Whether you’re a tech enthusiast, privacy advocate, or simply curious to explore beyond Google’s ecosystem, this comprehensive list of search engine alternatives aims to enrich your online exploration, each offering unique benefits and capabilities.

1. Bing

Microsoft’s Bing presents itself as a robust contender, emphasizing a visually appealing interface with features such as rewards programs for users.

What I Like: Bing’s video search is remarkably superior, rendering a better user experience than Google by providing previews and facilitating an easy-to-navigate layout.

2. Yahoo!

Once a titan in the realm of search engines, Yahoo! still offers a comprehensive solution integrating news, email, and a search engine in one package.

What I Like: Yahoo! excels at compiling and displaying news stories relevant to your interests, alongside traditional search results.

3. DuckDuckGo

Championing online privacy, DuckDuckGo doesn’t track your searches or link them to your personal information, making it a favorite among privacy enthusiasts.

What I Like: Its commitment to not tracking users is a breath of fresh air, providing peace of mind while navigating the web.

4. Ecosia

Ecosia stands out by donating a significant part of its profits to tree planting efforts. Using this search engine, your queries contribute to environmental restoration.

What I Like: Beyond its eco-conscious mission, Ecosia offers a seamless search experience with results powered by Bing.

5. Qwant

Qwant is a privacy-focused search engine based in France, which structures its results across web, news, and social categories.

What I Like: The privacy aspect, coupled with a well-organized interface, allows for diverse content discovery without sacrificing personal data.

6. Baidu

Primarily serving the Chinese internet population, Baidu affords a window into a vast selection of Asian content that might be less visible on Western search engines.

What I Like: For those interested in Chinese culture, news, or language, Baidu offers unparalleled depth and specificity.

7. Yandex

Russia’s leading search engine, Yandex, provides a suite of tools including translations, maps, and cloud storage, targeting users in Eastern Europe and Russia.

What I Like: Its translation service is especially notable, handling a wide array of languages with remarkable accuracy.

8. StartPage

StartPage pays homage to Google’s search capabilities by delivering Google search results with an added layer of privacy, not tracking or storing user information.

What I Like: It combines the familiar effectiveness of Google’s search results with strict privacy controls.

9. Swisscows

Positioned as a family-friendly search engine, Swisscows utilizes artificial intelligence to determine contextually relevant results, banning adult content.

What I Like: Its commitment to privacy and safe content makes it ideal for users of all ages.

10. Search Encrypt

Using encryption to protect your search terms, Search Encrypt ensures that your search history cannot be tracked or decrypted after the fact.

What I Like: The automatic encryption provides an additional layer of security, especially on shared computers.

11. WolframAlpha

WolframAlpha excels in delivering expert answers to computational questions, making it a powerhouse for math, science, and data analysis queries.

What I Like: Its ability to compute answers and generate reports for data-based queries is unparalleled, offering a different dimension to search.

12. Gigablast

A veteran in the search engine space, Gigablast offers web, news, and images searches, indexing billions of pages with its own algorithm.

What I Like: Its open-source nature appeals to those interested in understanding and perhaps contributing to the mechanics of web search.

13. MetaGer

MetaGer combines results from over 50 search engines, prioritizing privacy and unfiltered information, hosted in Germany under strict privacy laws.

What I Like: The aggregation of diverse search engines ensures a broad spectrum of results, widened by its commitment to privacy.

14. Searx

A decentralized, open-source search engine, Searx prides itself on gathering results from multiple sources without tracking users.

What I Like: Its customizable features allow users to fine-tune their search experience according to personal preference and needs.

15. Dogpile

Dogpile retrieves results from Google, Yahoo!, Yandex, and more, positioning itself as a metasearch engine that compiles the ‘best of the web’.

What I Like: Its ability to fetch and filter aggregated results saves time and may uncover resources that single engines might miss.

16. Info.com

This meta-search engine pulls data from various search engines, offering comprehensive results across web, news, and images.

What I Like: The vast array of sourced engines includes niche options, broadening the scope of search results significantly.

17. Oscobo

UK-based Oscobo is dedicated to protecting users’ privacy, providing an anonymous way to search without the fear of being tracked or profiled.

What I Like: Oscobo’s commitment to user privacy is commendable, especially for users within the UK seeking localized content without compromise.

18. Mojeek

Unlike many other privacy-centric search engines that rely on existing search engine results, Mojeek uses its own crawler, forming an independent index.

What I Like: The independent indexing means results from Mojeek are unique, providing a fresh perspective untainted by larger search engine algorithms.

19. OneSearch

Verizon Media’s OneSearch promises no tracking or personal profiling, with search results enhanced by Bing, prioritizing privacy amidst its offering.

What I Like: OneSearch positions itself strongly in the privacy space with transparent privacy practices, aiming to win trust in an increasingly data-aware world.

20. You.com

You.com aims to reimagine search by providing users control over their results with customizable modules catering to different needs and interests.

What I Like: Its innovative approach gives users the power to shape their search ecosystem according to what matters most to them, from reliable news sources to direct answers.

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, these 20 search engine alternatives to Google offer refreshing perspectives and utilities. From enhancing privacy to prioritizing user experience and contributing to social causes, there’s a search engine for every preference. Diving into the features and benefits of each, it’s evident there’s much to explore beyond the familiar. Whether for better privacy practices, specialized content, or simply curiosity, venturing into these alternatives can enrich your internet usage, ensuring the web remains a diverse and vibrant ecosystem.

The Role of Backlinks in SEO

Backlinks connect web pages in the digital landscape and are crucial for SEO. The quality of backlinks is essential in determining a website’s ranking strength on search engines. An intelligent strategy focusing on relevance, authoritative sources, and content alignment is essential to obtain high-quality backlinks. Companies like Vazoola specialize in connecting websites with reputable and relevant sources, ensuring that the links boost SEO performance and add value to the user’s experience. It’s vital to pay attention to certain factors as they can diminish the effectiveness of backlinks and harm a website’s SEO position. Backlinks serve as endorsements, indicating to search engines that a webpage has valuable content worth referencing. The importance of a backlink is evaluated based on the credibility of the domain it comes from and its relevance to the content it’s linked with. A well-placed backlink providing additional relevant information is more likely to be valued by search engines, enhancing the user’s search experience.

Advantages of Niche Edit Services

Niche edit services have risen to prominence for several compelling reasons. Primarily, they streamline the link acquisition process, allowing website owners to sidestep the labor-intensive path of crafting new guest posts for link placement. This convenience extends beyond mere time-saving; it also ensures that the links are positioned within content already established its worth and audience. By tapping into this pre-existing value, niche edits can expedite search engines’ recognition process, leading to swifter SEO benefits.

Niche edits are highly valuable regarding strategic significance, as they can provide top-quality backlinks. These services are usually selective, ensuring your links are in contextually relevant articles. It improves the link’s authority and relevance in the eyes of both search engines and users. This contextual integration sets niche edits apart, blending them naturally into the content narrative, often creating a stronger and more organic endorsement than more obtrusive, standalone link-building tactics.

Identifying High-Quality Niche Edit Opportunities

Finding a platform for a niche edit is like uncovering a hidden gem; it requires patience and discernment. To maximize efficacy, niche edits must be sourced from articles that align closely with your domain, subject matter, and audience. The idea is to seek content with a substantial existing reach and exhibit a natural synergy with your site’s messaging and goals. High-quality niche edits breathe new life into existing content, offering readers additional value and resources while enhancing your website’s backlink profile.

Integrating Niche Edits into Your SEO Strategy

An effective SEO strategy is multifaceted, thoughtfully weaving together various link-building techniques to cultivate an organic and sustainable backlink profile. Niche edits serve as a complement to this tapestry, interlacing pre-existing authority with new relevance. They should be approached not as a standalone solution but as part of a larger, diversified strategy that may include content creation, social media marketing, and other conventional SEO tactics. This integrative approach ensures a resilient and adaptable online presence better equipped to withstand the fluctuations of search algorithm changes over time.

Measuring the Impact of Niche Edits on SEO Performance

To truly appreciate the value of niche edits, one must measure their impact through various SEO metrics. These can range from surges in organic traffic and improved rankings for targeted keywords to the enhanced authority of incoming links. Employing analytical tools can simplify the monitoring process, providing precise data on the progress and enabling strategic adjustments as needed.

