The Featured Snippet are results that Google already shows in SERP as a response to user Queries to increase a site’s organic traffic. Commonly referred to as result zero (while for Google it is the Featured Snippet) because it is displayed before the result in the first position.

By also appearing in position zero, the website appears twice in search results, doubling the chance of receiving traffic and allowing even small sites to compete with much more popular sites.

Appearing in position zero has become one of the most coveted results when it comes to SEO, in fact, 13% of Google searches return a SERP with Featured Snippet.

Let’s see together how Featured Snippets work and when it is convenient to reach position zero.

Continue reading the Dear Web article to find out more.

eatured snippet: what is it for?
It is Google that states that the snippet in position zero is chosen based on the results most useful in providing answers to informational queries (which the search engine classifies as questions).

Providing a search answer in the featured snippet might lead one to think that the user, having read a concise but fairly comprehensive answer, will not go and click on one of the SERP results.

In reality, the snippet cannot contain a detailed answer in a few lines. In fact, it generally shows truncated text so it will be necessary to open a Web site to get a complete answer to one’s questions.

Different types of Featured snippets
It is necessary not to confuse Featured Snippets with Rich Snippets: the latter contain data taken from a Google database and do not contain any links.

Among the types of Featured Snippets provided by Google are:

• paragraphs;
• numbered lists;
• bulleted lists;
• tables;
• videos.

Let’s look at them in detail.

Paragraphs
The paragraph is the most widely used type of Featured Snippet because it is the most suitable way to respond quickly and comprehensively to user queries.

They are typically used for queries that contain words such as “who” or “what” or “why.”

The numbered list
Numbered lists are displayed if the query is about actions to perform some task.

It is therefore necessary to insert a numbered list summary at the beginning of the post so that the snippet is obtained.

The bulleted list
The bulleted list is the most useful type of snippet for users. To display it, Google chooses an informative article, takes its headings (particularly H2s) and turns them into a bulleted list.

Tables
Google uses tables with essential information to display structured data to create a snippet that is immediate and useful.

To get the snippet it sorts the data into a table.

Videos
A Featured Snippet can also consist of external resources, such as, for example, YouTube videos.

The snippet shows the preview of the video, the exact minute when you can find the information you are looking for, and a brief description of the content.

It is very difficult for an SEO to be certain of reaching position zero with their content, but it is possible to increase the odds by properly curating the formatting. Of course, there is a need for this care to be always high since position zero is not permanent.

Why is it important to appear in position 0 in SERP?
It is good to ask yourself whether it is always useful to achieve position zero in SERP.

If it is a small site that does not exceed the fifth position in SERP having Featured Snippet content can be a great way to increase traffic to your site.

On the other hand, it is more difficult for sites that appear in the top three results of the SERP to aspire to see their content in position zero: in fact, appearing in Featured Snippet could result in a decrease in CTR because users may already consider the snippet content exhaustive and decide not to access the site.

The converse can certainly apply, but appearing in position zero can prove to be a great way for small sites to compete with the most popular sites in their industry.

Let’s look at what to do to appear in position zero.

You might also be interested in: SEO factors, list of ranking signals that affect Google ranking

How to reach position zero with Featured snippets
To see your own content in position zero, you can take steps that can help since there is no one method that guarantees this result.

Try to create content that can satisfy informative queries: in fact, Google is more likely to consider content that answers specific questions such as “how” or “why.”

You might also be interested in: SEO factors, list of ranking signals that affect Google ranking

How to reach position zero with Featured snippets
To see your own content in position zero, you can take steps that can help since there is no one method that guarantees this result.

1. Try to create content that can satisfy informational queries-in fact, Google is more likely to consider content that answers specific questions such as “how” or “why.”
2. Presta attenzione alla cura degli aspetti tecnici del contenuto. Ad esempio, inserisci la domanda a cui vuoi fornire risposta come titolo H1 o H2 del paragrafo che contiene la risposta.
3. Se crei un elenco puntato ricorda di utilizzare i tag <lil>e<ul> , mentre devi utilizzare il tag per gli elenchi numerici. Utilizza il tag per le voci dei paragrafi.
4. Non utilizzare link nei testi che vuoi far apparire in posizione zero.
5. Scrivi risposte brevi poiché gli snippet in evidenza in genere sono formati da 40-50 parole.
6. Metti in evidenza le parole chiave con il tag in modo che la risposta salti subito all’occhio.
7. Rispondi anche a domande correlate al contenuto del tuo articolo in modo da ottenere la posizione zero anche per query collegate.
8. Cerca, se possibile, di creare pagine FAQ o Q&A.

Try to use these tips also to improve the ranking of pages you have already created. In fact, the further your content moves away from position 1, the harder it is for it to appear in position zero.

The post Featured Snippets: What They Are And Why They Are Important For Getting Zero Position In Google SERPs appeared first on SEO, content marketing, social marketing and digital advertising.

Link equity is the value that links convey to a piece of content. Considered as the 5th pillar of SEO, it corresponds to activities such as linking strategy, link earning, and link building, which increase it both directly and indirectly. Internal link optimization or internal linking is also crucial for the success of an SEO project.

