Naturally, the heads at Google have committed to nurturing their healthy relationship with the users. Thus, in 2024, we expect them to implement significant changes reflecting the ever-changing user behavior. As you can imagine, to stay on top of the SERP, you must meet these changes and make your website a much more welcoming place. 

So, what will be the trends in 2024, and how should you tweak your SEO to accommodate them? Let’s find out. 

AI at the forefront

The rise of AI is simply remarkable. Since its inception, AI has grown by 20% each year. Moreover, experts suggest that its influence will only grow, expecting the industry to reach 15.7 trillion dollars by the end of the decade. Also, with 97% of smart device users interacting with AI on a daily basis, it’s no wonder that AI will take the spotlight in almost every aspect of online communication.

Google itself is increasingly relying on AI to understand and utilize users’ intent and create an algorithm that will sort the results based on genuine first-hand data. 

Bard and Gemini are the first steps toward building an AI empire and tapping into that market as well, showing their dedication to this industry. 

So, to stay ahead of the competition, you might want to enhance your website UX by implementing AI tools. You can also help yourself by utilizing AI SEO tools such as keyword research tools and link-building assistants. 

When it comes to content, AI can be of great help. Still, despite the significant advancement in all AI generators, one thing they can’t fake is personal experience. For Google, personal experience has always been a cornerstone of high-quality content, as it gives value to the user. 

So, next year, AI will be a hot topic. Thus, getting some AI tools ASAP would be wise and help you stay ahead of the competition.

SGE will be the new standard

Speaking of AI, Bard and Gemini are not even the best AI products that Google will introduce in 2024. Google’s Search Generative Experience is, without a doubt, the revolution in search engines we’ve been looking for. This cutting-edge technology uses AI to provide more natural, conversational, and personalized search results. So, instead of listing some links, SGE will try to understand the user’s query and provide a more comprehensive and interactive response.

Unfortunately, not everyone had access to the beta version, so we can’t talk from first-hand experience here. Still, if SGE is half of what it’s advertised as, this will be an entirely new chapter in Search engines and SEO as a whole. 

Unfortunately, this means new SEO guidelines for all website owners and SEO experts. First and foremost, we might be looking at the twilight of keywords. Website owners must shift to understanding the intent behind the user’s query. For example, if someone asks how much baking soda you need for a loaf of bread, advertising bakeries will be pointless, as, obviously, this user will make their own bread. On the other hand, retailers selling various cutleries, utensils, and electric appliances needed to bake the perfect bread can easily target them. 

Furthermore, SGE will focus on informational searches rather than transactional ones. This means Google will push back landing pages that aim for direct sales in favor of informative blog posts and other useful content that answers queries, not offer a product or service. True, this will make the sales department’s work much harder, but it will underline the need for high-quality infotainment.

Finally, SGE will focus on prioritizing user experience, so websites will have to be easily navigable, mobile-friendly, voice and image search optimized (more on that later), and, of course, have high-quality content. 

High quality is now a must

Yes, quality content will remain king. In February of 2023, Google made it clear that they won’t care if the content is AI-generated as long as it abides by their quality standards. Unfortunately, AI is not quite able to cover those entirely, as this includes personal experiences and added value that Chat GPT and other AI generators can’t produce. So, content writers can sleep soundly for now. AI is not taking your job anytime soon.

So, while an AI generator can create mediocre content by the ton, it can’t compete with genuine human-written texts, at least for now. However, what AI did was drive the quality standards higher than ever. Only ten years ago, keywords were enough to skyrocket you to the top of SERP. Today, you need to add high-quality images and videos, have perfect readability, and, of course, understand the material you are introducing.

So, how do you make sure you will retain your rankings in Google? Well, all you need to do is produce some genuinely high-quality content. To do that, you will have to either spend at least half a day writing your own blog or hire an SEO content writer to do it for you. Either way, you will have to make some new investments if you already haven’t. You will either spend money or time. The choice is yours. 

Expertise, Trust, and Authority are no longer enough 

Speaking of high-quality content, Google is no longer satisfied with showing your experience, trust, and authority on the topic at hand. The search engine is now fixated on experience as well. This means you need to showcase your personal expertise in solving the issues and queries of the users. In other words, the authority factor has transferred from industry to a specific topic. This push will become even more noticeable in 2024 as the focus shifts towards personalization.

Thus, to remain relevant, you need to follow the hub and spoke strategy. This strategy dictates creating dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller blog pieces, explaining specific aspects of a broader topic. Then, write a general topic and link all these smaller pieces inside to create a circle of knowledge. For example, writing on “Creating a digital marketing strategy” can be considered the hub. In this case, the spokes will be “how to build a winning landing page,” “how to create a compelling CTA,” and others.

Creating such cluster topics will be extremely time-consuming, but it will build an internal content ecosystem to keep users on your website longer, resulting in better ranking scores. 

Most importantly, however, learn how to write authoritatively, use proper data, and don’t mislead your audience. For example, citing unexisting research or quoting out of context to serve your own needs will be punished harshly by Google.

Finally, take your time to create your author’s bios. This will automatically give you some extra points and enhance your credibility in the community. 

Voice and image searches will be the focus

We’ve already mentioned it several times, but when it comes to SEO, it bears repeating. Voice and image searches are on the rise and soon will become the norm. Well, not in 2024, but still, there is a significant influx of people using those two methods to satisfy their queries.

 In 2024, voice searches are expected to reach 8 billion monthly. Another 12 billion will utilize Google Lens and image search as well. This trend is even more noticeable in the US, as about 85.4 million users utilize voice search on Google Assistant. 81.1 billion use Siri and about 73.7 billion use Alexa. 

Naturally, you must tweak your metadata to facilitate these changes in user behavior. People often speak differently than they type, so you need to account for that during SEO optimization and keyword research. 

Moreover, users most often use the voice-activated search mode to make a rapid search for a product or service.

The same goes for image searches. Google Lens is most often used to recognize a brand or an item and find out where the user can buy it. Naturally, high-quality pictures with properly optimized file names, tags, and alt tags are no longer recommended. It’s a must if you want to keep your top spot on Google and make sure that image searches will land precisely on your page. 

Still, when it comes to voice searches, people will use them to find a local solution to their problem.

Local SEO will become even more important

Local SEO efforts have been on such lists ever since 2018. Still, after the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive restrictions on traveling and moving freely, people finally realized how important it is to know your local market. So, today, around 46% of all Google searches have local intent. This means that half of all your organic traffic comes from people looking for a local solution to their problem. Furthermore, as already explained, most voice searches also seek a local solution.

Thus, in 2024, it’s a good idea to improve your local SEO so you can enjoy an influx of new customers. This includes optimizing your Google My Business profile. If you already haven’t, give as much information about your business as possible. Add a FAQ section and list your biggest benefits. In 2024, Google My Business should be on focus, and you must add posts regularly if you want to remain relevant.

Zero-click searches should be in the mix

2024 will be the year when zero-click searches will finally reach their potential. The zero-click search is practically a straight-away answer to a query that doesn’t need the user to click to receive. This information is above all results and often is the only thing that users will ever see. Unfortunately, zero-click searches, as the name suggests, won’t lead to traffic. 

However, it will do wonders for your branding. Users will see your brand as an authoritative website, leading to better credibility. Naturally, this will lead to increased sales in the long run, which is far more effective than just “cheating” the user to get on your website. 

Naturally, you need to answer Google’s call and make sure you can accommodate the user’s interest. As yourself, what’s the first question anyone would ask about your product? Give a straight answer within a blog post, preferably in the intro, and go for the lengthy explanations afterward. Naturally, some topics can’t be explained in 2-3 sentences. Still, if the question is which is the best hosting company, the answer HostArmada should be front and center, while the explanation of why can come later. And if the user is interested in your reasoning, they can go in and check it out.

Naturally, to qualify, you need nothing short of exceptional content. Research, quotes, and references are a must. But there’s more. You will have to make your content entertaining and easily scannable. This way, Google will be able to take snippets much easier, giving your website a better chance to be featured at the zeroed position.

Being fast will be more important than ever 

Finally, we have website speed. Now, website speed has always been an integral part of your SEO. Still, today, users are far more impatient, and even a one-second delay will tarnish your results significantly. It has been well-documented that site speed has a direct correlation with conversion rates, so naturally, the faster your website, the better your results will be.

The core web vitals you should always be on top of are the Largest Content Paint (LCP), the First Input Delay (FID), and the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). LCP is the time it takes for the main content to appear on the screen. This can be an image, a text, or a video. FID refers to the time it takes for your website to respond to a user’s first Interaction. Finally, CLS are the unexpected movements on your page, which often leave the user frustrated and unable to complete an action. 

In 2024, the FID will be replaced by Interaction to Next Paint (INP). It measures the speed with which your website reacts to users’ actions. The faster your website responds, the better your ranking will be. 

So, you need to analyze these core vitals and tweak your website to meet and exceed the current standards. 

However, if nothing works, the problem might be in your hosting. In this case, all you can do is switch to HostArmada. Our cloud-based hosting offers lightning-fast website speed, robust security features, and 99.9% guaranteed uptime. This will significantly boost your SEO efforts, as speed, security, and reliability are among the cornerstones of user satisfaction. So, check out our plans and choose the one that suits your needs perfectly. Don’t waste time in taking this first and crucial step in upgrading your SEO in 2024.

The post 8 SEO Trends that will boost your Website Ranking in 2024 appeared first on HostArmada Blog.

Still, before the plugins can do their magic, you must go to the beginning. Start from the essentials. You need to optimize your WordPress settings so that search engines will read your website faster, better, and more effortless. So, today, we’ve made a list of 10 settings on WordPress that will boost your SEO. We will start from the easiest and go to some more complex settings. But before we get there, let’s talk a bit more about WordPress settings and why they are essential for your SEO.

Why are WordPress settings essential for your SEO

WordPress settings are the essence of your website. They are the pillars that make its usability and, in general, its communication with the internet. Thus, ignoring them in favor of some powerful plugins is like building a skyscraper with the most high-quality materials on a cracked, sandy foundation. The best part is that these optimizations are built in, and you don’t have to install any extra plugins. They are indeed the first thing to do when you start building your website.

So, let’s go through the settings that will boost your SEO efforts and make your website easier to find and read by crawlers.

Make your website visible

Before you start improving your SEO, you must be sure that you haven’t discouraged search engines from visiting your website. Now, you might be wondering why there is even such an option. Well, when you are in the process of building your website, your SEO is absolutely terrible. For example, first, when you build your website, you fill the blank text spaces with lorem ipsum. Lorem Ipsum is a ready text that has no meaning. Thus, if at this moment Google, Bing, or another search engine comes across your website, it will nuke your SEO efforts for the next six months. Thus, when your website is being built or refurbished, you need to discourage search engines from indexing your website.

So, if you are building your website on your own, you need to activate this option by going to Settings->Reading-> Search Engine visibility.

Once your website is ready, don’t forget to unmark the box, as it will otherwise render all your other SEO efforts entirely useless.

Set up a proper tagline

The next step is to boost your SEO with a proper tagline. In a nutshell, the tagline explains what your website is all about. Now, many companies will put their slogan there. That’s not entirely a bad idea, as your slogan should represent what your business is all about. Usually, the slogan includes the unique sales proposition, the type of business, and the main benefits. Still, you might want to optimize it a bit further by adding some keywords or phrases inside. For example, if McDonald’s puts “I’m lovin’ it” on their website’s tagline, it will do nothing for their SEO.

So, thoroughly research keywords that you might incorporate in your tagline, but don’t compromise on giving a precise indication of your website and business. During this process, there is one thing to consider. Though your business may be directed toward end customers, your website might target business partners. So, make sure to target the right audience with your tagline.

In general, writing a tagline is not that easy. Give this process the due time, and don’t compromise on the result. Only a great tagline will boost your SEO efforts. Once you are ready, go to Settings->General and find the “tagline” box.

Set up your categories and tags correctly

Categories are the most basic method of grouping your content in WordPress. Naturally, on its own, this wouldn’t have such a huge impact on your SEO. Still, if you set it up properly, it will propel your website’s user experience. In terms, this will boost your search engine results.

As you can imagine, a blog post can belong to more than one category based on its topic. Still, the best practice is segregating your posts into just one category, giving users a general division to find your content. If the post touches various topics, you may use tags to connect posts from different categories.

For example, if you are a digital marketing freelancer, and you touch on topics regarding categories such as SEO, offline marketing, online marketing, social media, and others, you may have articles on SEO and online marketing sharing tags like “content,” “strategies” and others.

So, go to Posts->Categories to create your various categories. Don’t forget to place a proper slug, which will be added to your URL. Also, adding a description will help search engine crawlers better position your content. It’s a perfect place where you can add some additional keywords.

Then, make sure to assign each of your posts a category before publishing it through the dedicated option in the right hand-side sidebar.

Creating tags is similar. Try to make tags based on keywords that are relevant to your business. For example, if you are offering bike parts, you may be tempted to put a tag “forks.” However, you can see where crawlers might find this explanation a bit confusing. So, “front suspension” will be much better, as it’s far more related to your specific business niche.

