Advanced Hack: How to Improve Your SEO in Less Than 30 Minutes

I’ve been testing a new SEO hack and it works no matter how old or how new your site is.

Heck, you can have barely any links, and I’ve found it to work as well.

Best of all, unlike most SEO changes, it doesn’t take months or years to see results from this… you can literally see results in less than 30 minutes.

And here’s what’s crazy: I had my team crawl 10,000 sites to see how many people are leveraging this SEO technique and it was only 17.

In other words, your competition doesn’t know about this yet!

So what is this hack that I speak of?

Google’s ever-changing search results

Not only is Google changing its algorithm on a regular basis, but they also test out new design elements.

For example, if you search for “food near me”, you’ll not only see a list of restaurants but you also see their ratings.

And if you look up a person, Google may show you a picture of that person and a quick overview.

Over the years, Google has adapted its search results to give you the best experience. For example, if you search “2+2” Google will show you the answer of “4” so you don’t have to click through and head over to a webpage.

But you already know this.

Now, what’s new that no one is really using are FAQ-rich results and Answer Cards.

Here’s what I mean… if you search “digital marketing” you’ll see that I rank on Google. But my listing doesn’t look like most people’s…

As you can see from the image above, Google has pulled FAQ rich results from my site.

And best of all, I was able to pull it off in less than 30 minutes. That’s how quickly Google picked it up and adjusted their SERP listing.

Literally all within 30 minutes.

And you can do the same thing through Answer Cards anytime you have pages related to question and answers.

So how can you do this?

Picking the right markup

Before we get this going with your site, you have to pick the right schema markup.

FAQpage schema is used when you offer a Frequently Asked Question page or have a product page that contains frequently asked questions about the product itself. This will let you be eligible for a collapsible menu under your SERP with the question, that when clicked on, reveals the answer.

It can also let you be eligible for FAQ Action that is shown on Google Assistant. This can potentially help get you noticed by people using voice search to find out an answer!

Q&A schema is used when people are contributing different types of answers and can vote for which answer they think is the best. This will provide the rich result cads under your SERP and shows all the answers, with the top answer highlighted.

After making sure you understand what these are used for, Google also has additional guidelines on when you can and can’t use these schema’s for:

Google’s guidelines

Google has a list of FAQpage schema guidelines.

Only use FAQPage if your page has a list of questions with answers. If your page has a single question and users can submit alternative answers, use QAPage instead. Here are some examples:

Valid use cases:

• An FAQ page was written by the site itself with no way for users to submit alternative answers
• A product support page that lists FAQs with no way for users to submit alternative answers 

Invalid use cases:

• A forum page where users can submit answers to a single question
• A product support page where users can submit answers to a single question
• A product page where users can submit multiple questions and answers on a single page
• Don’t use FAQPagefor advertising purposes
• Make sure each Questionincludes the entire text of the question and make sure each answer includes the entire text of the answer. The entire question text and answer text may be displayed.
• Question and answer content may not be displayed as a rich result if it contains any of the following types of content: obscene, profane, sexually explicit, graphically violent, promotion of dangerous or illegal activities, or hateful or harassing language.
• All FAQcontent must be visible to the user on the source page.

And here are the guidelines for Q&A schema:

Only use the QAPage markup if your page has information in a question and answer format, which is one question followed by its answers.

Users must be able to submit answers to the question. Don’t use QAPage markup for content that has only one answer for a given question with no way for users to add alternative answers; instead, use FAQPage. Here are some examples:

Valid use cases:

• A forum page where users can submit answers to a single question
• A product support page where users can submit answers to a single question 

Invalid use cases:

• An FAQ page was written by the site itself with no way for users to submit alternative answers
• A product page where users can submit multiple questions and answers on a single page
• A how-to guide that answers a question
• A blog post that answers a question
• An essay that answers a question
• Don’t apply QAPagemarkup to all pages on a site or forum if not all the content is eligible. For example, a forum may have lots of questions posted, which are individually eligible for the markup. However, if the forum also has pages that are not questions, those pages are not eligible.
• Don’t use QAPagemarkup for FAQ pages or pages where there are multiple questions per page. QAPagemarkup is for pages where the focus of the page is a single question and its answers.
• Don’t use QAPagemarkup for advertising purposes.
• Make sure each Questionincludes the entire text of the question and make sure each Answer includes the entire text of the answer.
• Answermarkup is for answers to the question, not for comments on the question or comments on other answers. Don’t mark up non-answer comments as an answer.
• Question and answer content may not be displayed as a rich result if it contains any of the following types of content: obscene, profane, sexually explicit, graphically violent, promotion of dangerous or illegal activities, or hateful or harassing language.