How should link equity be developed? Continue reading the Dear Web article to find out more.

How link equity is developed
The development of link equity starts with authority. It is difficult for a human being to obtain it, but also for artificial intelligence systems and algorithms to decode it. To shape it, one must be able to recognize it, attract it, and win it.

The highest point an SEO can achieve is to try to attract the greatest possible amount of authority in a given market or industry, with very little cost and no penalties from search engines.

But where exactly does the value of links come from? Let’s look at that in the next section.

Where does the value of links come from?
The value of links comes from content. Without them, it could not be considered as such. It is a bit like the fruit that comes from the trees. The more value a piece of content possesses, the more value will be transferred from the links within.

A piece of content offers links or links can be received from a piece of content, but ultimately it is the perspective of observation that makes the difference. By being a single entity and connecting two pieces of content together, what it is doing is creating a previously nonexistent relationship.

That relationship, which can only connect two pieces of content at a time, continues to expand link after link, thus creating a very large network that manages to cover almost the entire Web.

Let’s delve below into the concept of links arising from content.

Read: 3 tips for really effective backlinks for proper link building

Links are born from content
Links are born from content, about that there is no doubt. By including them in themselves, content manages to convey some of its value to the target resource. The relationship a link succeeds in giving goes beyond and includes the content it has related, but not the other way around.

Since content includes all the pillars, links also do the same thing. The value of a link that has been received or offered, therefore, is closely related to the pillars it encompasses and their level of development.

If the number of unique links a site has received is multiplied by the unit value, it is better understood why link equity is the most influential and important pillar.

Let’s delve below into the concept of link value and how it is determined.

How valuable a link is
The value of a link can be determined only after fully analyzing the content that encompasses it, the level of optimization of the Web site, the information architecture, and how many and what search needs the site or content is capable of satisfying.

This principle has a strong impact on the link prospection phase. How much energy, money, or time are you going to spend on a potential link prospect that is going to be published on a site after category pagination is little used or not accessed at all?

It would only take a single day or only a few hours for the link to completely disappear from the view of Google and users, with the traffic losing value over time.

In practice, the potential value that can be transferred with a link is closely related to the level of optimization of the link prospect, who is thus able to determine the total value of the resource he or she is hosting or offering a link to.

At this point, it can be said with absolute certainty that the whole system is an unparalleled mix of effectiveness and beauty.

The post Link Equity: What It Is And Why It’s Important For SEO appeared first on SEO, content marketing, social marketing and digital advertising.

Tag H1 in HTML is the title of a site’s web page. It should be placed at the top so that it is the first visible sentence and should have a different formatting from the other tags (H2,H3…) on the page.

Let’s find out what we are talking about when we refer to HTML header tags, what importance the H1 tag has for a site’s search engine ranking, and how to format it so that it is functional and usable for users.

Continue reading the Dear Web article to find out more.

Header tags, H1 throughH6
In Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), used by web pages in browsers, there are Tags that serve as headings within a web page.

Similar to the headings that can be used in a Word document, each web page can have several Tags that allow the text to be divided into paragraphs, each of which will have a heading with different formatting (larger or bold font size).

The moment you set a sentence as Title 1 in the WordPress editor, the code will be added in the HTML source:

< h1 >My encoded title< /h1 >.

This code allows the browser, which has recognized it, to format the phrase included in the Tags differently than the rest of the text.

Similarly, when it comes to H2 and H3 and so on, the codes added to the HTML will be:

< h2 >My encoded subtitle< /h2 >.

< h3 >Another encoded subtitle< /h3 >

Thus, we can conclude that HTML Header Tags are HTML codes needed to indicate to the search engine the phrases that serve as titles and subtitles.

What is an H1 tag?
At the top of the web page and clearly visible, there is the H1 Tag, the first heading tag.

Since it is the main title of the article, generally the H1 Tag has different formatting than H2 which are the main paragraphs and H3, the sub paragraphs.

Let’s see what are the differences, from an SEO perspective, between the Title tag and the H1 tag, so that we can understand the importance of knowing how to handle them.

What is the difference between the H1 tag and the Title tag
The Title Tag is one of the main tags for SEO optimization. Let’s see how it differs from the H1 tag:

• the Title Tag is the header visible in the snippet present in the Google SERP after a search;
• the meta title appears only in the header of the page and in the title bar of the browser;
• the H1 Tag is visible to users only if they browse the specific web page,
• the title tag is critical for crawlers to immediately understand the content of the web page.

For on-page SEO, it turns out that Title Tag optimization is more important than H1 Tag optimization; however, to achieve excellent results, it is important to take care of the optimization of both tags.

The Importance of H1 Tags in SEO
Search engines, in order to satisfy user demands, need to know the content of the web pages they analyze.

To speed this up, information from a number of sources is analyzed, including the Title Tag and the H1 Tag.

Search engine spiders, through the HTML code, read the phrases included in the header tags. The H1 Tag contains information about the content of the web page and is, therefore, the one that is of most importance to the spiders.

In fact, it is necessary that keywords are present within the H1 Tag so that search engines are able to correctly rank the page based on the content covered.

