With over 40+ Apps and more than 750 features, streamlining, automating and scaling your business has never been easier with today's most advanced SEO optimized DXP solution on the market.
Start smart and scale big without allocating any resources or taking risks.
W3 is the 1st eBusiness Usage as a Service (UaaS) subscription provider to empower Bluestar resellers with a fully functioning DXP solution without allocating any resources, taking risks or having to pay anything to get started.
The W3 Digital Experience Platform (DXP) is a fully integrated SEO optimized tech stack that leverages the world's best Bluestar content, technology and SEO skilled resources to connect and align your marketing, sales, operations and customer success portal with Google's ever growing network.
From lead-to-cash and post service support, W3 DXP delivers everything you need to streamline, automate and scale your business across the full customer life cycle to drive new revenue through operational efficiencies within a single platform.
W3 DxP replaces 8 to 12 Apps
W3 eliminates the need to manage and license multiple applications to streamline, automate and scale your Bluestar business with a fully integrated workflow platform.
The following application list shows a typical example of a poorly assembled technology stack from a mid-sized Bluestar reseller. The following applications were used for ...
With an approximate subscription and internal resource cost of over $20,000 per month, it's easy to see how a disconnected and poorly assembled technology stack can be harming your business.
Let us show you how to migrate over to a fully integrated harmonious technology stack that does everything, connects with anything and costs a fraction of the price.
We take the stress out of eBusiness
It would take 8 to 12 siloed applications and an army of programmers to do what W3 DxP can deliver from a single hub.
---------- End W3 DxP Compared ----------
Next Steps
streamline & automate your business in the cloud
Start your POC experienceNo credit card required. No obligations. No risk.
World’s most advanced SEO optimized Tech Stack
W3 DxP is an all-in-one business platform that bundles the world's best SEO optimized Bluestar content, technology and skilled resources. It rapidly deploys a fully integrated Bluestar marketing and sales strategy that's easy and affordable.
Benefits:
A scalable SEO Contract & Business Platform that does everything, connects with anything and supports every industry.
Empower your website with great content
You'll inherit the best Bluestar microsite to fuel your website with everything needed to stand out and get recognized by Google as the best Bluestar content contributor using our Topical Authority SEO strategy.
Bluestar Content Synchronization Services (CSS) include:
Send personalized emails
You'll inherit a suite of ready-to-send Bluestar email campaigns that will keep your clients informed and engaged.
With personalized emails and Bluestar opportunity alerts, fostering stronger relationships and growing sales is easy when you have the best Bluestar email marketing solution.
Email MarketingFree Organic Reach
Using ready-to-post social media ads, you can be everywhere your buyers are so you can engage with existing customers who already love Bluestar.
Mix-&-match SEO tactics to reach your goals
There are many types of SEO strategies to increase traffic, the key is finding the right combination.
see more ...
Take the lead by building your Bluestar SEO authority
Using search to drive traffic requires a strong Bluestar off page SEO and back link strategy. Lets us build you the best Bluestar off page strategy!
Off page SEO StrategyDrive local traffic
With Bluestar Local SEO, we'll make sure you're noticed.
Run paid ads when and where it counts
The fastest way to drive traffic to your Bluestar microsite is using social advertising to leverage your unique selling proposition (USP) to target your ideal Bluestar customers (ICP).
Attract leads who are ready to buy
Bluestar Search Engine Marketing is a great way to leverage pay per click (PPC) and pay per thousand (PPM) advertising strategies to reach customers who are ready to buy.
Keep your customers engaged
Bluestar Blogs and newsletters provide an easy way to keep customers engaged while improving your chances to rank 1st on Google for Bluestar.
Make Bluestar stand out
Creating and hosting unique Bluestar content is an great way to standout and rank 1st on Google for Bluestar.
Standout with Rich Snippets on Google
With Bluestar rich snippets and advanced schema, we'll empower you with everything you need to stand out and rank 1st on Google for Bluestar.
The ultimate SEO digital experience
Bluestar DxP has an integrated software framework that engages everyone across the organization using digital touchpoints that seamlessly connects all your critical functions and customer facing applications into one fully integrated workflow solution.
Stay organized the easy way
Let our Bluestar Customer Relationship Management App help you automate and organize all your leads and customers using the best Bluestar Leads Management and CRM app on the market.