If your content meets these guidelines, the next step is to figure out how to implement the schema onto your website and which type to use.

How do I implement Schema and which to use? 

There are two ways to implement it… either through JSON-LD or Microdata.

I recommend choosing one style and sticking to it throughout your webpage, and I also recommend not using both types on the same page.

JSON-LD is what Google recommends wherever possible and Google has been in the process of adding support for markup-powered features. JSON-LD can be implemented into the header of your content and can take very little time to implement.

The other option is Microdata, which involves coding elements into your website. This can be a challenging process for some odd reason, I prefer it. Below are examples of how each work.

FAQpage Schema JSON-LD:

<html>

<head>

<title>Digital Marketing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) – Neil Patel</title>

</head>

<body>

<script type=”application/ld+json”>

{

“@context”: “https://ift.tt/2NfgAO9;,

“@type”: “FAQPage”,

“mainEntity”: [

{

“@type”: “Question”,

“name”: “What is digital marketing?”,

“acceptedAnswer”: {

“@type”: “Answer”,

“text”:”Digital marketing is any form of marketing products or services that involves electronic device”}

}]

}

</script>

</body>

</html>

FAQpage Schema Microdata:

<html itemscope itemtype=”https://ift.tt/2YqfNdK;>

<head>

<title>Digital Marketing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) – Neil Patel</title>

</head>

<body>

<div itemscope itemprop=”mainEntity” itemtype=”https://ift.tt/2K38SmB;>

<h3 itemprop=”name”>What is digital marketing?</h3>

<div itemscope itemprop=”acceptedAnswer” itemtype=”https://ift.tt/2YrIirz;>

<div itemprop=”text”>

<p>Digital marketing is any form of marketing products or services that involves electronic device.</p>

</div>

</div>

</div>

</body>

</html>

Q&A Schema JSON-LD:

{

“@context”: “https://ift.tt/2NfgAO9;,

“@type”: “QAPage”,

“mainEntity”: {

“@type”: “Question”,

“name”: “Can I tie my shoe with one hand?”,

“text”: “I currently have taken a hobby to do many actions with one hand and I’m currently stuck on how to tie a shoe with one hand. Is it possible to tie my shoe with one hand?”,

“answerCount”: 2,

“upvoteCount”: 20,

“dateCreated”: “2019-07-23T21:11Z”,

“author”: {

“@type”: “Person”,

“name”: “Expert at Shoes”

},

“acceptedAnswer”: {

“@type”: “Answer”,

“text”: “It is possible to tie your shoe with one hand by using your teeth to hold the other lace”,

“dateCreated”: “2019-11-02T21:11Z”,

“upvoteCount”: 9000,

“url”: “https://example.com/question1#acceptedAnswer”,

“author”: {

“@type”: “Person”,

“name”: “AnotherShoeMan”

}

},

“suggestedAnswer”: [

{

“@type”: “Answer”,

“text”: “It is not possible to tie your shoe with one hand”,

“dateCreated”: “2019-11-02T21:11Z”,

“upvoteCount”: 2,

“url”: “https://example.com/question1#suggestedAnswer1”,

“author”: {

“@type”: “Person”,

“name”: “Best Shoe Man”

}

}

]

}

}

Q&A Schema Microdata:

<div itemprop=”mainEntity” itemscope itemtype=”https://ift.tt/2K38SmB;>

<h2 itemprop=”name”>Can I tie my shoe with one hand?</h2>

<div itemprop=”upvoteCount”>20</div>

<div itemprop=”text”>I currently have taken a hobby to do many actions with one hand and I’m currently stuck on how to tie a shoe with one hand. Is it possible to tie my shoe with one hand?</div>

<div>asked <time itemprop=”dateCreated” datetime=”2019-07-23T21:11Z”>July 23’19 at 21:11</time></div>

<div itemprop=”author” itemscope itemtype=”https://ift.tt/2K75yY1

itemprop=”name”>Expert at Shoes</span></div>

<div>

<div><span itemprop=”answerCount”>2</span> answers</div>

<div><span itemprop=”upvoteCount”>20</span> votes</div>

<div itemprop=”acceptedAnswer” itemscope itemtype=”https://ift.tt/2YrIirz;>

<div itemprop=”upvoteCount”>9000</div>

<div itemprop=”text”>

It is possible to tie your shoe with one hand by using your teeth to hold the other lace.