Otherwise, creating tags is similar to categories. Go to Posts->Tags and create your tags with their slugs and descriptions.

Set your theme and plugin to auto-update

WordPress wouldn’t be a leader in the web-building and CMS markets without its plugins and themes. Naturally, much of the websites’ usability comes precisely from them. So, keeping plugins and themes up to date is a no-brainer. Moreover, this is more than just an SEO booster. It’s essential for your website as a whole. If you skip some major update, it can entirely crash your website, which, as you can imagine, won’t be very good for your overall usability. Naturally, this will become an SEO nightmare if you don’t notice your broken website in time.

Moreover, not updating your plugins and theme is a security issue. Usually, updates fix bugs and breaches that malicious attackers could exploit. So, keeping your infrastructure up to date is a must, regardless of your SEO efforts.

The good news is that you can effortlessly take care of this problem. All you need to do is set the theme and plugins to auto-update. This is quite easy. Go to the Plugin page and just enable the auto-update option on the right-hand side. The only downside is that you must do it for each plugin individually.

To activate the auto-update option for your theme, go to Appearance->Themes. Click on the theme you want to automatically update and enable the automatic updates right below the Headline.

Instal an SSL certificate

While SSL certificates were optional 10 years ago, today if you want anyone on your website, an SSL certificate is a must. Thankfully, HostArmada offers a robust SSL certificate as a bonus to every plan, so there is no need to go far and beyond to find a security option.

In a nutshell, SSL certificates are internet protocols that encrypt the transfer of data between the user’s browser and the website’s server. This way, third parties can’t just tag along and steal the information.

Users will see a padlock left of your URL in the browser’s search box. This will indicate that the website has an SSL certificate. Naturally, most users will entirely avoid websites without this padlock icon on the top left.

Installing an SSL certificate is a bit more complicated, so if you need more specific instructions, check out our dedicated article on SSL and the provided step-by-step instructions.

Optimize your permalink structure

The next step in making your WordPress the best pillar on which to build your SEO strategy is optimizing your permalinks. Now, if your website is more than 4-6 months old, changing permalinks will damage your SEO. So, if you do have some success in search engines, don’t change it. However, if you are just starting to build your website or you’re at the very beginning of your SEO efforts, then by all means, the permalinks must be optimized.

If you haven’t done the optimization, don’t worry. It’s not that bad, as WordPress uses the post name as a default URL tail. This means your URL will be something like “https://www.hostarmada.com/blog/why-is-ezoic-a-must-for-monetizing-your-website”

Still, you can do better. Go to Settings-> Permalinks.

Here, you will see several options:

Plain – This option will create a unique ID for your article and place it as a tail in your URL. For example, https://www.hostarmada.com/blog/123. Using this option is not a great idea, as it won’t give the search engine crawlers any information on the topic of your post.

Day and name – This is better than the plain permalink structure, but it will create extremely long URLs as it features the date and the name. So, if we used this permalink structure, this article would have had this URL https://www.hostarmada.com/blog/2023/12/17/10-settings-on-wordpress-that-will-boost-your-SEO. Not ideal, as you can see.

Month and name – The same as the day and name option, but doesn’t specify the day, only the month and the year.

Numeric – This structure is similar to the Plain, but it uses the post ID in your wp_post table. Still, it doesn’t help your SEO efforts at all, as it doesn’t provide any information to the search engine crawlers.

Post name – This is the default option, which uses the post’s title. This is a great choice if you don’t want to add additional information for the crawlers. If you do, then you need to use the custom structure.

Custom – This structure allows you to build your URL by adding the category, the author, or many other options. Adding the category is generally great for SEO, so don’t hesitate to do it. Moreover, if you rely on your name or brand as a keyword, you might also add your author’s name to the URL.

Dynamic sitemap

Adding a sitemap to your WordPress will be a game-changer. Every search engine loves having their work cut out for them. Essentially, a sitemap is a file that lists all your site’s content in a machine-readable format. As you can imagine, crawlers love this summarized version of your website rather than mapping it on their own.

More importantly, sitemaps will tell search engines which of your links are more important than others. This way, search engines will prioritize indexing them over others, putting them in the search engine faster than usual.

The best thing about sitemaps is that WordPress creates them automatically. To check out yours, simply type your domain name plus /sitemap.xml. For small business websites, that’s all you will need. However, a customized sitemap is necessary for websites with vast content or huge corporations with many pages. Dynamic sitemaps are a blessing, as they are always up-to-date.

Install an SEO plugin

This should go without saying, but still… Installing an SEO plugin will vastly improve your SEO. It will give you the opportunity to closely follow your SEO efforts and manage your content so it follows the best practices.

For example, YOAST SEO will show you whether your text has perfect readability and where exactly its problems are. This is invaluable if you want to make it to the front page of Google.

Moreover, SEO plugins will give you the opportunity to optimize your meta title and description effortlessly. This way, you can add keywords to the mix and create a general optimization for all of your content.

Optimize comments settings

Censoring your audience when it comes to commenting on your website is a terrible idea. The main point of having a blog is to start a conversation to actively seek communication with your audience. If this communication is one-sided, the audience will quickly distance itself.

On the other hand, the comment section below your blog posts should be a place for civilized conversation, not a marketplace for phishing and other schemes. Spambots and spammers will use every opportunity to flood your comment sections if they can post unchecked. So, light censorship is more than welcome.

So, to moderate your comments, go to Settings-> Discussions. There, you will find various options on how to deal with your comments section. What you will choose entirely depends on your strategy. Still, as a minimum, we suggest keeping all Default post settings on.

Furthermore, insist the author fill out their name and email and manually approve comments. This way, you can keep on top of what’s being said on your website. Still, don’t be tempted to exclude negative comments or critiques just because they do not fit your narrative. Censorship of such kind will instantly disperse any audience.

Set user permissions

Limiting contributors’ access to your WordPress dashboard’s options can play a crucial role in keeping your SEO intact. It’s no wonder that a single team usually implements the SEO strategy. They simply have the bigger picture. Moreover, you can’t expect a blog post author to have in-depth knowledge of SEO. Thus, they don’t need access to all dashboard options.

For example, an author may write a brilliant SEO-optimized post. But there’s more to great SEO than the text. The Images, the Alt texts, the meta titles. Those are post-production efforts that can be messed up if the author doesn’t see the bigger picture. Thus, giving them limited accessibility is a must.

The good news is that WordPress has some built-in roles that perfectly encapsulate everyone’s role. There are seven default roles – admin, editor, author, SEO editor, SEO manager, contributor, and subscriber. You must go to Users-> All users->Edit to change them.

Screen

You can customize what access to give these users so they can do their job without any risk of messing up anything else. This is essential if you are working with freelancers and other third-party service providers.

And that’s it

These are the most important settings you need to address to create the foundation of one truly inspiring SEO strategy. Of course, there are other small things you can do to tweak your WordPress to help you gain a foothold on Google or Bing’s front page, but these ten are the most essential.

Another essential factor for dominating the search engines is your loading speed, security, and, most importantly, reliability. A slow website will chip away not only from your SEO efforts but also from your overall performance. But nothing is more detrimental to your website than having downtime.

Luckily, HostArmada addresses all these essential problems. Having great hosting is key to a great SEO. We offer lightning-fast loading time, robust security, and 99.9% uptime, which will boost your SEO effort through the roof. Check out our plans and find the one that fits your needs perfectly. If you need any help, don’t hesitate to contact our team. They will gladly help you find the perfect solution to your problems.

The post 10 WordPress Settings that will boost your SEO rankings appeared first on HostArmada Blog.

Blog posts are not just to show off you know your industry and niche inside out. That’s a part of it, but not the main point. The focus of your blog is answering questions that users may have about your business, industry, and practices. However, to be efficient, these blog posts must have some qualities that will grab the user’s attention and push them to read the whole thing to the end.

Naturally, since Google is also keen on giving the best options to its users, the tech giant has some specific readability preferences. Following them will trebuchet your blog post at the forefront of the search results. Of course, this will lead to increased traffic, better CTR, more sales, higher revenue, and a bigger smile on your face. That’s what we call a win.

So, perfect readability is a must if you want to beat the odds and keep your audience around longer. But how can you make your blog posts irresistible to readers? Well, let’s have a look.

Why is perfect readability a must?

Before we get to the “How,” let’s briefly discuss the “Why.” The main reason why one visits your blog post is to find an answer to a burning question. Naturally, the quicker and easier they find the answer, the more satisfied they will be. So, building your blog posts and writing them in a clean, easily digestible, and organized manner will boost your user experience, which will inadvertently help you with your SEO score.

Still, when writing a blog post, don’t forget that you are not writing for Google and its crawlers. You’re not writing for a machine. Yes, having good SERP results is great, but when push comes to shove, you write for human beings. If you forget that simple truth, your blog is nothing more than a waste of your time and that of your audience.

So, what should you do? Well, it’s simple, really. All you need to do is please both Google and your readers. Thus, you will need a general understanding of Google’s guidelines for readability and the talent to build upon them to make your blog post not only Google-worthy but also reader-worth. The good news is that WordPress has the perfect plugin to help you appease at least Google – YOAST SEO.

What is YOAST, and should you follow its advice?

The short answer is a resounding YES. YOAST is a great tool that offers an accessible and comprehensive overlook of your blog posts’ SEO and readability. The plugin scans your text and suggests ways to improve your readability based on Google’s recommendations on how a blog post should look like. The plugin highlights several measurable readability features:

Subheading distribution

Subheadings divide your blog post into easily digestible topics within the spectrum of the overall theme. This way, if a user is interested in a specific point of your presentation, they can easily find it without having to read the entire text. For example, if you are discussing the various features of a vacuum cleaner, the user may be interested just in its suction power. Thus, having a separate subheading dedicated to this feature will help them pinpoint it faster and enhance the overall user experience.

Moreover, subheadings are the perfect way to include some additional keyphrases in your text. However, don’t be tempted to build your subheadings solely on long-tail keyword demand. This will ruin the entire blog post.

As a general rule of thumb, try to keep your subheading sections up to 300 words. This way, you won’t overexplain, but you can still have enough room to give all the relevant information with examples. If a sub-topic is more extensive and you need more words, introduce an additional layer of sub-division in the form of H3 headlines.

Paragraph length

Paragraphs are literary devices that separate different themes within a text. They come naturally within the text, making it much more readable. Still, you must be careful not to extend a paragraph for too long. You need to be able to finish your thought within 5-6 sentences, all of which should be in total 150 words.

What YOAST won’t tell you is that you must avoid one-word or one-sentence paragraphs as well. Yes, there are times when you can place such, but they are extremely rare. You are not writing a WhatsApp message. You are writing a blog post. So, use one-sentence or one-word paragraphs only when you want to underline a point heavily.

Sentence length

Have you ever read a sentence that has no end in sight? Not a great read, you will undoubtedly agree. Long sentences are sometimes a necessity. Still, if your entire blog post is filled with complex sentences with several subordinate clauses, then you might lose your readers along the way. Keep the majority of your sentences below 20 words to avoid this problem. You can, of course, have occasional lengthy sentences. Just make sure to keep them at a minimum and only when you can’t make them into two sentences. After all, you are trying to explain a complicated topic in a simple language, not creating a literary masterpiece.

Word complexity

Do not assume knowledge is one of the few golden rules of content writing. Using lingo, industry slang, and other complex words that might be known to professionals but not as much to the broader audience is a huge deal breaker to many readers. Imagine if you are looking for car tires. You open an article to see the best choices for your car, and you are flooded by definitions, measurements, and stats that mean absolutely nothing to you. Would you stay and try to understand what the writer had in mind, or would you go to another article where everything is explained simpler?

The same goes for uncommon and highly complicated words that even fluent speakers would barely understand. The English language is abundant in complex terms that only scholars and snobs use nowadays. So, try to avoid them, especially if your audience is not filled with snobs and scholars.

Transitional words

You should write as you talk. Well, not strictly, but you should follow the same logic. When you speak, you use transitional words so your listeners will follow your thoughts easily. The same goes for your written words. If you want your readers to follow the flow of your thoughts, adding transitional words is a must. The lack of such transitional words indicates the absence of a coherent idea behind your writing. So, make sure to give your text the flow it deserves through some transitional words like “so,” “therefore,” “however,” “besides that,” “also,” and others.

Passive voice

This is the bane of any text. Passive voice makes the text seem distant and boring. Moreover, it makes your sentences wordier and harder to understand. That doesn’t mean you should entirely cut passive voice from your texts. But keep them at a reasonable number and try to use an active voice where possible.

Sentence beginnings

Finally, we have the start of your text. Beginning sentences with the same word or structure are just a sign of bad writing. Of course, this rule has some exceptions, but they are extremely rare. You can use the same beginning to several consecutive sentences, only to accentuate a point and only once in your entire text. Naturally, this should be the climax of your text. Still, as a general rule of thumb, try to avoid starting the consecutive sentences with the same structure, let alone the exact words.

You can count on YOAST to track all these signs of excellent readability. Moreover, if you have made some of these mistakes, YOAST will underline them, so you won’t have to search in your entire text. That’s quite handy when you’ve written a 3000-word article. But is this enough?

Are YOAST suggestions enough?