CRM AutomationStreamline and automate your sales process
The Bluestar Configure, Price and Quote module offers the easiest and fastest way to win new business.
Never lose another sale
Streamline your sales process with our Bluestar sales funnel and never let another opportunity slip away. Organize, manage and follow up on leads with our built-in Bluestar sales pipeline.
Sales PipelineSell products and accept payments online
see more ...
Automatically calculate and apply taxes
With potential sales coming from all across the country, computing taxes in real-time is easy with our fully integrated Bluestar taxation lookup service and eCommerce module.
Give your clients great support
Easily manage service requests using our built in Bluestar customer service and ticketing system to provide a seamless customer experience.
Help Desk SupportEmpower your clients with useful tools
Leverage our Bluestar lifecycle management tools to generate more sales by sending reminder notices at the right time and for the right assets. Easily manage license renewals, hardware refresh, consumables, warranties, service contracts etc....
Asset ManagementConvert visitors into customers
Communicate directly with clients using our built-in Bluestar live chat features.
You can also build automated responses, transfer conversations among internal team members with Bluestar corporate chat, share documents and more.
Live ChatGive your customers a unified experience
Allow customers to link and transact with your Bluestar eCommerce system using their procurement punch out (punchout) solution.
Plus you can opt-in to our Bluestar single-sign-on (SSO) module to accommodate clients to log into all your applications using a single login.
Punch Out and SSOSeamlessly connect with your partners
Get real time Bluestar pricing and inventory updates, including the ability to submit orders and receive advanced shipment notifications (ASN), update ETA's and more via a single click.
see more ...
Make billing and invoicing faster with automation
Get a 360° view of your business
Make accurate data driven decisions
Experience unlimited flexibility & scalability
The Bluestar DxP platform can support custom workflow to meet the unique needs of your business.
Our custom integration, workflow and business logic engine empowers customers to integrate and customize your solution to do anything and everything eBusiness related.
Custom Workflow FlexibilityYour SEO Business Specialists
You'll inherit a Bluestar marketing and sales program powered by a dedicated team of SEO business specialists to help you become the most recognized brand in your marketplace.
---------- End How it Works ----------
Next Steps
streamline & automate your business in the cloud
Start your POC experienceNo credit card required. No obligations. No risk.
Problem:
9 out of 10 IT procurement requests begin with a Google search and if you're not listed on the 1st page of Google, you're not getting the sale.
Solution:
With our SEO Sales Strategy, we'll supercharge your website with the world's best SEO optimized IT content and help you get listed on the 1st page of Google.
What is the ...
It's a marketing simulation technology that allows you to model, simulate & predict the different outcomes between multiple marketing scenarios in order to analyze, fine-tune & optimize your marketing strategy.
The results empower you with the necessary information that takes the guesswork out of profit planning and optimizing your sales funnel to eliminate costly mistakes.
It's a win-win marketing discovery process that should never be skipped.
Analyze, fine-tune & improve your funnels full potential.
Avoid pouring time & money into marketing efforts that will not produce results.
Find inefficiencies that are limiting your ROI.
Being able to predict shortcomings before they happen is huge
Simulating traffic & predicting outomes is the best way to improve your return on ad spend (ROAS).
Planning your next big marketing idea or optimizing an existing one is easy!
Our IT Profit Simulator gives you all the tools, technology & business know-how to streamline, automate & grow your business with percision & accuracy!
Simulations include conversion numbers that allow you to visualize the path customers follow as they travel through your sales funnel.
With an overview summary of your marketing funnel, it's easy see all the number by month and year.
Such as Revenue, Profit, Traffic Volume, Traffic Costs and Leads in addition to key metrics such as earnings per click (EPC), life time value (LTV), cost per action (CPA), cost per lead (CPL), cost per click (CPC) and more. You will also be able to easily manage and visualize the distribution source of your traffic product revenue.
The dream profit report is an easy and powerful report that puts your revenue goals into perspective with helpful information.
Assume you want to increase your revenue by $500,000 this year. Our system will automatically reverse engineer the required level of effort based on your marketing funnel to generate a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly breakdown of all the required benchmarks that need to be achieved (# of leads, revenue, website traffic etc...). It will provide an estimated budget required to generate the needed traffic to achieve your dream profit goal.
