Search Results for "keywords"

If you are a someone who writes content for your website, such as practice area pages or blog posts, it is likely that internal linking is near the bottom of your list of priorities. When creating content, a lot of factors come into play, from keyword usage, to alt text, to images on the page. All of these are important, and it is easy to feel a bit overwhelmed with all the “best practices” and “how-to” guides. And, many small businesses simply don’t have the budget to hire a SEO expert to curate their content for them.

That is why we have put together this quick and easy checklist for you to follow when it comes to adding internal links in your site.

But first, let’s brush up on some of the basics…

What is an “internal link”?

An internal link is a link on one page of your site that points to another page on your site.  You may have done this already, by including links to your “Contact Us” page on most of your pages. An external link, on the other hand, is a link on your site that directs the user to another website. You can read our blog post, Back to Basics, to learn more about on-page SEO best practices.

For an example of an internal link, imagine a law website, lawsite.com. This site may have a practice area page called “Family Law”. This page is identified by the URL lawsite.com/family-law/.

Within the content of this page, the author may include a link to another page on their site that is about divorce (lawsite.com/divorce/). The reader would get to this page by clicking on the anchor text divorce.

Using internal links usually aids the natural flow of users from one page to another, but that is not always the case. Often, content creators include internal links just for the sake of a link. This is not the most optimized strategy for internal linking, and sets the basis for this guide.

What’s the purpose of an internal link?

Including internal links on your site actually serves a variety of purposes. More important than just SEO, internal links are a way of directing readers around your site.

Here are some of the other purposes of internal linking:

• Guide readers to other content on your site that they may find helpful
• Increase user-friendliness
• Decreases likeliness that user will leave your site after visiting just one page
• Shows search engines which pages you deem important
• Helps “boost” pages that aren’t performing well in search engines

The most important purpose of internal linking is to help readers and customers that are using your site. Search engines prioritize content that is helpful to the user and provide a great user experience. When it comes to link building, always consider what information your potential customer may be looking for, and then provide links to that information.

Easy (5 Step) Guide to Internal Linking

Now for the good stuff.

We have compiled our best tips and tricks for internal linking into an easy-to-follow checklist for you to use when creating and updating the content on your site. After reviewing this list, you may consider going back over old content and removing any internal links that are not providing a benefit to your potential customers.

1. Make Sure the Link “Makes Sense”

Include links to other pages on your site that are relevant to the page you are linking from. If you are linking from your “Employment Law” page, linking to your “Worker’s Compensation” page would be a good choice. Do not link to a page that does not make sense for that page, such as your “Personal Injury” page. This is not helpful for the user, and it confuses search engines.

It is okay to link to your “Contact” page on most pages of your site, since it is helpful for those readers that need to get in touch with you. We would discourage businesses from linking to the “Contact” page multiple times on one page. Once should be enough 🙂

2.  Use Helpful Anchor Text

Anchor text is the word(s) that users click on that directs them to page you are linking to, such as “divorce” in the earlier example. Anchor text, like internal links in general, should be helpful for the reader. This is not a place to stuff in keywords in order to boost your rank in search engines. 1-3 words usually suffice, and the text should give some indication what the next page is about. DO NOT use “here” or “click here” repeatedly, as this is can look spammy. Anchor text is an opportunity to direct users to other pages on your site. Be as helpful as possible, for both the user and search engines.

3. No Page Should Be More Than 3 Clicks Away

You want to make it as easy as possible for users to find the pages on your site. Most businesses include their most important pages, such as their “About” page, blog, and practice area pages in their main menu. This makes it so those pages are only 1 click away and thus very easy for users to find. If your site is set up correctly, no page should be over 3 clicks away.

The ideal internal link structure is more like a pyramid. You will have your most important pages included in your main menu. These pages then link to other pages that are relevant to them.

Once optimized, your internal link structure should look something like this:

 

Here, the blue dots are pages that are being linked to from the main menu pages, and so on. Note that no page is farther that 3 clicks away from the home page. This is ideal, as it makes it fairly easy for users to find what they are looking for. Note that the Search box is not an option, as search engines will not utilize the search box to find your pages, and a user may not know what to search for. Having all the information as accessible as possible is best for your potential customers.

4. Don’t Have Orphan Pages!

Related to the point above, make sure that you don’t have have any pages that are completely unlinked to on your site. These are pages that are not in the main menu or in the sidebar, and are otherwise impossible to find by clicking around on your site. To “unorphan” these pages, link to them in other pages that are related to the orphan page. If the content is important to you, consider adding it to the main menu or side bar. If the content is no longer important to you, but you don’t want to delete the page, noindex the page so it won’t be crawled by search engines. v

Visit this latest blog post to learn how to find and fix orphan pages.

5. Link From Pages That Have Quality Inbound Links

This step is a little more advanced, but pretty simple once you understand the basics of internal and external links. If you have pages on your site that have received links from other reputable sites (i.e. inbound links), it is beneficial to link to other pages on your site from these pages.

The idea here is that an external link from another reputable site adds authority to that page. By linking from that page to other pages on your site, you are sharing the love, so to speak.

