What is ORM? What is its role in SEO?

You must have heard about SEO and ORM. For many years, professionals utilized the SEO practices to improve the ranking on the search engine. SEO became a never-ending battle in the late ’90s and is continuing to rank better. 

SEO has affected many online and offline businesses and has become one of the most prominent digital marketing methods. But relying on SEO isn’t enough. It is required to maintain and deploy some other tactics such as ORM, that is, Online Reputation Management. 

The combination of both aspects will not only improve your search ranking but also the brand image of the business.

Before proceeding further, do you know what SEO and ORM are all about? If not, then I am sharing the answer below.

What is SEO?

SEO, as you understand, involves the techniques and tactics to enhance the visibility of websites on search engines. It involves increasing the traffic and rank of the websites. It entails multiple factors that influence the search engines to move the websites on different positions or ranks. 

SEO involves different keyphrases that rank for a single website or a page. These keyphrases are ranked through the algorithms that take multiple factors, into account, for ranking. Search engines like Google have more than 300 factors that are analyzed before placing any website in a particular position. 

What is ORM?

ORM is a broader and more prominent term than SEO. You can say that SEO is a key part of many ORM campaigns. Online reputation management involves the visibility and image of a brand in front of the end-users.

SEO majorly focuses on driving ranking on search engine results page (SERP), while ORM deals with the online reputation of a brand. It targets to build and manage the brand reputation or positive perception of a brand. 

ORM involves different websites that rank for fewer branded terms. For this, it combines various disciplines of digital marketing such as 

• SEO
• Web Development
• Content Development
• Online Public Relations
• Web Analytics 
• Social Media optimization and marketing

ORM is a multi-channel approach that targets reputation building by some activities that include

• Building SEO and user friendly website 
• Maintaining positive social media presence
• Managing online reviews and ratings on different websites
• Doing discussions in forums
• Sharing useful and informative content on different platforms
• Maintaining online PR
• Web analytics and so on.

This multi-disciplinary approach of the ORM is what makes it different from SEO. 

Benefits of ORM Beyond Search Ranking

ORM has numerous benefits that are beyond search engine rankings. I would like to mention some of them.

• Trust - If you have a good brand reputation, people would like to trust your brand more than others.
• Word of mouth - When you have five-star rating or reviews, people speak about you. They refer you to their known ones as well.
• Profits - Having a good reputation increases your chances of getting more business and profits.
• Reach - You can reach to the audience that you might not reach with search ranking.
• Risk - You have fewer chances of risk because people move with the crowd.
• Employees - Companies having a good online reputation gets talented employees to work for them.

How SEO and ORM are Connected?

Both SEO and ORM are aspects of digital marketing that go hand in hand. How? Let me tell you. 

As specified above, SEO is a primary part of ORM. Therefore some of the off-page SEO activities are utilized in the ORM that is

• Business/local listings are targeted for link building but can be utilized in ORM in terms of ratings and reviews.
• Spammy link removal saves businesses from bad links and distance websites that are not good for business’ reputation.
• Brand mentioning helps you to get a high-quality backlink and also brand awareness.
• Press Releases also get backlinks and increase brand awareness.

These are some of the SEO techniques that are utilized in good ORM strategy.

How are SEO and ORM different?

When it comes to the difference between these two, the major difference is that ORM utilizes SEO as its discipline. But when you dug deeper, you will get some other differences as well. Check out some of the differences below

Working

SEO focuses on improving the ranking or position of a website on the search engine on some targeted keyphrases. 

ORM works on building and maintaining brand reputation by creating a positive perception among people.

Number of websites

SEO provides results to one website at a time. A single website ranks on different positions for different targeted keywords. 

ORM includes multiple websites where your brand is present or can be presented. It involves social media sites, business listings, etc.

Focus

SEO revolves around search engines and professionals use SEO practices by considering search engine guidelines. Whereas, ORM works around brand reputation and changing the people’s perception of a brand.

ORM strategies are defined according to the business activities and the clients a business has. 

Revenue

Both of the digital marketing aspects are used to generate leads and revenue for a business. SEO does it by generating organic traffic through search engines.

On the other hand, ORM does it by improving the brand reputation and image in front of their audience.

Goals

While SEO is all about generating traffic and improving ranking, ORM is utilized to build trust and credibility among the audience.