From an SEO perspective, using good Tags is also important because it enhances the user’s browsing experience. Already with a glance at the paragraph titles, the user understands the content of the page and determines whether the information provided is what he or she needs.

How to optimize the H1 Tag
Although the H1 Tag may differ from the Title Tag, in CMS systems (WordPress, Magento…) these coincide.

While this is not an SEO mistake, it is preferable to create different content for the meta title and the H1 tag: in fact, in Tag Title, as we have seen, it is shown in the Google SERP and, therefore, it is necessary that it contains more descriptive text while the H1 header must be a simpler and more immediate text.

Setting the H1 tag and page title tag different from each other
As we have already seen, most CMS systems require that the Title Tag and the H1 Tag must coincide.

To avoid using the same content for the H1 Tag and Title Tag (even in CMS systems), you can change the HTML code or, in the case of WordPress, make use of the Yoast SEO plugin.

In this case, after installation, an area will appear under each page where you can edit the Tag Title of the page.

The keywords to be included in the H tags
After determining what the keywords are for the article, make sure to include them in both the Title tag and the header tags.

In case you decide to use different content for the Title Tag and the H1 Tag, you can decide to put the main keyword in one tag and a related keyword in the other.

Make sure, however, that you do not use the keyword in all header tags or you will run the risk of running into keyword stuffing.

Proceed with an analysis of the keywords you want to use so you can determine which Header Tags are most useful to put them in.

Avoid very long headings
Create short but descriptive sentences to use for your titles. Adjust to the guidelines for title tag formation and do not exceed 65 characters.

If you need more space to describe the content of a particular paragraph, follow the header with bold text where you can include some other necessary information.

Is the H tag visible to users?
Some themes provided by WordPress that have the H1 tag in the HTML of the page, make it not visible to users through CSS rules.

But peR get good results in terms of SEO, it is necessary to choose a theme that makes it clearly visible in H1 tag in the page.

Access, then, the source of the page via selecting the View Source option, and look for the H1 Tag in the code: at this point make the letters larger so that they are differentiated from the text by the subheadings on the page.

Use headings in a hierarchical manner.
To get good results in terms of SEO, use headings in a hierarchical way, starting with Tag H1, then Tag H2, etc…

Using another kind of order can confuse search engines and provide users with confusing content.

Therefore, place the H1 Tag at the beginning of the HTML code and then following, respecting the order, all the other Header Tags.

Always remember that there should only be one H1 Tag per page!

Tags and Search Intent
Always keep in mind the search intent of users and create an H1 Tag that is consistent. In fact, since it is the first piece of content visible, if it does not meet the search intent, the user will abandon the page before reading the content. Losing users not only hurts site traffic, but also causes negative results from an SEO perspective.

This behavior is known as pogo-sticking and negatively affects the site’s search engine ranking if it occurs over an extended period of time.

Therefore, be sure to create H1 tags that are consistent with user expectations.

Examples of optimized H1 tags
Let’s look together at some examples of optimized H1 tags:

1. Optimized H1 tags for users and longer Title tags to include more long-tail keywords.

2. In the Title Tag, the keywords you want to rank for are included, and in the H1 Tag, a message is inserted that apparently does not have ranking as an objective.
3. The same content is used in the H1 Tag and the Title Tag.

Optimize the H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6 tags.
All the rules we have seen for good SEO optimization of the H1 Tag apply to all types of header tags. However, for these Header Tags remember that:

• Tags H2 and H3 are the subheadings of the pages;
• H4, H5, H6 are for notes or insights of the subheadings.

To use Header Tags properly make sure to:

• use Header Tags when it is not convenient to use other Tags such as bold or italics;
• use Header Tags to make it easier to navigate the page and understand the text;
• do not use all Header Tags if it is not necessary.

How to improve a website’s SEO
Many factors contribute to good SEO optimization. In addition to optimized H1 Tags, follow these tips to achieve successful on-site SEO:

• make it easy for search engine crawlers to analyze your site;
• ensure that useful URLs for SEO are contained in the CMS;
• optimize quality content with SEO Copywriting techniques;
• put into practice effective link building internal to the site so that the user can learn about all the content you propose;
• practice link earning editorial links from other sites.

Everything you need to know about tag heading
Good Tag Heading optimization is critical for site ranking. Through it, spiders are able to identify the most important content on a page.

Heading Tag optimization is one of the few SEO factors over which we have real control.

To figure out which H1 tags on your site are in need of optimization you can enlist the help of specific tools such as, for example, Screaming Frog. This tool can analyze your site and show you the H1s that need to be optimized, the duplicate ones, or the multiple ones.

The post H1 Tag: What it is And How to Optimize Tag Headings appeared first on SEO, content marketing, social marketing and digital advertising.

One of the problems that penalizes good SEO optimization of a site is the presence of broken links.

Having broken links within a website could impair users’ navigation.

Continue reading Dear Web’s article to find out how to spot them and remedy them so that they do not cause very serious damage to your site’s traffic.

What are broken links?
Broken links are addresses whose destination is incorrect or inactive. If in the case you have created a link that leads from the homepage to another section of your site but you made a typo in the URL, the link will lead to an error page and will, therefore, be a broken link.

