Organic Traffic Does Not Simply Disappear |  |
- Organic Traffic Does Not Simply Disappear
- 10 visual ways to double traffic and engagement from your social media updates
- How to Create the Perfect 404 Page
- 5 Link building strategies that simply work
| Organic Traffic Does Not Simply Disappear Posted: 30 Jul 2015 01:00 AM PDT
The Curious Case of the Missing Organic TrafficIn SEO, there are few things worse than waking up to find that your organic traffic has disappeared. First there’s denial, shortly before anger sets in. A few curses later and you begin bargaining before sinking into the depths of a foggy grump. Finally acceptance; it’s gone. So, what on earth has happened to it? It’s easy to jump to conclusions when organic traffic goes missing. Some might say it no longer exists. That’s hard to believe; a market doesn’t eat itself over night. Others might think that Google has pulled the rug from underneath them, often true but not always the case. So what can be done when you are a few thousand organic visitors light? The answer: ask the right questions. Take a step back from the situation and go through the following sequence of questions:
What has changed on your website?The first place to look is inside. You control your website, so you should know what has changed. First you need to work out when organic traffic began to drop. There are two options here:
If the drop was sudden you can be more confident that there was a specific, recent change that occurred to cause the issue. Conversely, if the drop happened over a longer period of time, you have an immediate clue that there is a fundamental change that is causing a downward spiral. Now you know how quickly your organic traffic disappeared, you need to work out what has changed on your website to see if this is playing any role. Ask yourself questions such as:
Focus on gaining insight into the three core pillars of your on-site strategy: technical integrity, on-site content, and link profile (which directly influences the integrity of your domain). Note down all of the changes on a timeline and then move onto question two…
What has Google changed recently?You’ve already looked at the things you control, so now it is time to review the factors that you cannot control. Chances are, when you look at organic traffic you are mainly looking at traffic from Google. Whether Google is your primary organic traffic source or not, these principles apply just as well to other sources of organic traffic. This question is all about understanding what Google has changed in the build up to your drop in organic traffic. There are a number of places you need to look in order to answer this question:
These are only three sources of search engine news, but most of the time they will have you covered for anything that happens in search. Note down anything significant that has happened around the same time as your organic traffic troubles, put your pen down and move onto question three…
Has your market changed recently?It’s all very well understanding what has changed on your website and what Google has been up to, but it would be incredibly short sighted to ignore what is going on within your market. Chances are you already have a good understanding of the market that you operate within, but things change, so take nothing for granted. Begin by updating your keyword research. Searcher’s intent and their use of language can change quite dramatically given time and changing circumstances. By updating the keyword research data you hold you are validating whether your keyword strategy is still suitable for the traffic you are trying to capture. You also need to review the trends within your market; are new products and services on offer that make yours less appealing? Question whether related markets are diversifying and beginning to eat up some of your organic traffic. Also review whether there has been any breaking news related to your industry; major/significant news events can often shake up the organic search market, increasing the importance of ‘fresh’ content. Google Trends is a great place to review movement in your market, and setting up Google Alerts can be a good way to monitor changes in the future.
What have your competitors been up to?What happens if you conclude that nothing on your website has changed, Google has changed nothing (unlikely, by the way), and your market is as solid as it has ever been? Sometimes the absence of change is as significant as its presence. In The Adventure of Silver Blaze, Sherlock Holmes draws the attention of Gregory (the detective) to the “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time”:
Investigating the disappearance of Silver Blaze, a famous race horse, Holmes fixes his gaze on the fact that the family dog did not bark during the night of the horse’s disappearance. Knowing that dogs are infamous for their ability to make noise when a stranger is present, Holmes was able to confirm that the thief must have been known to the dog for it to stay silent. The absence of something proving to be the most significant clue. And so it is with your website. When all else remains the same, often the best place to look is at your competition. You probably have a long list of competitors; go to this list and look into what each of them has been doing recently. Note down new content they have added, look at where new websites/features have been launched and see if they have moved into a new space within your market. Also look to see whether anyone new has moved into the market. Look at whether a previously weak competitor has suddenly found momentum. SEMrush is a great tool to use when reviewing competitor changes and can be enough to highlight a change in fortunes for your competitor’s websites. Your website, Google and the market may have stood still, but if your competitors have carried on moving forwards chances are you are going to lose out as a result. After all, in a world that is constantly changing, standing still is as good as moving backwards! ConclusionsHaving carried out your investigations you should have a list that covers:
Now all you need to do is look through all of the facts and come to a conclusion. Focus on the significant facts, line them up in order and then run through the scenario. Like a good detective, keeping to this process will help you uncover everything that matters in your quest to uncover what happened to your missing organic traffic. After all, organic traffic does not simply disappear! Credit – Sherlock Holmes icon by James Keuning on The Noun Project. The post Organic Traffic Does Not Simply Disappear appeared first on White.net. |
| 10 visual ways to double traffic and engagement from your social media updates Posted: 28 Jul 2015 12:00 AM PDT Producing regular content on social media is crucial for any brand aiming to remain memorable and engaging. But with so much content published across various social channels every second of every day, the pressure is high to remain visible in a visual and different way. If you want to make your social media posts a bit more punchy and never allow them to be scrolled right past, you are in the right place. In this post I'm going to share some tips and tricks on how to make your content jump out. Mastery of visual content