Conclusion: Maximizing Your SEO Efforts with Strategic Niche Edits

In summary, the strategic employment of niche edits offers many advantages to SEO practitioners who prioritize ethical and relevant link-building practices. As with all elements of digital marketing, staying informed, adaptable, and focused on creating genuine user value remains the guiding principle for success. Niche edit services, when leveraged correctly, can be a powerful tool in enhancing a website’s authority, relevance, and search engine ranking, thus reflecting the actual strategic value they hold within the intricate SEO world.

With constant algorithm updates and the rise of sophisticated technologies, understanding and executing a robust off-page SEO strategy is crucial for online success.

Step 1: Competitor Backlink Analysis 

Understanding the landscape of your niche is pivotal, and analyzing your competitors’ backlinks is a strategic starting point for solid off-page SEO. By assessing where they acquire links, you can gauge the health of your own link profile and uncover opportunities for your link-building efforts.

Tools for Backlink Analysis

Several powerful tools can help you perform a comprehensive backlink analysis:

• Ahrefs: Offers an extensive backlink profile for any URL, showcasing the quality and relevance of links.
• SEMrush: Provides an in-depth look at competitors’ backlinks, enabling you to identify their strategies.
• Moz’s Link Explorer: Allows for the evaluation of backlink quality and the discovery of new link-building opportunities.

How to Identify Opportunities

Examine the backlink profiles of your top competitors to spot patterns and common sources. Identify high-authority domains that link to multiple competitors but not to you. Look for niche-relevant sites with strong engagement that may serve as potential link partners.

Additionally, track the type of content that garners the most backlinks in your industry. Whether it’s blog posts, infographics, or case studies, such insights can steer your content creation in a direction that naturally attracts valuable backlinks.

Step 2: Content Marketing and Amplification

The success of off-page SEO is significantly influenced by the content that resonates with your audience and prompts shares across the web. Creating content that naturally attracts backlinks is an essential part of a robust off-page strategy.

Creating Shareable Content

Shareable content typically provides value through education, entertainment, or inspiration and stands out with distinctive qualities such as:

• Original Research and Data: Content featuring unique insights and statistics often attracts organic links as a reputable source.
• Infographics and Visual Data: Visuals simplify complex data and increase shareability due to their engaging nature.
• Comprehensive Guides: In-depth resources on specific topics become go-to references within an industry or niche.

Utilizing Content Platforms and Distribution Channels

Maximize the reach of your content through strategic use of multiple platforms and distribution channels:

• Social Media: Tailor content snippets to different social platforms to encourage sharing and engagement.
• Email Newsletters: Leverage subscriber lists to promote content directly to interested audiences.
• Content Syndication Networks: Broaden your content’s exposure by publishing on platforms like Medium or LinkedIn that tap into larger, built-in communities.

By crafting content that provides tangible value and optimizing distribution channels, your off-page SEO campaign becomes a force multiplier, driving both traffic and authoritative backlinks.

Step 3: Social Signals 

The echo of your brand’s presence across social platforms can send significant signals to search engines, indirectly affecting your off-page SEO. While social signals may not be a direct ranking factor, their influence on online visibility and brand authority is undeniable.

Understanding the Impact of Social Media

Social media platforms are powerful amplifiers for content and brand exposure. Likes, shares, comments, and follows depict user engagement, which can enhance brand recognition and foster trust. 

A strong social media presence can lead to increased organic search traffic as users often search for brands and content they encounter on social networks.

Engagement Strategies for Social Signals

Maximizing social signals requires an engaged approach:

• Consistent Brand Messaging: Maintain a consistent voice and image across all social platforms to build recognition and trust.
• Interactive Content: Encourage user interaction through polls, quizzes, and challenges that make your content relatable and share-worthy.
• Influencer Partnerships: Collaborate with influencers to tap into their following and boost content visibility and engagement.
• Prompt Responses: Actively respond to comments and messages to increase engagement and customer experience.

Strategically nurturing your brand’s social media presence can elevate the perceived value of your content, increasing the likelihood that it will be cited as a resource, thereby positively impacting your off-page SEO.

Step 4: Influencer Collaboration and Outreach

Engaging with influencers can exponentially increase the reach of your content and enhance your off-page SEO through high-quality backlinks and social mentions. Choosing the right influencers and crafting a mutually beneficial outreach strategy is key.

Identifying Relevant Influencers

Look for influencers who align with your brand values and have a dedicated audience that overlaps with your target demographics. 

Use tools like BuzzSumo or Followerwonk to search for influencers by topic or industry, and analyze their engagement rates and content quality to ensure a good fit.

Best Practices for Outreach and Collaboration

When reaching out to influencers, keep these best practices in mind:

• Personalize Communication: Address influencers by name, comment on their work, and explain why a partnership would be mutually beneficial.
• Provide Clear Value: Offer something of worth, such as exclusive content, free products, or monetary compensation.
• Be Flexible: Allow influencers creative freedom to present your brand in a way that resonates with their audience.
• Nurture Relationships: Treat influencer engagements as the start of long-term relationships rather than one-off transactions.

A successful influencer collaboration should feel organic and authentic, aligning with both your brand’s messaging and the influencer’s style, thus driving traffic and bolstering your off-page SEO efforts.

Step 5: Guest Blogging and Content Syndication

Guest blogging and content syndication are pivotal in expanding your content’s reach, building industry authority, and securing valuable backlinks—all essential components of off-page SEO.

Selecting Target Sites for Guest Posts

Choosing the right platforms for guest posting is crucial:

• Relevance: Target blogs that are relevant to your industry and audience.
• Authority: Aim for sites with high domain authority to get quality backlinks.
• Readership: Consider sites with an engaged readership to ensure visibility.
• Content Quality: Only contribute to sites with high editorial standards.

Tools like Alexa Rank and Moz’s Domain Authority Checker can aid in evaluating potential sites.

Syndicating Content Effectively

For syndication, the approach should be methodical and selective:

• Choose Platforms Wisely: Publish on reputable syndication sites like Medium or industry-specific platforms.
• Update for SEO: Make minor changes to the content to avoid duplicate content issues.
• Use Canonical Tags: Implement canonical tags to point back to the original content on your site.
• Monitor Results: Keep track of referral traffic and backlink profiles from syndicated content to measure effectiveness.

Guest blogging and syndication, when executed properly, can amplify your message and lend credibility to your brand, thereby enhancing your off-page SEO profile.

Step 6: Local SEO and NAP Consistency

For businesses with a physical presence or localized services, local SEO is a critical facet of off-page optimization ensuring that they appear in location-based search results.

Managing Local Listings

Effectively managing local listings involves:

• Claiming your listing on platforms like Google My Business, Bing Places, and Yelp.
• Providing comprehensive and accurate business information, including hours, services, and photos.
• Encouraging customers to leave reviews and responding to them promptly to improve visibility and credibility.

Importance of Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) Consistency

Consistent NAP information across all online platforms helps search engines associate your listings, which can enhance your credibility and rankings:

• Ensure your business name, address, and phone number are uniform and up-to-date on every platform.
• Regularly audit your online presence for discrepancies and correct inconsistencies immediately.
• Utilize local citations to further strengthen location-based authority by mentioning your NAP on local business directories, websites, and social profiles.

Maintaining NAP consistency amplifies your off-page SEO by reinforcing your relevancy for local searches, which can lead to increased organic traffic and improved search engine rankings for localized queries.

Step 7: Forum Participation and Community Engagement

Actively participating in forums and online communities can boost your off-page SEO efforts by establishing you as a knowledgeable authority in your niche and driving traffic back to your site.

Strategies for Meaningful Forum Contributions

To make an impact through forums:

• Identify Popular Forums: Choose forums with active user bases relevant to your industry such as Reddit, Quora, or niche-specific forums.
• Provide Value: Answer questions, offer insights, and share valuable resources that genuinely help the community members.
• Balance Self-Promotion: While sharing your content, ensure it’s relevant and beneficial to the discussion to avoid being perceived as spammy.

Building Relationships within Online Communities

Forge genuine connections by:

• Consistent Engagement: Regularly contribute to conversations, not just with answers but by asking questions and sharing experiences.
• Support Others: Endorse valuable content from other users to foster reciprocal relationships.
• Integrate into the Community: Adhere to community guidelines and understand the ethos of each forum to become a respected member.

