increases your blog’s credibility, something very important for science blogs. It might put you on Google’s coveted page 1, getting you the exposure you deserve.

Let’s make science popular again!

And while you’re at it, why not hone in your writing skills? Science can be a pretty technical subject. Here are 7 technical writing tips all scientists and bloggers should be using! 

7 Web Design Tips That’ll Improve Your SEO Dramatically

It’s Saturday night and you’re going out with your friends. You get out your phone and pull up a ride share app to arrange your transportation.

As the page is loading, a note appears that your ride will be found within the next minute and a countdown starts on your screen. As you tap your foot, the first minute passes and the next thirty seconds seem to drag on for eternity.

After the time is up, the page continues to load. You’re now wondering if it’s going to find you a ride at all, so you open up the competitor’s app and give them a shot at securing your ride.

Even if this scenario doesn’t sound familiar to you, it’s a reality for many people. In this dog-eat-dog world, responsive web design tips are necessary for success. Read on to learn what you need to do.

1. Optimize Your Site for Multi-Device Usage

Responsive website design refers to the programming of a website so that it realigns text and images automatically when a device is reoriented.

If your website design doesn’t adapt based on the screen size and angle that your customers are using, then you are making life more difficult for them. Trying to read a full-scale webpage on the small screen of a cell phone can be frustrating. No one wants to have to scroll back and forth to read lines of text.

Make sure that you take the time to ensure your site is displaying properly on all devices. This makes it easy for Google to crawl your web pages and deliver the content searchers are looking for.

2. Boost Your Site’s Mobile Capabilities

Google’s algorithm has regarded mobile-friendly websites as superior for a few years now. This is because currently, the majority of Google’s searches are coming in from mobile devices such as smartphones.

It used to be that you had to wait until you get home to look something up, but now everyone has the ultimate encyclopedia in their pocket. Numbers of mobile users are only expected to grow in the coming years so adapt today and rise with the tide.

3. Achieve Lightning Fast Load Times

Internet users want websites to load instantaneously. If it takes more than a couple seconds for one of your website pages to load, then they will find another site to visit. With the responsive design we previously mentioned, your website users will have the experience they crave.

4. Keep Your Bounce Rate Low

Your bounce rate refers to how often someone comes to your website to land on a single web page for only a moment. This behavior signals to Google that the content they provided wasn’t what the reader was looking for.

To ensure your bounce rate is low and users are directed to your site, you need to make sure your menus are all easy to navigate and that you are providing opportunities for viewers to find more content on your site that they would be interested in.

5. Improve Your User’s Experience

Your website users should be able to navigate easily from one section of your website to another. That means making your menus robust. Try to create page titles that are highly accurate so that customers don’t have to dig for what they want.

Another good idea is to include a call to action at the end of any blog posts you write that sends your reader to a purchase point or another article. This will help to keep your bounce rate as low as possible. Learn more about web design that engages your customers here.

6. Avoid Duplicate Content

Before responsive website design was a thing, it used to be that companies would create multiple versions of their website – one meant to be viewed on a mobile device, and one meant for the desktop.

Often they would delineate between the two by putting “m.” at the start of their URL.

While this was the best strategy in the past, today having two websites is a major Google faux pa. Google crawls the web to see how often a piece of content has been published and if you maintain two websites then you are essentially copying yourself. That hurts the SEO of both your websites.

Instead of continuing to update and maintain two versions of your website, move to a responsive web design. You’ll save time and get a boost in your rankings.

7. Include Social Media Sharing Options

When people come to your website to read one of your blogs or purchase your product or service, they should be engaging with your content. That means that they are hooked in by your introductions, informed by your words, and directed by your call-to-action.

If readers are hooked, then they will want to share your content with their friends on social media. While copy-pasting the URL is one way to spread the content, adding mobile-friendly share buttons to your articles is a great way to help get the buzz out more easily.

Be sure that you include buttons to the social media sites that are most relevant for your business. For example, if you are a restaurant or bar, you will want to have share buttons for all the major social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, while ignoring more niche sharing sites like Pinterest and LinkedIn.

Wrapping Up Web Design Tips

Now that you’ve learned these helpful web design tips, you’re ready to draw in new customers.

For more helpful articles to boost your rankings, check out our blog today.

12 Local SEO Solutions That Will Help You Outrank the Competition

Why should local SEO solutions matter to your business?

Out of all of the ways to market your business, more and more people are focusing on local search. For the first few years of internet marketing, business owners and marketers were all about SEO. Then around 2009, the marketing topic was social media. Today, the big marketing topic is local search.

There are a couple of simple reasons why it’s so important to your business.

According to HubSpot, 76% of people who do a local search pick up the phone and call a business.