</div>

<a itemprop=”url” href=”https://example.com/question1#acceptedAnswer”>Answer Link</a>

<div>answered <time itemprop=”dateCreated” datetime=”2019-11-02T22:01Z”>Nov 2 ’19 at 22:01</time></div>

<div itemprop=”author” itemscope itemtype=”https://ift.tt/2K75yY1 itemprop=”name”>AnotherShoeMan</span></div>

</div>

<div itemprop=”suggestedAnswer” itemscope itemtype=”https://ift.tt/2YrIirz;>

<div itemprop=”upvoteCount”>2</div>

<div itemprop=”text”>

It is not possible to tie your shoe with one hand

</div>

<a itemprop=”url” href=”https://example.com/question1#suggestedAnswer1″>Answer Link</a>

<div>answered <time itemprop=”dateCreated”datetime=”2019-11-02T21:11Z”>Nov 2 ’19 at 21:11</time></div>

<div itemprop=”author” itemscope itemtype=”https://ift.tt/2K75yY1

itemprop=”name”>Best Shoe Man</span></div>

</div>

</div>

</div>

When you are implementing it on your website, feel free and just use the templates above and modify them with your content.

If you are unsure if your code is correctly implemented or not, use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool and you can add your code snippet or the page that you implemented the schema on and it will tell you if you did it right or wrong.

Plus it will give you feedback on if there are any errors or issues with your code.

You can also try Google’s Rich Result Tester. This will give you a brief look at how your structured data will look like in the results!

Getting results in under 30 minutes

Once you make the changes to any page that you think is a good fit, you’ll want to log into Google Search Console and enter the URL of the page you modified in the top search bar.

You’ll then want to have Google crawl that page so they can index the results. All you have to do is click “request indexing”.

And typically within 10 minutes, you’ll notice it kick in and when you perform a Google search you’ll see your updated listing.

Now the key to making this work is to do this with pages and terms that already rank on page 1. That’s where I’ve seen the biggest improvement.

Will Schema get me to rank for People Also Ask and Featured Snippets?

Will this help with People Also Ask and Featured Snippets? So far, there has been no correlation between schema markup and People Also Ask or Featured Snippets and you do not need them to be featured in them.

Optimizing your content for this will not hurt you though and can potentially improve your chances to be on here.

Google has been testing out how they can show these types of Q&A, FAQ, and How-To results and looking at structured data to help understand them.

It’s better to be early to the game and help Google understand your pages, as well as possibly participating in any of Google’s experiments.

Will this get me on voice search?

With more and more people using mobile devices to find answers to questions, this is a very relevant question!

Especially considering that over half of the searches on Google will be from voice search in the near future.

Answers from voice search get most of their answers from featured snippets.

And adding structured data on your website increases the chances of getting you into featured snippets, which increases the chance of you getting featured on voice search.

Conclusion

This simple hack can potentially increase the visibility of your brand and help improve the authority of your website. It’s a simple solution that can take a single day to implement across your main question, product, or FAQ page.

I’ve been using it heavily for the last week or so and as long as I pick keywords that I already rank on page 1 for, I am seeing great results.

And as I mentioned above, when my team analyzed 10,000 sites we only found 17 to be using FAQ and QA schema. In other words, less than 1% of the sites are using this, which means you if you take advantage now, you’ll have the leg up on your competition.

So what do you think about this tactic? Are you going to use it?

The post Advanced Hack: How to Improve Your SEO in Less Than 30 Minutes appeared first on Neil Patel.

The Definitive Guide to Mobile Deep Linking

The average consumer is spending five hours per day on their smartphones and this number is only going up.

We do everything on our phones these days, from shopping to browsing social media and managing our businesses.

This is why it’s more important than ever to optimize the user experience to keep people on your app for longer periods, enjoying it more, and sharing it with friends.

If you’re trying to optimize your mobile app, I’m sure you’ve already tinkered with the layout, fonts, copy, and more, but there’s one thing you probably haven’t…

Mobile deep linking.

It’s a small detail that can drastically enhance how users engage with your app but few are taking advantage of it.

That’s why I’m going to be teaching you what mobile deep linking is, why you need it, and how you can implement it yourself.

Let’s dive in.

What is mobile deep linking, anyways?

Mobile deep linking is the practice of funneling users deeper into your app through the use of a uniform resource identifier or URI for short.

This allows mobile app developers to push to a specific page within an application versus simply opening it.

Think of it as a website URL.

If you were trying to sell a product, would you want users landing on the homepage or being forwarded to a sales page found deeper in the website?

The latter, of course.

By helping users go to a certain page within an app, you’re making the customer journey easier by getting them closer to the end goal sooner.