Effective forum participation and community engagement involve thoughtful interactions that showcase your expertise while being mindful of the line between helpfulness and promotion. 

This approach can lead to organic, high-quality backlinks and increased brand visibility.

Step 8: Podcast Appearances and Webinars

Embracing the power of audio and video through podcasts and webinars can be a dynamic approach to off-page SEO, giving your brand a voice and expanding your digital footprint.

Finding Opportunities in Podcasting and Webinars

To tap into audio and video opportunities:

• Research Relevant Podcasts: Use podcast directories like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher to find shows aligned with your expertise.
• Approach Webinar Hosts: Identify industry experts or companies that host webinars and propose relevant topics you can present.
• Offer Unique Insights: Present a compelling angle or unique knowledge that adds value, making you an attractive guest.

Leveraging Audio and Video Content for SEO

When featured in these formats:

• Share and Promote: Actively share the episode or webinar across your social media and website.
• Incorporate Links: Request the host to include a backlink to your site in the show notes or video description.
• Repurpose Content: Turn your audio or video appearances into blog posts, infographics, or social media snippets to reach a broader audience.

Podcast appearances and webinars can significantly improve off-page SEO by providing quality content for your audience to engage with and share while also generating backlinks and traffic to your site.

Step 9: Brand Mentions and Unlinked Brand Mentions

Brand mentions are powerful off-page SEO signals that demonstrate your brand’s footprint in the digital arena.

Monitoring for Brand Mentions

Regularly scanning the web for mentions of your brand is essential:

• Use tools like Google Alerts, Mention, or BuzzSumo to track where and how your brand is mentioned online.
• Analyze the context of mentions to gauge public perception and identify areas for improvement or expansion.
• Keep an eye on both positive and negative mentions to manage your reputation effectively.

Turning Unlinked Mentions into Links

Unlinked mentions are potential backlinks waiting to be activated:

• Reach Out: Contact the author or webmaster and politely ask if they would be willing to turn the mention into a hyperlink.
• Provide Easy Access: Make it simple for them by sending a direct link to the preferred landing page on your site.
• Highlight the Value: Explain how linking back to your site can add value to their content and benefit their audience.

Converting unlinked brand mentions into backlinks solidifies your online presence, driving both direct traffic and improving your off-page SEO link profile, while also fostering positive relationships with other websites and content creators.

Wrapping Up

Remember, off-page SEO is not a one-off task but an ongoing journey of building trust, authority, and connections across the web. 

Implement these strategies consistently, measure your progress with the right tools, and be prepared to pivot as new opportunities arise. 

By doing so, you’ll not only boost your online visibility but also forge meaningful connections with your audience that go beyond the realms of search engines.

Because in this post I’m going to show you exactly how to create a post that:

• Taps into the subscriber lists of people with massive followings
• Quickly build relationships with key influencers in your niche
• Positions you as an expert through the power of association
• Promotes itself and has the potential to go viral

What kind of post am I talking about?

It’s called a ‘roundup’ and it’s very simple.

You just find some experts in your niche and ask them a question, the shorter the better.

Roundups have the potential to generate huge traffic to your website and massive social media sharing.

But the real magic of roundups is the relationships that you form with key Influencers in your niche. And it’s relationships with key players in your niche that will take your blog to the next level.

There are six key steps in creating a successful roundup post and I’ll take you through them step-by-step:

• Deciding on the Question
• Finding the Experts
• Finding Email Addresses
• Doing the Outreach
• Writing the Article
• Promoting the Article

1. Deciding on the Question

The question you ask your experts is the most important aspect of a roundup post – it will literally make or break your roundup.

Why is that?

Firstly, the question you ask must be one that your experts want to answer. Influencers and experts are busy people. If they can’t answer your question in about 5 to 10 minutes, they’ll simply pass – they don’t have the time.

Also, if you ask a question they’ve already been asked in half a dozen previous roundups, they may not bother to respond.

Secondly, the question you ask your experts must be one that your target audience wants answered.

So when you write a roundup post you actually have two audiences – experts and target audience – and they both need to be motivated by your question.

1.1 Use Your Own Learning Process

If you are a blogger and you have a following, it’s more than likely that you are teaching people how to do things. You may be only one or two steps ahead of your readers (you only need to be one step ahead of someone else in order to help them).

This means that your problems are very likely their problems. So keep a detailed diary of the challenges and problems that you face and overcome as you build your blog.

You can use those challenges and problems as the basis for roundup questions. For example: “What’s you number one list-building technique?” or “What’s your single most important source of traffic?” or “What are the three digital marketing tools you couldn’t do without?”

1.2 Use BuzzSumo to find trending topics

Let’s say your broad topic is ‘email marketing’ but you want to narrow it down to a sub-topic. Go to BuzzSumo and type in ‘email marketing’.

In the left panel, set the filter to ‘last 6 months’ to ensure relevancy:

In the top 10 results I can see that ‘email etiquette’ is the trending topic within ‘email marketing’:

I cast my eye over the titles of these articles and bingo! I’ve got the question for my roundup post: “What’s the single most important aspect of email etiquette for a web marketer?”

You can use this method with any upper level topic you can think of:

• auto responder sequences
• collaborative content
• content marketing
• content promotion
• copywriting
• creating graphics for blog posts
• creating infographics
• creating online courses
• creating optin bribes
• finding topics for blog posts
• finding your niche
• finding your tribe
• forum commenting
• guest posting
• influencer marketing
• link building
• list building
• monetizing blogs
• opt-in popups
• podcasting
• sales funnels
• seo
• social media espionage
• wordpress plugins
• writing blog post titles
• writing blog posts

1.3 Be Very Specific

Ask ONE thing only. The more specific your question, the more likely your Influencers and experts will respond.

Avoid vague questions like “what’s your view on guest posting?” Instead ask: “What’s the most valuable guest posting tip you could offer to a novice blogger?”

One way to make a question more specific is to add a date. Instead of asking: “What are the best blog promotion techniques”, ask: “What are the best blog promotion techniques in 2021?”

1.4 Always Indicate the Target Audience

Your experts will find it much easier to respond to your question if you clearly indicate the target audience. It goes back to the previous point – being as specific as you can.

For example, this question is okay, but it doesn’t indicate the target audience: “What’s your single most valuable piece of blogging advice?”

This is the same question, but with the target audience specified: “What’s the single most valuable piece of advice you would give to a first-year blogger?”

The second version is much more likely to get a response from an expert, because it’s more specific.

Not only that, once the article is published it’s more likely to be shared and go viral because it has a very specific audience: first year bloggers.

Here’s another example.

Instead of asking: “What are your best list building techniques?” ask: “What key tip would you give to a first year blogger trying to get their first 1000 subscribers?”

This is an easier question to answer because (a) you’re asking for just one tip, and (b) it’s a tip for first year bloggers who don’t yet have 1000 subscribers.

Remember: the more specific your question, the easier it is to answer, and the more likely it is you’ll get a response.

1.5 Place the Influencer in the Role of Expert

In a recent roundup post I asked: “What’s the single most valuable piece of advice you ever received about succeeding as a blogger?”

But I noticed I wasn’t getting much response.

So I changed the question to: “What’s the single most valuable piece of advice you would give to a first year blogger?”

Immediately I started getting more responses.

The reason? My second question placed the Influencer in the role of an expert helping people with less experience. It works because (a) people want to help others and (b) they want to be seen as experts.

1.6 Avoid questions that will produce similar responses

If you ask: “What is your #1 list building technique?” you can be fairly sure that over half your respondents are going to say a ‘free eBook’ or something to that effect.

That’s not going to result in a very interesting article.

One way to avoid getting similar responses is to ask personal questions such as:

• “What was the biggest mistake you made in your first year of blogging?”
• “How did you get your first 500 subscribers?”
• “How did you make your first $1000 dollars online?”

These kinds of questions are all going to produce unique results because they draw on individual experience.

1.7 Use a Negative Perspective

If you find that your topic has already been done to death, you can always put a twist on it.

Let’s say you want to do a roundup on ‘blog post promotion’ but a quick search on Google shows that it’s been overdone.