Online Reputation Management Techniques and Tactics

I hope now you have a clear understanding of ORM and its relation with SEO. Now let’s talk about good and successful online reputation management techniques.

• Optimize your website not just for service or product keywords, but also for the branded keywords.
• Increase your online presence by building local listing profiles and optimize them to improve search ranking.
• Keep your eyes on the reviews that your users are doing for your business. Manage reviews positively no matter what type of review the user has done.
• Ensure that the backlinks your website has, are not talking about something negative related to your brand. Therefore, links should be relevant and authoritative.
• Don’t forget to monitor the brand mentions. Make sure that websites mentioning your brand, are not spoiling your brand reputation. If they do, remove those links.
• Survey your customers regarding the improvement in your business products and services and analyze the insights.
• Share newsworthy content of your business through Press release websites. It will be beneficial for both brand awareness and link building.

ORM or SEO - Which one is for your business?

The easiest way to decide which one is your business need, simply perform the following things

• Search your company on Google.
• Check on which position your website is appearing
• Look for the other websites where your business is present.
• Examine the information and inspect to find anything negative.
• You can do all the above things with your employees' names.

If you encounter anything negative about your brand during the search, it’s time to improve your online reputation. Consider the fact, if you have found negative things by googling your company, your users are going to find them too. So, it's the time for you to go for ORM of your business.

If you don’t find anything negative (which is great), focus on improving your SEO. You can also start the ORM to give more power to your business and to increase your brand awareness.

Both of the strategies are profitable if implemented genuinely and professionally.

Conclusion

As you can see, both SEO and ORM are equally important for a business. Although both are different but are still connected. If you want a good online reputation, you need to implement a good SEO strategy. SEO makes people get to you and ORM ensures that they don’t leave you.

8 Proven Strategies to Increase Blog Traffic

If you are a blogger like me, then you may have been facing the difficulty in getting traffic on your blog. Despite publishing the quality and relevant content, you may lack traffic. The reasons can be many but the most important question arises here is how to gain blog traffic. 

You can find a content pool of diverse strategies that may help you in gaining traffic. But before implementing any of these strategies, just ask yourself, “Are these strategies reliable and good enough to be implemented?”

If it is yes, then you can go for some. Experimenting is a good thing, but if you are provided with the tried and tested tactics, then implementing them won’t do any harm. Therefore, in this post, I am going to share some proven tactics and methods to increase your blog traffic.

1. Go for the content that people are looking for

Before creating any blog post, analyze and understand what people are looking for. I have seen many bloggers that only talk about their own achievements in their blogs. This may excite them, but not the readers. Recognize what people want to read. You can choose the trending topics by using tools such as BuzzSumo, Ahrefs or platforms like Quora, AnswerThePublic, etc.

Be picky in terms of the topic that you are going to present in front of your readers. 

Tip - Avoid posting latest news or random rants as much as you can, if you are an authentic blog. 

Such content pieces can give huge traffic in the beginning but once the interest of the readers fades away, your content is no use.

Instead, go for the informative posts that can provide consistent traffic and can rank easily on search engines.

Go for the topics such as How-tos, tips with count (7 tips), guides, etc. This type of content can provide you with passive organic traffic.

2. Write by keeping user’s search intent in mind

Whenever a user types a query in the search engine, he/she must have an intent behind it. Consider yourself as the end-user and find out the search intent. Now the question is how to understand the user’s search intent. 

Well, simply go to Google and search for something. Google will provide you with all the best content pieces it has. For example, if a user types “digital marketing tips”, he/she is basically looking for information related to digital marketing or advertising. 

Now analyze the content of these top-ranking blogs and understand what they are providing that is fulfilling the user’s search intent. 

Tip - Choose and write on topics by keeping search intent in mind. This makes your content more relevant and you can rank easily on search engines.

Remember, Google always prefers to rank and show the content that is relevant to the user’s search intent and that people want to see. 

3. Write in-depth content 

After you are done with the research part, focus on writing the in-depth content. 

Tip - Creating a topic with detailed information and a good length can gain ranking and therefore can increase blog traffic.

Target long-tail keywords in your blog post and make it as natural as you can. You may have noticed a blog ranking for multiple related terms. The reason is quite simple. Google understands the variations that users use while looking for something. For instance, different users may type different queries having the same search intent.

User 1 - How to treat dengue patients?