Here’s a visual of what the process looks like:

While it might seem simple, mobile linking comes in three different forms that you need to be aware of. They include the following:

Standard deep linking

This is the straightforward deep linking that forwards a user to a specific part of the app. It’s also known as universal linking.

It only works if the customer already has the app installed.

The problem is within traditional linking is that when a user clicks a link, it won’t open the mobile app, but rather directs them to the browser version.

If someone is on a mobile device, the app version will always be more optimized and streamlined.

Here’s what happens if you search for my Instagram on Google for example with the app installed.

The results appear to be the exact same whether you have the Instagram app or not, but clicking it opens up the app seamlessly.

This is a good example of basic deep linking. 

Someone that doesn’t have the Instagram mobile application installed will be given an error or redirected to a fallback page.

Deferred deep linking

This form of deep linking works the same way as standard linking does with the exception that it will direct users without the app to the download location.

This is beneficial because it can help app developers and companies acquire more customers.

Once the app is installed, the user will be referred to where they were originally navigating.

Check out the Skip The Dishes app to see what I mean.

While a user is creating their order, they are able to download the mobile app for Android or iOS.

They are forwarded back to the exact step they were taking, except in the mobile app after downloading it.

This means that they don’t have to manually go through the entire process again to get back to where they were.

Contextual deep linking

Contextual deep linking, also known as onboarding, is commonly used for gathering information on customers to personalize the user experience of an app.

Data such demographics, how users navigate to the app, and more is recorded.

The app onboarding process can be different depending on if the user installed via the Google Play Store, the Apple Store, a Facebook campaign, or another source.

A mobile app downloaded through a Facebook Ad might look different than when it’s downloaded through a Google Display Ad, for example.

The landing page is able to be customized through what is known as a deep view in mobile app development.

Just as the deep link forwards users to a specific deeper page in the application, the deep view is the visual result they see that’s different than others.

URI schemes

Deep linking is only doable thanks to what is known as URI schemes. These schemes are similar to how a website URL can direct you to a specific page on a website.

They look something like this:

See the fetched URI? Its format is appname://path/to/location.

Custom URIs are simple to set up for developers (Often created by default) and present the opportunity to redirect users wherever you please.

The mobile customer journey and how it applies to deep linking

The mobile buyer’s journey is the individual’s steps a user takes to find, use, and share your application.

It’s similar to the regular funnel a customer goes through when purchasing a product with some small differences you need to be aware of.

Here’s how the various steps in the mobile buyer’s journey can be applied to mobile deep linking.

Discovery

The first step in the mobile customer journey is discovering your app in the first place.

While this can be achieved through strategies like content marketing and SEO, deep linking gives you a nice boost to these tactics.

Google indexes deep links from mobile apps, giving you more opportunities to rank and drive organic traffic.

Users can click the search engine listing and open the link directly through the app instead of an internet browser.

Look at this search for Google Analytics to see what I mean:

This helps businesses acquire more users and increase brand awareness versus having a single search engine listing.

Check out my video on skyrocketing mobile app organic traffic, and pair it with deep linking for mind-blowing results.

Compare

Once a user has narrowed down a few options, they’re naturally going to want to find the best app by comparing them.

They’ll look at factors such as pricing, ease of use, and features. 

Deep linking enables you to push users to the best features of your app, reviews, or customize the experience to make your application better than competitors.

By reducing the number of steps it takes to get to important functions of the app, you’re also decreasing the chance of users bouncing.

Decision

The third step in the mobile buyer’s journey is making a decision and commitment to a single app.

Having a clear value proposition and refined user experience is crucial here. 

Better yet, contextual deep linking helps you collect data to make the application as tailored as possible to your buyer’s persona. 

Marketing campaigns can also be optimized with this information to improve targeting and performance.

Retain

Once you begin acquiring more users, you need to keep them.

Standard and deferred deep linking will help navigate users back to your app when they are on search engines, social media, and other platforms. 

This keeps them using your app more often.

Data that can be collected as a result of deep links will assist you in understanding why and how they use your mobile application.

Doubling down on these is what we call Pareto’s Principle or the 80/20 rule.

This rule can be seen everywhere and defines that 80% of results come from 20% of actions.

In the case of mobile app development, you might discover that users are only engaging with a few features and others are taking up space.

You could hypothetically update the features and pages that are used the most, boosting engagement and retention.

Businesses will miss out on discovers like this if they don’t use deep links to collect information.

Why mobile deep linking matters

I know what you’re thinking.

“Why should I bother with mobile deep linking?”

Let me explain.

It improves the user experience

If you can save the user from going through multiple steps instead of one, why wouldn’t you?