You can put a twist on that topic by turning it into a negative and still have a question that sounds original:

• What Are the Most Common Mistakes People make when Promoting Blog Posts?
• What are the Three Most Common Mistakes People make when Promoting Blog Posts
• Why do People Fail with Blog Post Promotion

1.8 Formulas for Asking Questions

Take the topic of your choice and then apply these formulas for coming up with a question for your roundup post:

• If you had only 3 months to ____ what would you focus on?
• What will be the biggest change in ___ over the next 12 months?
• What is the biggest lesson in ¬¬¬___ you ever learned?
• What is the biggest mistake you ever made in ____?
• What’s your best tip for ___?
• What are your 3 favorite tools for ____?
• What is the most creative example of ____ you have ever seen?
• What are the top traits of highly successful ____?
• If you had to start again in ____ what would you do differently?

1.9 Go for a Three-Word Response

The response rate in your outreach process can be quite low, sometimes as low as 20% to 30%.

If you want to increase the response rate, ask an extremely simple question that can literally be answered in three words.

For example:

• Q: What are your three most useful blogging tools?
• A: BuzzSumo, Skitch, Evernote.

It’s so short, you could even use Twitter for the outreach!

1.10 Email Your List

Send out an email to your list asking them: “What’s the one thing frustrating you most in _____”.

Find a topic that your readers are struggling with and you’ve got a winner!

2. Finding the Experts

Finding experts or Influencers in your niche is not difficult. Here are three techniques that work well.

2.1 Use BuzzSumo

Go to BuzzSumo, type in the keyword for your niche, and then click on the ‘Influencer’ tab. In the example below I searched for Influencers in the ‘Content Marketing’ niche.

In the left-side panel check ‘Bloggers’ and ‘Influencers’ and leave the other three boxes unchecked.

In the filter box on the top right of the screen, make sure you have ‘relevancy’ selected:

The free version of BuzzSumo will only give you 10 results. However, if you sign up for the free trial, you’ll get access to a fully functioning version for 14 days.

2.2 Use Followerwonk

Followerwonk is a product of Moz and is a paid service. But the free version allows you to find Influencers in your niche.

Just go to Followerwonk and click on the ‘Search Bios’ tab (top left).

Then type in the keyword for your niche and click ‘Do It’:

Followerwonk returns over 32,000 results:

Use the columns on the right side of the screen to filter the results by various criteria, including ‘Tweets’, ‘Followers’, and ‘Social Authority’:

The only catch with the free account is you won’t be able to download the results.

But it’s still a great way to identify Influencers in your niche.

2.3 Look for Previous Roundups

A quick and easy way to find Influencers is to simply look for previously published roundups on your topic.

The advantage of this method is you not only find experts in your niche, you find experts in your niche who like participating in roundups.

Just go to Google and type in any of the following strings:

• experts reveal “keyword”
• experts top tips “keyword”
• experts best tips “keyword”
• experts offer “keyword”
• experts predictions “keyword”

Click on the search results one by one and build up a database of experts who have participated in previous roundups in your niche.

3. Finding email addresses

Although most people now have contact forms on their websites you’d be surprised how often you can find someone’s email address on their contact page, usually disguised by replacing @ with [at].

3.1 Use an Email Finding Service

But if you can’t find their email address anywhere, there are various email finding services, such as:

• AnyMailFinder
• ClearBit (Chrome Extension)
• LeadGibbon
• Hunter.io

The service I’ve had best results with is Hunter, which gives you 150 free searches a month. That’s enough to do a couple of roundups a month!

Just type the domain name into Hunter and it will usually give you at least a couple of verified email addresses:

3.2 Sign up to their Newsletter

If that fails you can always sign up to their newsletter. Most bloggers use their personal email address in the header of the confirmation email (i.e. name@domain.com).

It’s a good practice, in any case, to sign up to the expert’s Newsletter, as that’s another way of getting on their radar.

In the welcome email, Influencers often reach out to new subscribers, asking them what issues they are struggling with. That’s a great opportunity to drop them an email and introduce yourself.

4. Doing the Outreach

Outreach is where you’ll do the bulk of the work involved in putting together a roundup.

4.1 Use an Online Form

An online form makes it really easy for your experts to respond. It also makes it very clear-cut what is required. An online form will make you appear business-like and show that you know what you’re doing.

There are four bits of information you want to collect in the online form:

1. The expert’s response to the question
2. The expert’s Bio
3. The expert’s URL
4. The expert’s portrait pic (also called a headshot)

I use Jotform as it’s the only free online form that allows the user to upload a photo (Google Forms used to allow uploads, but no longer).

Sign up to Jotform.com and create your form. Once your form is ready, click on ‘Publish’:

On the next screen, click on ‘Embed’:

Then select the ‘Embed’ option and copy the code:

I create my forms on a WordPress page rather than a post because it gives me more control over the appearance.

Specifically, I want to:

• Put the form on a blank page without a right-hand sidebar
• Remove the Page Title from the top of the page

If your WP theme doesn’t allow you to create a totally blank page, download the Blank Slate plugin.

Create a new page and in the ‘Edit’ screen choose ‘Blank Slate’ (in the right sidebar):

Then check the box next to ‘Hide Title’:

And that’s it! Your form will look something like this:

4.2 Make it Personal

Always begin your email with the expert’s name. Nothing will get your outreach email discarded quicker than a message that starts: “Hey there!”

4.3 Use the Principle of Reciprocity

It’s a basic law of human behaviour that people will give back or reciprocate a favour. In other words, do a favour for your expert and they’ll do one for you (i.e. contribute to your roundup post).

The way I do this is I look for a blog post of theirs that I really like, and then I tweet it to my followers. You can mention the tweet in your outreach email.

4.4 Template for the initial Outreach

As with the other templates in this article, please don’t copy it word for word. Find your own words and make it your own!

Key Points in the Initial Outreach:

• Name of the Expert
• Introduce yourself
• You know their website
• You’ve read at least one of their blog posts
• You liked it because…
• You tweeted it to your followers
• The Roundup Question plus link to the online form
• The deadline (people put things off without a deadline)
• A two-line bio with a link back to their website
• 50 to 100 words would be great
• You have invited other experts to contribute
• You’ll be promoting it once it is published
• If they don’t have time or the question doesn’t fit with their focus, it’s totally fine.

4.5 Include Contributing Experts in your Outreach Email

Once you have responses from 5 experts, include their names and websites in your outreach email.

The psychology of this is that your prospects are more likely to want to participate if they see names they recognize. People don’t want to be left out:

4.6 Specify a Deadline

Specify a deadline of no more than 7 days away. You want people to take action now. If you don’t give a deadline, or if you give them too long, it will go on the backburner and they’ll forget about it.

4.7 Thank Responders within 24 hours

Thank the experts who respond with a simple email, within 24 hours:

4.8 Keep Track of your Outreach

Use a spreadsheet to keep track of who you emailed and who responded. You’ll need this to:

• Avoid emailing the same expert twice
• Send a ‘thank you email’ to all the experts who responded
• Send an email once the article is live, asking the expert to share

In my spreadsheet I include a column containing the link to the expert’s article that I tweeted to my followers, as this is information I will need while composing the outreach email.

4.9 Get Noticed by the Expert

When you’re starting out and are completely unknown, it can be hard to get experts to respond. You need to do everything you can to get on their radar.

One way to do this is to follow them on Twitter and another way is to sign up to their Newsletter.

In either case, they may or may not see your name and take note. But either way, it increases your chances of getting a response to your outreach.

5. Writing the Article

5.1 Analyse and Summarize the Responses

You might think that the main advantage of roundup posts is that you get your article written for you. That’s certainly true. But you still need to do your own analysis and summary of what the experts have said.

A roundup post that just presents the responses of the experts and nothing more is very weak.

One of the reasons you need to analyse and summarize what the experts have said is that your readers may not have time to read the whole article – they just want to get the key takeaways in a nutshell.

So at the end of your roundup post, always include your analysis and summary of what the experts have said.

If your roundup asked a ‘top three’ question (e.g. What are your top three Productivity tools?), the analysis is very simple. You just add up the responses and create a ‘top 10’ leader board. Here’s an example from Robbie Richard’s article, 60 Experts Reveal Top 3 Tools To Grow Your Email List:

If the roundup question is not a list-type but asks for an opinion, then the analysis will be bit more involved. But nothing scary!

Just go through the responses and see what the main points are.

Often there will be overlap in the responses. For example, you might have 19 experts who made 11 points.

Create a sub-heading for each point and summarize the point in no more than 3 or 4 sentences. That’s all you need to do!