No. These suggestions are a great start, but they are far from enough to make your text the best it can be. YOAST is excellent at its job, but its scope follows only Google’s recommendations. So, if your goal is to appease the crawlers, you can stop at YOAST’s suggestions and be done with it. However, if you want to keep your audience entertained and informed, you must go above and beyond.

After all, no one in their right mind will count what percentage of your sentences are above 20 words. That’s Google’s arbitrary suggestion that presumes that longer sentences are harder to understand. And this is not too far off. Still, there are far more important factors that can make a text easier to understand.

How to better your readability beyond YOAST’s suggestions

Most of these factors are quite intuitive. Yet many blog posts lack them for one reason or another. The main idea behind these points is not to increase your SEO rating but to better the user experience and make your blog post more readable for humans.

Know your audience

If you are a marketer, you would know that every action, no matter what it is, starts precisely with knowing your audience. Your entire establishment is dedicated to a particular group of people interested in your product or service.

Naturally, pinpointing this group will give you invaluable information on how to make your blog posts more readable for them. For example, if your blog posts target younger or non-specialist audiences, you must give them shorter and to-point answers to their questions. The younger generation has no patience for lengthy explanations.

Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t add all the relevant information. All it means is that you must format it to suit their needs. Thus, you will need shorter subheading segments, focusing more on the why rather than the how.

On the other hand, if your blog post targets professionals, they’d much rather have a full explanation with examples and specific scenarios. Thus, your subheading sections will have additional divisions. Actually, this blog post is an excellent example of this.

Don’t overbulk your post

You are not writing a high-school assignment, so there is no specific word count that you must get. Well, okay, there is. Actually, the best practices show that blog posts between 1000 and 2000 words are the norm. If you are trying to produce high-quality content, 2000 words are the minimum. However, that doesn’t mean that you must overbulk your articles. Keep it to the point. Most topics, especially those for specialists, have enough relevant information to share, so don’t worry. You will get to the recommended word count and more. Still, if the topic doesn’t allow you to reach a specific word count, don’t force it. Better to keep it short and simple rather than just blabber on and on.

For example, the topic of how to build a winning marketing strategy is obviously not something you can explain in 1,000 or even 2,000 words. It’s not an easy concept. On the other hand, an article on how to tie your shoelaces so they won’t untie can be explained faster with far less going into detail.

Don’t over-format

Speaking of overdoing it, you need to consider how much formatting you do on your blog. Yes, your blog post should be skimmable, but over-formatting will do more harm than good.

Naturally, using some italicized words is okay. The same goes for occasional bolding. But having every third word different than the last is too much.

So, instead, go for the H2 and H3 subheadings. If you need to do a further division, consider whether some bullet points won’t do the trick. However, don’t overdo it with bullet points as well. They are a great tool to list features or highlight information. But if there is a bullet list in every section, the reader will get lost. Moreover, this stops being a blog post and becomes a very bad infographic. If you want to list information with bullet points, at least put the extra effort into building a proper infographic. Check out what proper formating should look like:

Highlight key points

This being said, don’t shy away from highlighting the most important parts of your text. In general, these are the exceptions. We talked about single sentences or single-word paragraphs. We spoke about bolding, underlining, and italicizing. But when it comes to highlighting, you must use visual hierarchy to your full advantage.

Make sure all your key points are visually distinguishable. Make them look appealing and easily skimmable. You can do that by using bullet points and listings, and if there is something you want your audience to remember, then it’s time to use single-sentence paragraphs. Make sure this is the one thing you want your audience to remember, as there is a place for only one such paragraph.

Use keywords but in moderation

This is the part where content writers usually get on edge with the SEO team. The SEO team wants to follow protocol. They want to add as many keywords as possible in a single text. Google will love this. Your readers will hate it. Stuffing keywords everywhere in bulk shows you are more interested in Google than your readers, and they will quickly become frustrated. Moreover, this makes you look condescending, which is not a great look if you want to win hearts.

Break the tension with visuals

Usually, lengthy texts are heavy. Readers feel exhausted and often lose concentration. That’s inevitable, especially if you are trying to explain complex concepts. So, instead of skipping on vital information, a much better strategy is offering some tension relief.

The best way to do so is by adding a picture, a video, or another visual. Graphics often help illustrate your point while at the same time relieving the reader’s eyes of the text.

Many writers use humor to break the tension, and that’s a great idea on paper. However, jokes must be done extremely carefully, and you must have established your brand persona and brand voice as such. You can’t be all serious and place a deadpan joke out of nowhere.

So, if you are not sure if you can pull off a joke persona without offending or alienating part of your audience, just stick to the classics. Provide your audience with a visual tension break in the form of pictures or videos.

Don’t over-link

When creating your blog post, remember you are not Wikipedia, so not every sentence must contain 3-4 links. Links are a delicate art. Naturally, when you are citing someone, it’s common courtesy to link them in your text. Moreover, linking authoritative websites will give you an SEO boost.

However, this can’t be your entire content strategy. You must provide your readers with something more – to build upon existing information. Furthermore, you don’t want to divert your audience from your website. You want them glued to your page for as long as possible.

Naturally, links can’t be completely avoided. That’s what building a proper backlink portfolio is all about. However, be sure never to link your competitors or divert your audience to another website unless absolutely necessary. For example, when offering statistics.

Forget about clickbait headlines

Ten years ago, clickbait was huge when content writers used every method to gain traction and be ahead of their competitors. Today, that certainly doesn’t work. On the contrary, making your headline sound clickbait-ish is off-putting, as internet users were burned one too many times, falling for false promises. So, while headlines like “10 content strategies that you won’t believe will work (but they do)” might have worked back in 2013, today, they are avoided like the plague.

The same goes for elevating the anticipation of the readers to unbelievable heights. So, avoid headlines that promise “Unique,” “Never before seen,” or “100% fail proof…” even if you actually can fulfill your promise.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you should put only dry and unimaginative headlines. Using powerful adjectives is definitely a good idea. Still, make sure that you can deliver what you promise. For instance, if you want to make the clickbait-ish headline we used for an example above into a readable blog post headline, you can transform it to “10 powerful content strategies to help you grow your audience”. The difference is obvious. You can see some additional examples in the picture below:

Get to the point straight away

Whenever you want to find out something, you don’t want to read through a boring 500-word-long introduction of the problem. You want a fast and clear answer. Then, if you have the time, you can read the detailed explanations. So, when writing a blog post, try to stick to the point from the very top.

Go straight to the topic and provide an answer right from the beginning. Naturally, topics like this don’t answer a specific question but offer a step-by-step tutorial on improving your content. So, obviously, we can’t give an answer in the intro itself. However, if we are talking about “Is SEO worth investing in?”, the resounding “Yes” should be in the first sentence. Then, you can explain why you think so.

Give your text a flow

Most importantly, your text must have a flow. This will help your readers follow it much more easily, making it a better read in general. Placing just facts without any context will give the information, but what will set you apart from everyone else in your industry is the entertainment and readability value of your content. So, structure your text soundly, use transitional phrases and words, avoid plot holes, and don’t be afraid to use pronouns. Make sure your next section starts where the previous one ended.

Your website readability starts way before you create your blog post.

There is a simple truth. A blog post is only good when the website it is on is well-maintained. This includes the load time, the up-time, and the security of your website. Even if you follow our advice to the letter and you manage to create a masterpiece of a blog post, it will all be in vain if users can’t reach it half the time. The loading speed is just as instrumental to your success as your content, as people don’t wait for a website to open. They simply move to the next one.

So, if you want to avoid this uncomfortable situation, you must find a great web hosting provider. HostArmada is just what you are looking for. We offer lightning-fast load speed, 99.9% guaranteed uptime, and top-notch security. Check out our plans and find the one that best fits your business needs.

Remember, a fast, secure, and reliable website is always the first step toward your business success.

The post How to elevate your blog’s readability beyond YOAST SEO? appeared first on HostArmada Blog.

Building a proper, well-designed, and informative website is the first step and the easiest way to attract paying customers without breaking the bank. Naturally, you need to provide the audience with all the right information. And while a one-pager is quite enough for a starting freelance gig or a nanobusiness if you want to go big and become a full-time freelancer, having a full-blown multi-page website is the way to go. There, each page has its own mission. Of course, how many pages you will create is entirely up to you. It depends on your business plan, your industry, and your vision. Still, there are five pages each freelancer must have on their website if they want to be successful. Let’s have a closer look at the what, why, and how of these web pages.

About page

As a general rule of thumb, each page you create is for the benefit of your audience. This means that no matter the page, it must serve a purpose. It needs to bring value to the users, thus converting them into leads. The About page makes no difference. Many freelancers go into lengthy tales about their childhood dreams, stories, and lives. Unfortunately, no one cares about these aspects of the freelancer’s life. What users are interested in are the freelancer’s qualifications, experience, and motivations. So, naturally, this should be the highlights of your About page.

On the other hand, some freelancers disregard the About page as a waste of time and effort. They couldn’t be further from the truth.

Why do you need an About page?

The About page serves multiple purposes at once. Probably the most important one is establishing credibility. For instance, if you are a freelance SMM specialist, a customer will have to give you access to some funds and their Social Media profiles. Naturally, the potential client will want to know who you are, where you come from, your expertise, and who you have been working for. Consider it a job interview where your About page answers all the questions.

Furthermore, the About page builds trust and connects with your audience. Imagine being at a social event or a workshop where you wanted to find a business partner. You’d like to know their background, hobbies, and personality. You’d like to see if you are compatible as partners and if they can be trusted.

The About page is much more than that. It’s a platform where you can showcase your personality. This is your key advantage against big companies that dwell within your niche. Customers often prefer the personal touch, which most companies can’t give because they follow standards. When ordering from a company, you’re not talking to a decision-maker. When talking to a freelancer, you talk directly both with the owner and the worker. This is a communication homerun.

Last but not least, the About page is an SEO goldmine. Google loves it when they can verify who’s behind a website. Thus, though not explicitly stated, About pages give you a slight bonus for your SEO. Moreover, the more credible your website, the better your ranking will be. So, what should your About page have?

How to make it work?

In short, you need to show your understanding of your target audience’s problems and, more importantly, your knowledge and experience in solving them. But first things first. People should be able to find your About page effortlessly. Make it visible and add a link in the main menu and your homepage. A great idea is to add a small About section on your homepage with a link to the About page.

Firstly, a successful About page is always customer-centric. That means you must focus on traits and aspects of your personality, business, and services that are interesting to your audience. What you find interesting about yourself is irrelevant if it doesn’t serve the About page’s purposes listed above.

This, however, doesn’t mean you should avoid talking about yourself. On the contrary, the About page is all about you. However, focus on being convincing and trustworthy rather than interesting. For example, wingsuit flying will definitely make you look cool. However, it will also instill doubt about your credibility, as taking risks is not a great B2B model. So, choose carefully what is beneficial to disclose and what can remain hidden.

Furthermore, on your About page, you must address the problem that drove your audience to your website. Share your story, your credentials, and your qualifications. Share how you found a fix and what makes it better than all other solutions. In other words, give your unique sales proposition.

Most importantly, make your About page memorable. Create a lasting impression through your content, imagery, and page design. Don’t hesitate to incorporate interactive elements. Moreover, this is the best place to add some humor. Still, don’t go overboard and keep it professional. After all, you are offering a service. Speaking of which…

Services page

Of course, your entire website’s main point is to offer your audience some services. While this can be done on your home page, a far better solution is to have a dedicated Service page. If you are offering more than one service, it’s a good idea to have a separate page for each one of your services.

Why have a Service page?

Your Service page is, of course, the highlight of your website. This is the place you want all your audience to end up on. A good marketing strategy will funnel traffic from various sources. A dedicated Service page will accommodate the hotter and warmer audience, usually via paid advertisements and Search engines. These people have a particular problem, and they are looking for a solution. If you offer multiple services, sending them on your home page will only dilute their resolve to use your service. On the other hand, if they land on a dedicated Service page, you can build a tailored customer journey for this segment of your target audience.

Moreover, a separate Service page will immensely benefit your SEO efforts. Offering a solution is what Google is all about. So, if you nail your SEO optimization, a dedicated Service page will be much more valuable than any home page. That’s why each of your services must be separated on a different page. Because each one of them solves a different need and problem.

So, how should you build your Service page?

How to build your Service page?

Your Service page is nothing short of a landing page. It should follow the same structure. It needs to create a customer journey, starting with a strong introduction in your Hero Section and ending with a persuasive CTA. The narrative on your service page, naturally, depends on your industry and service. Regardless, there are some key elements you need to incorporate on your Service page.

Firstly, you must be clear about what you are offering from the very start. This must be the focus of your Headline (H1) in your Hero section. There, you must also add a “quick order button” for returning customers or those who have already decided.

To make the impact even stronger, you must state your offer beneath the Hero section. Be clear and specific. For example, you should add delivery time, ordering process, what information you need, and others. Most importantly, you need to add what your service does not include.

Moreover, you need to address the cost of your service, as this is one of the most important pieces of information for the customer’s decision-making process. Thus, you can explain how the price is formed.

Furthermore, any customer will want to see a sample of your work. Thus, you need to provide a link to relevant examples of your work. While having a small batch of service-specific samples on your service page is good, a freelancer should also have a dedicated portfolio page.

