Google, SEO

Google’s December 2020 Core Update- Reviewed

What is the December 2020 Core Update?

The Google search engine uses a “core algorithm” to maintain its SERP rankings. We all need to know the impact of this core update in order to stay on top of the game.

As we know, Google’s algorithms are continually improvised for efficient search results. While some inbuilt filters are already in their query processors, releasing December 2020 core updates is a way to refine the search results and incorporate the latest research and findings into the core ranking algorithms.

So, the websites, which had been playing fair, get positive results while many try to manipulate the search results, and the outcome isn’t very favourable for them.

So, let’s talk about this particular core update in a little more detail.

When was it Rolled Out, and How Long Did it Last?

Google’s December 2020 core update was rolled out worldwide on December 3, 2020, at 1:00 pm ET. It is considered a bigger update than the last significant one rolled out in May of 2020. It was classified as a “broad core update.”

The nice thing about this update is that it fully rolled out in just 24 hours. This is considerably much quicker than the May core update, which started on May 4, 2020, and ended on May 18, 2020. Unfortunately, the timing of this huge update did not sit well for a lot of webmasters, given that the holiday season is fast approaching and it can significantly affect their websites.

The Winners and Losers of the 2020 Algorithm Update

Although it hasn’t been long since the core update rolled out, the shifts are already showing clear winners who benefited from it and losers who lost a deal. Few winning and losing categories for reference:

Winners

Finance (19.9%)
Accounting & Taxes (15.4%)
LGBTQ (14.0%)
Nutrition & Fitness (13.7)
Groceries (13.0)

Losers

Natural & Alternative Medicine (-23.5%)
Addictions (-13.3%)
Senior Care (-7.5%)
Dating (-6.6%)
Sports (-4.3%)

How to Tell if You are Affected?

All paid subscribers of Ahref can check out the rise and fall of traffic around the update release date. Ahref 2.0 can help you by comparing historical data from the previous month or year or on a customed date range.

Suppose you see a noticeable decline or rise in the main terms driving traffic or affecting pages in general. In that case, this is an indication that the December core update affects you, positively or negatively.

SEMrush can help you scan traffic with its historical data tool if you see changes, whether a rise or fall in the primary traffic page or query. It means that the Google December 2020 core update has definitely affected you.

However, if you don’t have any paid tools, you audit your website using Google’s Search Console and Analytics tool. For Search Console, go to the performance section, check out the data in your previous week or month, then compare if there are drop pages or queries.

The process for using Google Analytics also involves comparing data before and after the first week of December 2020

How is this Update Different from the May 2020 Update?

According to many leading SEO professionals, this is considered more significant than Google’s May 2020 update. Websites reported that some experience declines and gains between 10% to 100% in organic search traffic. So those who missed the May 2020 update, did not spare them. Unlike many updates that affect a particular niche, this one was broad and the impact was quickly noticeable.

Tips on How to Recover from the 2020 December Update

There is no exact fix on how to recover from the 2020 December update. However, Google has provided several tips on what you can do to reverse the update’s negative impact on your website. Here are some of them:

Improve Content

Although there is no specific way to recover from being negatively impacted by any of the core updates, what’s familiar about the websites affected most of the time is that they require content improvements. Having content on the website that is either copied or thin and doesn’t add any value will surely see a drop most of the time. You may get away from a few updates initially, but eventually, those who do well and deserve will rank better and longer. Therefore, it is always a good idea to invest in original and substantial content in the first place.

Prioritize Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness

Google also emphasized the need for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness in ranking websites. If you have a good website in place but the contact details and address etc., are missing, you miss that authority factor on your website. Such websites are always under the radar and can drop off overnight. If you are not sure how to look into that, maybe get some professional help and hire someone experienced in the domain.

Bottomline

It can be really tragic if your website is hit by algorithmic changes, especially when the holiday season is fast approaching. What’s even more difficult is isolating the exact thing to do to reverse the damage made.

However, by the end of the day, the best thing you can do is step back and see how broad and wide the core update is and how it deals with specific issues. This way, it will be easier for you to identify which part of your website you can improve to recover.