5.2 Provide a Summary at the Beginning

At the beginning of your roundup post include a brief summary of the key takeaways. This is for readers who are just skimming and want to see the nutshell version.

5.3 Table of Hyperlinked Names

At the start of the your roundup, insert a table of hyperlinked expert names so that readers can quickly navigate to individual responses:

5.4 Include a TL;DR button

Most people who read blog posts are in a rush. They just want to get the gist of it quickly. For these readers it’s very helpful to provide a button near the top of the article that takes them straight to the analysis and summary:

5.5 Include Portrait Pics

Images are vital in any post, as a way of breaking up the text. A portrait pic of your expert is too good an opportunity to miss. Always include a headshot next to the name of your expert:

5.6 Affiliate Links

Roundup posts that ask experts for their ‘top three tools’ for doing something can become evergreen content that will deliver a steady stream of traffic from organic search.

Include some affiliate links and your roundup could bring you a handy stream of passive income for years to come.

5.7 Create a Photo Collage

Images make any blog post more engaging and more shareable and what better image to use in a roundup post than a photo collage of the contributing experts?

There are various online services you can use to create a photo collage, some free (e.g. canva.com) and some paid (e.g. picmonkey.com).

But the easiest way to create a photo collage for a roundup post is Picasa. Although Google has officially retired Picasa you can still download it at: http://picasa.en.downloadastro.com/download/

Open Picasa and use the left side panel to navigate to the folder where your portrait pics are located.

The following portrait pics are from my most recent roundup post, 19 Experts Reveal Their Top Tips For First Year Bloggers.

Select all the images in your folder and then click on the ‘Make Collage’ button (second from left):

Then, in the left side pane, use the ‘Grid Spacing Slider’ to adjust the margins between the photos. Then click ‘Create Collage’:

On the next window, click the ‘Export’ button at the bottom of the screen:

On the next screen, make sure the resize slider is set to 800 pixels, and then click ‘Export’:

With some of the online collage making services you’re either limited to a set number of photos per collage or you’ll be left with a grid containing empty spaces. What I like about the Picasa Collage Maker is that it fits the photos to the available space:

5.8 Include an Infographic

Including an Infographic in your Roundup post is one of the factors that will make your post go viral.

To prove my point, let me give you a little case study.

I published two roundup posts. Roundup ‘A’ had 27 contributors, while Roundup ‘B’ had 19 contributors.

Which one do you think got more shares?

You probably guessed Roundup ‘A’ – with 27 experts sharing it with their followers, it had a far greater audience reach than the first.

But it was the other way around.

Roundup ‘A’ received a total of 87 social media shares, while Roundup ‘B’ got 314 shares.

Not only that, but Roundup ‘B’ has gone viral: it’s been weeks since it received any active promotion from either me or the contributors, but every week it gets 10 to 20 new shares:

What made the difference? An Infographic!

The above Infographic was created using a vector graphics app called SketchApp, but there are plenty of online drag-and-drop Infographic makers:

• https://www.canva.com/create/infographics/
• https://piktochart.com/
• https://venngage.com/
• https://www.easel.ly/create
• https://www.visme.co/
• https://infogr.am/

Here’s a good tutorial on how to create an Infographic using Canva:

5.9 Thank the Experts

Somewhere in your roundup you should thank the experts for their time.

I usually do it at the end of the post, just before the summary. Here’s an example:

5.10 Include the Number of Experts in the Title

It’s been proven over and over again that numbers in the title get more clicks, so always include the number of experts in your title: “27 Experts Reveal Their Top Tips For First Year Bloggers”.

For some reason odd numbers attract more attention than even numbers so if you end up with an even number of experts, try and get just one more expert!

6. Promoting the Article

It’s true that roundup articles are self-promoting: the experts who contributed to the article share it out to their followers on social media. That’s one of reasons roundups are so powerful.

But there are some things you can do to make it easier for your contributors to spread the word:

6.1 Template for the Promotion Email

As soon as the roundup is live, send out an email asking the contributors to share it to their followers:

6.2 Just Hit Reply

With your promotion email, no need to create a new subject line. Just go back to the email where the expert gave their response, and hit ‘reply’.

The reason for this?

When the expert sees that your email is a reply to their email, they are much more likely to open it.

6.3 Sprinkle ‘Ready-to-Tweet’ quotes

Sprinkle the completed article with ‘ready-to-tweet’ excerpts or quotes. This makes it easier for your experts to Tweet the post to their followers.

Ideally, include a ‘ready-to-Tweet’ quote for each expert.

I use the Social Warfare app for this, but there are many other options such as ClickToTweet (which is free).

6.4 Floating Social Media Buttons

Floating social media buttons are the panel of buttons that follow you as you move down a web page.

They’ve been shown to dramatically increase the number of shares on social media, so make sure you have this installed before your article goes live.

You want to do everything you can to help your experts share out the article to their followers.

I use the Social Warfare plugin but there are several other options:

• Monarch
• SumoShare

7. Start Writing!

A roundup post is one of the most powerful blogging techniques available.

If you’re in your first year of blogging, or if you’ve been blogging for longer but haven’t been able to get any traction, roundup posts can take you to the next level.

Here’s a little known secret about successful blogging – it’s as much about connections as it is about content. And roundups are a brilliant way to make those connections.

My first, second, and third guest post opportunities were all direct results of a roundup post.

Do three or four roundups and you’ll have a perfect platform to launch yourself into guest posting. But roundups do require some solid work, mainly in the outreach stage.

Here again are the 6 key steps in producing a successful roundup:

• Deciding on the Question
• Finding the Experts
• Finding Email Addresses
• Doing the Outreach
• Writing the Article
• Promoting the Article

And remember, the more experts you have on your panel, the more audience reach you’ll have. Get enough experts involved and you may well have a roundup that goes viral!

Let me know how you go in the comments below.

I’d love to hear your experiences with roundup posts!

Far from it!

To demonstrate the power of very alive SEO, today I’m going to share 4 tried and proven SEO tips that will still drive traffic to your website this year.

1. Grow Your Revenue By Using Long-tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are created when you combine at least three words to form a search query that targets your specific niche.

How can you find all those terms?

Use a SEO checker.

And, how do these long-tail keywords help you?  

Let’s imagine you’re the owner of a chicken teriyaki recipe site.

According to SEMrush, there are 110,000 people searching for “teriyaki.” At first, you might think “Great! I’ll just use teriyaki as my main keyword!” And while that may seem like a good idea, what percentage of people searching for teriyaki will you actually be able to convince to visit your recipe site? Since most of them are looking for teriyaki restaurants, odds are you won’t get many clicks.

To get your website in front of that niche of people who are looking specifically for teriyaki recipes, you need to use a long-tail keyword. For example, “easy teriyaki chicken recipe.”

Looking at this SEMrush data, you can see how long-tail keywords are so effective. By using the long-tail keyword, your teriyaki recipe website will be discoverable by 2,400 searchers who are seeking exactly what your site offers.

Some SEO tips to help you craft effective long-tail keywords are:

• Make sure you understand your buyer personas.

What kind of questions are they typing into Google? What stage of the buyer’s journey are they in?

Answering questions like these will give you the ability to perfectly tailor your long-tail keywords to your personas’ needs.

• Check what keywords you’re already ranking for and use them.

Use Google Analytics to see what keywords are driving the most traffic to your site. Use these in your long-tails.

• Research what long-tail keywords are currently driving the most traffic.

Two great tools for this are Google auto suggest and SEMRush — use these to see what kind of long-tail queries your personas are making. Or, for a free substitute to SEMRush, check out Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest tool — type in a keyword, click “keyword ideas,” and scroll through the suggestions.

If you don’t know how to use Ubersuggest, here is a quick guide to get you started.

2. Increase Your Website’s Loading Speed

People are impatient. If your website doesn’t load within 3 seconds, 40% of your audience is going to bounce. As your bounce rate increases, your rankings will drop.

Here are three powerful SEO tips to make sure your site is loading quickly:

• Smooth out your site’s HTML by using PageSpeed Insights to identify problems.

Run your homepage and any other major pages or posts through the program, and take action based on the Opportunities and Diagnostics reports.

• Make sure that all the images on your site are compressed.

Use a program like Piio.co to optimize images and increase your site’s loading speed.  

• Start browser caching.