Our traffic reinvestment report will forecast how much additional revenue and profit you could generate if you we're to reinvest a specific percentage of your newly generated revenue back into generating more traffic results.
These reports provide a simple way to envision how your business could scale using a proven marketing & SEO Deployment Strategy.
With our marketing scenario comparison reports, it's easy to do A/B marketing simulations to determine the best possible outcome for your advertising efforts and budgets.
Imagine an SEO strategy so precise, that getting listed on the 1st page of Google is not only easy, it's predictable. Introducing the world's 1st predictable SEO sales platform for IT contract holders.
Google's mission is simple!
Google wants to share the world's best content on their 1st page (SERP) and your mission is to host the world's best Bluestar content on your website. Your SEO responsibilities are simplified using our 3 step proven process.
1) Content
2) Technology
3) Skilled Resources
An arrangement of give and take
Getting ranked on the 1st page of Google is a simple arrangement of give-and-take and if you play your cards right, it can be the most rewarding activity you ever do. However, it takes great content, an all-in-one DxP technology platform and SEO skilled resources to make it all happen.
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s content and share it back through a free all-in-one content retrieval system (www.google.com) where users get easy access to the world’s best (available) content for their search requests (keywords).
For Google to make good on their promise, they need your content to succeed.
Your SEO mission is to populate your website with the world’s best Bluestar content related to your business so you can empower Google with the fuel they need to deliver the best content to their user’s. When done properly, Google generates demand for their service (so they can sell advertising), the user gets the information they need, and your website receives a new visitor (traffic) for having supplied the content.
Depending on the mixture of SEO tactics and strategies you use, this will determine the level of traffic you can generate.
Be a great Bluestar Content Contributor
There are two SEO ranking tactics that can give you an unfair competitive advantage within the Bluestar marketplace.
Bluestar topical authority is an SEO ranking tactic that provides a broad range of information related to everything about Bluestar in order to become a top-level content provider and authority about everything Bluestar (hence the word 'Topical Authority').
This is accomplished in the SEO optimized Bluestar Microsite and all other SEO guidelines and ranking factors are secondary, following Topical Authority.
The Bluestar SEO Google Profiler adds another level of content value that defines your unique selling proposition (USP) and ideal customer profile (ICP) so you can target and attract quality traffic.
When executed, maintained and implemented properly, these two SEO tactics will dramatically enhance your SEO rankings while following our proven step-by-step Bluestar SEO Deployment Strategy.
Bluestar SEO Tactics
Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic directed to your Bluestar Microsite and this is accomblished by combining as many SEO tactics as possible to your Bluestar Topical Authority strategy.
To enhance your ranking potential, try combining more of the following:
CTR on the 1st page of Google
The average click-through-rate (CTR) based on SERP positioning:
1st Page Google Ranking CTR
2nd Page Google Ranking CTR
Highest Google Ranking Asset
SEO Topical Authority is the highest Google ranking factor that's awarded to those websites that cover a broad range of topics related to everything about Bluestar, including it's vendors, products, pricing, industry, customers, community, users and more.
How to win with search
When it comes to SEO, you want to participate and show up on the SERP every time a Bluestar search request matches your ideal customer profile (ICP) and unique selling proposition (USP).
The only way to accomplish this with confidence, is to become a top-level authoritative content domain for Bluestar.
Why is Content so Important?
Search engines work using algorithms that discover, crawl, index and rank web content to provide search users a list of content destinations based on complex rules and guidelines to provide relevant content results.
Therefore, the foundation of search, is content and this is why . . .
Content is King!
How Google works
Google follows 4 steps:
Step #1: Discovery
Step #2: Crawl your Bluestar Microsite
Step #3: Index your Bluestar Content
Step #4: Ranking for Search Results
This is a Google search simplified and it's all about content.
One mystery that SEO's are constantly trying to solve is Google's algorithm as it's always being updated and improved based on new available data and user input.
Google's algorithm is a combination of operational guidelines that define how content is indexed and how links are classified on the organic search engine result pages (SERP). It's a function that creates a hierarchy of webpages to provide relevant results in the most logical order based on the intent of each search request.
The algorithm adopts a series of criteria to try and understand the user's intent and to match it with the best available content provider. To achieve and build on this, the algorithm is continuously improved.
Google's objective is to improve the classification of search results and to eliminate or decrease the position of malicious, low-quality content, which can harm the user's experience.