Digital Marketing Agencies, Digital Marketing Agencies, Global Seo, Lead Generation, Lead Generation Strategies, Sales team, SEO, SEO Audit, SEO Leads

3 Must-Have Browser Extensions for Every Sales Person in a Digital Agency

By Prasad Katakam on

- Digital Marketing Agencies, Digital Marketing Agencies, Global Seo, Lead Generation, Lead Generation Strategies, Sales team, SEO, SEO Audit, SEO Leads

Selling services for a digital agency is a tough task. You are not only competing with umpteen number of agencies which mushroom every day but also with a lot of “so-called freelance experts” too. 

Let’s accept the hard fact. Most of the agencies do not have something innovative to offer to the customers. 

Services that are popularly offered are SEO, video marketing, inbound marketing, paid media marketing, social media management, design services, etc. 

I have done sales for an agency, and I know that it takes a hell of a lot of time to differentiate and convince the customer to go ahead with you and not the other agency or a freelancer. 

But sales targets don’t understand all this 🙂 after all, we have to clock numbers and keep the top line moving north.

The way you sell is completely different today. You need to keep surprising your prospects with some interesting findings which are personalized only to their business and not just some random content. 

Some popular and beneficial browser extensions are super handy to help you understand some key factors of the customer’s business and you genuinely helping the prospects with the right inputs.  

3 Must-Have Browser Extension for Every Sales Person in Digital Agency

1.Similar Web

Understanding the prospect’s website traffic is one of the most critical steps. The vital metrics like website traffic, rate of engagement, source of traffic, keyword ranking, etc., are all crucial factors for designing the perfect sales pitch. For such situations, one of the top web analytics tools is SimilarWeb. 

Here’s why it is popular:

It offers a capable platform for monitoring website statistics. 
Being a browser extension, it lets you monitor it all in real-time. 
With this browser tool, it is easier to find information about websites while surfing. 
At just the touch of a button, it gives you in-depth details of a website.
It also shows the popularity ranking of a website. 
It highlights the primary traffic sources with geographic and demographics.

SimilarWeb has helped small and large-scale companies grain website statistics with ease. With clients like Microsoft, eBay, Deloitte, HSBC, and many more, it is undoubtedly one of the top contenders in the world of web analytics. 

2.RoboAuditor

Knowing the reason behind the low website traffic is equally important. The website is the most critical entity of any online business. Nothing should be more important than knowing the health of the website. 

Nothing can be more helpful than having a browser extension for SEO Audit which can give a comprehensive SEO Audit Report on critical factors like Mobile Responsiveness, Page Speed – desktop and mobile, On-Page SEO, etc. in just one click in your own branding :) 

One such browser extension is RoboAuditor. 

This free SEO audit tool extension is capable of:

Perform a comprehensive SEO Audit on any given website. 
Make the report in your own branding. Your prospects would love it. 
Not only display the issues related to on-page SEO, page speed, mobile responsiveness, etc., it also provides you with detailed recommendations. 
Convert the report in any language (Yes more than 6500+ languages) 
Put your own Custom Call To Actions like Schedule a Call, Request a Quote, etc.

Embed RoboAuditor on your website, and your website can convert 4X more leads.

The features mentioned above are just the tip of the iceberg, as it is capable of so much more. And the best thing about it is that it is free to utilize!

3.Grammarly

We all don’t want to make silly mistakes like a spelling error or missing punctuation etc. while sending out emails for meeting requests or proposals. 

One of the most popular browser extensions which come very handy is Grammarly, and there is no doubt not to believe in this fact. 

Here’s why this NLP tool is so adored around the globe:

Grammarly uses AI to check for spellings and grammar in the written content in real-time.
It suggests better alternatives for sentence structures so that they sound more professional, friendly, and to the point. 
It enhances the vocabulary based on the required context to make it more understandable.

It gives the flexibility of choosing the content style as per the specific niche.
It even offers a plagiarism detector to ensure that the content is unique.

With such features, who wouldn’t want to add them as an extension? 

Everyone in sales needs to be quick at writing and submitting sales pitches for grabbing clients faster. So, this tool is a must-have. Though it is a free browser extension, yet it will limit some features that are mentioned above. So, to use its full abilities, a premium version might need to be bought. 

Final Words

Competing online with others needs to be smart and quick. With such excellent and handy browser extensions, digital agencies’ sales teams can generate leads and close the deals faster by keeping the conversations interesting all the time. 

Global Seo, SEO

What does in-depth Website Analysis Mean?