Browser caching is a fast and easy way to make big speed improvements for your website. Caching saves the basic elements of your site on visitors’ devices, so that when they navigate between pages your logo, menus, and the like, don’t need to be loaded again — increasing loading speed!

3. Build Your Site Authority

Two proven SEO tips to boost your website’s authority:

• Make it easy for your clients to give you social proof.

Put review forms on your product pages, ask previous clients to leave reviews, and show off your review stars where it really counts — in your post’s schema markup.

Written reviews contribute towards content and keyword count, so not only will your future prospects benefit from seeing 5 stars on your product, Google will also rank you higher due to the increase in relevant content and keywords.

• Get an SSL certificate.

Chrome has recently started flagging HTTP sites as “Not Secure” — driving potential clients away from your website.

Communicate trust and authority to your prospects by installing an SSL certificate and moving your site to HTTPS.

4. Answer Your Persona’s Questions To Get Featured In Search Snippets

Have you wondered how certain websites get their content featured in a nice little box at the top of the search results? These are called “search snippets” and they look like this:

According to a study done by Ahrefs, featured snippets have an 8.6 percent click-through rate.

That’s huge!

But it gets even better.

Being selected for search snippets gives your website double-representation — first in the snippet and again in the results. Wow!

Now that you understand what a powerful SEO tool search snippets can be, let’s get your website to be featured there.

Here are a couple quality SEO tips for getting your website featured in the search snippets:

• First, do keyword research.

Use Answer The Public to see the questions your personas’ are asking. Decide which one you want to answer.

Type the question into Google and take not of the kind of content that is making the search snippet. There are three kinds of content that get featured — tables, lists, and paragraphs. Whichever one Google is currently featuring is what you should also do in your post.

• Write a kick ass post and format it correctly.

To reach the search snippets, your post needs to rank in the top 10. So make sure you follow SEO best practices when creating your content.

Take the question you chose during the research stage, and place the answer as close to the top of your content as possible.

Put the question in an H2 heading and write your answer directly beneath the H2, making sure you keep your answer between 54-58 words.

• Publish and monitor your content.

Track the analytics of your post to make sure it reaches the top 10 search results for your target question.

Make adjustments where necessary.

Once you capture the search snippet, celebrate with some champagne.

Conclusion

SEO is still the primary tool by which to rank your website in 2019. Mobile and voice search may be changing the way people interact with the internet, but the way we do SEO hasn’t changed.

Getting ranked on Google requires diligent research, testing, implementation, more testing, and a continual emphasis on quality — all of these things are SEO.

Combine the tips I gave you today with quality content, and you will see your rankings grow and traffic increase.

Are there risks to using SEO, or are threats of Google penalties overblown?

Black-Hat vs. White-Hat SEO

First, we need to address the fact that there are hundreds, if not thousands of tactics that could technically fall under the umbrella of “SEO,” but not all of these are inherently risky. In fact, experienced search engine authorities often group them into categories of “black-hat” and “white-hat” SEO.

White-hat SEO tactics include strategies that increase your visibility in search engines by providing users will meaningful content and relevant backlinks that serve a purpose. Google’s main goal in policing its search results is to ensure that users find value, so if you’re only providing them with valuable content and infrastructure, Google isn’t going to complain.

Black-hat SEO tactics are meant solely to manipulate the rankings, a way of fooling Google’s algorithm, and are generally frowned upon by Google and web users alike. These typically use deceiving or misleading tactics to trick users into taking a specific action, or to dupe Google’s algorithm into detecting something that isn’t there.

It’s possible to decline in rankings due to low-quality content or other small issues, but the real problem—manual Google penalties—are only going to come into play when your site commits an egregious offense in the realm of black-hat SEO. In other words, if you’re only practicing ethical, white-hat SEO strategies, there’s virtually no risk of a penalty for your site.

Examples of Black-Hat Tactics

That begs the question, how can you tell what “counts” as a black-hat strategy?

Anything that violates Google’s terms of service or anything that intentionally tries to be manipulative with search rankings could warrant a penalty. These are some examples of these types of actions:

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the practice of injecting specific words and phrases into your content and throughout the site, without regard for content quality. In egregious cases, the keywords won’t make sense in context, or webmasters may sneak keywords and phrases into the background of the site, hiding them from view.

Misleading links

Sneaky or misleading redirects can also warrant a Google penalty. If you’ve set up basic 301 redirects, don’t worry—these are perfectly fine, and are even encouraged if they guide a user toward the content they want. The problem is when these links take a user to a place they didn’t originally want to go.

Link schemes

Link schemes are usually one of the biggest problems. These usually revolve around establishing links to your website without the context of high-quality content to support them. There are many types of link schemes, none of which are acceptable, including link circles and link exchanges.

Most of these are more akin to get-rich-quick schemes than legitimate marketing strategies.

By contrast, white-hat SEO tactics are all about providing as much value as possible to readers and web users. For example, developing high-quality onsite blog posts, tweaking your site to improve its loading speed and usability, and building links with high-quality offsite guest posts are all valuable white-hat strategies that won’t earn your site a penalty.

How Can You Tell If You’ve Been Penalized?

If you’ve read about white-hat and black-hat SEO tactics but you’re still worried, there’s a way you can check to see if your site has been penalized. In all cases, if you’ve earned a manual Google penalty, you will be notified through Google Search Console. If there’s no message, you’re in the clear. If you do receive a message, you’ll be notified of the specific tactics or actions that led to the penalty. From there, you’ll have the opportunity to correct the issues and submit an appeal.

If you’ve noticed your search engine rankings declining, it’s not worth panicking. Ranking fluctuations are somewhat common, even if you haven’t changed much in your strategy. If this is the case, take the opportunity to assess the strategies you’re using, and see if there’s anything you can improve. Usually, a handful of tweaks and a few weeks of development are all it takes to restore your rankings back to normal.

The benefits of white-hat SEO are substantial, and there are practically no risks to using these strategies. As long as you understand the difference between white-hat and black-hat SEO, and don’t stray into the realm of black-hat SEO, you’ll only bring benefits to your site.

“What are the best SEO trends that will dominate in 2023 and why?”

Personalize Content to Search Intent

In 2023, one SEO trend that will dominate is content personalization. This is because search engines are getting better at understanding the searcher’s intent and providing more relevant results. As a result, content that is personalized for the searcher’s intent will be more likely to rank higher in search results.

It has been around for a while and the technology is getting better. This trend will also help businesses understand their customers better and help them in their buying process.

Paw Vej, Chief Operating Officer, Financer.com

Get on TikTok

TikTok SEO isn’t going anywhere. People, especially younger generations, are searching in different ways than just search engines. So it’s so important to continue to realize that the best practices of SEO also will include platforms where people search like TikTok and, of course, YouTube. It’s important that quality content that is well-optimized and provides more value is always going to “win.”

Gresham Harkless Jr., Media Consultant, Blue 16 Media

Include Video Marketing for Products

I have been in e-commerce for the last 15 years selling stickily online. The biggest trend that I see dominating SEO in 2023 is including videos with all website products and blog articles. 

Google added a few new features with videos so users can seek the right to the area they want to view. Users spend more time on your page when there are videos and now with the seek markup feature, it helps users get the information they are looking for and end that search session. 

In 2023, videos need to be added to your SEO strategy if you want to increase your rank.

Evan McCarthy, President & CEO, SportingSmiles

Emphasize Your High-Quality Content

Google search engine trends change year by year, but one thing remains the same always, making high-quality content will drive content to your site. Your content should be insightful, informative, and interesting. 

Higher quality content is more shareable, furthering your SEO goals. If you are not sure where to start, try interacting with your audience and seeing what kinds of questions you are answering often or what kinds of content they keep coming back to.

Jacob Dayan, Co-Founder & CEO, Community Tax

Maximize the SEO Around Your Video Content 

As people consume more and more video content, maximizing the SEO of your videos can help them rank higher on search engine results pages, boosting your organic traffic. So while you want to ensure you regularly provide high-value content that answers people’s questions, making it easy for them to actually find those videos is vital. 

And you can do this by including your brand’s primary keywords in the video’s title, tags, and description. But remember to refrain from keyword stuffing, as this may seem spammy and cause your videos not to appear in the results pages for specifically targeted queries. 

Stick to the essential terms site visitors associate with your brand and products and create various combinations. Keeping your titles and tags simple gives you a better chance of attracting qualified leads and getting more eyeballs on your videos.