With thousands of updates occurring every year, there is no fixed answer to Google's algorithm as your SEO strategy needs to be constantly monitored and optimized to achieve your highest results.
The only constant in Google's Algorithm, is that content will always be king!
It’s estimated that Google’s algorithm involves more than 200 ranking guidelines and relationship factors. The value assigned to each guideline and the relationship between them determines the position a webpage will hold while listed on the first search engine result page (SERP).
Google does not share these ranking guidelines or relationship factors but does make the occasional statement to reveal hot new discoveries and ranking patterns. There are thousands of independent organizations who perform their own studies to determine and share the impact of specific actions as it relates to on-page and off-page ranking factors.
In general, whatever you read are only opinions. The only way to know for sure is trying it for yourself because seeing is believing.
On-page ranking factors refer to the content displayed on each webpage for its content value and technical value.
When on-page SEO gets mentioned, it’s referring to the optimization of these elements.
Some examples:
Google evaluates these factors to understand what information is being displayed and therefore, how to index them according to the identified content intent.
Off-page ranking factors are elements that demonstrate a webpage’s status as a trusted reference from another website.
Off-page SEO consists of gaining authority using links from other trusted websites that share information about your webpage using hyperlinks that direct a user back to your webpage, better know as backlinks.
Some examples:
The more backlinks you have from other trusted websites reveals your website’s level of authority. Quality backlinks is better than quantity.
Google’s algorithm is always improving the search experience for its users.
This also means combating dubious and low-quality content, known as Black Hat SEO.
Black Hat has always been a target of Google as there are many loop holes to achieve a higher ranking using deceptive tactics when you have nothing to offer.
Common Black Hat strategies included:
Websites that gain a massive increase in backlinks from suspicious domains over a short period of time is an indication of Black Hat techniques. When this happens, Google will penalize these webpages which can be anything from a temporary drop in search results to a complete ban off Google.
The lesson here is to avoid Black Hat SEO techniques.
White Hat SEO Tactics
If you want to earn trust from search engines to guarantee a safe and sustainable position on SERPs, follow Google’s SEO guidelines.
These guidelines coincide with White Hat SEO, acceptable SEO strategies recommended by search engines.
These can include, for example, improving site usability, natural use of keywords in the content, receiving backlinks from trustworthy partners, among other strategies.
To achieve the organic traffic you’re looking for, the content you publish must be relevant to your needs and like any marketing strategy, it all starts with creating and following a proven deployment plan.
This will pave the way to your SEO success strategy.
The first step in creating an SEO strategy is to define your objectives for optimizing your website. To do this, you first have to know what SEO offers.
Always seek to align your SEO objectives to your brand’s macro-objectives. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, for example, SEO can help with this by placing your company’s site among the first positions on Google.
By setting objectives, you can also identify goals and KPIs.
While you execute your strategy and afterward, you can evaluate these indicators to know if you’re on the right path to achieve your objective.
Another important planning step is to define your ideal customer profile (ICP).
After all, who is your strategy for? Who are you communicating with? Who are you bringing to your business?
An ideal customer profile is the description of a personality who represents an ideal customer for your brand, with real questions, pains, and needs, which you can help solve.
Building your ideal customer profile should take into consideration the different demands a customer may have throughout the stages of the funnel.
This can be observed in the keywords used to search, more general at the top of the funnel, and becoming more specific towards the bottom.
To start with an SEO strategy, you need to know the basic tools.
They help to diagnose where you’re starting from, base your planning on, make initial optimizations, and track the impact of each action.
For the most part, we’re talking about two indispensable SEO tools: Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Google offers both for free, and they will play a huge role in measuring your strategy.
Google Analytics is a widely-used data analysis tool that provides a vast array of resources to evaluate the performance of digital strategies. For SEO, it can assist in a variety of ways:
Google Search Console is a tool to facilitate communication between your site and Google, which offers valuable SEO reporting. Some of the resources include:
Google Search Console is a little more technical, with a greater focus on webmasters.
But the interface is user-friendly, so anyone can use it to diagnose and direct more complex demand to specialized professionals.
Keyword research aims to identify the search terms that have the greatest potential for your strategy, according to your brands unique selling proposition (USP) and ideal customer profile (ICP).