Paying attention to visual content and looking for ways to stand out is something any brand should think about when looking for ways of increasing longevity and making distribution process more worthwhile. Let’s have a look at 10 different ways of how to start thinking visually when crafting and promoting your content on social media: 1. Make your branded hashtags memorable
Post Office makes their #HolidayFeeling hashtag stand out by adding it not just within the copy of each tweet, but also by making it part of each graphic. Use of vibrant colours helps the tag to be more visible while the consistency of adding it to all the graphics making it far more memorable. The use of branded visuals is also a great way of being able to go beyond Twitter's character limits in order to tell unique story and offer type of storytelling that otherwise would be impossible. 2. Turn feedback into animated GIFsBrands often use open questions to boost conversations on social media. But asking questions is simply not enough, it is what you do afterwards with any sort of user-generated content that truly counts. Dove recognised the full potential of generating customers feedback and made it a prominent aspect of its latest #SpeakBeautiful campaign. Similarly to Dove, you can reward your most engaged followers who are contributing to your conversations, by turning their answers into sweet little animated GIFs. 3. Provide value and humour with quotes
4. Turn your tweets into photo collages
One of the latest features on Twitter allows you to add not just one but up to 4 images into one tweet. In the past to achieve an effect of a photo collage, I had to use external apps or a tool to create such a format. Now you can easily and much faster do it yourself on both mobile and desktop versions of Twitter. To my surprise not many brands are using this method which is another great way of attracting customers attention which also can make your messaging far more interesting. 5. Use eye-catching imagery
The tactic of 'in-your-face' promotion with the use of imagery taken straight from the website, which doesn’t fit social channels sizing requirements, should be put aside in favour of showing and sharing stories the audience actually cares about and can relate to. 6. Inject humor with appropriate image dimensions
You should never be afraid to experiment with your content and adjust it to your brand's personality. Sometimes playfulness might be the best way of attracting someone who is mindlessly scrolling and skimming through social media feed. Here's a great example from Chester Zoo showing how one image can be turned into a meme with a bit of planning and creative execution. This approach works extremely well on various devices, whether browsed on desktop or mobile. Without splitting this photo into 3 parts, the image posted as portrait won't display correctly and won't be able to reveal the greatness of this capture. Try to keep in mind image sizing when sharing photos on Twitter, as the in stream photo displays as 440×220, what means that some of its aspects will be hidden and won't show until being clicked on. It's also worth pointing out that Twitter favours landscape, not portrait photos, as they display more effectively. If that is a problem for you try to use portrait photos as photo collages, which I mentioned in the paragraph above. 7. Use branded visuals with a powerful copy |
| How to Create the Perfect 404 Page Posted: 23 Jul 2015 12:49 AM PDT There is nothing more frustrating than landing on a broken webpage and seeing the below message, in fact it's one of my biggest bugbears. This is what users see when they land on a page that doesn't exist and has been deleted or the URL has been misspelt. As you can see from the image below the generic 404 page is pretty useless and doesn’t even attempt to help users continue their journey to your website.
Guess what users do in these situations? Bounce straight back to Google and go on your competitor's site. Not everyone has the time or even thinks to delete the breadcrumbs and navigate to the homepage. They want the information there and then without having to make an effort to navigate to your site. To soften the blow and put a smile on the disgruntled visitor’s face you need a well-designed custom 404 page that allows users to continue their journey on to your site. In this blog post I am going to cover the reasons why it's important to have a custom 404 page and what you should include on it, and then I'm going to show you some quirky and fun custom 404 pages that will inspire you. Why does my website need a custom 404 page?A custom 404 page is more important than you think; without one your visitors can't continue their journey on your website. There is going to come a time where you've deleted a page and haven't implement a 301 redirect and a visitor is going to land on a 404 error page. You also can't control other errors; for example if another site links to you and inputs your URL incorrectly. Creating a custom 404 allows you to control what users see when they land on the broken link. You need to make it visually engaging and as easy as possible for them to continue their journey to your site. Ecommerce sites are regularly deleting pages when products have been discontinued or are no longer for sale so it's important that these sites have engaging 404 pages that prompt users to find an alternative or explain why the page is no longer available. What should I include on my 404 page?When it comes to what you should include on your 404 page there is no right or wrong approach. It ultimately comes down to what you think your visitors are looking for. Whilst it's great to point visitors to your homepage, the 404 page should do more than this. Your 404 page should be customised so it reflects what your visitor is probably looking for. For example if you're an estate agent you would want to cater for those who want to buy or sell a property, therefore having a search facility and links to the buying and selling page would cater for both audiences. There are a number of items that you could include on your 404 page, these are as follows;
404 page wall of fameI've searched and found some amazing custom 404 pages to inspire you: Animal
Barabantia
Benefit
Jude’s
Antler
Fiorelli
Lego
Ben and Jerry’s
eHarmony
Cottages4You
Crayola
Go Ape
Innocent
Hotel Chocolat
Gourmet Burger Kitchen
Waterstones
If you think of your 404 page as being a place to show off your creativity, humour but provide a great user experience at the same time you’re on to a winner. Have you come across any 404 error pages that you think are worthy of adding to my 404 wall of fame? If so, please leave me a comment below with your recommendation.