Chris Gadek, VP of Growth, AdQuick

Optimize Your Website’s Loading Speed

An SEO trend that will never go out of fashion is to optimize website performance elements, such as page loading speed. Users want fast-loading web pages before they even consider browsing or purchasing products from a business’s website.

Fast-loading pages increase user conversions and decrease bounce rate while satisfying Google crawlers. Businesses must invest in designing well-organized, appropriately formatted, and straightforward website layouts that are easy for users to navigate and that don’t ask them to wait around.

In some ways, website performance is a primary indicator of perceived business legitimacy. Wonky site designs, clunky media formatting, and overcrowding are amateur design mistakes that put off customers and Google crawlers.

Guna Kakulapati, Co-Founder & CEO, CureSkin

Reinforce Your Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness Signals

EAT stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. In an increasingly crowded search engine landscape, showing your website as a reliable source of information is essential to stand out. 

With the enormous shift towards increased engagement with digital content, good EAT signals will be even more important in improving your organic ranking in 2023. Ensuring that your website, content, and overall brand are strong and credible will be critical in order to succeed.

Michael Fischer, Founder, Elite HRT

Promote Voice-Search-Friendly Content

The new generations of online users undoubtedly depend more and more on voice searches to get what they want on the internet. 

In 2023, they will just as easily pass on this habit to other generations of users, too. As voice searches gain even more traction, creating content that supports these searches will be crucial. 

From Google Assistant to Amazon Alexa, people are asking questions in their long form to seek information and navigate online. Only if your content responds to these questions can your SEO provide a winning user experience. 

Content generation roadmaps will increasingly cater to this new era of voice searches in the new year.

Riley Beam, Managing Attorney, Douglas R. Beam, P.A.

Remember RankBrain

It’s no surprise that Google employs an AI system called RankBrain to help with the ordering and prioritization of search results. Although the technology has been around since 2015, it is constantly being improved upon. 

When 2023 rolls along, we expect it will be smarter and more perceptive than ever before. RankBrain’s ability to interpret a user’s query and return results that are pertinent to that query will improve. This means that in the coming months, quality writing and material that applies to your audience will be more important than ever if you want your website to rank high.

As always, prioritize providing a pleasant user experience, as this is something that will grow in significance for RankBrain and other Google AIs.

Gerrid Smith, Chief Marketing Officer, Joy Organics

Prioritize Google Discover

When you launch the Google app on your phone, do you see a stream of suggested reading? That’s Google Discover, and it’s a terrific method to get your material in front of potential buyers. 

Discover is a curated feed of information tailored to you based on your location, search history, and preferred websites. It’s been around for a while, but until recently, it flew under the radar of search engine optimization professionals. Due ‌to Google’s renewed dedication to providing an excellent user experience, Google Discover is poised to become a formidable force in digital marketing by 2023.

If you want your material to be viewed by potential customers in 2023, you need to optimize it for Google Discover. Specifically, your content needs to have Schema Markup, a narrow focus, high click-through rates, and fast loading times in order to be included in Discover.

Edward Mellett, Co-Founder, Wikijob

Use Structured Data on Your Website

Structured data is a type of code that helps search engines understand website content. For example, it can help search engines identify product information and display it in rich snippets. 

Structured data is becoming increasingly important for SEO, as search engines use it to better understand what a website is about and rank websites with relevant content higher on SERPs. 

In 2023, structured data will become even more vital for businesses looking to improve their visibility on SERPs. As such, companies should ensure they properly optimize their websites with structured data to stay competitive in the digital world.

Demi Yilmaz, Co-Founder, Colonist.io

Publish Long-Form Content 

When you look at the top-ranking pages on Google for strong search queries, nearly all of them are long-form content exceeding 2000 words. Because businesses that want to stay competitive in SEO need to follow the trends and algorithm moves that perform well, that trend is likely to carry into 2023. 

This makes it more important than ever to consistently publish high-quality, long-form content on your site to stay relevant.

Rachel Roff, Founder & CEO, Urban Skin Rx

“What are the best strategies for optimizing content for voice search? “

Focus on Conversational Content and Use Natural Phrases 

The best strategy for optimizing content for voice search is to focus on conversational and question keywords. It’s not that you shouldn’t use short-tail keywords, but they make your content far less relevant in the case of voice searches.

Your content should contain natural phrases. This is because people tend to ask entire questions when using voice search devices rather than putting in short-tail keywords. Thus, you should add conversational keywords to your content for voice search optimization.

Jay Bats, Co-Founder, ContentBASE

Think locally 

We are moving toward a world where people and gadgets are both mobile. As a result, it’s crucial to keep in mind that mobile and local are intertwined, particularly in voice search. Users of mobile devices can do local searches while on the move. Users can then ask local inquiries via voice search.

Make sure your website’s XML sitemaps and directions to physical places are viewable by both visitors and search engines. Create various user experiences for desktop and mobile users as well. For instance, it’s important to tailor “near me” content for mobile searches.

Muskan Rai, Content Writer, HostingRevelations

Optimize Your Content for Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are the boxes that appear at the top of SERP results when people search on Google. They provide a summary of information about a particular topic and include a link to a page that provides more detailed information.

When optimizing your content for voice search, your goal should be to get one of these featured snippets so that your website is the first thing people see when they perform a search. To achieve this, you need to create quality content that provides concise answers to questions related to the topic you are writing about. This way, Google will be able to recognize the quality of your work and feature it in its featured snippets.

Todd Saunders, General Manager, BIG Safety

Cultivate a Consumer-Focused Approach

It’s essential to always keep your consumer at the forefront of your focus when optimizing any kind of content. The only way to effectively target your approach is by gaining a deep understanding of your intended consumer.

It’s vital to understand how your specific audience engages with voice search and voice-enabled devices, in order to deliver an experience that is tailored to their needs. It’s also essential to consider their journey and to provide compelling content which meets their needs in a consistent and satisfactory manner.

Consider the common questions being asked by your particular consumers, and make the search process as smooth, simple, and streamlined as possible. Ensure that results are clear, concise, and cohesive, in order to promote maximum consumer satisfaction.

By maintaining a focus on delivering the best possible service to your specific clientele, you will increase your chances of success.

Alex Mastin, CEO and Founder, Home Grounds

Optimize For the Mobile Experience

The success of your website in terms of SEO and voice search optimization depends heavily on the mobile experience. Google revealed how the mobile experience directly affects your website’s ranking. The considerable rise in mobile users has made it so that we should focus on these users over those who use a desktop computer.

Voice-search on mobile requires more thought than for other platforms, as you need to consider that users will have to navigate smaller screens, so all of your text and image elements need to be easily readable. Because of this, your webpage also needs to be responsive and information needs to be concise yet informative.

Having a voice search feature on your website can be a great way to help with navigation. For us, we have a lot of different types of content, so allowing customers to speak can save them a lot of time.”

Aiden Higgins, Senior Editor and Writer, The Broke Backpacker

Don’t Use Homonyms as Keywords

Avoid homonyms as keywords. When you’re trying to optimize for voice search, it’s important to foresee and avoid the predictable issues that can come up with similar-sounding words.

Voice search has come a long way, but it’s still easy for the tech to misunderstand which variant of a word you’re using if it sounds very comparable — or even identical — to the one you want. To minimize the likelihood of this problem impacting you, optimize your content by avoiding easy-to-confuse words.

Brian Munce, Managing Director, Gestalt Brand Lab

Equip Your Site With Schema Markups

Equipping your site with schema markups is one of the quickest ways to win the steaming voice search contest.

Search engines like Google love Schema because of how simple it presents your site content, giving them a larger context to the pile of information housed on your site, particularly educating search engines on the content intent and the audience you target.

You may say search engines have gotten exponentially intelligent and intuitive in detecting intent. But they would still appreciate some help from you, the website owner.

The HTML add-on (thanks to Schema) makes it easier for Google to segment the information and rank it accordingly for voice-related queries.

So instead of having to rigorously crawl your web pages for voice queries, Google can more rapidly (and accurately) lift the information from your Schema markup.

Lotus Felix, CEO, Lotusbrains Studio

Adopt Multiple Voice Search Languages

Make your content available in other voice search languages besides English to cater to your international audiences.

Voice search technology often requires people to speak a specific language clearly, which can be challenging for those with accents. If they are conversing in English and are not fluent enough, the voice assistant won’t understand them, or it will process what they said but provide a different answer.