That’s exactly what deep linking does, and improves UX because of it.

You’re making the life of users easier by using deep linking to get them where they want to go faster.

This gives them a better experience and impression with your app as a result.

Here’s what the difference between not using mobile deep linking and taking advantage of it looks like:

Much simpler, right?

This brings me to my next point.

It increases customer retention and engagement

Wouldn’t it be nice if every user that downloaded your app stay active all year round?

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

It’s been found that 55% of users will churn after the first month of use. That means nearly half of the new downloads will be lost.

Look at mobile app user retention the same way you approach a website.

It’s common for nearly half of all visitors to leave a website and not take any action.

Do you just sit there and do nothing about it? Of course not!

You implement strategies like email options through popups and exclusive content to capture those users before they leave.

This is precisely what deep linking can be used for but in the sense for a mobile app.

Once a user has visited your app, you can retarget them and use a different style of deep linking to improve their experience.

It improves the onboarding of new users

When a mobile app uses a form of deep linking like the deferred approach, you are capable of acquiring more users.

This is because as a user goes through the mobile browser version of your application, they will be given the option or automatically forwarded to the appropriate download location.

The contextual linking technique can be used to onboard new users in different ways depending on where they originally download the app from.

If you understand that users coming from a Facebook ad campaign regularly navigate to a certain product category, you can push them there automatically.

Furthermore, perhaps users from Google like to learn more about your business first before purchasing.

You can use contextual deep linking to direct those users to the page detailing your company’s history.

You can re-engage users

Once a user has used your app, you have a small window of opportunity to retarget them.

Did you know that 46% of search engine marketers believe that retargeting is the most underused form of marketing right now?

It’s a hidden gem that deep linking enhances.

If a segment of users downloaded your app, viewed product pages, and bounced, you could retarget them in advertising campaigns and use deferred linking to forward them back to the high-interest product pages.

Strengthens your marketing

Personalization is key. Contextual deep linking allows you to customize the user experience, which improves marketing results.

Take into consideration that 39% of consumers will spend more money when given a mobile coupon.

You could collect data on users via contextual deep linking to discover what product categories they enjoy the most, then offer a discount for them to align with this behavior.

Similarly, mobile deep linking has the potential to increase conversion rates.

This is because you are pushing users through the sales funnel quicker. Normally this consists of:

1. The user lands on the homepage of your website.
2. They navigate to a product page and add a line item to their cart.
3. They visit the cart page to confirm their order.
4. Finally, they pay and check out.

Mobile deep linking can effectively cut the sales funnel in half by helping customers go straight to sales pages.

Take the ticket mobile app SeatGeek as an example. They were able to increase revenue by 10.6% and app open rate by 8.8% with deep linking.

Here’s how…

Firstly, they struggled with reminding users to finish their purchases and buy tickets through the app.

They resolved this issue by using deep linked mobile ads. These target ads based on past user activity would display relevant ads in other existing apps the customer used.

SeatGeek noticed that they were getting thousands of new users per day and had to keep them.

Their team began creating ads that would serve different audiences based on previous behavior.

An example of this would be a user adding tickets to their favorite basketball team’s game to cart, but then abandoning before checking out.

When this user was on another application that supported ads, they would see an advertisement for that same basketball game.

The ads were simple in nature, using a related image, and straight forward call to action.

Boosts app discoverability

Don’t you want to get discovered by more customers?

Of course, you do!

And that’s precisely why you need to implement more deep linking in your mobile app.

Deep links are indexed on Google, giving you more opportunities to rank and drive traffic to your business.

And seeing as Google receives over four billion searches per day, you don’t want to miss out on the free exposure.

Think about how a website like mine ranks for thousands of pages, and not just the homepage.

You can achieve that same performance but for your mobile app.

Users on search engines like Google will be able to visit deeper functions and features versus landing on the welcome page.

This creates the opportunity to optimize applications for SEO via keywords, meta descriptions, and title tags, as well.

Provides analytics and insight into campaigns

Mobile deep linking allows you to refine your buyer’s persona and better understand their behavior.

This information can be used to improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and the overall experience of your app.

You will also be able to discover which links are being clicked the most and by whom.

Doing so creates the opportunity to double down on the best-performing links and optimizing who you target in advertising campaigns.

Deep links also shine light in which parts of your app are used the most and which aren’t.

Google offers its Firebase product to track deep linking in an easy to use platform.

You can begin using it by selecting the Android, iOS, C++, web, or Unity options.

Using Android as an example, you will need to ensure that you meet the prerequisites Google outlines in their documentation.