It’s one of the key planning stages for an SEO and Content Marketing strategy. After all, it’s how you identify optimization opportunities and set priorities.
Keyword research usually starts with a list of terms related to your sector, product, and brand, which are then expanded to capture your ideal customer profile (ICP) is and brands unique selling proposition.
This process can be expedited with tools and worksheets such as the SEO Google Profiler which helps brands layout their SEO strategy and path moving forward.
Keywords are how users express their question to Google’s search engine.
When a user searches for a specific term, Google looks for the best matches within their page index to display their best results.
The order in which they appear is the result of ranking factors.
Therefore, keywords are essential in a SEO strategy, as they reveal what your webpage intent is and what your ideal customers could be searching for.
Keywords define the purpose behind optimizing a webpage and this helps Google index your webpage correctly according to your content.
During the search process, users may apply different types of search requests to find what they are looking for.
Navigational Searches:
Transactional Searches:
informational Searches:
Local Searches
Other types of searches:
Notice that, for each type of search, Google is constantly seeking to provide more specific results. For product searches (transactional), we receive offers from Google Shopping. When looking for a certain song, results include the lyrics and a music video on YouTube.
The goal is to improve the search experience with more agile and precise results for the users.
Along with types of searches, we also need to consider the types of keywords that are used to find results on the web.
There are two types of keywords: short tail and long tail.
They refer to the two extremes of generic and specific keywords corresponding to different stages of the process.
The longer the tail of the keywords and the more specific it is, the closer a user is to the purchase decision.
For an SEO strategy, it’s important to work with both types of keywords to reach potential clients at all stages of the sales process.
Short tail keywords are broad, generic, and generally used at the start of the research process. At that moment, the consumer doesn’t know what they need yet; and thus, start with this type of search before becoming more specific.
Generally, short-tail keywords are high volume, resulting in a lot of traffic, but also attract a very wide audience with few conversion opportunities.
They also tend to face a lot of competition for the top search positions, making it more difficult to rank high.
Long-tail keywords are more specific and are usually used at the end of the process.
The customer has already researched what’s required to meet their needs, are familiar with the solutions offered, but still seek information before making their final decision.
In contrast to the short tail, long tail keywords don’t usually generate as much traffic as they are less searched for.
On the other hand, they tend to attract visitors further along in the purchasing process, leading to higher conversions.
In addition, as a result of less competition, a higher ranking is easier to achieve.
SEO is not about what people are searching for but what they want to find.
To facilitate this, on-page optimizations should focus on the user’s search intention, which varies from search to search, so your pages and content are relevant to searchers requests.
This is where Google’s focus on giving users what they’re looking for comes into play. For example, natural language processing and analyzing user location are elements that help determine their intention.
So, the challenge for on-page SEO and Content Marketing is understanding the searchers intent the way Google does, to provide users exactly what they’re looking for.
The length of content generally affects its ranking, but it’s not a direct ranking factor in the algorithm. Longer pieces tend to be complete, have more details, and go deeper into the subject matter. As a result, they better answer users’ questions.
But this isn’t necessarily a rule. For a given topic or ideal customer, the length of content may be different.
Publishing volume also tends to favor ranking, as the more content you publish, the greater chance you have to rank high. However, it’s important to make sure you have a balance between volume and frequency.
There’s no point in publishing hundreds of pieces that aren’t relevant and don’t solve users’ questions.
Likewise, having a high volume of content when you launch your site, then not keeping it updated brings no advantages.
Content creation needs to be an ongoing process in order to attract a loyal audience and show Google that what you have to offer is fresh and relevant.
Along the same lines as the volume of posts, there’s not an ideal frequency. You have to identify what your topic and buyer persona demands, as well as evaluate your business’s ability to produce this content.
Quality is the number one priority. The content needs to be accurate, clear, current, relevant, trustworthy, and, of course, address the user’s intent.
This will generate engagement and increase the likelihood of receiving backlinks — weighting factors in the ranking calculation.
So even though Google increasingly understands and values natural writing, there are some strategies to optimize your content to reach higher positions, while also improving the reader’s experience.
To achieve this, it’s crucial to pay attention to an article’s scannability and semantics.
Scannability is how easy a text is to read by making use of resources such as subtitles, lists, bold, and images.
Have you ever opened an article, been faced with a solid block of text, completely lost your desire to read that content, and simply closed the page?