To find out which pages on your site have backlinks from other sites, use can use Moz’s free tool, Open Site Explorer, or the more robust tool at ahrefs.com.

Summary

The most important purpose of internal linking is to provide a route of helpful information for your readers. Not only will this result in a better experience for potential customers, but will lead to payoffs in SEO and your overall business. By linking to relevant pages, optimizing anchor text, and having an organized internal link structure, you can increase traffic flow on your site and drive growth. Don’t forget to go over older content to make sure that you are linking to pages that serve the interests of your users.

Be sure to visit our SEO blog for even more tips and tricks. Feel free to leave your questions in the comments below!

Title tags and meta descriptions. One of the first additions to any new SEO’s on-page optimization arsenal. Although simple, it’s important to have a strong understanding of what titles and descriptions are, why you should use them, and how to optimize them in order to get the most cost-effective means of SEO improvement.

What Are Title Tags and Meta Descriptions?

Title Tags

A title tag is an HTML element included in the <head> section of a page on a website. To read a page’s title tag, right click anywhere on a page and click “view page source”. The title tag is the text between “<title>” and “</title>” (believe it or not):

Go ahead and give it a try on this page!

The title tag never actually appears on the page itself. It gives search engines a boiled down description of what a page is about. According Moz’s 2015 search engine ranking factors survey, title tags are still one of the most important on-page ranking factors. Title tags are helpful for search engines, and they’re helpful for users. When a user performs a search for “Mockingbird Marketing”, this is what shows up:

The title tag added to a page (in this case, home page) is the first thing a user sees when they come across a website in the search results. For obvious reasons, you want this text to be inviting, informative, and accurate.

But search results aren’t the only place users encounter your title tag. Title tags show up in the text displayed on your browser tab:

and in social media:

Meta Descriptions

A meta description, similar to a title tag, is an HTML element that tells the users what a page is about. It too, can be found in the <head> section of a page:

.

Meta descriptions, although not as big and bold as title tags in search results, provide users with a more detailed description of what a page is about. This text is found directly below the title in search results.

Why Should I Use Title Tags and Meta Descriptions?

There are two reasons to make sure that each page on your site has optimized title tags and descriptions:

1. For search engines
2. For users

Of (1), it’s unclear the extent to which this helps. In the good old days, Google would take a page’s title tag and use that as a primary ranking factor. Since then, search engines have added a multitude of ranking factors to consider alongside meta tags, reducing their clout. Currently, the exact influence of a title tag on page ranking is unclear.

Google has been more clear on meta descriptions. Matt Cutts of Google said in 2009 that meta descriptions are not used as ranking factors.

Of (2), this is where the definitive value of optimizing title tags and meta descriptions lies. Giving your pages clear titles and descriptions draws in the user.  If a user comes across the title of your page in search and it does a good job of describing exactly what the content within the page is about, the user will click, and stay, on your page.

How Do You Optimize Title Tags and Meta Descriptions?

There are a couple things to keep in mind as you optimize your title tags and descriptions.

1. Length: Google will display the first 50-60 characters of your title tag. Keep your title within this length to ensure nothing gets cut off. Meta descriptions should fall between 150 and 160 characters.
2. Keep Users in Mind: Spamming meta tags with keywords looks suspicious to search engines and users. When writing meta tags for a page, first go through the page and make sure you have a strong understanding of what the page is about. Boil this down to title tag and meta description length.
3. Important Keywords First: As users scan a page filled with search results, their eye starts on the left side of the page. Place the most relevant words early in your title tag.
4. Never repeat: duplicate titles and descriptions confuse everybody, search engines and users alike.

There You Have it

To see how all of this fits in to the bigger picture, check out ahrefs’ guide to on-page SEO. This study does a good job of showing how much of an impact meta tags have on your on-page SEO.

 

 

 

 

It’s that time of year again. The SEO world is reflecting back on a year defined by unexplained shake ups in the search results. Rather than taking a look back on 2016, it’s much more fun to look ahead to 2017. Some writers were so excited for 2016 to end, they started their predictions as early as August. Other writers, like the brilliant David Mihm, have just recently published their predictions for 2017 (definitely worth the read). In this post, I want to look at a few different common SEO trends/predictions and offer my thoughts in a ESPN(ish) talkshow fashion called “Good news, bad news, no news.” Essentially, I’ll be sharing whether I think this SEO trend will benefit law firms, hurt them, or have no real impact.

More Traffic to Paid Advertisements than Organic on Mobile

…Bad news

Google has been stressing the importance of mobile experience since back in March of 2015 when the digital marketing world had a simultaneous heart attack about the impending “Mobilegeddon.” Mobile search has continued it’s astronomical growth and with that, Google is capitalizing on a huge opportunity for additional revenue. We’ve seen this trend already with new ad extensions (reviews and location data) and even more recently with the addition of local search ads on Google Maps like the example below.

So why is this bad news for the average small law firm? I say bad news because it’s becoming a pay-to-play game, and fast. Legal has always been a hyper-competitive market – while you can still get solid results from beating your competition organically – you now have to compete with more advertising than ever before with less room on the search results pages than ever before. 2017 may be a good time to start thinking about the various mobile advertising options.