Firebase’s SDK automatically captures various metrics, user properties, and allows you to create custom events if you wish to track a specific action.

This data is then relayed through the Firebase dashboard which has a very familiar look and feel to other Google products.

You will feel right at home if you’ve ever used Google Analytics.

Which by the way can be connected to Firebase if you need to add events specific to your business like e-commerce purchases.

How to perform mobile deep linking

Now that you’re excited to get started using mobile deep links, here’s how to implement it yourself.

Deep linking on Android

Android devices will select one of three options when a URI is requested:

1. It opens a preselected app with the URI.
2. It opens the only available app that can handle the URI.
3. The user is prompted to choose an available app.

To begin adding deep links to achieve this, you will need to navigate to the AndroidManifest.xml file of your Android mobile app.

You will then have to add the following elements to the file through an intent filter:

• Specify the ACTION_VIEW attribute in the <action> element.
• <data> tags which include the URI scheme, host, and path.
• CATEGORY_DEFAULT and CATEGORY_BROWSABLE attributes to move users from a browser to your app.

Here’s an example from Android’s official documentation on deep linking of what the code will look like:

The second step is to ensure that your app can read data from the intent filter you created.

This is achieved through adding getData() and getAction() methods like so:

Deep links should not require users to log in or perform other actions to visit the desired content unless desired like in the case of promoting app downloads through deferred linking.

iOS

Adding deep links to iOS apps begins by enabling them through what is known as Associated Domains Entitlement.

That’s a fancy way to say you’re letting search engines know what app belongs to what website.

This way when a user clicks on your website, it activates the specified type of deep linking you choose.

You will then have to add an Apple App Site Association file to your website to verify it.

This association file needs to contain the following code, as you can see from Apple’s official documentation:

Similar to how Android apps have the manifest file, the app delegate file acts as the root of iOS apps.

This is why you will have to program your app delegate file to respond to deep links like Apple shows in this example:

They are specifically handled through the NSUserActivity object and activityType value of NSUserActivityTypeBrowsingWeb.

Your iOS app will be prepared to handle and accept users that navigate to it from browsers like Safari after you complete these steps.

Conclusion

Mobile deep linking is a powerful technique to improve the user experience, on-boarding, and marketing of applications.

The three types of mobile deep linking are standard, deferred, and contextual. It’s important to understand each of these to know when to use them properly.

Standard deep linking is used when customers already have an app installed. When they click on a mobile link, it will give them the option to open it in the app or automatically.

Deferred deep linking works by forwarding users to the appropriate app store to download the app if they don’t have it, then pushing them to the originally intended page.

Contextual linking is the most complicated but allows developers to collection information on users to customize the on-boarding and overall experience of the app.

Mobile deep linking can be implemented in each step of the buyer’s journey to acquire and retain users, too.

How do you use deep linking to improve mobile app performance?

The post The Definitive Guide to Mobile Deep Linking appeared first on Neil Patel.

How to Track and Improve Your Rankings Without Spending Money

Can you guess how most people improve their rankings?

Well, they either hire an SEO firm, which is expensive, or they do it themselves, which is time-consuming.

There must be a better solution, right?

One that still gets results, doesn’t take as much time and doesn’t cost any money.

Well, I’m about to make a major upgrade to Ubersuggest in the next 30 days that will help you do just this.

And before I release it, I need your feedback… so let me know what you think.

Here’s what I am thinking of doing to help you get better rankings in less time and without spending money.

SEO starts with good data

The first thing I want to do is help you track your results so you can see what’s working and what isn’t.

Currently, with Ubersuggest, there is no way to track your progress, but I am about to change that.

First, I plan to create a dashboard that looks something like this:

You’ll be able to see your site, how much organic search traffic you get on a monthly basis, the keywords you rank for, how many backlinks you have, and any website errors you need to fix.

And on a weekly basis, we will automatically run your site through our site audit report to show you what’s wrong and if you are improving.

This way, you don’t continually have to check your site or look for opportunities. Instead, you’ll be notified when you need to fix something.

In addition to that, you’ll be able to start tracking your rankings for any keyword you want.

Rank tracking

From your dashboard, you can click on a profile and see where you rank for any given term on both mobile and desktop devices and in any country or city.

If you have specific keywords that you want to track, you’ll be able to manually add them to do so. And if you aren’t sure which keywords to track, you’ll see a list of suggestions as well.

And if you want to track those rankings in a specific city or country, you can also do that…

My favorite part about the report is that you can easily see your rankings over time. Not just from an overall site perspective but also from a keyword level.

Conclusion

Now, this is where I need your help.