User 2 - Tips to treat dengue patients

User 3 - Treating patients of dengue

Now, these are distinct queries having common search intent. The users are looking for ways to treat dengue patients. 

In this scenario, you may see the same result in the SERP because Google identifies the variations and frequently ranks the same pages for multiple related terms.

So, my suggestion to you is to provide, as much as possible, detailed information to the readers. It will increase your chances of getting ranked in the SERP and you may gain blog traffic.

4. Include Links in the posts

If you notice my previous blogs, I have done the internal and external linking of my blog posts. Internal links are links associated within a website in which you provide links to the other page of the same website. Whereas external links refer to providing the links to other authority websites. 

If your website has some pages that are ranking in good positions, you can link them in other pages that need a boost. This refers to the internal linking. It will help in improving the performance of the pages in search engines.

Tip - Check the positions of the pages on Google Search Console. GSC provides all the pages of your website that are ranking on high positions.

When you write a blog, you may pick some resources from other websites such as stats, reports, survey results, tools, etc. While doing so, you can add the link of the reference sources in your post to increase the visibility of your post.

5. Focus on the Link Building

Being a digital marketer, I have often heard that link building is dead. But this is just a myth. Quality backlinks always provide a share in generating organic traffic. You can use numerous link building strategies such as content reposting, broken link building, outreaching, etc. But my suggestion is to go for guest blogging. 

There are a lot of websites that allow users to write and post on their websites and give links in return. The thing that matters are the relevancy and the quality of the content. You can either link your website’s blog or the website itself, depending upon the guidelines of the guest blogging website.

All you have to do is to find the websites that allow guest submission and create content according to their guidelines.

Tip - If you are struggling with the guest blogging sites, you can find them using advanced search methods.

Advanced search allows you to find the guest posting websites in your niche. Some of the operators to do an advanced search are

• [your_topic] “write for us”
• [your_topic] “guest post”
• [your_topic] “guest article”
• [your_topic] “become an author”
• [your_topic] inurl:contribute

These are some of the operators. You can find more on Google. With this advanced search, Google will display websites that allow guest submissions.

6. Promote content on Social Media

You can share the links of your published work on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.

As you know, graphics and videos are the best methods to increase your reach.

Post-eye-catchy and informative graphics or videos related to the posts that you want to promote. Engage with your users and communicate with them. 

Tip - Videos can increase your landing page conversions by 86%. Use videos in your blogs and on social media platforms as well.

Promote your content on the different communities such as

• Facebook Groups
• Slack Communities
• Forums
• LinkedIn groups

Each community or forum has its own set of rules and guidelines. Read their rules and post only, if they allow you to do so. Don’t spam rather become an active member by engaging with other members such as leaving comments, liking their posts, etc. Build relationships with them and you will get the chance to share your content.

7. Target Question-Answer Websites

Question-Answer websites or discussion websites can bring a lot of traffic on your blog. You can target Quora, Disqus, Reddit and other websites like these, to increase traffic. As per my opinion, 

Quora is one of the best platforms to generate traffic and to showcase the expertise that you have. You can answer the questions in your niche. I have been active on Quora and it has an audience of 300 million people. 

Have you ever noticed that Quora appears on the first page of SERP? If not, then make a search on Google. Most of the time, while you make a search, you will find Quora on the first page of the SERPs.

Tip - Quora ranks for millions of keywords in Google. Answer the questions that are new and in the trend of your niche. You will get views easily.

Just like Quora, Reddit is a popular platform with 330 million members. But the difference lies in the guidelines of the websites. Reddit is one of the high traffic generating platforms but it is not an easy nut to crack.

Reddit doesn’t allow self-promotion at all. If you want to work on Reddit, you need to understand the culture of Redditors. If you don’t do so and directly do posting on any subreddit, your post will be marked as spam and the further attempts will result in a ban.

Tip - Choose subreddit of your niche and then look out, if they allow links or not. Go through the top posts on Reddit and analyze their methods of posting.

You need to be a pro when it comes to Reddit. 

8. Paid Promotion

When I speak about paid promotions, many businesses may not like this. But it is the rapid method to generate traffic. You can do social media marketing or search engine marketing depending upon your business niche.

Tip - In most cases, social media marketing generates traffic at lesser prices as compared to Google Ads. Rest depends upon the business type, location and target audience.