Returning error pages is an error that results in a strong penalty from search engines. In fact, following links that lead to nonexistent or error pages causes a bad user experience and results in possible site abandonment.

Links, however, can break frequently as web pages change and are closed all the time.

Let’s find out what solutions you can apply to solve this problem.

The Google Search Console
Google provides free tools for all web platforms. These tools help you identify crawl errors, that is, errors generated by Google’s inability to read the content of your page. These errors include broken links.

To solve this problem, add your site to Google Search Console and log in with your Google account. At this point you will need to verify that you are the owner of the site to be analyzed, and you can choose to verify it by domain or URL prefix.

Now you can proceed with site verification: you can proceed with full site verification (with or without www, http or https) using the Domain system, or verify the individual version of the site by adding an HTML tag, uploading an html file, providing the provider name, via a code for Google Analytics and via Google Tag Manager.

After verifying your site you can use all the features of Google Search Console, such as the one in the Coverage section that allows you to detect crawl errors.

From here you can check which links are broken on your site, which links are nonexistent, and which generate a 404 error.

The post How to Fix Broken Links On Blogs appeared first on SEO, content marketing, social marketing and digital advertising.

The hreflang attribute is necessary if your site has content in two or more languages.

According to John Mueller of Google, the hreflang attribute, HTML attribute, is one of the most complicated SEO processes to manage. In fact, even if it seems as simple as a meta tag, it can get complicated quickly.

But as we’ll see, it just needs a little extra attention and you can use it easily for your site.

Continue reading the Dear Web article to find out more.

What is the hreflang attribute?
The HTML hreflang attribute is used to determine the language and geographical location of the website. You need to use it if there are multiple versions of the same page but translated into different languages: by entering the hreflang attribute you can tell the search engine how many variants exist of a single web page.

For example, thanks to the hreflang attribute, the Apple site searched in the United States will result in “www.apple.com,” while in Italy it will be “www.apple.com/it”

Hreflang is importance in SEO
If your site has content available in multiple languages, it is very useful for Google to be able to provide the most appropriate version for each user: in fact, having content available in their own language improves the user experience on the site, increases dwell time by reducing the bounce rate. All these aspects contribute positively on the SEO of the site.

Hreflang tags can also influence a page’s ranking, as pages in a hreflang cluster share ranking.

Another aspect why it is important to use hreflang tags is to avoid duplicate content. In fact, if, for example, there is content in British English and American English on your site, Google will classify it as duplicate content and index only one page.

Using hreflang tags, on the other hand, you can locate pages within a cluster by indicating to Google that the two pages are related but do not have the same content. To emphasize this difference, you can use lexical variants for the two languages or differentiate prices based on currencies,

How to Construct an Hreflang Tag
To build an hreflang tag we need to know the two-letter code for the language we need. In fact, hreflang supports any ISO 639-1 language code.

In case we want to translate our site from English to German, the hreflang tag will be:

By entering the code “de” and the URL, the page will be translated into German.

In addition to the language you can also specify which region or country the page is aimed at. Again, just add a die-letter code in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 format.

For example, if the page in English is addressed to the United Kingdom, you will have:

While for the United States:

To indicate the region we are referring to, we must use the formula: hreflang=”language-country”.

How to Implement Hreflang Tags
There are many ways to implement hreflang tags, but regardless of the methodology you choose, you must always remember these three basic rules.

Let’s look at them below.

Rule 1. Hreflang tags are bidirectional: hreflang tags must be used in pairs: if you add the tag for the English version to an Italian page, the English version must contain the tag for the Italian version.

This tells Google that the pages are both under our control and that they are related to each other.

The moment the tags are broken or the relationship has not yet been established, you will get the wrong page or the wrong title for the URL that was correct in the search phase.

Rule 2. it is okay to create self-referential hreflang attributes: According to Google, “each language version must list itself and all other language versions.”

This means that each page must contain an hreflang tag that links to the page itself.

So if we create a hreflang tag between an English and an Italian page we will have the following hreflang tags:

The first tag indicates the URL of the Italian alternative of the page while the second tag is self-referential.

Similarly, the tags must appear on the Italian page.

Rule 3. x-default tags are recommended, but not required: the hreflang x-default tag allows you to set up a fallback page to show when language variants suitable for the user browsing are not available.

Using this tag is not mandatory, but Google recommends that you include it.

An x-default hreflang tag is composed as follows:

Implementing Hreflang Tags
Let us now see how to implement the hreflang tag.

You can do this through:

1. the HTML tags;
2. the HTTP headers;
3. sitemaps.

Let’s look at them below:

HTML tags
Using HTML tags is the easiest way to implement hreflang tags, especially if you are a novice.

Add the hreflang tags you need in the tag of the page. Take, for example, the English, German, and Chinese versions of the same blog page:

To take advantage of the hreflang tags we need to put the code in the of each page.

Using this method, however, involves a lot of work and can easily be confusing.

In fact, for each page translation inserted, there is a need to add the new tag to each previous version. There is no maximum number of hreflang tags to insert per page.

HTTP headers
On non-HTML pages you cannot implement tags in the of HTML, since there is no code of that type.