This is what makes scannability so important.
It improves the reading experience, engages the user, and even communicates information to Google.
By creating subtitles, for example, both readers and bots are able to understand the structure of the piece.
The use of keywords throughout your writing is important for Google to correctly index the page with the terms you want. Keep in mind this doesn’t mean repeating one word the whole time, ok?
Google understands how humans use language and aren’t looking for exact keyword matches.
This is what makes semantics so important for SEO.
Take full advantage of a term’s semantic field, its variations, synonyms, and relationship with other words. By doing so, it becomes easier to read and helps Google to understand the topic of your page.
The title, heading tags, URL, and the first paragraph are some examples of where bots tend to focus on first.
So, make sure to place keywords in these locations.
The title of the page that you see on the SERP, in browser tabs, and when you share links on social networks is the Title Tag. Title tags are fundamental for Googlebot to grasp the key theme of the page, and also for users.
After all, the title is the first contact a reader has with the text and can affect whether they click through to read it or not. With this direct influence on your click-through-rate, this tag is one of the most important on-page factors.
Therefore, as part of your SEO strategy, this tag should feature your keyword, but also incentivize your user to access your page.
Meta descriptions are the description of a page that appears in search engine results, a snippet of the page with the title and URL. They also serve as a way to encourage users to access the page, so they should be persuasive and descriptive what is offered.
Note that meta descriptions are not a direct ranking factor, meaning Google doesn’t consider them in its algorithm. However, it’s still important to ensure your keyword shows up in it, as it will appear in bold if it coincides with what the user searched for.
Meta descriptions attract more clicks, affecting your results.
Heading tags are code markup, which identifies titles and subtitles in the text.
The H1 tag identifies the title on the page, yet differs from the Title Tag.
If the goal of the Title Tag is to get users to click through, H1 aims to get users to read the text. It also doesn’t have the character limit of a Title Tag.
There is a structured order to heading tags, with H2, H3, and so on.
These heading tags identify subtitles and show the structure of your text, useful both for Google and for your user.
Using these increases scannability.
It’s important to use keywords, and semantically- related terms within these tags since Google analyzes subtitles for its indexing and ranking.
URLs are also targets for Googlebot.
Page URLs are crawled to get a sense of their central focus since they generally use terms that summarize their content.
They need to be clear to users and readers. A descriptive URL is much easier to understand — not only for bots, but also for users
Here are some good practices:
Google still can’t completely understand the content of an image and needs your help to understand what it represents.
Use image optimization for SEO.
This strategy allows you to provide textual data about the images. This can include alternative text (alt tag), filenames, image captions, image URLs, and the context (the text around the image).
The important component here is the alt text, which is fundamental to the experience for individuals with visual impairments, as a screen reader reads the alternative text to describe the image to the user.
The alt text should always be a description of the image and contain the keyword.
Through these elements, Google can understand the image, index it correctly in Google Image Search, making it another source of traffic.
Other aspects concerning image optimization for SEO include the size and format of image files so they can be quickly loaded and indexed.
The network of your site’s internal links also plays a role in on-page SEO.
The primary function of links between internal pages is to guide navigation and lead the user (and search engines) to other relevant content.
But they also have a technical SEO function. The network of internal links helps Google to find your content and better understand your site, as it reveals the hierarchy between pages.
This internal linking strategy strengthens the authority of your site by developing topic clusters between pages.
Rich snippets are content fragments from the page which provide additional information on the SERP. These can include site links, reviews, the number of comments, product prices, and more.
Rich snippets offer extra information about your pages to bots and users and highlight your link on SERPs. This tends to increase your click-through-rate (CTR).
To display rich snippets, they need to be created with structured data, as organized content is easier for the Googlebot to read.
This can be accomplished by programmers or even by using plugins.
Have you noticed how Google provides ready answers on its SERP for some searches?
These are known as featured snippets and are excerpted highlights of pages that provide direct results in paragraphs, lists, or tables.
This is great for the user’s search experience! After all, they get the answer they’re looking for even faster.
But if fewer visitors reach your pages, what’s the impact on your traffic and results?
Keep calm. Featured snippets are a great opportunity to increase your authority on a specific topic and can lead to more traffic from the SERP, as the excerpts include a link to where they came from.
Now, it’s time to examine the factors beyond your pages with off-page SEO. What steps can you take to have more authority in the market and show Google that you are a reference?