No one can neglect the fact that paid marketing starts to give results from day one. Yes, it costs you but you can optimize your campaigns to save your money.

Summing Up

All the above-mentioned tactics are important and work. Although you can use it individually, yet combining them all will definitely do wonders for your website or blog.

When you rank on good positions, you get higher traffic on your website or blog. If you want to succeed and grow your traffic, use these tactics.

Try these methods and let me know, if I missed something, in the comment section!

The Complete Guide to YouTube Keyword Research and Planning

When we create content, the first thing we do is to optimize it so that people can find our content, right? The same thing goes with YouTube. 

YouTube doesn’t need any introduction. As per the reports from JumpShot, YouTube is the second most used social media platform. Not just that, it is the world’s second biggest search engine after Google. 5 billion videos are watched daily and it covers almost a third part of the internet users, globally and if you are still not using video as a marketing tool, you are losing your business.

The numbers specified above clearly states that YouTube is a paradise of marketers. According to a study in 2018, videos generate 1200% more shares than graphics and text. The reason is the human brain which is bewitched by the movement. 

When you consider these facts, one thing is comprehensible and that is YouTube is the right platform for the brands who are looking to create awareness and interact with their audience.

As I specified, YouTube is the second highest used search engine, creating an engaging and valuable video is not enough. You need to go for SEO. 

Yes, you guessed it right! On YouTube, SEO plays a major role to increase your organic impressions, views, and subscribers just like on Google. To ensure that your videos reach your target audience, you need to do two important things - SEO of the video and the keyword research for the video.

To rank your video on YouTube, you need to perform the following steps - 

1. Video Keyword Research

Whenever we talk about SEO, be it a website or a video, keyword research is the primary step. YouTube keyword research lets you figure out what people are looking for and how you can serve them or in other terms, it helps you to understand the people’s search intent and what sort of videos you can create for them.

To initialize this, you can use any of the YouTube keyword research tools that I will cover in this blog. You should have a general idea of the keywords related to your business or service. Just put the general keyword and get the relevant keywords with the average traffic on them. 

You can perform the keyword research on YouTube itself with the help of YouTube autocomplete. All you have to do is to type a keyword idea on YouTube and you will receive a list of suggested results in the dropdown. This will help you to generate keyword ideas.

You can also perform competitive research. You can analyze your competitors’ videos or videos that are ranking on the top positions. Check out the keywords that have been used in the meta title and desc of the videos. After generating keyword ideas, you can use a YouTube keyword research tool to find the search volume of these keywords and can choose the other keywords that are relevant to your business. 

2. Create engaging and retaining videos

You should create videos that can retain and engage users. Always remember, your goal should be to retain the audience because a video with a high retention rate is much preferred by YouTube than others. No matter your video has a great meta title and desc with good ranking, but if your video retention rate is low, you can face a drop in the ranking.

Always focus on creating content that is useful, encouraging and valuable to people who are watching it. This can help your videos to rank well because interesting and valuable videos will have high retention and engagement rates. YouTube analyzes the performance of a video through these rates.

Retention rate refers to how much time people are spending on your video and engagement rate refers to how people react to your videos. Engagement includes the likes, dislikes, views, comments, and subscribers count. You can increase these rates by creating quality video content.

3. Appealing Video Title and Thumbnail works well

Whenever searching for a video, you may have noticed that the videos on the top positions have appealing thumbnails and interesting and relevant titles. These types of videos attract the attention of the viewers. It not only increases their CTR (click-through rate) but also impacts on their ranking. Just like engagement and retention rates, CTR is also important in terms of ranking.

Suppose you have a video that is ranking well on YouTube but viewers are still not clicking it. Then what will be the problem here? The problem lies in the title or thumbnail of your video. It not only decreases your CTR but also the rank and YouTube is smart enough to understand these factors and it can demote your video. To avoid such things, use an appealing thumbnail and interesting and bold title that is relevant to your video. Always use your target keyword in the title of your video.

4. Video optimization

If you have created user friendly video content, then video optimization is the most important step that can improve your video’s ranking. Nowadays, YouTube can put subtitles in your videos by transcribing your video content, automatically. Therefore, putting subtitles in your video can have an impact on ranking. You can use your targeted keywords in the subtitles, a couple of times. Don’t try to stuff keywords in the video content; just put them in a natural way. 