For these pages, HTTP headers must be used to indicate variants of the document.

Although this method is mainly used for content such as PDFs, it also works properly with normal web pages.

If we convert the English, Spanish, and German versions of the site pages we took as examples earlier to PDF, we will have these HTTP headers:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Content-Type: application/pdf

Link: https://ahrefs.com/blog/free-keyword-research-tools.pdf; rel=”alternate”;hreflang=”x-default”,

The post Hreflang Tags: What They Are And How To Implement Them On The Site appeared first on SEO, content marketing, social marketing and digital advertising.

The ‘optimization of a website that is made with WordPress, finds many facilities even in operations not really feasible by less experienced users such as speeding up the site. WordPress in fact, goes to meet the needs of those who want to do SEO on their website, providing an infinity of plugins that help to fine-tune the most diverse situations.

A great plugin to speed up wordpress, is W3 Total Cache, which allows you to make speed improvements to your web pages by going to modify different components depending on your setting. So let’s go over how I was able to make wordpress faster and what settings I configured in w3 Total cache.

How to set up W3 Total Cache
Once I downloaded the plugin to speed up wordpress, I set the following changes to never see my wordpress slow again.

In the panel of the installed plugin, you can read the following entries:

• general;
• page cache;
• minify;
• database cache;
• object cache;
• browser cache;
• licencyng.

Continue reading the Dear Web article to find out more about this plugin.

General
I started without checking the box named “Toggle all caching type”. Checking this box tells the plugin to activate all the features it has, none excluded. Better to go ahead and ‘activate only the specific items.

Page Cache
It is in my opinion what this plugin was born for, by speeding up the caching of wordpress pages in fact, you can get important improvements both in terms of navigability and permanence on the site ( users stay more willingly to the benefit of the bounce rate).

By activating this feature, you will tell the plugin to save the pages to return them faster to the clients avoiding making new queries to the data base.

Minify
Minify is another important configuration to mention, as with it you are going to compress css and javascript, even before saving it in the cache. Spaces, comments and other characters are removed. So enable qesta function to give WordPress more boost and speed, using the default automatic method.

Database Cache
This should also be enabled, to cache the queries that are most frequently made precisely to the database.

Object Cache
Enable this feature as well.

Browser Cache
Enabling this configuration commands the speedup plugin, to compress the data before it is returned to the browsers.

Licencyng
In this space, the code to activate the paid part of the plugin should be added. In fact, W3 Total Cache, has other features that used individually each of them will speed up WordPress most likely more and more.

Although this is a great plugin this to make WordPress fast, to get the performance I currently have I have also made other changes of which I will talk about in the next articles I will write to enrich the category of my site seo on site.

Before using this plugin I had a period in which I did not use any at all, without even getting my hands on the code, and another period in which I used Wp Super Cache, another great plugin.

And it was when I had installed Wp Super cache that I noticed most strongly that by speeding up wordpress you can achieve better performance which then translates into more views on search engines.

In the following picture you notice the 3 different moments :

• with W3 Total Cache;
• without any active plugin;
• with Wp Super cache active.

The substantial difference that is noticeable, is on the weight of the analyzed page. In fact, it went from over 830 kB without speeding plugins and with the Wp Super cache plugin, to 665 KB with Wp3 Total cache.

Another difference that is noticeable is the number of requests made to the database, in fact you can see that without a plugin the requests stand at 38, and obviously go up when installing the Wp Super chache plugin to 40.

I say obviously because by inserting a plugin it is logical that the requests increase.

Different thing happened instead by configuring Total cache, after that operation in fact, the number of requests dropped even to 31, less than I had without plugin.

After getting a small positive result, I did not resign myself, however, to look at it complacently. But driven by the desire to better optimize my site to make it the fastest WordPress site around, I decided to get my hands on the htaccess file.

The post W3 Total Cache Plugin: What It Is And How To Speed Up A Site On WordPress appeared first on SEO, content marketing, social marketing and digital advertising.

If you are wondering what keyword density is, how to calculate it and what the optimal values are for a page, continue reading and find out how to leverage keyword density to improve your site’s optimization.

What is keyword density and how to calculate it
Keyword density is a value that indicates how many times a keyword is used, including semantics, within text on a page of a site.

To calculate this value, one must divide the number of times the keyword was used by the total number of words included in the text and multiply by one hundred.

Why is keyword density so important?
Keyword density holds a fundamental importance in achieving good organic positioning: in fact, it can affect the site’s SERP ranking and consequently the number of visits it can get.

We understand why it is so important to always take keyword density into consideration.

Whenever we search for information on the Internet, the search engine provides answers after checking the keywords and lists them in the SERP, based on the level of relevance to the query entered. Google, therefore, creates indexes for each keyword based on the user’s geolocation and previous searches.

One can understand, then, why keyword density is so important: it is necessary to determine the consistency of the page to the user’s query.

In fact, Google uses automated software to check content on the web (crawlers or spiders) that are able to identify keywords through the analysis of title tags, meta description and alt text.

Then Google will form lists with the information it has obtained so that it has it ready in the moment to organize it in order in the SERP according to the user’s search.