Here you need to consider that, unlike on-page SEO, off-page SEO, doesn’t offer complete control over the optimization.
The choice to include backlinks to your site, mention or directly search for your brand depends on others.
What you can do is increase your chances of this happening. You can adopt link building, guest posting, redirects for broken links, in addition to other strategies to reinforce your backlink profile and create greater authority for your page.
Links are the building blocks of the internet. They connect one page to another and allow users to navigate and discover content. Just like users, bots also travel this interconnected network to index new content and understand which pages are the most important, as one page transmits link juice and authority to another.
Here we can see why link building is so important for off-page SEO.
Link building is the construction of a network of links that point to your pages (known as backlinks) and strengthens your authority on the web.
Google’s algorithm understands that more high-quality backlinks to your page indicates greater relevance to the market.
But keep in mind that quantity and quality work together. There’s no benefit in receiving hundreds of backlinks if they all come from a single domain, untrustworthy site, or placed out of context.
To get a link building strategy to work, achieving high-quality backlinks is a must.
As we’ve seen, Google penalizes actions that correspond to Black Hat SEO.
Link building was previously used extensively to generate artificial authority, with schemes like link farms and the “super optimization” of anchor texts.
High-quality backlinks run contrary to these tactics and demonstrate that the links you have received are on merit and are relevant, trustworthy references in your sector.
High-quality backlinks:
These are the main characteristics you should look for in backlinks when planning a link building strategy.
Another important point about backlinks: the difference between do-follow and no-follow links.
By default, all links are “do-follow”. This attribute tells bots that they should crawl the link and share authority from one page to the next. In contrast, the “no-follow” attribute prevents the bot from following the link and passing authority to the linked page.
This can come in handy, for example, in comment sections or for links shared on social networks, which are frequently used for spam for building artificial authority. But this doesn’t mean that no-follow links have no role to play in off-page SEO.
Even though they don’t spread authority directly to other pages, they generate traffic and develop brand awareness.
Link bait is the most natural and efficient strategy to building backlinks.
It involves creating high-quality content that receives backlinks organically without requiring prospecting or partnerships. To accomplish this, you should invest in creating rich content, share data from exclusive research, provide tools and resources as well as other forms of content that are worthwhile assets to link or share.
Guest posting involves publishing posts on partner blogs as a guest author. It usually takes the form of trade: you create content for the other blogs’ audience in exchange for one or more links to your site.
If the links employed are “do-follow”, this can attract new visitors and lead to a greater authority.
But it’s important to engage this strategy in moderation. If Google sees you receiving a large number of backlinks in a short period of time, it may understand this as black hat techniques and punish your pages.
Brand mentions, even without linking to your site, are also valuable to SEO. Google analyzes these to recognize if your brand really exists and how well known it is.
You can also search for any unlinked mentions and identify opportunities to receive high-quality backlinks. Simply get in touch with the administrator and politely suggest including a link.
What happens when a site’s URL structure changes or content is removed? This can result in broken links across the site. If you’ve ever clicked on a link and been brought to a 404 Error page, you’ve witnessed firsthand how broken links can result in lost opportunities and communicate less authority.
But if you come across links on sites with related content to your own, it’s a chance to recommend replacing those broken links with ones to your content.
There are a variety of link building tools available, both free and paid, or with a focus on specific actions and specialization.
Tools including Majestic, Ahrefs, Moz Link Explorer, and SEMrush offer complete analysis on a page’s backlinks profile, number of connections and quality of the anchor text.
Some offer proprietary indicators to aid in this analysis, such as Majestic’s Trust Flow and Citation Flow or Domain Authority and Page Authority from Moz.
These tools are paid options but offer some resources for free.
Furthermore, you can work with more specific tools to focus on determining outcomes.
Examples include using Google Search Console to request Google reject backlinks from untrustworthy sites or Google Alert to notify you whenever your brand is mentioned to identify backlink opportunities.
SEO is a vast universe that includes many technical aspects related to your site’s structure.
Technical SEO is a key part of on-page SEO. It includes all of the optimizations you can make to the internal structure of a site — the code and underlying architecture — in an effort to make it faster and easier to understand, crawl, and index.
Sitemaps are documents that lay out relationships between all pages on a site and information about them, such as the most recent update and how often changes are made.