Finally, you must add a persuasive CTA. The CTA should be the natural ending of your customer journey and narrative.

Your customer journey should answer all burning questions about the service you offer. The more detailed your service page is, the less time you will spend answering inquiries without the prospect of becoming paying customers.

Portfolio

You don’t just hire a person because of their charming smile and good looks. If you do, that’s not the most efficient way to run your business. Yes, personal traits play a huge role in choosing your partners and vendors, but any self-respecting business is looking for competence above all else. So, how do you show your experience, know-how, and work style? Through a portfolio, of course.

Why do you need a portfolio?

It’s simple, really. You need a portfolio so you won’t have to create samples for every customer. Your customers will want to know your capabilities, and showing them some of your work will showcase your competence and work both as social and authority proof.

How to build your portfolio page?

Honestly, there is no single rule on how to build your page. It all depends on the service you provide, the samples you want to share, and your personal preferences. If you are a digital marketer, you’d want to share screenshots of successful campaigns and their results. Graphic designers should go for a more gallery-like vision. If you are a copywriter or a content writer, you’d want to showcase some of your published blog posts or articles.

One common mistake many freelancers make is adding all their work to their portfolio. That’s not just unnecessary but can have a negative effect on your goal. In your portfolio, you’d want to share only your best work. Choose 5-10 of your best work examples. Giving too many choices and examples will either become confusing or give the audience enough opportunities to find something wrong.

Still, if you offer more than one service, highlight at least 2-3 examples from each. This will showcase your skills while, at the same time, you can use the same samples as an element in your service page.

Regardless of how much information you share on your website, there will always be additional questions. That’s why you need at least two other pages on your freelance website.

FAQ page

People are not too thorough when searching for information, especially when this information is beautified and not direct. That’s why having a dedicated page where the most common questions can be answered is a good idea. This is the FAQ page. A good FAQ page can reduce pointless inquiries significantly, as the audience will have the means to get their answer without contacting you. But the benefits of the FAQ page are more.

Why do you need an FAQ page?

First and foremost, it saves a lot of time, both for you and your customers. Most customers will have a specific goal in mind, and they wouldn’t want to go through your entire sales page to see if you offer what they are looking for. For example, if you provide writing services but don’t offer SEO research, this may be a dealbreaker for some customers. Thus, stating that on your FAQ page will save you time answering an email on whether you offer SEO research.

Furthermore, it will immensely improve your SEO. The FAQ page is the perfect place for adding all sorts of shot-tail and long-tail keywords. This will help you rank on many more keywords, increasing your organic traffic.

Most importantly, however, the FAQ page demonstrates your expertise. This is the place where you can show off your knowledge of your industry.

How to build your FAQ page?

First and foremost, you need to pick the questions you want to add. At first, when you are new on the market, you won’t have much data. Still, the FAQ section can be filled with everything you consider important to share. Over time, as you start receiving inquiries and communicating with customers, you can add new questions to your list. You can also draw some inspiration from your competitors and Google.

Your next step is to structure your questions. Follow some kind of logic. For example, start with broader questions like “Who are you?” and get into specifics later. Being random with your questions will only confuse your audience.

If your list is far too long, you should group the questions into categories so they can be easily scannable.

When it comes to design, there are no strict rules. You can choose whatever seems most convenient. Still, your FAQ page design should correspond with the rest of your website.

While the FAQ page will significantly reduce the number of pointless emails, you still must give your audience the means to communicate with you directly. This is where the Contact page comes into play.

Contact page

You can’t cover every single question your audience will have. Many will have subjective questions about their cases. Others will want to order or book your services after they make sure you are a real person. So, naturally, you must give your audience the means to communicate. The contact page is just that. There, you can present your preferred means of communication. Regardless of whether you prefer to communicate by phone, adding an email address is essential. If you don’t want to share your email directly, you can add a contact form instead. The main point is to allow your audience to communicate without personal interaction.

With the rise of AI, you can even create a chatbot, but that shouldn’t be your priority.

Naturally, make sure to state how long it takes you to reply and stick to it. For example, if the reply time is 24 hours, make sure to always answer an inquiry within that period. Otherwise, you will lose your customer’s confidence.

Moreover, make a schedule of checking your inbox at least thrice daily and state that on your Contact page. For example, check your emails at 10 am, 2 pm, and 6 pm. This way, when someone sends you an email, they will know precisely when you will read it and when to expect an answer. Don’t forget to exclude weekends, though. After all, you didn’t become a freelancer to have a worse work-life balance.

There you have it

Your website is done. Mostly. You still need a gorgeous homepage and a catchy and memorable brand name. However, no matter how excellent you build your pages, if your readers can’t get to them, it’s all pointless. So, the first step towards building your freelance website should be investing in a fast, secure, and reliable web hosting service. Fortunately for you, HostArmada is just that. We pride ourselves in our lightning-fast hosting, boosted with top-notch security. To top it all off, we offer 99.9% uptime, making our service one of the most reliable on the market. If you want to have a successful freelance website, our offers are where you must start your journey. Check out our plans, and if you need any help choosing the right one, don’t hesitate to contact our team.

The post 5 Web Pages Every Freelancer Must Have On Their Website appeared first on HostArmada Blog.

So, obviously, it’s extremely important for anyone to be able to write a captivating, persuasive, and alluring headline that will push people to click on the provided link. It’s like a CTA but with much less explanation involved. Thus writing a proper, effective headline is anything but easy. So, to help you attract an even bigger audience to your website, we composed a comprehensive guide on how to write a winning headline. But before we get started, let’s discuss why headlines matter.

Why do headlines matter?

The most obvious reason why headlines are crucial to your website’s success is that they attract the audience. You can’t persuade someone to click on an article if it doesn’t have an appealing enough headline. Even in social media, while people may notice your content because of the picture, they will click on it because of the headline. Thus the most significant benefit of having a winning headline is the traffic it generates.

Organic traffic relies predominantly on search engine results, though. As you know, search engines share the headline with a short description. Still, what gets the user’s attention is definitely the headline. So, a better headline means higher traffic, better results, more conversions, and, ultimately, better revenues.

However, a headline should be much more than that. About 8 out of 10 people will only read the headlines, while only 20% will actually invest the time to read the entire article. Thus, the headline should give enough information and exude enough appeal to increase this percentage. Or at least push readers to share your page with someone interested.

Of course, to manage all that, you must be above average. With about 7 million blog posts published daily and about 97% of them boosting their results via social media, standing out is genuinely one of the most challenging parts of your marketing. Still, if you want your post to be shared, you must do better than 90% of the internet. Only about 1% of all posts receive more than 1000 shares. 10% will get over 100 shares, while the rest will enjoy less. So, how do you get in the top 10%? Well, you write one outstanding headline, of course, and here is how you start.

Headline Foundations

Any headline has some mandatory features that it must cover. These are the cornerstones of your headline. Without them, none of the subsequent tips and tricks will help you reach your desired potential. They are the flesh and blood of your headline. Thus, adding them will not necessarily bring you any benefits. On the other hand, disregard them, and no matter how you adorn your headline after, it will inevitably fail.

Consider the length

When writing a headline, you should strive for simplicity. Reserve the lengthy explanations for the content after the user clicks on the headline. Moreover, studies have suggested that a seven-word headline would receive the most clicks. It will receive about 30% more clicks than an eight or 12-word headline.

Also, you should avoid way-too-long or way-too-short headlines. Both are not performing well. Any headline with less than 4 words can’t relay enough information while using 14 words or more will lose focus.

Moreover, you need to follow the guidelines of the channel you are using for distribution. For example, since most websites strive to end up in Google, you must follow their guidelines for creating a title. Since January 3, 2023, the search engine King has removed its headline limit of 110 characters, but that doesn’t mean you can write as long as you want. Google will cut your title short after approximately 60 characters. Why approximately? Well, Google has predetermined a 600-pixel limit for your headline, and not all characters take the same space. So going for 50-55 characters with your headline is probably for the best. Statistically, the most effective headlines will be 7 words and 55 characters. Still, what you put inside these seven words is far more important.

Make it on point

People have options. They don’t have time. So when writing a headline, you shouldn’t waste the reader’s time while highlighting why you offer the best option. This means you need to stick to the point. Yes, your title should summarize the content beneath it, but that’s not all. It should also highlight how reading this content will benefit the user.

It’s not a coincidence searching on the internet is called browsing. Users are not ready to give everyone the same amount of attention. So to capture it, you need to address a problem they face or its solution. For example, the title, “Why is your bounce rate so damn high?” addresses the issue (high bounce rate) and implies the featured content has the solution. This type of headline states precisely what the user can expect to learn if they click on the title. It’s straightforward, short, and enticing. For this headline to work, however, targeting is crucial.

Make it targeted

As you can imagine, a user looking for a swimsuit won’t click on this title. Neither will someone who has a perfect bounce rate. The headline offers a solution to a tightly targeted audience with a common problem. Thus, almost everyone who clicks on the article will be interested in our solution. That’s what makes it work. Therefore targeting is instrumental for your success. You need to know what audience you need to address. Not only which segment of the population will be interested in your problem, but also what’s the entire point of your content, where is the targeted audience in the marketing funnel, and how knowledgeable are they on the issue at hand.

For example, if we were targeting people with experience, we would have made our headline “Utilize Google Search Console to improve your bounce rate.” This headline accents the solution, which assumes the user already knows all aspects of the problem and only needs a quick solution.

Moreover, this headline is much more sharable, as it can act as a direct answer. Still, the user needs to know what GSC is, how it works, and its implementations. For beginners, the original title is much better as it focuses on the problem, and the content not only explains the ins and outs of the problem but gives a solution after carefully explaining the processes.

So, when you write a headline, know your audience. Otherwise, you risk patronizing the more knowledgeable or scaring away the less knowledgeable.

Use Active Voice

Using active voice is not something new in presentations. It has massive benefits to your entire content, not just the headline, but as the title is practically your text’s ad, it’s good to start using active voice there as well.

Probably the most significant benefit of using active over passive voice is the confidence it implies. Using passive voice can sound doubtful. For example, if we were to write, “Bounce rates can be improved with Google Search Console,” the title would give the same information. Yet it lacks the conviction that the method will work. “Utilize Google Search Console to improve your bounce rate” sounds more confident and assertive.

Moreover, the active voice states the point clearly and directly. Passive voice usually allows for interpretations, which is confusing, to say the least.

An active voice is also authoritative and assertive, which shows the users that you are trustworthy.

Most importantly, the active voice uses fewer words to build more momentum, which helps you create anticipation and interest.

Proofread it carefully

Finally, make absolutely sure your headline has perfect grammar and spelling. Headline mistakes kill the entire content long before anyone gets to read it. People may forgive a minor error in 3000-word content, as most are not out to get you. However, mistakes in the headlines are unforgivable. They will instantly destroy your authority, credibility, and reputation. So, take your time, spellcheck, and grammar-check your headline before you publish it, and save yourself the embracement from negligence.

Some DON’Ts when writing a headline

Knowing the mandatory features of a headline, one is always tempted to get a bit overboard with creating a winning title. Well, there are some great ways to do that precisely. But before we get to them, let’s discuss the don’ts that instantly kill your headline.

Don’t use clickbait

Only a handful of things can irritate your audience quite, like clickbait. This is the lowest copy form, instantly destroying a company’s reputation. Usually, such headlines are reserved for third-grade tabloids, gossip factories, and some get-rich-quick schemes. Clickbait purposely misleads the audience into thinking they will receive much more than they actually do. This hype usually plays for cheap clicks and is used by shady affiliate marketers, who count on high traffic to get the numbers they’ve promised. Still, the quality of these leads is atrocious, and as a business owner, you shouldn’t be interested in the quantity but the quality of your audience. Thus, stay away from clickbait, as they will crush your image as almost nothing else can.

Don’t make it boring.

Boring headlines are another bane of content creation you should strive to leave behind. Boring headlines are also known as generic. Yes, they give the users the intended information, but at the same time, they snuff out any emotion and abandon any sign of creativity. This blends the headline with the background making people blind to it. Take this article’s headline, for example: “The art of creating an effective headline.” It represents the task at hand as an artwork. You don’t write the headline. You create it. The title is dynamic and exudes emotion and care. Now imagine if we put “Writing headline guide.” It basically gives the same information without the extra layers of benefits, dynamics, and emotions.

Don’t assume knowledge

The knowledge level of your targeted audience is crucial when creating a headline. Still, you shouldn’t assume knowledge regardless of whether you’re targeting experts or beginners. As you can see, in our previous example with “Utilize Google Search Console to improve your bounce rate,” we didn’t use the widely spread acronym GSC since not everyone will interpret it right away. Even worse is using business jargon or internal lingo. This will instantly chase away anyone outside the tight circle of people familiar with your terms. Even those that already have some knowledge will be pushed away from using too much jargon. After all, they are looking for a simple solution to specific problems, and terminology, as a definition, complicates communication. Leave the jargon, abbreviations, acronyms, and all tech lingo for the content, where you can explain them in length.