This is why a proper keyword density value is necessary: better site ranking translates into more visits to the site and more leads.

Keyword density in Google’s algorithm
In the course of the evolution of Google’s ranking algorithm, a number of SEO techniques arose that managed to change the ranking on the SERP in a way that was not entirely clear: the so-called black hats (to relate back to the imagery of Western movies in which the villains often wore a black hat).

To curb this phenomenon in 2011, Google released a change in its ranking algorithm, Panda Update, which eliminates from the SERP those sites that repeat keywords often in order to achieve rankings that increase site traffic but contribute content of little value.

Panda Update thus penalized the unnatural use of keywords within text, i.e., keyword stuffing.

Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing means “keyword stuffing”-it is a technique of overusing keywords in a text to get better rankings in SERPs. With the introduction of Panda Update, this behavior has become a penalizing behavior. Excessive use of keywords makes the reading of a text less fluent and therefore the user will easily abandon the site, consequently harming the search engine as well.

Is there an optimal keyword density?
While there are no specific studies on the subject or guidelines provided by Google, thanks to the Panda update it is possible to derive some indications of the best percentages. Of course, one can rely on common sense: it is important to avoid keyword stuffing, but also to place keywords in specific places such as the title tag, in headings, URLs, meta descriptions, ALT attributes for images.

It is also useful to use the long tail theory of choosing generic keywords that allow you to respond to a larger number of searches in order to improve your ranking.

Very important is to create text that is easy and pleasant to read and has interesting content that manages to entice the reader to spend more time on the page.

Measure keyword density through online tools.
To make sure you are achieving a useful percentage of keyword density, you can resort to using check tools.

A good help can come from the online checker tool and keyword density generator, available free online.

They work in much the same way: you can enter the URL if the text has already been published, or portions of the text that you have started to produce.

Other tools you can use are:

• Text analyzer from Online-Utility.org: in addition to providing the number of characters, words and phrases, it also provides the density of the text analyzed;
  • keyword density checker from Small SEO Tools: gives the ability to indicate the keywords that you need to analyze. In the results it will indicate the keywords and their frequency of use.

The post Keyword Density appeared first on SEO, content marketing, social marketing and digital advertising.

To increase the visibility of a website it is necessary to prepare a whole series of actions all aimed at improving the ranking on Google by making the website appear before others in online search and, consequently, increase traffic and visitors clicking on the site.

People on Google are inclined to click on the first search results they have available, so activities using SEO and SEM techniques that improve ranking allow the site to get more visitors and more traffic.

In this article we will look at the most useful practices to increase and improve the visibility of a website.

Increase traffic to your website
Increasing website traffic is not just about improving search results because, when it comes to a business website, increasing traffic also means:

• potentially improving sales results,
• increasing brand awareness (referred to as brand awareness),
• building trust with site visitors and positioning yourself in the marketplace.

Here are all the most important tips to follow to increase website visibility.

Take care of the technical aspects with the Audit
With the Audit, all technical aspects of the website are analyzed by identifying and correcting any errors that penalize the website.

By getting all the technical aspects in order, thanks to the Audit, the site can be considered technically perfect for being crawled and indexed by Google and other search engines.

The main errors that are typically identified are:

• 404 errors,
• errors in canonicals,
• broken links or links that do not work as they should,
• redirects and XML sitemap errors.

The main Audit tools are Google Search Console and Screaming Frog, but many others can be found on the web.

Create an XML Sitemap for Indexing
The XML Sitemap is the map that allows the search engine to “read” the website and index it properly.

There are two types of sitemap: the XML Sitemap and the HTML Sitemap.

For indexing purposes, an XML Sitemap must be created and inserted and reported to Google Search Console to index the website.

Entering the XML Sitemap into Search Console is also useful for periodically monitoring for any technical errors that may occur as you edit the website.

Make your site mobile friendly
Search engines have updated their algorithms according to the increased rate of user usage.

Most users consult Google via mobile devices, so the search engine indexes and rewards sites created in mobile friendly because they are easier to consult from all devices.

Keyword research, including local
Doing keyword research (Keyword) even local allows Google and other search engines to better understand what the website is about and suggest it based on user searches.

Don’t be afraid to search and use even clear long tail (long tail) words because they may have fewer searches in terms of numbers, but have few competitors using them and therefore little competition on the web.

The importance of SEO Copywriting
Keyword search results are used to fill the website with information that searchers find useful.

The website does not have to be user-friendly; search engines such as Google need to consider useful information for visitors to increase the site’s visibility.

SEO Copywriting allows you to improve the score that search engines give the site by increasing visibility, and at the same time, it must be engaging text for the people who will read it.

Remember that you are not writing for the search engine, you are writing for people!

Be careful, the content of the website must be unique and absolutely not copied from other web sources because, if Google detects plagiarism, it will penalize the indexing of the site.

Doing SEO for website images
During Google crawling, all elements on the website including images are considered.

Therefore, it becomes important to do SEO for images as well.

By this, we mean using images that are relevant to the text in which they are placed and that contain an alt tag consistent with the writing.

Quality link building to increase authority
Link building is a practice in which, through user engagement on social pages or video channels or through personal branding, visitors share pages on your website.