My goal is twofold… the first is to help you track how your SEO is doing and the second is to tell you what to fix.

Here’s why I am trying to accomplish both of those things:

• Track your progress for you – it’s too much work to track on a daily basis if your efforts are going in the right or wrong direction. The new Ubersuggest will track your rankings for you on a daily basis. That way you don’t have to do it. And if Google updates their algorithm, you will see what’s happening in real-time.
• Tell you what to fix – instead of you having to hunt down what you should fix, I will simply send you alerts and reports with step-by-step instructions on how to fix what needs improvements. And if you or someone on your team updates your site, no worries, because every week I will automatically recrawl your site and tell you if there are more errors you need to fix.

Eventually, I want to even automate most of link building, but that isn’t ready yet.

Is there anything else I can add to the reports to make your life easier? Is there anything I can change to make it easier for you to get higher rankings?

PS: If you haven’t checked out Ubersuggest recently you should. We’ve made a lot of improvements to it over the last few months.

PPS: These features will be free of course. 😉

The post How to Track and Improve Your Rankings Without Spending Money appeared first on Neil Patel.

How to Rank Your Old, Outdated Content

What percentage of your search traffic is driven by your top 10 pages?

Chances are, it’s a large portion.

Just look at the screenshot below. You’ll see that my top 10 pages drive 28.7% of my search traffic.

That may not seem like a high number, but I have 5,441 blog posts. In other words, 0.1% of my pages make up 28.7% of my search traffic.

Typically, with smaller sites, the percentages are much higher in which the top 10 pages make up the majority of their search traffic.

So, what does that tell you?

You should just focus on your top 10 pages and ignore the rest? Or, even worse, just focus on cranking out more new content?

Quality over quantity

I used to have the philosophy of “more is better.” I was cranking out dozens of articles each week. At one point, I was publishing 2 articles a day on this blog.

And, over time, my traffic grew, but not by much.

I was spending all of this time writing and realized that the majority of the content I was publishing never ranked.

So, what did I do?

I started focusing on my old, outdated content to boost my traffic.

Just think of it this way: Every week I publish one new piece of content, but my team, on average, is updating 23 older articles.

When I used to write more frequently, my top 10 pages made up 33% of my search traffic.

Since then, I have increased my search traffic by 107% and reduced my reliance on my top 10 pages by 13%.

So how did I do this? Well, as I mentioned, I have my team focus on updating my old, outdated content while I focus on creating new content.

Here’s exactly what I have my team implement, step by step.

Look for pages that were once loved

With Google Search Console, you have access to data for a much longer period of time. You can go back up to 16 months.

So, I want you to compare this month’s results during the same period as last year.

You can do this by clicking on “date” and then “compare.” Next, select your older date period first (should be roughly from a year ago) and then select today’s date period.

I’ve been doing this for a while, so I selected an older date range so you can see a better set of data before my team really focused on updating old content.

You should then see a report that looks something like this:

What you’ll want to do is look for articles that used to get a ton of traffic and have less now. From the screenshot above, you can see that my article on Instagram used to perform really well, but no so much anymore.

Keep in mind that I selected the older date range first. I did this to see which of my old pieces of content used to rank well so I can see if any of them have dropped over the last 12 months.

This will show you old content that Google used to love, but no longer does.

Now, let’s find content that Google never loved.

Look for pages Google never loved

Log back into Search Console and look for pages that have a high impression count but never got any real clicks.

The easiest way to find these pages is to set your date range to the last 28 days and look at each page’s metrics from an impression, click, and CTR perspective.

Sort the CTR column in ascending order (lowest percentage at the top, the highest percentage at the bottom).

Typically, the pages at the top of that list have the most potential. It means that Google is ranking you but you just aren’t getting too many clicks.

It usually isn’t just related to your title tag and meta description. It typically has to do with the content on the page.

Now it’s time to create a list of pages that have the greatest potential.

It’s time to prioritize

Typically, the pages that have the most potential are the ones that used to rank but no longer rank. Google used to rank and like them, which means if you give those pages a little tender loving care, you can easily get them loved by Google again.

The second group of pages that have potential, but not as much as the first, are the ones with a high impression count but an extremely low CTR.

These pages are harder to fix because they never really performed that well.

How to update your old content

Now that you have a list of pages to fix so you can boost your search engine rankings, I want you to log in to Google Search Console, find that article, click on it, and then click on “queries.”

For the keywords that don’t rank in the top 5 or have a high impression volume, I want you to go to your ranking article and see if the article is relevant for that term.

If not, adjust the article to at least include that term and cover that topic.