Not just the video content, you should optimize the video title and description with the targeted keywords. You can optimize your video’s meta title and desc by using the following guidelines

• Target your primary keyword in the title.
• Create a relevant description of 250 words or more.
• Add your primary keyword in the first 25 words of your video’s description.
• Don’t just focus on the length but also the relevancy and quality of the content.
• If possible, start the content with the primary keyword
• Use your 2-3 targeted keywords in the content 3-4 times.
• Add the relevant and target keywords in the meta tags section of the video

Using these guidelines, you can optimize your video and serve the people with amazing content.

5. Video Promotion

Video promotion is one of the best ways to increase the views and likes on your videos. You can promote your videos on various platforms and channels such as other social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. You can add your video to your website.

You can promote your video on YouTube, itself or other video promotion websites. Remember, the aim is to generate the audience and engagement for your videos.

Best YouTube Keyword Researching Tools (Paid and Free)

As you know, SEO is all about keywords. Without proper keyword research, you cannot get anywhere. To get the relevant keywords for your video, you can use keyword researching tools. As I specified above, here I am sharing the list of some tools for YouTube keywords that include both paid and free tools. 

1. TubeBuddy

TubeBuddy is considered to be the easiest YouTube keyword research tool. It is a Chrome extension with free and premium versions. This extension displays a sidebar to the YouTube window where it shows the keywords insights. It provides information such as the competition, traffic volume, and the keyword score. 

The keyword score is calculated out of 100. It provides you the complete information related to a particular keyword such as the views on a keyword, searches per month, subscribers count, etc. 

Not just that, you will be provided with a list of relevant and quality keywords that you can utilize in your video. This tool is effective for long-tail keywords that you can use to optimize your video.

It also serves as a rank tracker which can track your YouTube organic search ranking and your competitors’ ranking too. You can schedule the report download with TubeBuddy.

2. vidIQ

vidIQ is similar to TubeBuddy in terms of functionalities but with some differences. vidIQ is also a Chrome extension with a freemium version. It also displays a side tab in YouTube's user interface that includes the metrics about the keywords and the video. It provides information such as search volume, competition, tag suggestions from top videos, relevant queries, keyword score, the status of keywords, etc. 

After installing this extension, you get the competition score and the tags of a video whenever you click a video. Not just that, when you upload a new video, this extension provides the relevant tags that are used by other people for similar videos.

The main difference between the vidIQ and TubeBuddy is that when you check your competitor’s channel, you can find out the trending videos of them. 

This information helps in searching video content that is trending and you can use it to make your videos.

3. Google Trends

Google Trends is one of the free YouTube keyword research tools. As it is the property of Google, the results are quite accurate and reliable. It provides you a complete analysis of the keywords. You can check the YouTube keywords on Google Trends by simply changing the search settings to YouTube.

Google Trends let you find and analyze keywords based on filters such as demographics, data range, etc. It provides you with complete information about user behavior and interests. You can check the suggestion and add relevant keywords to your video content.

4. Morning Fame

Morning Fame is a premium tool that has its own interface and platform. It is not an extension or add-on. This tool package starts from USD 10 per month depending upon the pricing strategy. 

The pricing varies as per the duration (monthly or annually). You can perform keyword research in two ways

• Search by entering a general keyword or keyword idea
• Search by entering competitors’ video URL.

Before it, you have to choose a topic related to your business niche. It will extract the data and will show the relevant keywords. To get insights about a particular keyword, all you have to do is click on the keyword and it will show the information such as search volume, competition, etc. This tool offers a very unique feature that includes “good keyword choices for smaller channels” and “good keyword choices for larger channels”.

Similar to vidIQ, Morning Fame provides you tag suggestions whenever you upload a new video. These suggestions are based on the trending videos, relevancy, and competitors.

5. Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

Ahrefs is known to many SEOs as it is an SEO analysis tool offering keyword research and auditing. You can explore and search YouTube keywords by setting the targeted platform to YouTube.

You can get detailed information such as the local and global search volume, clicks, etc. You can export the list of related keywords provided by Ahrefs, in .csv format. It allows you to add filters and categorize keywords such as 

• Phrase match keywords
• New keywords
• Queries
• Exact keywords
• All Keywords

If you have the list of keywords and want to check the SEO metrics, then you can discover SEO metrics of 10,000 keywords by uploading a file or simply pasting the keywords.