By Prasad Katakam on

- Global Seo, SEO

Last August, Google announced a medic update that had an unfavorable impact on the rankings of health and medical websites.

Google, by its admission, had revealed that it makes constant changes to its algorithms to make the search results more relevant to the user.

It means even if your website is optimized for the search engine, you still have to pay attention to the health of your website to keep the ranking consistent.

An in-depth analysis of the website is crucial. It tells you where your website lags and indicates the things you need to fix to keep it optimized.

And it’s not something that you can do once in a while or after your website is live. It’s a continuous journey. As Jill Whalen, one of the early pioneers of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), said, “Good SEO work only gets better over time.”

How to do an in-depth website analysis?

There are three major components that you must check while analyzing your website.

On-page SEO: Moz defines On-page SEO as both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO, which refers to links and other external signals. This essentially means that you have greater control over your website. When you do an on-page audit, here are a few things that you must check and fix:

Do all your web pages have unique titles and meta descriptions? And are they within the specified size?
Have you added H1 (main title), H2 (main headings), etc. for the text on all your pages?
Is the copy on your website updated, non-plagiarized? Are there any pages that have duplicate content?
Are your images optimized for SEO? Have you added alt tags to it? Do you require a content delivery network (CDN) if you are using many images on your page?
Do you have any broken links on your website?

Off-page SEO: Moz defines off-page SEO as actions taken outside your website to impact your rankings within search engine result pages. Google pays a lot of attention to the trustworthiness and authority of a website. So, if a reliable, third-party website promotes your website, it has a chance to be ranked high by Google. To ensure that your off-page SEO is as effective as on-page SEO, check for the following:

Which of the incoming links that link to your website are trusted domains?

Are these domains unique?

Are there any suspicious incoming links linking to your website?

You may not have control over third-party websites. However, by auditing your off-page SEO, you will be able to remove the bad backlinks and improve the SEO of your website.

Technical SEO: SEO has moved beyond keyword stuffing and traditional SEO parameters. Today, Google gives equal importance to technical SEO as on-page and off-page SEO. As Google focuses on delivering a good user experience to website visitors, technical SEO is a crucial element for page ranking. It ensures that search engines can access and index your pages without any hassles. Here are a few things that you must audit when you check for technical SEO.

Is your robots.txt file optimized for indexing?
Have you set the canonical URL for all the webpages?
Have you optimized your XML Sitemap?
Is your URL secure?
Are your webpages loading within 3 seconds?
Are your CSS and HTML minified?
Is your website optimized for different screens and devices?

Are you confused about the terms used above? We have simplified it for you.

Manual vs. SEO Audit Tool

There are two ways to do the audits; you can either do it manually or use an SEO audit tool to do it. If you ask us, we would recommend you to use an SEO audit tool to check for the flaws in your website. SEO audit tools will not just save your time but will also give you accurate results that will leave minimal scope for errors. It will provide you with a detailed report within minutes.

How Can Digital Marketing Agencies Use White Label SEO Tool to Generate Leads?

SEO audit tools are useful in auditing your website. However, as a digital marketing agency, we would recommend you to offer website audits as a service to keep your visitors on your website. It is one of the best ways to convert visitors into leads. Now, if you are wondering about the cost that you may have to incur in developing the audit tool, relax! White label SEO audit tools can help you audit websites without spending time and money on hiring a team or developing a tool. It does all the background work and sends the website analysis report to your client with your logo on it.

However, choosing the right white label SEO tool can be a challenge. There are various SEO audit tools such as RoboAuditor, WooRank, and Moz that can help you with website analysis. It is, therefore, important to do a competitive analysis to choose the right one. From the parameters that it checks to the support, the tool offers in the lead nurturing process, check everything thoroughly before investing.

At Growth Robotics, we offer a 14-day trial to companies to try RoboAuditor for free. The white label SEO audit tool is so efficient that one of our clients, ZNetLive, was able to generate 50+ leads in just two days!

If you want to offer an in-depth website analysis to your website visitors, contact us, we will help you get started.

SEO

Will SEO Trends and Techniques Remain Relevant in 2021?

By Prasad Katakam on

- SEO

Will SEO Trends and Techniques Relevant in 2021?

It’s a common question that most marketers and organizations ask.