For the terms you already rank for in the top 5 spots, head over to Ubersuggest and type in those keywords and click on the keyword ideas report.

You’ll then see a report with all of the long-tail variations of that keyword.

If you adjust the article and include any of the long-tail phrases Ubersuggest gives you, you’ll see quick traffic gains.

In other words, if you already rank for the head term, it’s not hard to rank for the long-tail variation of it as well.

In addition to including the right keywords, you’ll want to update the post. Make sure all of the information is relevant, the pictures are up to date, and if you could include any multimedia (like embedding relevant YouTube videos) you’ll be able to increase the time on site of your visitors.

Finally, when updating your content, make sure your article is more thorough than all of the other sites that rank for the terms you are trying to rank for.

Remember that keyword ideas report I had you check out on Ubersuggest? On the right-hand side of that report, it shows you all of the sites that rank for that keyword.

You can quickly see who’s currently ranking in each country, visit their web page, and make sure you create something better.

User metrics

User behavior is one of the biggest factors with Google’s algorithm.

Once you update your old content, you’ll want to optimize for user signals as that’ll help boost rankings.

A great example of user metrics is optimizing your title tags and meta description.

For example, if everyone searched a keyword on Google and clicked on the second result instead of the first, it tells Google that the second result is more relevant and that it should be ranking in the first spot instead of the second.

And Google eventually would make that change.

If you can use persuasive copy and convince people to click on your search listing instead of the competition, eventually your rankings will climb. And you can do so by following these 2 articles:

1. How to Craft Amazing Headlines
2. How to Write Copy like Apple

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of title tag and meta description tests and I’ve also found that these keywords help increase clicks:

• What is
• Best
• Amazing
• [lists]
• How to
• Free
• You
• Tips
• Why
• Tricks
• Great

You can also use tools like Clickflow to A/B test your meta tags.

Don’t forget to promote (again)

Now that your content is up to date and you’ve optimized your meta tags for clicks, it’s time for you to promote your content.

I know what you are thinking… why would you promote old content, right?

Well, technically it isn’t old anymore.

First of all, you should update the published date or last updated date within your WordPress.

That way search engines know your content is changed, more relevant, and up to date.

Secondly, you need to promote the article. It’s new now, so why wouldn’t you share it with the world?

The simplest thing you can do is share it on the social web. I typically share my content on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn… but you can pick whatever social profiles you have.

Although Google doesn’t really look at social signals, Bing does. Plus, some people who visit your page from the social web may decide to link to your article, which does help rankings.

And if you want to go above and beyond, check out Meet Edgar. It’s what I use to continually schedule my old content to be promoted on the social web. That way I don’t have to manually do it or set reminders.

In addition to social shares, you should consider sending out a text-based email blast to your audience promoting your content.

It’s a great way to get a quick boost of traffic and breathe life into your old content.

Here’s an example of a text-based email blast that I send so you can copy my format.

Subject: How to Generate 10K visitors from a Brand New Blog in Under 6 Months

If I tell you to do 100 things to grow your traffic, I know you won’t do it.

Heck, even I wouldn’t. It’s just too much work.

In the spirit of simplicity, just do this and you’ll get to 10,000 visitors.

I’ll even make a deal with you. If you follow it and don’t hit 10,000 visitors and you can show me you followed it, I will help you for free.

That’s how confident I am that it works.

Cheers,

Neil Patel

As you can see, simple text-based emails are generating 30% open rates and 6% click rates for me. Not too shabby.

You can also use tools like Subscribers to send out a push notification. Every time I update a post I send out a push. Look at my stats… I can easily generate an extra 7,000 visitors from a single push.

And don’t forget to build links

The last step you want to leverage is link building. You can use Backlinks to see who is linking to competing articles:

All you have to do is put in a competing URL and select “URL” from the drop-down menu and you’ll see every site that links to that page.

From there, you’ll want to reach out to each site and ask them to link to you.

The easiest way to do this is to leverage the skyscraper technique and the steps in this article.

Conclusion

Once you hit the 150 mark in the number of pages on your site, you should consider focusing the majority of your time to updating old content instead of creating new content.

If you have over 1,000 pages, you should definitely spend 80-plus percent of your time updating old content instead of writing new content.

The key to ranking your old, outdated content is to first focus on the content that used to rank but doesn’t anymore.

Once you fix those pages, you should see results within a month or two. From there, you can then focus on pages that have a high impression count but a low click count.

So, are you going to focus your time on ranking your old content or creating new content?

The post How to Rank Your Old, Outdated Content appeared first on Neil Patel.