Don’t over-explain

While we are speaking of explanations, don’t ever over-explain in your headline. The headline’s duty is not to sell nor to give solutions. It’s to advertise what users will find in the content. So, keep your headline short, to the point, and without pointlessly getting into details. There are enough things to cramp in your headline without adding an extra layer of complicated reasoning.

Don’t self-promote

Finally, your headline is not the place to introduce yourself. While it’s not as unforgivable as using clickbait, self-promoting in headlines is generally frowned upon. When someone is looking for a solution to a problem, they don’t want to hear how great your company is, how rich your history is, and how much experience you have. That’s what the content is all about. So, titles like “HostArmada’s 5 ways to improve your bounce rate” will always sound pretentious. The only time it’s OK to use a brand name in headlines is when you are talking about the brand specifically or when you are quoting some other more authoritative brand’s ideas. For example, “Coca-Cola’s three tips on starting a successful business.” Still, if Coca-Cola does this in its blog, it will leave a pretty bad taste.

So, avoid self-promoting in headlines and leave this part to the content and the About Us page.

Pro tips for writing a winning headline

Since we’ve already gone through the basics and the don’ts, let’s add some flavor to the headline. After all, the point is to have one truly outstanding and unique title among the millions of headlines that offer solutions to the same problem. So, these pro tips will help you make your headline yours and transform it into an effective marketing tool.

Implement Keywords

This should be obvious. The main point of any website, especially a blog, is to generate as much free traffic as possible. Free traffic, in its vast majority, comes from search engines (Google, to be precise). Thus, for a compelling headline, you need to mirror the way people search for products or services similar to yours. These terms are called keywords. Implementing these into your headline will entice search engines to rank you higher in their search results. They will calculate the relevance of your title compared to a specific search and push you forward in their results list.

For blog posts, since it’s generally a good idea to base your articles on long-tail keywords, adding keywords shouldn’t be much of a problem. Still, for product pages, home pages, and others, this can be a bit tricky.

Utilize rare adjectives

It’s a good idea to utilize adjectives to your advantage. To do so, use some rarely used adjectives that instantly grab people’s attention. Those are words seldom used in everyday conversations. For example, instead of “easy,” go for “effortless.” Yes, it has a bit more characters, but it also adds exclusivity to your headline. Other such words are “astonishing,” “exquisite,” “essential,” “masterful,” and many more.

Such rare adjectives are precisely the way to relay your intended emotion to the readers. But more importantly, they will separate your content from the pack and make it stand out.

Make it for people

The emotional value of your headline will determine whether it will attract people or not. For better or worse, people are highly driven by their emotions and will always choose someone who sympathizes with their struggles. So, manipulating the emotional output of your headline will make it sound more human. This can be done in several ways. The most commonly used one is to address the reader directly. However, you may also use some powerful words.

“Why is Your Bounce Rate so Damn High” is a perfect example of implementing both. The headline addresses the reader as if we are starting a conversation in a bar. The reader feels involved thanks to the possessive determiner “your.” At the same time, the powerful and rarely used (in headlines) “Damn” instantly attracts attention. Note that shock value is not always a good idea. In fact, most times, using curses and slang is counterproductive in writing any content, especially headlines. However, in this case, “Damn” works since it refers to a popular meme, which makes it instantly recognizable and stands out from the pack. Moreover, this word makes the entire headline much more human, as it introduces a dose of frustration anyone who has battled with improving their bounce rate is familiar with.

A great way to make your headline human-friendly is using a question. Utilize the 5Ws – Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. This pushes the user’s brain to make the next step independently. So they either answer the question to themselves or wonder. If they wonder, they are ready to start a conversation. If they have the answer, then they might check if they are correct. Adding personalization to your question with the personal pronoun “you” will add a layer of humanity to your headline.

Never start with a negative

Speaking of emotions, it’s essential to avoid relaying negative emotions and sub-messages to your audience. This is constantly done by using negatives at the beginning of the headline. It’s a good idea to avoid negatives altogether, but if you have to address some don’ts, at least don’t put them at the very start of your headline. Negative terms such as “Don’t,” “Never,” “Can’t,” “Won’t,” and others affect the readers’ demeanor. Thus they are far less likely to fulfill the predetermined goal of the content. Many would tell you that using negatives is an effective way to get more traffic. This is based on the notion that people are far more interested in bed news. However, while that may be, the negative impact on the user’s subconscious will affect their behavior on your website. And your goal is not simply to have many visitors but to enact a particular goal.

So, avoid headlines like “Don’t be afraid of high bounce rates,” despite their positive demeanor. The negative word in front will hinder this perceived benefit. Instead, focus on positive words for your headlines.

Underline its goal

Content usually has three main goals: to entertain, inform, or solve a problem. Whichever one is your content’s goal, you need to address it in your headline. The title should leave no surprises when the user opens the content. Imagine how disappointing it would be if you were looking for a solution, yet the article only describes the problem and doesn’t offer a solution. Yes, defining the issue is important, but as we said earlier, users have options but no time. So if you waste their time, they will be understandably frustrated. Thus make sure to word your headline in a manner that makes it clear if you are offering a solution, informing, or entertaining.

For example, “What is web cache and how to use it to your advantage” clearly states that the article inside will be informative and offer a solution. On the other hand, “Twenty years of changing the world for the better. Happy Birthday WordPress” is an informative article about an event. It offers no solutions.

So, make sure you underline your content goals in your headline, so you won’t mislead anyone by wasting time on something they are not interested in.

Use numbers

Many would tell you that numbers are so 2017. But they still work perfectly well. By introducing a number, you not only add a specific symbol that differs from the letters all around and thus attracts attention, but it also specifies what the user will get by reading your content. Moreover, people prefer scannable texts, and introducing a number guarantees them a list, which is much more scalable than plain text.

So, it’s very important not only to use a number but to write it with a number. For example, instead of writing, “The ten most common mistakes to avoid when creating a website,” go for “The 10 most common mistakes to avoid when creating a website.” We bet even now, your attention was instantly drawn toward the second headline with the number.

Interestingly, research by the Content Marketing Institute has determined that people are far more responsive to odd numbers. So much so that click-through rates have increased by 20% by merely including an odd number in the headline. Naturally, these numbers get the most average engagements. Only 10, a nice round number, gets more engagements than the odd single-digit numbers.

However, when you are making a list, make sure to keep it relatively short. Stick to a maximum of ten items and make a second article if needed. Otherwise, people will lose interest.

Conclusion

Of course, it’s not mandatory to use every tip in this article at the same time. Feel your audience and try out what will work best for you. Most importantly, however, always use all of the headline foundations. Without them, any additional tweaks will be pointless. Just like it would be pointless to have the perfect headline when your website is loading slowly or is constantly down. Thankfully we have a solution—our high-speed, heavily-secured, and extremely reliable hosting. We guarantee your audience access to your website 99.9% of the time with a secure and fast connection. And while your headlines attract the masses, we will ensure they have as comfortable an experience getting to your content as possible. Contact our team, and they will help you choose the best hosting plan for your needs.

The post The art of creating an effective headline appeared first on HostArmada Blog.

It’s true. Producing high-quality content is a challenge, especially if you don’t have a dedicated team to create it. Sadly, if you are a new small or micro business owner, you most probably don’t have the resources to create a content team or even outsource your content creation. So, naturally, this formidable task falls on your shoulders. Luckily HostAramada is here to help. To simplify your job, we gathered the ten most common mistakes new website owners make when trying to create their own content. 

1. No Content Strategy

Creating high-quality content is much more complicated than simply sitting down and writing a blog post or an article. First, there is much research involved. Usually, the preparation phase takes about 80% of the time, while writing the text will take only about a fifth of the effort. Naturally, the preparation phase can be cut short if you take the time and create a comprehensive and data-driven content strategy. Creating an entire content strategy is by no means an easy task. It demands a lot of research and know-how. Last week we shared an extremely detailed walk-through on creating a winning content strategy. We urge you to check it out if you missed it since a good content strategy is the foundation on which you will build your content. 

In a nutshell, a content strategy is a data-driven blueprint behind your entire content creation process. This is the document that answers the who, what, where, when, and how questions of your content and allows you to plan your content so you won’t need to start from the very top each time you sit to write a blog post, for example. 

A content strategy is the most powerful document regarding your content, as it allows you to closely follow your content’s performance and determine which piece of the puzzle is missing. Moreover, it will enable you to focus on your goals rather than a specific topic, which will help you optimize your content, better your communication with the customers, and increase your conversion rate, sales, and profits. 

2. No apparent goal for the content

A good content strategy will help you determine your content’s goal long before you start creating it. Each content piece should have a measurable goal. The purpose largely determines the format and the channel you will use to share your content. Some mediums work better with specific content formats, while others will interact much better with the targeted audience. For example, if you want to target audiences at the top of the marketing funnel, a case study shared through email will be highly insufficient. On the other hand, an SEO-optimized educational blog post like this one, which will be shared through social media and search engines, has a lot more potential to receive the desired attention from this audience segment. 

Moreover, you need to build your message based on your goal. If you aim to increase your lead generation, you must adjust your wording and your message so it will push customers to follow the provided link to a landing page. For example, product pages usually aim to sell products. Naturally, that’s not the place to educate or to build interest. Your content on your product page should be short, sweet, and persuasive. On the other hand, a post-purchase email aims to increase your social proof by convincing the customer to leave a review. So, it stands to reason that the content shouldn’t introduce new benefits but act as an invitation and express gratitude. 

Aligning your content with your goals will give your work meaning and allow you to measure how good the content is and whether it needs some changes. Most importantly, interacting with your audience will be much more efficient. 

3. Choosing irrelevant content

For your content to be relevant, you must choose an interesting topic for your audience. This will help you generate higher interest in your potential customers, and your message will spread further. Moreover, a relevant topic will help you reach your goals much easier. For example, if no one cares about t-shirt fabrics, yet you try to create a lead generation campaign based on this topic, it will undoubtedly produce worse results than if you use a trending topic in the t-shirt production industry.  

Following the industry trends will give you a good idea of what’s being discussed at the moment. Moreover, constantly observing your competitors will bring you a long way if you don’t have the resources or time to research independently. Naturally, observing your audience’s behavior is a better way to find relevant topics. For example, if we take social media content, some objective metrics, like “likes” and “shares,” can show you what topics fly best with your audience.

Moreover, analyzing your blog and its results in Google Analytics can give you a great sense of the topics that attract the most customers and if they achieve the set goals. For example, if a blog post has attracted 20,000 readers but none have continued their journey. Obviously, the topic is relevant, but the content needs some tweaks. On the other hand, if a blog post has 1000 views, but 900 of them continue their journey, it’s evident that the topic is not widespread but highly potent. 

Still, using the GSC and researching long-tail keywords is by far the best way to find new and exciting topics. This will give you a ton of ideas that your potential clients will find mighty interesting. 

4. Disregarding the brand voice

Keeping your brand voice consistent across channels is one of the most challenging tasks you will have when creating various types of content. However, maintaining the same brand voice is essential to building your brand personality. Deviating from your established brand voice may lead to losing the trust of your audience. In addition, consistency is key to retaining your customer base, as people seek some security and stability when choosing a product. Varying your brand voice across messages and channels may be a small thing, but subconsciously it affects the audience’s perception of your product in a negative way. 

This mistake is quite common among new brands that haven’t yet established a brand voice and content strategy. They often confuse the content tone with the brand voice and try to modify it according to the channel. Still, while following the media’s tone is a good idea, deviating from your brand voice is anything but. 

To avoid making this mistake, all you need to do is to write down the aspects of your brand voice which correspond with your product or service. Then, highlight the key elements of your voice, and always check if your content is not contradicting them. 

5. Neglecting the channel preferences

Speaking of the tone of voice, we can’t forget to mention that each communication channel has its own preferences regarding content. The tone of voice is probably the most noticeable. For example, a blog post must be more generalized and distant than an email. The latter should be personalized and far more relaxed than a blog post.

Some platforms have specific preferences for the content format as well. The most obvious one is YouTube, where text content is definitely not optimal. On the other hand, social media content can differ depending on the platform. For example, TikTok is well known for its short videos. Instagram allows videos and pictures, depending on your audience and product, which will work better. Crafting unique Instagram story designs using a tool like Wepik can add visual appeal and increase your brand visibility.

The main mistake regarding the channel’s preferences is that people often try to create multipurpose content, which they can later distribute across channels. Most often, the reason is lack of time. However, that’s the worst idea you can have. A text segment of a blog can’t work just as well as a social media post, as it simply doesn’t correspond to the tone of the social media platforms. Moreover, the text has a vastly different goal, making its use in another channel highly inefficient.  

6. No added value or personal experience

This brings us to the value of your content. Each piece of content must be valuable to the audience if you hope it will achieve its goal. For example, a common mistake we see in some young brands is to publish an abstract picture on Facebook with an “inspirational quote.” This content has absolutely no value and delivers no information. Moreover, that also doesn’t work as brand awareness. It doesn’t represent the brand in any way. Here is where the content strategy comes into play. If you’ve done your job of creating a good content strategy, you will already know what added value each of your content would have.  