Final thoughts on YouTube keyword research

To rank well on YouTube, you need to target the keywords that are relevant, have decent search volume and optimize your video content with the keywords. Quality content always plays a crucial role but content becomes searchable if it is properly optimized.

I hope the tools optimization techniques and tools specified in this blog post can add value to your YouTube videos and you can increase your viewers and likes. If you are looking for more information related to digital marketing, you can explore Digital Keshav.

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR SEO AND SOCIAL PRESENCE WITH RICH SNIPPETS

Ever wondered how some websites manage to get really customized, unique data into the snippets on the Google search engine? Rich snippets – such as star ratings, recipes, event details and more – are great for maximum rankings, and brand awareness.

HOW RICH SNIPPETS WORK

Rich snippets comply with microdata which is uniform across the popular search engines and social networks. This is made possible by a collaborative called Schema.org, which is sponsored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex and Open Graph which is more social-focused.

Without getting into the technical side of how this works, the idea behind it is to make data more relevant and accessible for search engines and searchers by giving webmasters the opportunity to structure their data better.

Rich snippets need to be respected though, as with any type of SEO overdoing it could result in a penalty from Google. So make sure that you only add them when they should be used – like on posts that actually have reviews on them and exclude pages such as the Home page of your site.

THE SEARCH ENGINES PERSPECTIVE

By structuring your data more effectively, the search engines can now determine relevancy with more accuracy when matching up web pages to search queries. Being able to prove how relevant your website is to the search engines is a very important SEO aspect and microdata gives you the chance to communicate with GoogleBot and its friends properly. That being said, you should also apply the basic SEO strategies beforehand which serve a foundation, and only use micro-data to add more relevance and increase the potential rank.

HIGHER CTR

Having rich snippets is a known click-through rate booster, your web page will be more visible in the search results and stand out from the other competing pages if they have not optimized for it.

Higher CTR is also going to get noticed by Googlebot, and its indeed a ranking factor. So websites with optimal rich snippets are especially rewarded for their efforts.

SOCIAL SEO: MICRO DATA AND SOCIAL NETWORKS

Popular social networks are using microdata as well. Google+ uses authorship, Pinterest uses Schema.org and Open Graph tags, and Facebook also uses the Open Graph API.

If you start optimizing your microdata for social, it will have the same effects as the search engines meaning your posts will be easier to read by the social bots and ranked accordingly within the social networks. This data will also be seen by the search engines, and we know that every bit of spider food helps.

You can also set featured images to be displayed when your URL is shared so that you have consistent branding across your networks.

Including structured data can become a complicated process for the non-coders like myself, but luckily there are plugins for WordPress which make this much easier – which we’ll cover shortly.

WORDPRESS PLUGINS

If you are looking for the star rating markup to appear in the SERP’s for your site, then WP Social SEO can handle this. It goes beyond that by offering basic Open Graph functionality for your social networks as well.

Popular SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO and AllInOneSEO have been including basic Open Graph functionality in their feature lists but it's not something that is often talked about.

I usually use AllInOneSEO, you can find the social settings under the Features tab, then once you have activated, just click on Social Meta and you will be able to add your social media details. It's pretty straight forward to setup.

If you are looking for even more options and really want to take advantage of this optimization technique, then one of the best solutions is WP Social SEO PRO. This plugin is packed with features and allows you to easily integrate with Open Graph and supports microdata for reviews, events, videos, business...etc

That's it!

Let us know what measures are you going to display your unique rich snippets?

About the Author

Yassine is a digital marketer and co-founder of SEOAgency HQ. The author loves to help small businesses grow their online presence through education, and of course execution. “SEO may see hard to tackle, but once done, it unveils the real potential of any business,” says Yassine. 

Google BERT Update – New Search System Introduced by Google

Google has rolled out a new search algorithm named BERT. This is the biggest change in Google’s search system since its last RankBrain update that was introduced almost five years ago. The internet is flooded with lots of rumors since the company confirmed the new search algorithm. The SEO community has different assumptions regarding this update however the changes in the search system will be seen shortly. BERT rolled out this week and soon the communities will see the impact of it on the search queries. Before discussing its influence on websites, let’s figure out what this update is.

What is Google BERT?