Tracking Keywords Rank Becomes Obsolete

…Good news

Search queries are getting longer and more specific with the growth of voice search and shift in searcher behavior. Soon, tracking your ranking for broad terms like “bankruptcy lawyer” will become more difficult. This is great news. It’s very easy to use ranking as a measuring stick of success, but we shouldn’t, and soon won’t be able to. We’ve never used ranking as a measure of success at Mockingbird and never will. Our philosophy has always been to focus on the metrics that matter, which for law firms is new leads and ultimately new clients (not ranking for “car accidents”).

This inevitable shift will free up business owners and their SEO agencies to focus on optimizing their website in a way that drives revenue, not rankings. Instead of focusing our efforts on rankings, we can focus on the user’s intent and how to solve their problems.

HTTPS Becomes a Must

…No News

We’ve known that Google is using HTTPS as a ranking signal since they announced it back in August of 2014. Since then, Google has been running their own PR campaign to push site owners and SEOs to make their website’s more secure. Google even offers help articles, a post on why HTTPS matters, and a variety of tools to check your site’s security. They have been preparing us for the shift to HTTPS for the last two years and “Beginning in January 2017 (Chrome 56), we’ll mark HTTP pages that collect passwords or credit cards as non-secure, as part of a long-term plan to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure” (source). This should be “no news” to all of us. Our lead developer, Matt Stahl, wrote a great post on this: “Why HTTPS? Well that’s a stupid question.”

Looking Ahead to 2017

Things are changing fast and it’s important to keep on top of the trends. In summary, think about investing in mobile advertising, forget about keyword ranking, and make sure your site is secure with HTTPS. Please comment with your own thoughts and predictions below!

We recently subscribed to an SEO toolkit called Ahrefs at Mockingbird. We did this because the overwhelming majority of voices weighing in across the web seem to agree that while Ahrefs is a little more expensive than, say Majestic or Moz, it’s more accurate. We like accuracy.

After playing around with Ahrefs, investigating features, and watching many of their help videos, I put together this guide that can serve as a how-to-get-the-most-out-of-Ahrefs manual, complete with basics, some cons, as well as some advanced features offered by Ahrefs.

What Ahrefs does:

Ahrefs brands themselves as:

“A toolset for SEO and marketing. We have tools for backlink research, organic traffic research, keyword research, content marketing & more.”

Basically, Ahrefs crawls the web and reports on what it finds. Its key functionality is its backlink checking capabilities. According to a study we found, Ahrefs reports on a higher ratio of live, accurate links than any other similar service. Based on our own experience with other tools, so far this seems to be the case.

Pricing:

The costs of different Ahref plans run as follows:

How to Use it:

Dashboard:

The first step towards using Ahrefs to the fullest is adding important sites to your dashboard (adding a “campaign”). This allows you to quickly and easily keep tabs on the websites you are most interested in. This is helpful insofar as you wont need to enter a url each time you want to check on a certain site, but adding a site to your dashboard also allows you to setup automated email reports. These reports give you your site’s vitals as they pertain to backlinks (new/lost/broken), keywords (are you still ranking for important keywords?), and online mentions (who’s talking about your website?) on a weekly or monthly basis, depending on your preference.

Backlinks:

Ahref’s backlink checker is its meat and potatoes. They have an easy-to-use interface that makes checking in on your sites’ backlink profile relatively intuitive.

To illustrate some of Ahref’s backlink checker tool’s capabilities, here’s an example that came up the other day; A co-worker noticed an unusual amount of dofollow links pointed at a client’s website in the past two months. She wondered if there was a way to quickly check in on backlinks that had been added in the last two months that were dofollow, and whether any of these links were related to each other. Let’s review:

1. New links within last two months
2. Dofollow
3. Related to one another?

To figure this out, I used Ahref’s “New Backlinks” tool. Once inside, I adjusted the settings as follows:

As you can see, the date is set to include the last 60 days, the link type is set to “Dofollow”, and, perhaps most importantly for what my coworker was trying to accomplish, the links are set to show up as “One link per domain”. This last feature allows you to condense all links from the same (generally spammy) domain into something more easily digestible.

Once here, use the toolbar above the backlinks to further hone in on the information you’re interesting in seeing. Here you can prioritize how your backlinks are presented to you based on highest/lowest: Domain Ranking, URL Ranking, # of external links on page, social, date found by Ahrefs, or the number of times a domain links to your site.

Disavow tool:

This feature impressed me. Once you’ve added a site to your dashboard, the “Disavow Links” tool becomes available. This tool allows you to stockpile and organize links that you don’t want linking to your site. As you go through new backlinks, or all backlinks, you’ll see a small box waiting to be checked:

Once you click this box, you can choose to either disavow only that URL, or the entire domain. Once you’ve done this, the backlink is saved to your disavow list.

Once you’ve compiled a list worth disavowing, Ahrefs makes it easy to export the list as a txt. file, so you can send it straight to Google’s disavow tool (with the addition of some annotation on your part).