Its function within SEO is to provide information to search engines that make it easier to find and index URLs.
Although search engines already get this information through their bots, sitemaps simplify the process and ensure all pages get indexed.
Robots.txt is an additional document located in your site’s root folder, which lets Google know which pages on your site should be ignored and not appear in search results.
You can use robots.txt to prevent bots from accessing sensitive data, such as your admin login page or scripts and stylesheets that aren’t important.
It’s important to remember robots. txt if your pages aren’t appearing in search engine results, as they may have been added to the list by accident.
User Experience and SEO are two approaches that support each other. As the priority for search engines is to offer the best search and navigation experience to users looking for something. This includes the experience on your site.
User experience covers how sites are developed to focus on the actions and responses of users to address their needs.
There are seven essential characteristics to good UX.
How long a page takes to load is one of the main classification factors.
Google itself openly discussed that speed is a key ranking factor — for desktop search in 2010, and mobile search in 2018. It should be mentioned that speed alone won’t get you to the top of the results, but you won’t get there without it.
A fast page speed won’t lift you above the competition, but a slow one will lower your ranking.
For Google, the quality of a user’s search experience depends on the agility of information, as people have become used to not having to wait for what they want to find.
Since cell phones are more common than computers, mobile search has overtaken desktop search.
With more traffic from mobile devices, Google began to prioritize results from sites that offer a strong mobile experience. In 2015, Google announced that mobile-friendly had become a ranking factor for search on mobile devices, which resulted in many sites adopting responsive layouts.
A similar impact was brought about with the launch of the Mobile-First Index in 2016, which considered mobile versions of pages first when ranking.
Implementing a responsive site design is one of the strongest recommendations for making your site mobile-friendly. This technique allows your site to have one single version, which can then adapt to different screen sizes.
Besides a responsive layout, there are two other techniques you could consider adopting.
Accelerated Mobile Pages is an initiative to improve the mobile search experience. It’s an open-source code project initially led by Google, which aims to develop static content pages that load faster on mobile devices.
These can be identified on mobile SERPs by the small lightning bolt icon next to the URL — and are given preference in the ranking.
An SEO audit is an important step to take as part of your technical SEO strategy; especially at the start of your optimization project. It can be used to identify problems involving page speed, usability (especially mobile), crawling, and other errors that affect users’ navigation and site ranking.
Here are a few of the elements that an audit can diagnose:
One of Google’s priorities in recent years has been understanding the intent behind local marketing.
Search engines understand that searches made locally require contextual results, offering practical and objective information as opposed to the list of links traditional SERPs provide.
For these searches, Google created local search algorithms to prioritize results in the region the user is located or included in the search.
Similar to featured snippets, the search engine offers information from Google My Business directly in the search results in such a way that users don’t need to access the brand’s site.
Based on this, optimization for businesses with a physical location — known as local SEO — has a few specific details that require attention.
To display local results, Google attempts to understand the user’s local search intention.
In the case of searches for “pizzerias”, “pizza near me” or similar terms, Google takes into consideration the user’s location when the search was made and offers businesses in the area. But if the user searches for “Boca Raton pizza”, the SERP will display results for the region in the search, regardless of the user’s location.
This is useful for individuals planning trips, for example.
So, keyword research for a local SEO strategy should consider these variations of search intention, not simply those with your city.
Consider the following cases:
For your content to make it to the Local Pack, you need to register your company on Google My Business. This tool offers several resources for participating in local businesses.
Google My Business is the main ranking factor for local SEO.
At the top of a local search SERP, Google displays the Local Pack, a box with three specific results for the user, based on information taken from Google My Business. This is one area you should work hard to show up in!
You can submit your business name, address, phone number (NAP), business hours and also receive ratings, answer users, upload photos, list your menu and other specific details according to your business type.
Take advantage of the opportunities offered by registering and engaging your users to improve your chances of showing up in the Local Pack. Google gives preference to businesses that have provided the most information, especially those with a high number of strong reviews.
Google uses three key ranking factors for local search: relevance, proximity and prominence.
The search engine reveals these criteria on its page, outlining recommendations for local ranking.
A combination of these factors is analyzed to provide the best results. For example, if a company is farther away from the user but provides delivery, it may rank higher.
RELEVANCE
PROXIMITY
PROMINENCE
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