BERT, that stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, is the latest update rolled out by Google. It is an open-source neural network-based bidirectional and pre-trained deep learning algorithm that relates to Natural Language Processing (NLP). The algorithm is presently targeting English queries only and will be updated for other languages with time. The concept of BERT can be considered as a language model that was prefaced by Google in 2018 in a paper that was published by the researchers at the Google Artificial Intelligence Language. It is not targeting the search queries but also the featured snippets.

As per Google, BERT provides state-of-the-art results by understanding the distinctions and context of the words in searches. BERT understands the intent behind the search queries and delivers the results accordingly. It helps Google to understand queries that are conversational and more human-like. Let’s understand this concept with an example:

Suppose you searched for a query, “I need to travel to USA for FIFA cup”. In this particular query, the word ‘to’ and ‘for’ and their relation with other words are also important. In the previous approach, Google used to ignore such words and delivered results related to ‘FIFA world cup’ or’ USA’s performance in FIFA’. As you can see in the below image,

After the update of BERT, Google understands the full context of words and provides more accurate and related results. It is good for longer and conversational queries, where the prepositions are significant in the search. It will enhance the user experience by letting people search in natural way and delivering relevant results.

What will be the impact of BERT?

BERT will impact on 10% of the search queries. This simply refers to one in ten search queries. BERT is designed to focus on the user’s intent of the search and thus Google is going to look for the content that is relevant to the user’s search query.

Can SEOs optimize for BERT?

SEOs are looking for ways to optimize their sites according to the BERT algorithm. According to Google, BERT is a lot like RankBrain in terms of the machine learning algorithm. However, it is not the replacement or updation of RankBrain; it will be used in conjunction with all other algorithms. 

SEOs can’t really optimize their websites for BERT. There is some misinformation that websites can rank better by targeting long-tail keywords in their content. But this is not the complete reality. All they have to do is to write content for their users. The algorithm is for Google to get a better understanding of the search queries and delivering relevant results.

In a nutshell

Google is taking many steps that can help the user to use the search engine in the easiest way. But it may bring more competition in terms of ranking. To avoid the negative impact of any Google algorithm, the websites should focus on writing the content from users’ perspective. It cannot be said that BERT will not affect ranking but there is no specific way to optimize sites for BERT except that you should have your user in mind.

Major Updates of Google Algorithms - Every SEO Need To Know

Google Algorithms are the segments of SEO ranking factors. If you are not fulfilling the Google guidelines, then your website may lack in the SEO ranking factors. Every time Google launches any new update, it makes it more difficult to rank in terms of SEO. In this article, you can read and learn the major updates of Google that you should follow and make your website Google and SEO friendly.

Google Panda Update

The Google Panda update was introduced in Feb 2011. It evaluates the quality of content on the website. It mainly focuses on your websites' On-page optimization. This algorithm checks your low-quality content. It inspects grammar errors, duplicate content, poorly formatted text, and article spinning.

If you are stuffing keywords in your website content, the panda update will penalize your site immediately. Keyword stuffing means forcefully inserting your keywords many times without any sense. for eg., your keyword is "digital marketing in Delhi". If it has been utilized more than the required keyword density such as more than 8-10 times in 400 words article then panda update will de-rank your site on Google. This is a very important update rolled out by Google in terms of SEO. Till now, Google has done many modifications in its Panda update.

Google Penguin Update

The Google Penguin update rolled out in April 2012. The main purpose of this update was to measure the spamming sites and link bombing sites in search engines. Link Bombing means if your website is getting a lot of backlinks every day, then Google AI will detect it as suspicious activity and it may penalize your website. So, according to the penguin update, Google will penalize your site for link bombing.

The second reason can be the link exchange with another site. Many SEO experts are using this strategy to create high-quality back-links. But, if you create more and more links through link exchange then again it can be harmful to your website and  Google may de-rank your site.

Google Payday Loan Update

Payday Loan update mainly focuses on search queries. This update was launched in 2013 and targeted spam queries like pornographic, casino and loan of high interest. Google removed the spammy keywords from the content with this update. This is a very straightforward and simple update by Google. Naturally, many sites are using high-risk SEO methods but still those sites are not targeted to pornographic content, interest loan and so on.

Google Rank-Brain Update

As the name suggests, Rank-Brain is a machine-learning artificial intelligence system. Google confirmed the usage of the Rank Brain algorithm on 26th October 2015. It is a part of a search algorithm that helps to understand users' search queries. 