Naturally, the added value should closely relate to your content’s goal. For example, this blog post is educational content with a brand awareness goal. Therefore, its added value is the shared know-how to create better content for your website. Naturally, this topic interests most new business owners who just started their websites and have no idea how to create compelling content. We are highly interested in this audience, as most of our clients are precisely such people. 

When it comes to blog posts, your content should aim not only to be valuable but also unique. It needs to showcase your knowledge and understanding of the industry and business. Sharing personal experiences will help you achieve that. 

Creating good valuable content is definitely not an easy task. You must have a lot of experience and know-how in creating such content. Still, a good start is to familiarize yourself with Google’s Helpful Content document. This is the guideline that Google uses to determine the quality of your content. Naturally, it pretty much mirrors their user’s behavior. So it stands to reason to try and be as close to these guidelines as possible.

7. Using edgy content

That’s another common mistake newbies make when trying to stand out in front of their competitors. While edgy content will certainly attract users’ attention, it will definitely not help you reach your goals. Moreover, more often than not, edgy content is penalized by search engines, so it will even make the audience shrink. 

Ultimately edgy content has no value other than pure shock value. Unfortunately, shock value is not ideal for marketing purposes and has long since been proven ineffective. On the contrary, edgy content will alienate segments of your audience, devastating your brand image and authority. 

So, while edgy content can certainly deliver vast amounts of clicks, it’s doubtful this will lead to some benefits for your brand goals. 

8. Overlooking spell and grammar check

With about half of the American population struggling to spell correctly, one can easily be confused that spelling is not that important when it comes to content. But, unfortunately, that’s not the case. Impeccable spelling and grammar are mandatory for any and all channels and formats. Any sort of mistake hinders your brand authority and destroys your credibility in front of the audience. So, naturally, this leads to fewer conversions, fewer sales, and lower profits. 

Unfortunately, many new business owners, who can’t afford to hire professional writers, often fall for the error blindness trap. Error blindness occurs when you have spent several hours writing a piece of content and cannot see obvious errors due to fatigue. The best way to avoid this mistake is to use a spell-checking program like Grammarly or hire an editor to proofread your content. 

If you can’t afford either, you can at least give yourself some rest before starting to check your writing. A good tactic is to edit your work the next day. This way, you will have enough time away from the text. 

9. Ignoring the content’s SEO optimization

As we’ve discussed many times until now, SEO is the cornerstone behind your success. Naturally, if you want your content to be visible in search engines, you need to make sure your SEO is in top shape. Every single piece of content must receive optimization. Most often, you need to manually add meta headlines and descriptions as well as some keywords. Moreover, you must ensure your website has perfect readability, which imposes some pretty restrictive requirements. For example, each paragraph needs to be less than 150 words. You need to have enough pictures in your text. Your text must not be too complicated, but at the same time should not sound simplistic. 

Its high load speed, security, and reliability are a general must for content. For example, 53% of users will abandon a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Moreover, a 2-second delay will increase the bounce rate by 87%. Therefore, you need a fast, reliable, and secure hosting service. This way, you will avoid hindering your content success due to technical issues like load speed. Thankfully, HostArmada can offer you just that. Our cloud-based server technology guarantees high speed and practically no downtime at all. If you want to improve your content load speed, just contact one of our representatives, who will help you choose the perfect plan for your needs. 

10. Not tracking the content’s performance

The last mistake on our list is one that not only newbies commit but some established businesses as well. Tracking your content’s performance is the key to improving it over time, ultimately guaranteeing that it will serve its purpose. Naturally, if you’ve created your content strategy, you will already have some KPI to follow based on the content’s goal. If you haven’t done your content strategy plan, you can start by separating your content based on channel, format, and goal.

For example, put all social media lead generation content in one document. Then, closely check the statistics in your business social media account and study the best and worst performers. Since that’s lead generation content, you’d want to follow the CTR and the landing page views count, as they are the most relevant to the content’s goal. Then analyze the differences and what may cause them to perform the way they do. After you’ve drawn some conclusions, it’s time to test them by implementing the changes in a new lead-generation social media post. 

The biggest mistake is not to create content at all

Even if you’ve committed some of these mistakes with your content, at least you avoided the biggest mistake of them all – not having any content whatsoever. Content is King for a reason. Refusing to acknowledge its importance won’t change the fact that having no content will guarantee you oblivion in the vast information ocean of the Internet. Unfortunately, in today’s business world, you are practically invisible if you are not on the Internet. So, even if you can’t allocate the money and resources to hire a content team or to outsource this tedious task, make sure to offer your audience at least some content that’s devoid of these ten common mistakes.  

The post Ten web content mistakes every new business should avoid appeared first on HostArmada Blog.

However, simply having a website is far from enough. For example, about 55% of users will refrain from recommending a business if its website is poorly designed or difficult to use.

Naturally, just like with anything new, when creating your very first website, you should be extra careful to avoid some common mistakes almost everyone makes with their first web portal. As we are just as invested in your success as you are, we created a list of 10 missteps you should consider before you start building.

Mistake 1: Not doing any research

Research is the cornerstone of any business endeavor, and creating a website is no exception. You probably already have an idea about your customers. If you do not, this is your first order of business – finding out everything there is to know about your industry, sector, niche, and, most importantly, your audience. Each audience has its specifics, and a website dedicated to a specific audience needs to know much more than the lingo. Each industry has its standards for a reason, and you should strive to build upon rather than completely deviate from them.

Moreover, just like with any product, you need to know your unique selling point, whether it is relevant to the market, whether it will attract a specific segment of the niche audience, and what the needs of this particular segment are.

Furthermore, you need to start researching SEO as early as the planning stage to create your website according to all the search engines’ recommendations.

Research is a lot easier than it used to be back in the days before the internet. As you are targeting a specific audience, all you need to do is check your competitors and see their designs and how they attract an audience and build upon that. Furthermore, make sure to check your targeted audience’s forums, social media pages, and other social hubs, where they share what’s good and what’s bad. Typically Reddit is a very good place to start, but be mindful that people looking for the same product in different locations might be vastly different.

For example, people looking for cars in Wyoming have different needs than those looking for a car in Los Angeles. Not to mention those looking for vehicles in Germany or India, for example. So, make sure your research is not only targeted-audience-oriented but also geographical-location-oriented.

Mistake 2: Choosing the wrong domain name

With 1.13 billion websites worldwide and 10,500 new ones every hour, it’s easy to establish that finding the correct domain name is not as straightforward as it sounds. Your domain name is just as important as your brand name. Thus many new companies these days name their brand after their domain name. Mainly because it’s pretty hard to find a suitable free domain that hasn’t been taken yet. Thus looking for a play on words or some sort of abbreviation is today’s norm.

Before you get to the domain name, you need to choose your TLD. The Top Level Domain is among the highest DNS server types and is essential in pointing your users to the correct IP address containing your website’s data. To put it simply, the TLD is the end extension of your domain names, such as .com, .net, or .org. Each TLD has its specifics, so you need to consider which one would be best for you. You can find a very detailed explanation of how to choose the perfect domain name for your business in our dedicated article.

In a nutshell, your domain name should be brandable, easily memorable, effortlessly spelled, and without numbers, hyphens, and special symbols. Most importantly, your domain name must hint at the industry in which you operate and should not stop you from branching out. Finding the perfect domain name is far more complicated than finding a free name in the free-domain search engine.

Mistake 3: Choosing the wrong hosting plan

Finding a fast, reliable, and secure web hosting service like HostArmada is crucial for your website’s success. The load and uptimes depend directly on the power, location, and type of the servers where your website is hosted. However, even if you choose HostArmada as your hosting service provider and have high-speed, cloud-based web hosting services that provide you with lightning load speed and practically no downtime, you need to choose a service plan.

Typically our consultants will give you valuable advice on what plan would be best for you, but still, it’s far better for you to do your own research. For example, if you are a small business that just started and you need a simple website with up to around 30,000 visitors monthly, you can easily go for our Start Dock plan. However, if you offer some unique products and allocate enough budget for advertisement, the Web Warp plan would be much better for you.

Finally, if you are a retailer, who expects massive growth over the next few years, the Speed Reaper plan will accommodate your needs perfectly. Naturally, you can upgrade your plan as you go, but it would be far better to have a plan from the very get-go. This way, you can take full advantage of some pretty lucrative discounts.

Mistake 4: Putting aesthetics over user experience

Don’t get us wrong – good aesthetics are pretty important when creating your first website. However, they should always come second after usability. For example, if an element looks astounding on a Desktop, but doesn’t fit the mobile or tablet versions of your website, unfortunately, it needs to go.

Sure, a mesmerizing design look will surely capture your audience’s eye, but what will convert them into customers is your website’s usability. No element in your website should be there just for pageantry. Don’t forget that a website’s primary purpose is to further your business growth. Naturally, you’d want to create a customer journey that will transform the reader from a visitor into a paying customer. Thus, distracting them with pointless yet fascinating graphic elements is counterproductive.

The global fashion retailer Zara is an excellent example of a well-designed website with a poor user experience. Though the idea is pretty good, it was obviously done with little usability in mind. The menu is barely visible due to the colors, and users can’t navigate effortlessly.

Even when finally finding the menu, the navigation there is complicated. Thus, despite the visually stunning design, its lack of user-friendliness will affect their visits. Well, maybe not in Zara’s case, as they are a world-renowned brand, but for a new website, such a mistake could be detrimental.

Mistake 5: Using poor design

While usability is definitely a priority, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive for a visually stunning web design. Moreover, it takes roughly fifty milliseconds for a user to form an opinion about a website. Thus, it literally takes a blink of an eye for a customer to decide whether they would be interested in browsing your website or not. In addition, about 57% of customers wouldn’t recommend a business due to the poor quality of its website design, regardless of the product (or service) quality.

This being said, one of the worst transgressions we often see in new websites is using WordPress templates without customizing them according to the industry specifics. This creates generic websites that, although functional and most often user-friendly, have absolutely no personality. Keep in mind that people have at least 10 open tabs when looking for a product. If your website fails to capture the customer’s attention, they will most likely go to the competition, regardless of whether your product is better, cheaper, or more useful to them.

So, what should you do? You can still use WordPress themes if you don’t have the budget for a professional web designer. Still, it’s quite important to make them your own. The best WordPress Themes have countless customization options that will make your website highly functional and visually stunning, even if you don’t have any knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. So, if you are wondering how to create a visually stunning website, this article is a good start.

Mistake 6: Disregarding some valuable pages

There are a variety of websites, all with specific tasks. For example, you can have a retail website, a portfolio, a lead generation website, a service offering website, or a brand information website. They are all vastly different in their purpose, design, and content. However, there are some pages you simply can’t miss. For example, skipping on creating a blog section on your website will seriously hinder your SEO efforts and the ability to attract fresh new audiences through search engines. Moreover, an About Us page will close the distance between you and your customers, as you will literally greet them yourself. More importantly, this page gives you legitimacy and establishes you as a reliable source.

However, the contact is probably the most important page of all (after the home page, of course). The contact info doesn’t need to be on a dedicated page. Still, it has to be at an easily reachable place where people will confirm they can actually communicate with the person behind the curtain. A study by KoMarketing found that about 44% of all website visitors will leave if there is no communication information, emails, physical address or a phone number. Needless to say, losing half of your audience just because you forgot to put your contact info is not a great business start.

Mistake 7: Creating inefficient content

“Content is King.” This credo has been around for quite some time now and is gaining validity by the day. Great content on your website will ensure more traffic, a higher conversion rate, better sales, and, of course, higher profits. Writing great content, however, is anything but an easy task. When creating their first websites, people often try to give all the information in length. They ride everything they find interesting about their product or service on their front page simply because they find it valuable information. People, however, are reluctant to read lengthy texts, especially when they first land on your website.

The home page is definitely not the place to get into too much detail. That’s why you need a blog. You need to keep your content short and to the point. With a lot of images and graphics if needed. Most importantly, do not build your website content around your interests and what you think is important. A better strategy is to find out what your audience is looking for and develop your unique selling point around that.

Needless to say, everything on your website should be immaculate. A cluttered home page will only discourage people from following the pre-build customer journey, resulting in higher bounce rates, much fewer conversions, and lower profits. Moreover, you must ensure all your images are of high quality, as they are crucial to the user experience. Lipton is an excellent example of how you can ruin your website with an image of poor quality. This is something you shouldn’t cheap out on.

The bane of new websites, however, is the wording. Most often, website owners fail to highlight their product’s or service’s important features, leaving the audience with more questions than answers. Copywriting is an art form, and if you didn’t dedicate the time to learn a bit more about it, it would be best to hire a professional to write it for you. However, having a bad copy is nothing compared to using jargon, swearing, or spelling mistakes. While slang and swearing can be helpful in the hands of a skilled copywriter, they are the fastest way to chase away your customers if you don’t know how to use them. More importantly, Google actually penalizes the use of swearing.

However, nothing is as damaging to your reputation as spelling or grammar errors. These mistakes can cost up to 50% of your sales.

So, what can you do?

Firstly, give yourself enough time to come up with the copy. Then, after you’ve written it, leave it for a day or two without publishing it. Then, recheck it and make the needed corrections. Finally, it would be best to ask someone else to have a look at the copy as well. That’s the only way to ensure you won’t mess up your content.