44% of clicks go to the top search result. The top three results get on average 75% of all of the clicks.

Are you starting to understand how improving your local search results can mean more money in your pocket?

Would you like to know how you can make that happen?

Read on for 12 local SEO solutions you can use to improve your search rankings.

How Does Your Site Look in Searches Now?

If you have a goal to improve how your website appears in local search results, it helps to know how your site currently appears. This will help you track your progress as your search results change.

The trick here is to understand that people in different locations will have different search results. Even if they’re in the same town or the same room.

Google’s search results can vary depending on the device you use, your search history, your Google account and your IP address or location.

With so many variables, how can you get an accurate picture of how your website appears?

One workaround is to use a local search emulator. This will help you figure out how you appear according to location. A search emulator will allow you to change your location, so you can see how your site appears throughout your service area.

Know How Your Audience Will Look for You

Do you know how your customer thinks? In other words, how will your customer search for you?

There are a number of questions you should ask yourself to answer this question.

• Is your customer at home or at work?
• Are they on a mobile device or on a desktop computer?
• Are they searching in the middle of the afternoon or late at night?
• What is the problem they want help with?
• What are 15-20 search terms/phrases they would use in Google to find you?

Answering these questions will give you a better understanding as to what keywords you should try to rank higher for.

You should also consider positioning yourself for long-tail keyword searches vs. broader searches.

Think of it as the difference between searching for “fitness centers” and “fitness centers with a pool.” Fitness centers will have much greater competition, while fitness centers with a pool serve a genuine interest and will have less competition.

A Three-Pack Is Not Related to Beer

Currently, when you search for local businesses, you’ll see the top 3 search results. It used to be 7. That’s why improving your ranking is more important than ever.

Local SEO solutions such as filling out your MyBusiness listing can improve results.

The process to claim your listing is straightforward. Click on the above link and fill out your information. There is a verification process. Google will send a postcard with a PIN number to your address. It does need to be a physical address.

Once that part is complete, go into your account and fill out your profile. Make sure your description gives people a reason to contact you and be as specific as you can. Fill out your hours accurately, upload a few images and your company logo.

Content, Content, Content!

While these local SEO solutions are important, it’s also important to remember that as crucial as it is to get people to visit your website, they need a reason to stay there. You can do this by creating value for your site visitors.

The best way to create value is by creating content that will make people return to your site over and over again. That’s how you get people to like and trust you.

The more relevant content you have the better. A recent study by Traffic Generation Caf? showed that websites that have 21-54 posts get 30% more traffic.

There are case studies of businesses who have reported using content marketing to increase revenue by a whopping 438%

Improve Internal Links on Your Site

Linking your website’s internal links together helps customers use your website, and add link juice between pages.

Link juice is a way to let search engines know which pages on your site are the most important.

One word of caution: When adding internal links, it may be tempting to add a bunch of internal links on all of your web pages. Don’t do it!

By having a few internal links on each page, you maintain the quality of your links.

Get Quality Backlinks

Out of all of the local SEO solutions, one of the most talked about today is backlinks. A backlink is simply another website that links to your website.

The trick to making backlinks work for local search is that you have to get QUALITY links.

A shotgun approach to backlinks no longer works.

We go over a couple of ways (directories and Google’s My Business listings) to get started throughout this article.

You can also write guest articles for industry and local publications to get quality backlinks to your website.

What’s the Competition Doing?

Knowing how and where your competition ranks in search results can help you understand where your potential customers may be going.

You’ll also quickly learn what keywords your competition may be trying to rank for.

Here’s what to pay attention to when you’re doing competitive research:

• Your top 5-10 competitors
• Each competitor’s GoogleMyBusiness Listing. Pay attention to the text and images and look for keywords and locations they might be trying to rank for.
• Customer reviews – how many and are the reviews positive or negative.

You can either do this on your own or use local SEO solutions like Crunchbase or SEM Rush.

NAP & Structured Data Markup

We can’t talk about your website without a little geek-speak.

NAP is simply your name, address, and phone number. This cannot be stressed enough to make sure that these fields are accurate and consistent throughout your website and directory listings.

Structured markup, also called Schema markup, is code that you have on your website that tells search engines how your site should appear in search results.

This makes your search results more user-friendly.

This resource from Kissmetrics tells you step-by-step how you can add structured markup data to your website.

Customer Reviews Matter

Not only can customer reviews influence rankings, they can also influence a customer’s decision to buy. Over 62% of buyers consider online reviews to be important or very important when finding a local business.

You can ask your customers to leave reviews on Google and Facebook. Also, search for existing reviews and respond to them. You’ll show that you care about your business and your customers.