This situation can be frustrating for many who wish to save time searching online but can’t get exactly the information they need. However, when you make the content available in Spanish, Mandarin, French, Hindi, etc., there’s a high chance of expanding your market. This, in turn, allows you to optimize your content and go above your conversion target.

Sam Tabak, Board Member, RMBH Charities

Use Structured Data

One of the best things you can do to optimize your content for voice search is to use structured data. This code helps search engines understand the context of your content and makes it easier for them to generate rich results. As a result, your content is more likely to be featured in voice search results, which can help you attract more traffic.

In addition, using structured data can also help you improve your click-through rate, as users are more likely to click on results that are relevant to their query. So if you’re looking to optimize your content for voice search, using structured data is a best practice that you should definitely follow.

Ludovic Chung-Sao, Lead Engineer & Founder, Zen Soundproof

Target Questions Having Long-tail Keywords

As more and more people adopt voice search, it’s important for businesses to optimize their content for this new way of searching. One key strategy for doing so is to focus on natural language keywords (aka questions having long-tail keywords).

People tend to speak in full sentences or questions when using voice search, so including long-tail keywords that reflect this type of speech will help your content to be more easily found.

In addition, it’s important to ensure that your content is easy to read aloud; remember that users are likely to be skimming rather than reading word for word. Breaking up your text into shorter paragraphs and using clear headings can help make your content more voice search-friendly.

Ram Thakur, Founder, Solution Suggest

Check Flesch–Kincaid Readability Score

Voice search queries are typically short and casual. People expect to get a fast answer, so if your content is wordy and difficult to read, it may not be optimized for voice search.

Check the Flesch–Kincaid readability score to ensure your content is readable enough. The Flesch–Kincaid score measures the readability of a text, with higher scores representing passages that are easier to understand. By keeping your content reader-friendly, you can ensure that your content is better suited for voice search.

Burak Özdemir, Founder, Online Alarm Kur

Use Voice Search Yourself to Understand How It Works

One of the best ways to optimize your content for voice search is to just use voice search yourself. Think about what people might ask your company by voice search. Then, answer those questions in your content. If you don’t have a website, you can use Google My Business or Bing Local to get started.

For example, if you’re a bakery, some potential search queries might be “What are the best desserts in town?” or “Where can I get cheesecake?” You could then use these questions as inspiration for your content.

When writing, always remember that when people use voice commands on their phones or other devices, they want to get quick answers and helpful information—so avoid long-winded paragraphs or flowery language.

Vishakha Somani, Assistant Marketing Manager, WFX

Know Your Audience

Voice search has become increasingly popular and prevalent over the past few years. This is due, in part, to the surge in digital assistants, such as Siri and Alexa. Studies suggest that the majority of consumers now prefer to verbally ask a question, instead of typing it, so it’s essential to optimize your offerings to accommodate this.

To succeed, you must know your audience. Different people will have different voice search requirements, depending on the device, context, and purpose. Understanding who your consumer is, and how they engage with content on each particular device, will help you to tailor your approach accordingly. Smartphones may be used for more basic queries, for instance, whereas smart speakers are often used for more in-depth questions.

Do thorough research. Once you have the right data, you can use it to segment your audience, and further enhance their user experience. This will enable you to optimize your voice search content to meet their specific consumer needs.

Ana Codallo, CTO, Key Opinion Leaders

Understand your audience

The first step is to understand your audience, competitors, and market. This will help you to develop a strategy for marketing your business online.

You’ll need to know who your target audience is and how they behave and shop online. You can do this by asking the following questions: Do they use social media? How much time do they spend on different platforms? Which search engine(s) do they use the most frequently? Do they prefer mobile or desktop devices? 

These are all important questions that can be answered through research conducted in your specific industry or niche market. Once you have this information it will be easier for you to engage with potential customers in an effective way that converts traffic into sales leads or actual sales transactions.

Audit your current website and content

Before you can improve your SEO, you have to understand what’s already in place. This means performing a full audit of your website and its content.

Your website audit should include:

• An analysis of the quality of pages on your site
• A review of your internal linking structure and external links (do they point to relevant sources?)
• The number of keywords you’re targeting, and where those keywords appear in the page (are they used naturally, or are they stuffed into meta tags?)
• Your social media presence and engagement

Research the right keywords

The first step in any SEO marketing strategy is to do keyword research. The right keywords will help you drive qualified traffic, generate leads, and improve your organic rankings.

As the world of SEO continues to evolve, SMBs need to stay up-to-date with the latest best practices to compete against larger brands that have more resources at their disposal. While there are many aspects of SEO that come into play when working on an online marketing strategy for your business, finding the right keywords can be the most important piece of the puzzle.

Work on technical SEO

You can’t afford to ignore technical SEO when it comes to the small business market. The best way to get started on technical SEO is to make use of headings and subheadings, bold text, keywords in the title, meta description, and URL.

The first thing you should do is create a hierarchy through your headings. This involves using H1s for titles and subtitles where appropriate. You should also add a few H2s (subheads) within each piece of content so that users can quickly scan through what they need to know. If you have more than one piece of content on the same subject matter using different formats, try to create an outline with tags indicating which type of content each section will be in. This will allow users who are searching for specific types of information to find what they need more easily without having to scroll through multiple pages looking for something similar but not quite identical in style or tone.

Use a SaaS SEO agency to get better results

A SaaS SEO agency is the best option for SaaS SMBs who want to grow their businesses and gain search visibility for their products, services, and websites. They have access to a large network of websites with high-quality content that they can share your website link on. This ensures that your website gets the much-needed boost in traffic from various sources including social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc., blogs & forums related to your niche business.

And with an SMB or startup budget in mind, going with a SaaS SEO package is a start so that you don’t have to worry about costs once the initial investment is made.

For those who don’t know what it is, it’s essentially a group of signals indicating the level of user experience (UX) with a specific web page. And as a result, it intends to bring about a much better experience with the prioritization of websites that provide the desired performance—from a stable, non-shifting page to quicker loading times.

With so many people who rely on the Google search engine for all the information, products, and services they look for online, it’s imperative to optimize your online domain for the update, or you’ll miss out on generating leads and conversions. To this end, here are a few tips that should help you out.

Ensure That Your Web Pages Load Quickly

Image source: pexels.com

The largest contentful paint, or LCP for short, is the first of its Core Web Vitals (CWVs). As its name implies, it refers to the most significant piece of content within a web page. It’s a metric that determines just how quickly a specific page renders its most vital digital material so that users can see it.

Loading speed is an easy area to overlook, but thankfully, it’s simple to address. For starters, you can limit or compress the elements of your website that could be slowing it down, like videos and images.

Using a CDN or content delivery network is another way to speed up the site since these worldwide networks of servers will enable you to store and immediately duplicate its static elements. But if all else fails, it’s worth considering another hosting plan because your existing one may not be sufficient. It may sound simple but don’t underestimate loading time—it can aid you in adhering to Google Page Experience guidelines.

Enhance Website Interactivity

Another CWV in the Page Experience is the first input delay (FID). It’s essentially the amount of time it takes before users begin interacting with the web page.

In the eyes of Google, this period should be no more than 100 ms. The good news is that there are tools that can give you an idea of how your website is performing, like PageSpeed Insights.

However, it also involves a fair bit of website development, so you may need to hire a web developer or a digital marketing company.

Address the Layout Shift

Last but not least of the CWVs is the cumulative layout shift or CLS, which measures how much the web page’s content moves around as it loads. You’ve likely experienced clicking on a button while the site is still in the process of loading, only to accidentally choose something else because the intended element was suddenly moved to another area of the page. This can be frustrating and lead to bad UX, which is why this is an essential CWV element.

Your score must be 0.1 to pass this metric. If it’s higher than that, there’s a chance that your web pages will be shifting around a bit. There are several reasons why this can happen, from the browser being unable to understand visual spacing elements without dimensions to the font causing jarring changes. The key is to explore what is causing your shifts in layout and resolve the problems individually.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of things to take in when it comes to Page Experience and the Core Web Vitals. It all boils down to enhancing the user’s experience.

So if you haven’t done it yet, make sure that you start optimizing your website. It will allow you to attract more traffic and keep people engaged. Alternatively, you can work with an SEO agency to fast-track this task for you.