Let's understand with an example:

A user is searching "shoe" on Google, it will show the suggestions like "running shoes", "casual shoes", "formal shoes" etc. This update even knows very well the difference between "Apple" smartphone or "Apple" fruit. That's why this is called the Google AI update.

Google Broad Core Update

This is one of the latest updates which is given by Google. On Sunday 2nd June 2019, Google announced the rollout of a broad core algorithm to start on Monday 3rd June 2019. The core update targeted the specific queries that the user wants to search. It focuses on the relevancy of the website as per the users' search queries. It impacts the ranking of the search engine result page. 

If you want to fix your site from the broad core algorithm, then focus on user intent, Google guidelines, content quality, and clear architecture.

Difference Between SEO and SMM - Which is Better?

When you are into digital marketing, you can adopt multiple marketing techniques like search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), social media marketing (SMM) and so on. However, most of the businesses are investing in SEO and SMM. Both are playing a major role in the digital marketing of a business. But when it comes to choosing the one, people are confused about which is better - SEO & SMM?

Undoubtedly, both techniques are useful if want to increase your business branding and web traffic but both work on different strategies. In this article, you will get the knowledge about the SEO and SMM along with their working criteria and then you can decide which one is good for you - SEO or SMM. Let's start now.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO is an organic technique that totally relates to your site. The primary purpose of this technique is to get organic traffic on a website by ranking the website on top for some search terms that users search and are related to your business. It is divided into two categories - on-page and off-page. When you are structuring and managing your website according to the search engine guidelines to rank in SERP, you are performing the on-page optimization. Some of the activities in on-page SEO are

• Content management and optimization
• URL structuring
• Heading Tags
• Meta Tags
• Keyword Density
• Interlinking
• Image optimization
• Technical SEO likes robots.txt maintenance, sitemaps, schemas, breadcrumbs, Google Analytics integration, and so on.

When you are performing activities on other websites to raise your website ranking, it is the off-page optimization that you are doing. The primary goal of off-page SEO is to build links and traffic for your website from other sources. Some of the off-page activities are

• Forum Links
• Profile Creation
• Guest Posting
• Outreaching
• Social Networks
• Discussions
• Business Listing
• Broken Link Building and so on.

SEO plays an important role in Internet marketing. With SEO, you can get organic traffic by doing brand promotion and awareness. Many small and big companies are doing SEO for their websites. This is the reason that competition is very high and everyday organic ranking is ups and downs. In this digital world, Without SEO you can't imagine that you can get online customers.

How Its Works

Well, SEO takes time. You can't expect instant results when it comes to SEO. SEO depends upon a lot of factors like but majorly it depends upon the content quality and the relevancy. Below are some points to show how SEO works:

• SEO Ranking factors depend upon search engine algorithms.
• SEO works on your content optimization and website quality. 
• If you want to rank your website easily then you should firstly focus on the on-page optimization techniques. 
• After doing On-Page, you should start link building, which is off-page SEO, to create quality links.

As specified above, SEO is an ongoing activity so it takes time to rank your website for keywords. For example, if I am targeting a keyword "SEO in Amritsar", it may or may not take much time for my website to get ranked.

SMM (Social Media Marketing)

SMM is a paid marketing. It is a process of generating traffic, leads and business by advertising on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, etc. The main goal of SMM is to generate ROI (Return of Investment). Paid marketing provides instant results and in this era, when people are active on social platforms, SMM is proving to be beneficial for many businesses. Before starting SMM, you should be clear about your business goal and set up the campaigns accordingly. 

You should be clear about your budget and daily spent. The type of ads you want to create and the audience you want to target.  Only then you can expect good results from SMM.

How Its Works

These are key points that show how you can implement social media marketing:

• If you are new on social media then you should create brand awareness ads and get likes and followers.
• If you will create unique and attractive ads and target the specific audience for your business, then SMM will give you better results.
• Facebook ads are more popular in SMM, so be clear about your business goal and make the campaigns accordingly.

Conclusion:

Well, in my opinion, choosing one depends on your business type and requirement. For instance, if you have an e-commerce site then SMM will be a very good option for you. If you want to generate instant results, then you can go for SMM and if you need long term results, then you can go for the SEO. It doesn't matter which technique you will consider, remember both techniques will help you in revenue generation if implemented correctly.