Let’s say you were looking up a pest control service in Concord, North Carolina. So you search for pest control service reviews near concord nc.

You find a company that you may not be familiar with, but you decide to call based on a number of positive reviews.

Rank Images and Videos

One overlooked aspect of local search is to try to rank videos and images for keywords. This is probably one of the easiest local SEO solutions.

• A few easy tips to rank images already on your website are:
• Make sure the image is related to the webpage.
• The image file name should be changed from IMG_4323425 to something related to the keyword.
• The higher the image is on your page, the better chance it has to rank.
• Fill in the alt-text and description of the image. Preferably with your keywords, but don’t keyword stuff.

This is one way to help you rank in local search results that your competition probably isn’t doing.

Get Listed

Online directories are easy to miss as far as local SEO solutions go. You can help your local search results by making sure your business is listed in the main online search directories; such as Yelp, Citysearch, and MerchantCircle and YP.com.

Does that mean that you should submit your website to every directory? Absolutely not. Remember the earlier discussion regarding backlinks: Quantity does not mean quality.

When you list your site, pick the main directories above and include BingPlaces.

If you’re a member of business organization or chamber of commerce, take advantage of your membership and make sure you’re listed in their business directory.

It’s very important to make sure that your listings are accurate and consistent. If you have listings all over the place with old addresses or phone numbers, you’re diluting the potential impact of your search results.

Don’t Discount Social Media

Social media influencers tend to agree that social media remains one of the top local SEO solutions.

It’s still debatable whether social media has a direct impact on search results, but social media does help in other ways.

Social media networks are great for backlinks. They also have the potential to create conversation around your company. This sends social signals to Google’s algorithm.

The more positive the social signal, the more likely you’ll rank higher.

Finding Local SEO Solutions Can Be Easy

As you can see, there are at least a dozen ways you can improve your local search results. If you make these suggested changes, you should start to see your search results improve.

You might be ready to hand some of those tasks off to someone else.

At ArticleCity, our goal is to help you get your content seen so your website can appear in search results.

Sign up for your free account today for the latest marketing and local SEO solutions.

5 Essential SEO Tips for Self Defense Websites

After last year’s election, the number of Americans taking self-defense classes has surged. This is particularly true for women and minorities, many of whom no longer feel safe.

This means that self-defense websites can expect to see increased traffic, as long as they’re following best practices for SEO.

Read on, to learn the best SEO tips for self defense websites.

Top SEO Tips for Self Defense Websites

Over the past 5-6 years, Google has continued to release update after update, changing how we think about SEO.

Here are 5 SEO tips you should know:

1. Reconsider Your Keywords

When was the last time you thought about the keywords you’re targeting? It’s a waste of time to focus on keywords that potential clients and customers aren’t even searching for.

Your keywords will be related to the topics you’re blogging about. For example, if you blog about stun guns, you may have keywords like “TBOTECH“, “Most popular stun guns” etc.

You need to take some time to find the best possible keywords- the ones that turn into clients or purchases. This is often where long tail keywords come in, and they’re a great way for you to rank higher in Google based on common searches.

Instead of “self-defense classes,” consider something like “Best self-defense classes Chicago.” And instead of “Self defense tips,” a long-tail option would be “Top self-defense tips for women.”

2. Step Up Your Content Marketing

Like it or loathe it, content marketing is here to stay. And it remains one of the best ways for you to improve your SEO, attract new clients, and position your business as an expert in the self-defense world.

Gone are the days when you could slap together an article, stuff it with keywords, and climb the rankings. Google is far too smart for that. Instead, you need to write useful, unique, optimized content that will naturally appeal to both readers and search engines.

3. Optimize For Mobile

Google is a giving preference to mobile friendly sites. But it’s not enough to simply choose a mobile-friendly theme. This should be a given. Instead, you need to design it so it loads better and faster.

Use medium resolution images, turn off autoplay on your videos, display your content first. There are many things you can do to show Google that your site is attractive to mobile users.

4. Aim for Snippets

When you ask Google a question, you’ll often get a little box of content at the top which answers that question. That box includes a link back to your website, and it’s SEO gold.

To make this happen for your website, you simply need to focus on answering F&Qs about self-defense and make sure you write them in bullets and steps.

5. Optimize Your Website

Finally, you need to check if your website is optimized correctly. This includes your:

• Homepage title
• Homepage meta description
• Subpage titles and meta tags
• Call-to-actions
• Headings and subheadings

Whenever possible, these should include descriptive copy about your website. Include your keywords, and encourage visitors to click through and read your content.

Get Started

Hopefully, the above SEO tips for self defense websites will give you a good place to get started with your SEO this year. What has been working for your website? Let us know about it in the comments section!