Mistake 8: Not including a clear call to action

Your website has a purpose. Whether it is to sell something, to give information about your products or services, to act as an online business card for your brand, or simply to be your portfolio, you need to articulate what exactly you expect your readers to do after they have read your content. This is one mistake that new website owners make quite often. They expect their content to be persuasive enough so that their readers would be interested enough to take the next step on their own.

Unfortunately, that’s not how customer behavior works. Instead, you need to place a clear and visible Call To Action (CTA) that will tell your audience exactly what they are supposed to do to continue (or finish) their customer’s journey. If you want to learn more about the types of CTAs, you can check out our dedicated article on the topic.

Mistake 9: Disregarding SEO

SEO is the cornerstone of your website’s success. Over 68% of all online experiences start with a search engine, while 53.3% of your entire traffic comes from organic searches. Moreover, about 60% of all marketers are adamant that their highest quality leads come from search engines, as about 15% of them close the deal. This makes SEO one truly golden investment. So naturally, if you invest time and efforts in your Search engine optimization, you will reap much higher traffic, which will come at practically no cost at all.

Unfortunately, dealing with SEO is a whole science. There is a lot you need to learn before you can make your SEO outstanding. Still, for starters, you should consider placing meta headlines, tags, and descriptions, as well as learning a bit more about keyword use and which keywords would work best for you. 

Mistake 10: No budget for advertising

Working on your SEO is a great idea, but it takes between 3-6 months to start working and bringing you customers. In the meantime, it would be an excellent idea to popularize your website the old-fashioned way through paid advertisement. You don’t need a massive budget for this endeavor. You should consider the expenditure a brand awareness campaign, where you might get some leads in return. For your campaign to be most effective, you must share your website through various channels like social media, PPC campaigns, offline marketing, and others.

Creating a good marketing campaign has a lot to do with your initial research. You need to know your audience and their interests to be able to capture their attention and advertise yourself where they are most likely to visit. For example, if you sell bikes, having a guest post on cycling-dedicated media is a perfect idea. Going on bike fests or advertising in bike parks is also a good strategy. The main concept is to have your website everywhere, so people can learn about it.

Let’s recap

While a decade ago, merely having a website was enough to put you ahead of your competitors, today, you actually need to invest in creating your online home. This takes a lot of skills, and while WordPress can help you with designing solutions, you need to customize your website to make it unique and your own. Moreover, you need to invest time and effort into your content or hire someone to do it for you. Finally, you must consider how you will get your traffic. Of course, SEO is a must, but it takes time to start working. So a better idea would be to invest a small amount in some advertising.

Before all of that, however, you will need a great domain name and outstanding hosting. Luckily we can help you with the latter. So check out our plans and ask one of our representatives which one of our plans will fit your needs best. On top of getting fast, reliable, and secure hosting, you will also get a free domain. Your first website awaits.

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What is website quality?

There are several ways to look at your website’s quality. One of the most common is to see how Google sees your website. With 68% of all online experiences starting with a search engine query and Google hoarding over 90.58% of the Global Search Engine Market, it’s really a no-brainer why you should consider Google’s opinion of your website as gospel. It stands to reason to follow Google’s measurements, as they are based on billions of searches, so there is no greater way to determine what an audience likes than checking Google’s statistics.

Still, your website should do more than that. The quality of your website depends on much more than receiving traffic from a search engine. For example, things like how you build your website, its speed, navigation, usability, creatives, design, and several other factors are way more important.

So, the quality of your website is determined by how people act once they land on your page. On average, a person spends 52 seconds on a single page, which is an essential measurement of how good your website is. But before we get to measuring your website quality, let’s talk about why it is so important.

Why is website quality important?

The benefits of excellent website quality are immense. Naturally, the first would be a lot more traffic, as Google, Bing, and other search engines would place you on top of their search results. This will bring you a massive boost in your leads and, more importantly, your conversions and profits.

Furthermore, the better the quality of your website, the easier it will be for your marketing efforts. A good example is Google Ads, which considers your website’s quality when estimating how often to show your ad and where in the search results to place it. Naturally, it will be on top of the organic search results, but as it happens, almost everyone bids on keywords they find profitable. Therefore, when it comes to the results, a bigger bid doesn’t always mean a number one spot.

Remember that Google is determined to keep its users happy, so they place quality above the bid you set. In other words, Google’s ad ranking equals the bid+quality score. So, if your website quality is good (or above average, as Google would call it), you will have to pay less to get to the top of the SERP. Naturally, this will reduce your CPC (cost per click) and  CPA (cost per Acquisition) while boosting your ROI (return of investment) and profits.

Moreover, having a genuinely good website will reduce the number of bounces, which will instantly improve your SEO score. This would lead to getting higher in the organic search results as well, ultimately making your google ads obsolete.

Finally, a good quality website will lead to more conversions from your marketing campaigns, as a good quality website means a great customer journey, naturally leading to more conversions.

How to measure your website quality?

Waiting to see your position in Google is definitely not the optimal way to see your website quality. While, yes, Google will put you on top of its results if your website quality is outstanding and you answer the queries of their users, you have to get there first. To do that, you first need to know how to measure the quality. This way, you can improve your results faster and more efficiently. You will again use some of Google’s tools to get these measurements, but you will also have to collect and check your internal data.

In general, there are eight pillars you need to consider when checking your website.

Overall traffic

Hopefully, there is no surprise here. Knowing how many leads get to your web pages is detrimental to see if the quality of your website improves or worsens. The easiest way to do that is by using Google Analytics. The free tool will share a lot of essential data, like demographics, where your traffic comes from, which geographical location is most interested in your product or services, and many others. The software integrates seamlessly with your website, especially if you use WordPress, where Google has a dedicated plugin. If you are starting to measure your stats now, don’t worry. You can use what you see as a benchmark and improve it over time.

Organic Traffic

Usually, if you have a good digital marketing strategy, your customers come from various channels, like social media, PPC campaigns, backlinks, offline marketing campaigns, etc. However, for your website quality, it’s essential to know how many are here just because they found you organically and not through an ad. Don’t get us wrong. The other results are just as important, but as Google ranks your website based on its quality, the more people see it, the better the quality.

Bounce rate

That said, you need to know how many people are leaving your website without taking action. This is better known as the Bounce rate. If you see some bounce rate, don’t worry. It’s normal to have at least some, as many people are just browsing. For example, blog posts get up to a 90% bounce rate, and that’s normal. However, a higher-than-average bounce rate indicates something wrong with your website, as people leave without ever touching anything.

Average page per visit

Speaking of bounce rate, you should measure the opposite as well. For instance, the average number of pages a user visits while on your website. This can be a great indicator of your website’s usability and content engagement.

Average time spent on the website

No surprises here. The longer a person spends on your website, the better the content. Naturally, if they bounce right after they spent 7-10 minutes on your page, that means they found your content interesting, but it failed to redirect them to a sales page.

Conversions

Naturally, your end goal should be getting sales from your website. Whether it is a direct sale or creating a hot lead, which will contact your sales team, you should measure how many people take the last step in the customer journey you made. Of course, the number of conversions is only one aspect. You need to know how much you paid for each conversion and the percentage of the people who convert after landing on your website.

Website Speed

Website speed has a lot to do with your success and website quality. It has an astounding effect on the user experience and can basically make or break your website. Usually, a 2-second load time is considered a good one, and each second delay after that costs you significantly. You can check your website speed through various internet platforms, giving you a reasonable estimate of your website’s loading time and showing you where you can improve.

Backlinks

Finally, one significant stat you should always follow is how many backlinks lead to your website. However, having dozens of backlinks is not enough, as it matters who has linked you. For instance, if a very low-quality website links your content, it will drag your quality score down. So it’s best to strictly manage your backlinks through Google Search Console.

What affects your website’s quality?

Even if you closely follow all these measurements, if you don’t know what causes their fluctuations, the whole ordeal is utterly pointless. For example, how can you improve the stats if you have a high bounce rate but don’t know what’s causing it? So before we give you some tips on how to improve your website’s quality, you first need to know which elements affect it.

Mobile Optimization

We are starting with this one to get it out of the way. Every website nowadays is mobile-friendly, so there is no point in wasting time explaining this in detail. Still, if yours is not mobile-friendly for some reason, this should be your first and most important task. Thankfully, if you use WordPress, almost 100% of its themes are optimized for mobile.

Usability

People have options. What they don’t have is time. So naturally, your website’s quality is tightly related to the UX. A good website would give the needed information structured and fast and won’t leave anyone guessing what they should do next.

Design

A visually pleasing design with well-placed elements that strictly follow the best designer practices will always have better quality than a chaotic display of random content.

Functionalities

Naturally, a more interactive website will be received better, as people don’t simply want to read but want to feel, look, and touch. Let them understand what you are offering with more than words, and your website quality will instantly skyrocket.

Be careful, though. Having interactive elements is a two-edged sword. If the functionalities are not done with precision and have bugs, this will only lead to quality deterioration.

Content

We’ve said it many times, just as almost every other expert in the world, and we will say it again, “Content is King”. That’s probably the single most impactful element of your website’s quality. Mediocre content can destroy a website, regardless of how good its other aspects are. But on the other hand, high-quality and fresh content can save an otherwise questionable website. Still, if you want your website’s quality to soar, you need all the elements to be done to perfection.

By quality content, we mean having fresh copy and a blog post every 1-2 weeks, a great CTA, a ton of high-quality pictures and/or videos, and of course, impeccable grammar and spelling.

So, now that you know everything about website quality, how to measure it, and what affects it, let’s get down to business.

How to improve your website quality

Improving your website quality is truly not that hard. All it needs is a little effort and knowledge. Of course, we will gladly provide you with the latter. So, what can you do to help your quality soar?

Add value to your website

The best way to increase your website quality is to rely on your experience. People who visit your website are there for some kind of information. Most often, they have clicked on a search engine result or a paid ad, which already gave them some information on what they will see. However, once in, they need to learn more. So, naturally, you need to add some extra value. Be it your knowledge, some lucrative offer, or simply a product or service, which will resolve their problem, you need to show you have the solution to the reason they clicked on your link. The more experience you have, the higher the quality of your content will be.

So don’t hesitate to go all in with your knowledge when presenting a solution so you can give emence value to the readers.

Work on the user experience and the reliability

We’ve mentioned that user experience is, without a doubt, among the most important aspects of your website. Naturally, improving your website’s UX will instantly increase its quality. So, what you should do is audit your website’s usability.

First, check if your navigation is logical and hierarchical. After that, ensure all your features work as intended and don’t have any bugs. Next, check the links and make sure all of them lead to the right spot. There is nothing more frustrating than clicking on Prices and getting to the About us page, for example.

If you still haven’t added your contact information, now would be a great time. Having direct contact, be it via email or a phone number, will immensely increase your reliability, and the customers will feel much more secure sharing their information (like credit card numbers, addresses, and others).

Finally, reduce your ads and especially all the pop-ups. It’s OK to have one “Subscribe” pop-up window, but generally, don’t let ads and pop-ups overtake your content. A banner or two is fine, but overdoing it will increase the bounce rate. On the other hand, reducing the number of annoying ads, like blinking once, for example, will instantly improve your website’s quality.

Improve your CTA

The CTA is the end of your customer’s journey. So, naturally, if you improve this section and put the CTA type that precisely fits your narrative, you will enjoy not only an increase in your overall website quality but also a much higher conversion rate.

If you already have a CTA and it matches the type that fits the customer journey you created, you can try and improve it. Try some A/B testing on the copy. Make sure you use a good color scheme. Most importantly, make your CTA stand out from the rest of your page.

Stay fresh and up to date

Having your Christmas Special promotion on display in late January is not the best way to show you are a serious business. Being up-to-date will not necessarily improve your website quality, but having outdated information will definitely tarnish it.

What you can do to improve your website quality is to start writing relevant blog posts every week or two. Ensure you find relevant and trending topics with at least some implications for your business or industry. This will increase your website’s quality, help you with your SEO efforts and build up your brand authority.

Update your design

Just like with content, your design should also be up-to-date. User preferences change over time. Regardless of whether your 2003 edition looks fantastic, you need to change it. Stay on top of the trends, and rely on data rather than hunches when choosing your next design. Naturally, an up-to-date, visually pleasing design will instantly increase your website quality and make it much more efficient.

It’s best, however, to trust a professional designer to create your website’s look. Web design is a true science. So, if you don’t have experience and knowledge, it’s best not to do experiments.

Stay on top of the SEO changes

Speaking of SEO, you should always be on top of any changes to Google’s algorithm, and those happen a lot. Google makes roughly 500-600 updates a year, so you need to always be alert. These modifications are based on changing customer behavior, so following their guidelines will also help you improve your website’s overall quality.

Use a lot of images and/or videos

If you get the leads, but somehow your conversion rate is disappointing, you might want to consider changing your content type. What we mean is that people are not too keen on reading, especially when the text is filled with complex concepts and terminology. Naturally, this doesn’t apply to blog posts, as their primary function is to explain complicated ideas in detail. On the other hand, your home page should be just like a vestibule. It should direct people rather than convince them to convert.