The post How to Create the Perfect 404 Page appeared first on White.net. |
| 5 Link building strategies that simply work Posted: 13 Jul 2015 04:47 AM PDT I've had a chance to attend a lot of conferences; on some of them I was delivering a speech and on some simply attending, but at each event I saw at least 2 or more sessions about link building. So, its makes me think that generating links and finding ways to get them are still one of the hottest topics in SEO. Certainly, not all the old tricks and hints have the some power and effectiveness they used to, and on top of that some of old methods are absolutely forbidden and penalized today. Establishing a healthy backlink profile today can hardly can be managed with a purely technical SEO mindset – you need to master the art of building relationships. Even so, we still have a few ways generating relevant, sustainable links available to us. 1. Creating InfographicsWhat can I say about this type of content? Only that it simply works. I know that it has a lot of haters and enough lovers, but numbers and statistic are the best judges here. I selected a couple of well-delivered examples of this type of content to prove that it works like a charm: Search Engine Land created a really good infographic based on Google’s recent mobile update, where they collated the best tips to help you prepare upcoming Mobilegeddon. Majestic reports that this piece has generated more than 800 backlinks and the number of referring domains – 163.
Hopefully this data and insight is enough to persuade you that infographics are still among link building strategies you should be considering in 2015. Personally, I feel that infographics have been trending for a quite long time because they work from a user's perspective, making it easy to understand content. You don't need special skills or even knowledge to quickly understand the message, and that's why they can make users so happy. However, the trickiest part is to select a topic which will be trending or at least enough popular to engage readers & encourage them to share. Normally to select the right topic you can monitor informational portals, or simply go to Buzzsumo to investigate the trending content in different industries. This can lead you to on-trend conversations within your industry.
2. Working with broken linksHonestly, this is one of my favourite tactics, simply as it can be applied to any industry. On top of that you don't need to find those links manually and can use tools (such as Citation Labs’ Broken Link Finder) to detect such issues, so it doesn’t take a lot of time. However, sometimes it's not so easy to figure out whether a particular website owner is interested in, and thus willing to fix, those broken urls. The best option here from my personal experience is to carefully check the traffic the domain receives for the pages where you found the opportunity. The higher the traffic, the more important it may be to the site owner. For this you can use SEMrush URL reports:
3. Using competitors brand mentions to spot new opportunitiesYour competitors often know how to build a quality backlink, so why not to use their achievements to enlarge your backlink profile? The cheapest way to track your competitor's brand mentions is using Google Alerts or Talkwalker.com. Both solutions are free and provide you with a daily email update for your selected search terms. By using a competitor brand name, you can quickly discover how they are generating links or brand mentions, and apply those to your campaign. If you are not on a shoe-string budget, then I recommend you take a look at Moz's Fresh Web Explorer or a tool purely dedicated to discovering mentions, Mention.com, both of which can give you even more data to work with. 4. Responding proactively to community questionsIf you feel that you have expert knowledge, or at least you have something interesting to share, then you should definitely try to build links around Quora, or on any other relevant community hub in your industry such as a popular forum, or Google+ or LinkedIn group. First, investigate properly what others have already answered and discussed, then try to make your answer extremely useful and comprehensive, so adding value to the conversation. In most cases, directly advertising doesn't work well. Instead, I highly recommend that your answer not only mentions your tool but also includes some others in order to make your submission look more natural. An example will show the difference more thoroughly:
From the reader’s side, I'm certain that the second answer was more greatly appreciated. At the end of the day, only you can decide how to proceed on Quora and community sites for best effect. Remember that the most valuable piece has to be informational, educational, or interactive. 5. Building Round-up postsThis type of content can be implemented in various ways. On one site, you can have a strong range of industry experts whom you reach out to in order to receive a couple of lines from them, then make a helpful round-up on the topic. Or, you can curate experts’ old articles where they clearly express their opinion about particular aspects, and create something new that brings all this knowledge together. Optionally, any industry event can be a great way to generate a good piece of content where you collect lessons from the speakers. For example, White.net did it for BrightonSEO's April's conference, and according to Majestic the content performed amazingly:
In the endI believe link-building has changed dramatically in the last few years. Now, the main focus is on developing a trustworthy relationship with other users or companies and only then generating links. Also, a good portion of our time is now spent using our analytics skills to understand how different strategies work for other brands in your niche, and what you can adapt from them. My main advice is to deliver quality and useful content, but with only with carefully processed preparation to ensure effectiveness, plus milestones to measure the scale of your impact. What link building strategies are you still working with? I’d love to hear from you! The post 5 Link building strategies that simply work appeared first on White.net. |
Another interesting example of infographic use was delivered by the team at 
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