The answer to it is a resounding Yes.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not going anywhere soon. It will remain relevant in 2021, and you have to continue working on it to retain or improve your website’s search ranking.

If there is one thing that’s become irrelevant, it has to be the old methods of doing SEO trends and techniques.

SEO has come a long way from just stuffing keywords. Today, the focus has shifted to making the content more relevant to the user, strengthening the Technical SEO, and making the website more user-friendly.

As Eli Schwartz, the Director of SEO and Growth of Survey Monkey, said in a podcast with Y Combinator, never do anything just for crawlers. Do it for the users.

We would not be wrong in saying that user intent optimization will take center stage in 2021.

If you are wondering how to make sense of all this and translate it into your SEO strategies, don’t worry. We are going to give you a few tips on how you can make your SEO strategy relevant in 2021.

SEO Trends and Techniques

#1 – Focus on untapped channels

We are all aware of how Facebook changed its algorithm last year and the impact it had on businesses. Paid channels dominated the marketing scene last year. Companies spent a substantial amount of their marketing budget on Google and Facebook ads to reach out to their target audience.

While you must pay attention to these channels, Eli advises marketers to find out the untapped channels that can work for them. An unused channel could bring you organic traffic and business with little or no investment. These untapped channels differ from companies to companies.

Citing an example of a media company and e-commerce company like Amazon, Eli said that an e-commerce website like Amazon must focus on building a scalable and robust architecture and optimizing product descriptions. A media website, on the other hand, should focus on cross-linking strategies such as linking an existing article with an old but relevant article to maximize the value of their content.

Key learning: Focus on tapping the untapped channels that could potentially bring your business with minimal investment.

#2 – The more content, the better

And by that, we do not mean stuffing words just for the sake of increasing the length of the content. Eli stresses writing more relevant content that offers accurate information to your target audience. Whether it is a YouTube description or an e-commerce website with product descriptions, the more information you provide, the better will be the conversion. It also helps in ranking the app high on the play store, a platform that companies often ignore while planning their SEO strategies.

Eli also advises to go one step ahead and write content that’s related to your service but may not necessarily solve the problem of the customer immediately. This will help you to move your audience further into the marketing funnel. It will also help in establishing you as an expert in that domain.

For example, if you bake cakes, your immediate goal must be to write descriptions that will attract your buyers to come to your website to place an order. This becomes localized because only buyers in your vicinity are going to order the cakes. However, if you want to widen your reach, you can write content on how to bake cakes or different ways to bake them, and so on. This will help in ranking your page better.

Key learning: Focus on writing more but better quality and relevant content.

#3 – Right keywords are more relevant than meta descriptions

In continuation with the second point, Eli says that meta descriptions are no longer as relevant as they were before. Earlier, they were used because Google did not understand the spoken word. So, meta descriptions helped Google to understand what’s on the page. This led to marketers using spam keywords in the meta description to rank higher. Now, Google understands better.

Whether it is YouTube or the app description on the play store, it’s the relevant keywords that will help you rank better. You can use Google’s keyword planner to search for keywords that could lead people to your website and include it in your content to check if it works well for you.

Key learning: Focus on finding the right keywords and including them in all your content on different platforms.

The Next Step

SEO trends and techniques-8

The Google algorithm and SEO practices will continue to change over the next year. Factors such as voice search, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), and Expertise, Authority, and trustworthiness of the website are going to reign 2021.

The more you focus on making your website relevant to your user, the better would be your ranking. To begin with this journey, you must focus on improving the technical SEO and on-page optimization of your website. The best way to begin is to audit the website, identify the loopholes, and address them to build a better customer experience.

If you are a digital marketer, this can also be a great way to generate leads for your business. Everyone wants to know where his or her website stands. Help them to audit their website by using Growth Robotics’ RoboAuditor and build a trustworthy engagement with them.

RoboAuditor is an Embeddable SEO Audit tool that generates 4X more leads with the traffic you already have.

SEO

How to grow your SEO firm through SEO

By Prasad Katakam on

- SEO

Every business, be it big or small, knows the importance of coming on page 1 in google search results. The other great thing is that they all know it can only be possible through SEO.

Don’t you think this is the best time to start your SEO Service business? Indeed but SEO agencies have a lot of competition due to the demand for this service all over the world.