This being said, home pages with heavy, long texts are typically not that great. So to improve your website’s quality, you might want to rely a bit more on high-quality pictures or video. Visuals help people take a break from a long text and have some time to make sense of it as well, so you might want to consider adding a bit more of those in your blog posts. They also help to understand some complex topics easier.

Regardless of whether you will go for Pictures or Video, make sure you only post high-quality visuals.

Improve your page speed

With high-quality pictures, features, and a brand-new modern design, your website may become quite chubby. This will deteriorate its quality quite significantly. So, make sure you use compressed images, keep your coding clean and structured, and if that doesn’t help, maybe it’s time for a new hosting service provider. HostAramda can definitely help on this end, as we can provide lightning-fast hosting that’s both secure and stable. This means that your website won’t just be fast but will also have practically zero downtime. As you can imagine, having your website unresponsive even for a fraction of the day is a huge hit on your website quality, so getting one of our plans will definitely improve your website quality.

So, what should you remember?

A good website quality will make your entire business much more profitable. It will help you with your marketing immensely, as well as your conversion rates and lead generation. Naturally, many factors affect your quality. Keeping an eye on them via the most important metrics we mentioned in detail above will help you determine if there is a problem and, more importantly, where it is. Increasing your website quality is not that hard. All you need to do is improve your content, make a few changes here and there and have HostArmada as your trusted hosting service provider. It’s as simple as that.

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That’s fantastic, as you have less competition for organic traffic. Around 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic searches. At the same time, approximately 60% of marketers are adamant that organic traffic generators like SEO and blog content account for the majority of their high-quality leads. So it’s somewhat surprising to find out that more than 90.6% of websites actually get absolutely no organic traffic through search engines, and only 0.2% get over 1000 visits. With 68% of all online experiences beginning with a search engine query, one can easily see that making your website credible in the search engine’s eyes is astonishingly profitable. So let’s talk a bit more about how you can do that.

How do search engines work

Before we start, however, you need to understand how search engines work. We will talk predominantly about Google, which is the search engine responsible for 92.96% of all global traffic. So it stands to reason you’d want them to rank your website before anyone else. Still, most search engines follow the same basic algorithm, so except for some small deviations, you won’t need too much extra work to get your website ranked in Bing, Yahoo, or anywhere else that matters.

Search engines are robots that scrape websites, categorize them based on their content, collect their metadata and release it to the public when it’s relevant to a search. Each search engine ranks the scraped content based on its relevance, reliability, website quality, user experience, and others. The main point is for the search engine to be helpful and reliable. This means that it follows an intricate algorithm, which determines what would be acceptable for the reader and what wouldn’t. The worst part is that this algorithm is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) that learns from the collected data, and no one knows all its parameters. Moreover, it changes often due to the change in user behavior.

But how does Google know that your website will satisfy its users? Well, keywords are the backbone of this highly-complicated operation.

What are keywords

The definition of keywords usually doesn’t do justice to their importance. The textbook definition states that keywords are words, phrases, or sentences used to find a particular product, topic, or theme. On the other hand, however, when it comes to search engine optimization of a website, keywords are specific words or phrases that you infuse in your content, headlines, and metadata, so crawlers and users will understand that you have the answer to their query at first glance. So, regardless of whether it’s a home page, a sales landing page, an about us section, or a simple blog post, if you want it to be visible, it must be filled with relevant keywords.

For example, if a user wants to learn more about oscilloscopes, their first step would be to write this particular word in Google to find out what it does. These keywords are called one-word keywords. However, if the user needs a new car, they already know what a car is, so they would add some additional words to specify their search. For example, “new car,” “brand new car,” or “electric new car.” These types of keywords are known as short-tail keywords.

However, most often, people would be very specific about what they are looking for. So, if they want a new car, they might ask a direct question, “Which is the best electric family car for 2022?” This is better known as a long-tail keyword. Most search engine queries are actually long-tail keywords, as about 70% of all Google searches are made with them.

Naturally, we will discuss these three types of keywords in much more detail, but before we get there, let’s talk about where you can find the correct keywords for your website.

How to find keywords

Guessing what keywords might be right for you is the worst idea. Big brands wouldn’t pay millions of dollars for collecting data if it didn’t matter. Thankfully you needn’t spend any money on your website’s SEO, as there are enough free tools to help you start collecting data and find the keywords that will bring you high-quality leads.

The internet is filled with opportunities to learn the right keywords if you only invest a little time. For example, Google alone offers a ton of options to brainstorm ideas for relevant keywords.

Google Search

You can use Google Search’s user-friendly interface to your advantage. For instance, you can benefit from the autosuggest. You’ve probably noticed that if you write a couple of words, a bar opens and suggests ten queries. These are based on what people in your location most often look for. You can use these as long-tail keywords.

Moreover, you can use the related searches at the bottom of the first page, and the “people also ask” box. So, for example, if we write “Ski shoes” in the search bar, we will instantly get at least 25 relevant short-tail and long-tail keywords.

Google free tools

Another great way to get suitable keywords is via Google’s free tools. Google keywords Planner is probably the best place to start, as it gives you some valuable keyword information. The tool will show the keyword trends, their competition, and the cost per click for PPC campaigns. The higher the CPC, the better the keyword, with some asterisks, of course, but we won’t get too much into them right now.

The other invaluable Google tool is Google Search Console. To use it, however, you will first need some data. It will show you how your content ranks for different keywords, how people find it, and which keywords are relevant to your website. This will help you optimize your keyword use and SEO strategy.

Use other tools

There are hundreds of excellent keyword-finder tools like SEMrush, Ubersuggest, Keywords Tool, Keywords Everywhere, and Keywords Finder. They have different limitations, and most are paid, yet they offer invaluable insights into the keyword’s search volume, quality, competitive score, and CPC. Within a minute, you can choose from more than 1400 keywords.

Use Q&A websites

If you feel stuck with long-tail keyword generation, go to a Q&A website like Quora, Yahoo! Answer, Askville, Answer the public, and any other that comes to mind. People there ask genuine questions which answers they can’t find anywhere else in Google, so answering those related to your niche will guarantee you some quality leads.

Spy on your competitors

This may sound a bit unethical, but don’t think they won’t do the same. Duplicating and bettering what works for your competitors has been the basis of marketing since it exists. So, don’t be afraid to look at what your competitors post and just give your unique perspective on a topic they raise. That certainly doesn’t mean just copying their content, as this is legally and morally troublesome and will get you penalized, if not by the state, by the search engines for sure.

So, now that we know where to search for keywords, let’s look at the three core types of keywords, their positives and negatives, and when you should use them.

One-word keywords

One-word keywords, as their name suggests, consist of only one word. While one-word keywords have a truly magnificent search volume, they are usually pretty much impossible to compete for. The apparent exceptions are brand names containing one word or some brandable products. In some cases, you may manage to rank for some rarely used terms or very specific words, but in general, the number one spot is almost always taken by internet giants like Wikipedia.

Pros

The pros with one-word keywords are very few, and they apply only if you land on the first Google page. However, a one-word keyword works wonders for cold audiences if your niche requires knowledge of specific terminology. For example, it may be great for pharmaceuticals, medicine, chemistry, and technology, as one-word keywords pretty much specify the product that the customer is looking for.

The only other positive aspect of one-word keywords is that they give the search engine direct information on your industry, niche, and work.

Cons

The downsides with one-word keywords are many. Firstly, they can be used successfully only in some particular cases. Secondly, though they have a huge search volume, the competition is unbeatable. The CPCs are incredibly high, although only huge brands compete for them. Most importantly, you can’t expect quality leads from one-word keywords because they are targeting an extremely cold audience who’s just starting to learn about the product and its specification.

Where to use them

Most digital marketing experts would suggest skipping one-word keywords altogether. However, you need to consider competing for at least some of them. For example, if your brand name is just one word, you need to be on top of the search engine results, as most people will write your name in the search engine and click on the first link without thinking too much. Competing for a competitor’s brand name is frowned upon in the digital marketing world, but that doesn’t mean it’s not common. Especially if your brand is popular and the competition has a cheaper alternative.

Finally, one-word keywords can be used for specific products or industries with less public knowledge. Such highly distinctive fields include research, medicine, pharma, legal, and others.

Short-tail keywords

Short-tail keywords, also known as head terms, usually have high traffic potential, yet they are less competitive and have lower CPC than one-word keywords. They consist of 2-5 words and are considered general terms that give a bit more specifications than one-word keywords but are not precisely queries on their own. Those are broad terms typically used by cold and lukewarm audiences who are starting to familiarize themselves with specifications and norms in a specific industry, so they can later make an informed decision on what to purchase. The specific need of the user typically creates these words. For example, no one wants just any trainers. They have some preferences like color, gender, and size. So when searching, they will write, for example, “men’s white trainers.”

Pros

Short-tail keywords have some pretty nifty advantages. Even though they have far less reach than one-word keywords, they still get a vast search volume, which is excellent if you want to boost your website traffic. Moreover, they are pretty easy to determine, as they don’t need much data. Furthermore, as they target a broader audience, they are not limited to a specific target group, drastically reducing keyword research time. The best part, however, is that they are pretty much effortless to integrate into your content. They don’t need a lot of SEO writing experience to place in your blog, home page, or landing page.

Cons

Naturally, there are some downsides. Without a doubt, the biggest one of them is the high competition. The broader the audience, the more people would like to attract them as leads. So while acquiring the correct short-tail keywords is effortless, betting on those that are actually worth your time needs some extra work.

Another downside of the head terms is related to the quality of the traffic you get. Sure, you will truly enjoy significantly higher numbers of visitors, but not all of them will be looking for your products or services. For example, if the keyword is “yellow jacket,” the customer might be looking for your gorgeous yellow jacket fashion line. On the other hand, it can be someone looking for information on that particular type of wasp, a song, or even someone looking for the brand Yellow Jacket, which has nothing to do with clothing.

When to use them

Using short-tail keywords, unlike one-word keywords, is practically mandatory for home pages and landing pages. There you don’t have enough text for long-tail keywords, to begin with. Moreover, you’d want to reach a much broader audience with your home page, so the shorter the keyword, the better. Still, make sure you specify what you are offering. Otherwise, you may end up with a confused lead, who will only up your bounce rate.

In general, short-tail keywords are great to use in H1 and H2 tags, metadata, and even picture Alt-tags. They work wonders in communicating with search engine bots.

Long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are practically whole sentences that users write to find specific products or get a solution for a particular need. For example, this article answers the query of whether you should use short-tail or long-tail keywords. You probably found it by searching for a variation of this question. And since we found out that most other websites don’t differentiate between one-word and short-tail keywords, we added an extra value to our work so you’d have a more full and satisfying answer. Needless to say, long-tail keywords have far less volume reach than short-tail or one-word keywords, so you should expect far less traffic from them. However, less search volume means far less competition and a much narrower audience. All of this will result in high-quality leads with high intent. So naturally, these keywords target warm and even hot audiences ready to purchase your product or service.

Pros

Long-tail keywords bring a lot of advantages. First, as already mentioned, they lead to far better conversion rates as the quality of the leads is much higher. Moreover, there is practically no competition for more specific topics, and even for broader queries, the competition is only within your niche.

Long-tail keywords do wonders for new websites with no authority and can help them quickly make a name in the Google rankings. Moreover, it will complement your short-tail keyword efforts, so it’s a double win.

Most importantly, it gives you insights into industry trends and what your immediate customers expect and miss. You may even use this information in your product development strategies.

Cons

The biggest long-tail keywords downside is the complexity of integrating them into your content. True, you may seamlessly put them in headlines (H1 tags) and subheaders (H2 and H3 tags), but for better ranking, you need more than that. So, to properly place your long-tail keywords, you’d most probably have to hire a professional SEO writer.

Furthermore, long-tail keywords are hard to find, especially relevant ones with little competition.

Finally, their low search volume may be a blessing but is also a curse. While you will have high-quality leads, your reach will be much lower, your scalability potential will be hindered, and using exclusively long-tail keywords will need significant resources.

When to use it

The most obvious place you should use long-tail keywords is in blog posts. These are most commonly the entry points for organic traffic and usually are the easiest places to add long-tail keywords. It’s an excellent idea to start with long-tail keywords if you have a new website with little to no authority and seek to climb Google rankings rapidly.

Finally, use long-tail keywords as a conversation starter with your leads. Users often write coherent sentences in the search engine search bar as if they are communicating with someone. So, be that someone and start a conversation.

So, one-word, short-tail, or long-tail keywords? Which one is for you?

Well, all of them, actually. A good SEO strategy uses all types of keywords, as they have different places on your website and tend to different audience groups. However, which one you will start with depends on your business model, industry, niche, and, most importantly, your resources.

Regardless of your choice, the right keywords are just one aspect of getting to the top of the search engine results. But that won’t matter if your page takes ages to load. In internet terms, “ages” is approximately 4 seconds or longer. This will not only hinder your SEO efforts and render all keywords useless but also damage your customers’ relations and reliability. Luckily HostArmada is here to save the day. We have precisely what you need – secure, fast, and reliable cloud-based hosting that can increase your website speed and ensure zero downtime. All you need to do is check our offers and contact one of our teammates, so they can help you choose the plan that will best fit your needs.

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