You also do link building by deepening relationships with other professionals in your field who can direct audiences to visit your website or mention you in their content by leaving a link to your site.

The more sharing by users outside your site, the more you improve indexing and increase your website’s visibility.

Literally, in fact, link building means “building links.”

Improve Your Online Reputation in the Eyes of Users
Improving and optimizing your online reputation in the eyes of people, who are the users who will visit your website, is a really important activity.

To increase website visibility, you need to create a structured site as per search engine guidelines, but always keeping in mind that visitors are people.

The post Increase the Visibility of a Website on Google appeared first on SEO, content marketing, social marketing and digital advertising.

White Hat SEO refers to the use of SEO that Google likes, i.e., that which makes positive use of Google’s algorithms to position a Web site, trying to avoid penalties as much as possible.

In other words, with the term White Hat SEO occurs an appeal to Google’s rules without breaking them, operating in such a way as to position one’s Web site taking into account the target needs and searches made by users.

SEO has become a key tool for positioning a Web site in the top search results of Google or other search engines. By getting more organic traffic, you will get more visibility, with positive business implications.

Let’s see now what exactly White Hat SEO is used for.

What is White Hat SEO for?
White Hat SEO aims to position a Web site in the best possible way so that it appears in the top results on Google.

It can be defined as a set of ethically sound techniques aimed at positioning a Web site in full compliance with the rules and standards required by a search engine.

For example, content must be original, high quality and optimized, but also it must be structurally clear and clean, with HTML code behind optimally structured and capable of providing excellent UX.

With White Hat SEO a Web site is ranked without forcing algorithms and without slyly exploiting them. In this way, Google’s robots file standards are met, ultimately providing quality.

Unlike Black Hat SEO, which operates uncleanly, White Hat SEO always tries to position a Web site the right way to avoid Google penalizing it if it does not meet its rules.

There are no White Hat SEO techniques, only a way of operating SEO traditionally, that is, following the rules and avoiding forcing or circumventing them. In the next section, we will discuss the advantages that White Hat SEO offers.

What are the advantages of White Hat SEO?
The most important benefit of White Hat SEO is Google itself, which tends to reward Web sites that use it. Following the rules, therefore, results in better ranking in the SERP, which is beneficial to users, as it offers them functionality and quality.

In this way, you will always get the benefit of secure and lasting rankings, which is quite different with Black Hat SEO, which uses useless and harmful techniques to place a Web site in the top Google results.

Although it may be tempting, such behavior only leads to heavy penalties from Google, which tends to always benefit those who practice White Hat SEO, to instead punish those who are heavily circumventing the rules.

Positioning via Black Hat SEO, then, is by no means synonymous with security. Precariousness is sovereign, as a website that has positioned itself by circumventing the rules even risks being banned by Google, thus becoming invisible to users.

So, better to take advantage of White Hat SEO always, because it is not worth the risk. The supposed benefits of Black Hat SEO are just a red herring.

Get a white hat seo consultation.

The post What Is Meant By White Hat SEO appeared first on SEO, content marketing, social marketing and digital advertising.

Until a decade ago, SEO was considered a marketing technique that could bypass Google’s algorithm in order to get better rankings for one’s website.

This was possible because Google’s algorithm was much less accurate than today’s algorithm especially in detecting spam. It was, therefore, possible to use so-called black hat SEO techniques.

To date, thanks to a more updated algorithm, these deceptive techniques are, instead, penalizing for one’s website.

Let’s see what these techniques are and how we can avoid using them to avoid being penalized by Google’s algorithm.

The techniques of Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO consists of techniques for ranking a website that are not in line with search engine rules but are intended to circumvent their algorithms to improve SERP ranking.

Any search engine clearly indicates which techniques are contrary to their guidelines and explicitly states what the consequences of this violation are.

Mainly, the use of Black Hat SEO techniques can lead to a worsening of rankings resulting in a decrease in organic traffic.

What risks are involved in using Black Hat SEO.
As we have seen, the use of Black Hat SEO carries significant risks, as well as not being properly ethical, so many SEOs decide not to adopt them.

Unfortunately, there is always a small fringe of professionals who try to circumvent the system, at first even achieving positive results. But these results are destined, however, not to last.

In Google’s instructions reserved for Webmasters, one can clearly read thoughts on the principles that should guide SEO:

Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is to think about whether you would feel comfortable explaining what you did to a Web site that competes with you or to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask yourself, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

Using Black Hat SEO techniques does not answer either question positively.

Why avoid Black Hat SEO
It is necessary to avoid Black Hat SEO because, as you can always read in Google’s Webmaster Instructions, these techniques “can lead to the complete removal of a site from Google’s index or that the site may be affected by manual or algorithmic spam action.” And they also state that “if a site has been affected by a spam action, it may no longer show up in results on Google.com or one of Google’s partner sites.”

In this way it is possible to understand why Black Hat SEO is not advisable: SEO is concerned with improving a site’s ranking and organic traffic, but by adopting these unethical techniques the result you get is opposite.

Let’s find out what the main disadvantages are.