We have interviewed a lot of SEO agencies and took out the best 5 ways to generate leads at a very low cost per lead. Let’s move on!!

1. Referrals

It’s the oldest trick in the book. The best of clients come from friends, family, or existing customers. It is human nature; if someone refers us to a product or service, we are more likely to trust that referral.

On the other hand, it is your responsibility to give 100% to each of your clients. Otherwise, you will not get good referrals. If you have a reputation for dealing diligently and carefully with clients, people will be happy and refer you to others.

SEO agencies must work for several months before their efforts come to fruition. During this period, your services and customer helpline are the keys to keeping clients glued.

When you start out, it is essential to pitch yourself to everyone and grow through referrals. Once your business is established, you can earn more clients through marketing.

2. Cold Calling

Cold calling is an old sales tactic that is still used today. It can be defined as calling on the prospect without a prior appointment. Cold calling potential candidates can be tough and challenging. The whole process of cold calling is complicated, especially if you haven’t mastered it.

The best way to go about this is to offer something in return when you approach a potential client. Your pitch should be refined to capture the attention of a prospect, and then the game is yours.

The more guest blogs you write in high-authority publications, the more link juice your site will receive from these sites. That’s one way to establish a credible reputation.

Create a double pitch and master the art of delivering that pitch everywhere. If you are a startup that needs funding, make copies of your presentation and carry it anywhere with you on your phone, tablet, laptop, etc.

You must be ready to pitch it to a prospect whenever the opportunity arrives. Passionate agency owners are always on the lookout to present their ideas to a businessperson who is having trouble with their brand’s online presence.

According to Neil Patel,

3. Content Marketing

It is a technique to construct and spread relevant content to attract a targeted customer base to drive profits.

Content marketing focuses on content creation and distribution. It’s also somewhat like cold calling and takes time to show results.

The first thing your agency should do is to create a blog section on your website where you provide unique information to your prospects.

Many developed organizations and businesses keep an active blog to keep their clients, and daily readers informed about recent happenings in the SEO world. Here are 10 content marketing tools you can use to boost your SEO.

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the best ways to attract new customers and maintain good relations with existing ones.

You can combine email and content marketing to bring new leads to your website. You can send out newsletters via emails carrying a bit of information from your blog and a roundup of your services.

Customers are more likely to open emails that are personalized. Email remains one of the most low-cost internet marketing techniques that generates the highest possible return on investment.

With email marketing, you can also interact with your customers. Send them birthday messages, offer them promo codes and special discounts. They will be compelled to come back if you segment your audience based on their interaction with your website.

5. Process Automation

Companies gain exponentially from process automation. Automation is the use of technology to create processes that replace human effort. SEO firms can leverage automation by offering:

1. White Label SEO Tool
2. Automatic lead capture

i. White Label SEO Tool

The SEO audit tool is the first automation required for SEO firms. Since the starting step for any project in SEO is Site audit, automating the audit process with a tool is considered critical.

With a White Label SEO tool, it becomes effortless for SEO firms to analyze the current state of SEO for their customers. You can also generate white label SEO reports and send them to your prospects for free.

White Label SEO Report | RoboAuditor

A free trial gives a part of your service for free, and clients who wish to do business with you can gain firsthand experience of your efficient service. An SEO audit tool analyses any website on various parameters and generates an SEO audit report with actionable insights.

ii. Automatic Lead Capture

We know that leads play a very critical role in growing an SEO firm.

Wouldn’t it be great to embed an SEO audit tool onto your website, and your prospects can do the partial audit by themselves by just sharing their email address?

This, in turn, becomes an automated lead generation method for an SEO firm. Your website will turn into a lead generation engine without adding any more content like ebooks, white papers, etc.

How can RoboAuditor help?

We at RoboAuditor are in the business of helping SEO firms achieve their goals and help them grow.

We offer a robust white label SEO audit and lead generation tool, which can improve the SEO of your website.

Finally, businesses can use our lead generation tool to gather more leads. SEO firms are struggling with intense competition, but there are creative ways to grow and stand out from the competition.

Don’t give up on your passion, and network as much as you can with industry peers to promote your business on every platform.

RoboAuditor is an Embeddable SEO Audit tool that generates 4X more leads with the traffic you already have.

Try our other product – Keyword Rank Tracker. You can easily get google keyword rankings for any website in just a couple of clicks.