The ranking of your website
The main reason for not adopting Black Hat SEO techniques is the deterioration in search ranking that goes to negatively affect organic traffic.

The drop in performance can be a result of manual or algorithm action.

The loss of organic traffic leads to a decrease in conversions and revenue, which, in turn, can also decree site closure. To make up for these declines there is often a need to increase the volume of investment or target paid channels.

Black Hat SEO does not bring long-term results
It may happen that bypassing Google’s algorithm may result in an improvement in organic performance.

This improvement, however, is not likely to last: Google may take time to detect unethical behavior on the part of sites, but once detected the drop in organic traffic is certain.

Seeing positive results disappear after a short time is even more discouraging than investing time and energy to honestly rank well.

Examples of Black Seo to avoid
If you are getting into SEO you may find it difficult to identify SEO techniques that do not violate Google’s guidelines.

Always pay close attention to whatever tactics you choose to use so that you don’t risk engaging in unfair behavior, and most importantly, don’t trust techniques suggested on social media because they can easily lead you to using Black Hat techniques.

Following are nine techniques that should not be used as they conflict with Google’s Webmaster Instructions:

1.Keyword Stuffing
2.Duplicate content
3.Hidden Text
4.Doorway/Gateway pages
5.Cloaking
6.Paid links
7.Improper structured data and rich snippets
8.Misleading redirects
9.Negative SEO

Keyword Stuffing
Excessive repetition of the main keyword within the page generates so-called keyword stuffing. This behavior most often penalizes ranking.

Often Black Hat SEOs continually insert keywords in a forced manner within a text: the results will be content that is difficult to read and lacks value for the user.

Duplicate content
One of Google’s key ranking factors is the creation of valuable and useful content for the user.

One Black Hat technique involves automatically creating local pages with the same content but with different names or logos. In this way, it will be possible to rank content for many keywords, but without having provided the user with quality content.

To get good SEO results invest time in creating useful content so that you do not have to deal with the problems caused by pages with no content or duplicate content.

Hidden text
In the past it was common to insert text of the same color as the site background, perhaps behind an image, making use of CSS so that users could not see it.

This text consisted of a long list containing the keywords for which they wanted to place content in SERPs.

Today it is impossible to make use of this Black Hat technique because the algorithms are much more up-to-date than in the past and crawlers can immediately spot web pages that are overly full of keywords.

Doorway/Gateway Pages
Another technique that violates Google’s Instructions involves creating pages to rank for certain search queries but that act as funnels to other pages. These pages are called doorways or gateways.

Be sure to create content that answers a specific query without using them to place keywords that are inconsistent.

Also avoid:

• Of creating pages to respond to keywords that are geographically targeted in a place that your business does not physically cover,
• of creating pages that are useful only for ranking purposes but are of no use to the user;
• of creating content only for the search engine.

Cloaking
Cloaking involves publishing different content or URLs depending on whether the site visit is made by the user or by the search engine.

This allows you to position the content you create for the search engine and at the same time redirect the user to a different page.

If you create valuable content for your users, search engines will be inclined to reward your site.

Paid/manipulative links
One of the most common black hat techniques is the use of link schemes, not to be confused with link building, which involves spontaneous link building between one site and another.

Therefore, avoid:

• of placing sponsored links without the rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” attribute;
• Of inserting too many link exchanges;
• spam comments to the site;
• spam in forums;
• excessive article marketin or guest posting campaigns;
• automated link building;
• spam directories and bookmarking sites;
• Site-wide links in the footer or sidebar;
• links that use exact match or commercial anchor text.

Overuse of structured data and rich snippets.
Another Black Hat technique is overuse of structured data, which, when used properly, serves to define online entities and actions.

Misuse of this data involves providing the wrong information in order to create structured data that benefits one’s site.

Examples are fake positive reviews that improve a business’ SERP ranking.

Misleading redirects
The use of redirects is very useful if you are migrating a site or creating a new URL and is the only means of ensuring access to the site for both users and crawlers.

Be careful, however, not to insert fraudulent redirects that propose content to the user that is different from what the page has been ranking for.

In fact, the search engine indexes the original page but the user is redirected to other content.

Google in the Webmaster Instructions indicates the use of sneaky redirects as a Black Hat technique

Negative SEO
Some Black Hat SEO techniques involve penalizing competitor sites.

This decidedly unethical technique involves creating a large number of links to the competitor’s domain so that the search engine penalizes it.

By now Google is able to detect these links and ignore them so this technique is less and less used.

However, always be sure to analyze your link profile, perhaps making use of tools such as SEMrush’s Backlink Audit Tool.

Report the use of black hat SEO techniques to Google.
It is possible that you may have realized that you have encountered the use of these techniques on a competitor site that, however, has not been penalized in any way.

In this case you can send a report to Google: even if the report does not result in direct action you have still contributed to the algorithm’s improvement of spam detection.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that Google’s algorithm is becoming increasingly sophisticated and is able to penalize unethical sites, there are still some sites that gain advantages from using Black Hat techniques.

But, as we have seen, it is only a matter of time before Google penalizes them.

The post Black Seo: Some Techniques To Avoid It appeared first on SEO, content marketing, social marketing and digital advertising.