If you ever want to get your SEO campaigns working for you instead of against you, you need to ensure you are following the right guidelines.
If you’re following outdated advice or making the same common mistakes many beginners are doing, you’ll never get your content ranked at the top of the search engines… which is your ultimate goal, right?
Getting traffic is reliant on how well you follow the best SEO practices, so we’re going to share with you the 5 SEO mistakes affiliate marketers make and how to avoid them too.
If you were looking for more information on SEO Affiliate Domination, then you’ve come to the right place. SEO Affiliate Domination is a SEO for Affiliate Marketing training course by Greg Jeffries.
If you’re here, you’re probably wondering if Is SEO Affiliate Domination a scam or not?
First off, it’s great to see that you’re doing your research before buying into any “seemingly good” product.
To be completely transparent with you, we’re not associated with SEO Affiliate Domination in any form. We’re not here to pitch or sell you anything.
Instead, we will take a closer look at Greg Jeffries SEO course to see if it’s worth your time, and your money. More importantly, do the strategies that are taught here still work in 2021?
Traffic Rebirth has the usual looks of a low-quality product, but I was pleasantly surprised when I started to go through it. IS Traffic Rebirth a Scam or not? That is what we will go through in this Traffic Rebirth review.
First off, it’s great to see that you’re doing your research before buying into any “seemingly good” product.
To be completely transparent with you, we’re not associated with Traffic Rebirth in any form. We’re not here to pitch or sell you anything.
Instead, we want to share with you all the details you need to know. That way you can make an informed decision about whether this is the right move for you…
Let’s get into our Traffic Rebirth review and show you what we found out…
I am guessing you have a blog or website and you are struggling to get any website traffic and are wanting to get some help with how to get website traffic for free, Right?
Traffic is so important to a website owner, but if you are not employing the right techniques you will not be getting much traffic and find it extremely hard to put your products or content in front of the right audience.
If you are looking for how to get my website ranked in the Search Engines, then you have come to the right place. Getting your website found by the search engines is the first move to getting the key ingredient to monetising your website – TRAFFIC.
There is a key difference between getting your website indexed into the search results and actually getting it ranked anywhere near where you can get that traffic. In this post I will describe those differences, share some hints and tips on how to get your content ranking as high as it can and then tell you how to ensure the Search engines can actually find your website with ease.
Let’s start with the differences between ranking and indexing when it comes to Search Engines.
The Difference Between Ranking & Indexing
One of the things that people new to the online world get a little confused about is the difference between getting your post or website indexed into the search engines and the ranking of that post.
The search engines are actively looking for high-quality content for its users, and Google is really good at finding your website and content. Bing and Yahoo, not so much but we will delve into this a little deeper later on.
If your latest blog post is showing as indexed into Google (for example). This means that Google has found your post. Whether that is via your sitemap or if you are using the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console. But that doesn’t mean it will be immediately ranked, and especially will not always be ranked where you want it to be.
Once the search engines have reviewed a number of factors about your content is the point where it will be ranked somewhere in the results.
To get to the best position for your business, which is on page one you need to know what the search engines are looking for.
To answer this, the first part is a question for you – when you type in a keyword into the search engines, what are you looking for?
We are looking for the best result that will:
Answer our question or solve our problem
Be totally relevant to what we were searching for
Not have a corrupt or slow website experience
Understandable.
If you are searching for a term through a search engine, they want to be able to give you the best result straightaway. They are constantly checking new and existing content to see if it still does. Being able to rank as high as possible is every website owners dreams and there are some simple techniques that will help you along the way.
Let’s go through some hints and tips, prior to sharing with you how to tell the search engines about your website.
Keyword Research
Blindly writing content will not help you in your quest, one of the first tasks you need to complete prior to writing your article or recording your video is keyword research.
If you are just starting out, you are much better off going for the ‘low-hanging-fruit’ keyword, as this givs you a better chance of getting ranked higher up the rankings.
If you are not too sure of what keyword research is at this point, check out my guide on Effective Keyword Research.
But by targeting keywords that have regular traffic, but lacks a lot of other competing posts. With a well written article, you could definitely get ranked higher up. Even though when you complete a search there will be millions of results, only the top few will be relevant to the actual keyword. The remainder of the list will be the next best results.
The search engines are looking for high-quality content that is highly relevant and actually does a good job of answering any questions or resolving any problems that the reader was searching for the first place. If it is to do with whether to buy a product, have they thoroughly reviewed it and written well for it, to help you make a decision.
But what you will find is that whilst there might be competing posts for the keyword you are targeting, they will not all be offering the best content out there. They are just the next best.
A perfect example of this is there are plenty of posts out there that just have 500 words. They also don’t always fully answer your question. This means that you need to go away and find another post that might fill in the blanks from the first one.
Most SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) experts suggest that you target at least 1500-2000 words. But these words need to be fully relevant. Don’t just type content for the sake of it and there is a key reason for this.
Specifically Google, reviews your whole post not just the keyword you targeted in the title. If you type up a 2,000 word high-quality article on a given subject, you could actually be ranked against any keyword or key-phrase within that article.
Another point with your content is that it needs to help, and ideally written as though you were talking to someone you know. Make sure that it is understandable and also worth a spell check. Whatever your niche, you are building an authority with it… anything that effects the quality of your site will affect the next topic – Engagement.
Visitor Engagement
This is the hardest one to achieve for a new website owner – getting organic traffic to visit your website and actually engage with it. The easiest way is by adding comments to your posts.
The search engines like these comments for two reasons:
It shows people are interested in your article, found it helpful and wanted to add a quick question or thanks to it.
It adds content to your post.
That’s right, you could have written a 2,000 word article that ends up showing as close to 10,000 words when comments start coming and with your replies.
As you start to gain these comments or organic traffic visits your website, the better your rankings will become as it all shows that people find your article useful and this is a big tick from the search engines towards improving your rankings.
I would also advise you against buying traffic too, It might make it look like your website is getting a lot of visits. But in my experience, it is not really traffic (normally a load of bots) and you have a huge spike in traffic, but then when the time is up it shows as a massive fall in traffic. This is the bigger impact. It shows the search engines that you have lost loads of (fake) traffic.
Stay true and create regular content and the engagement will come. The more often you can post quality content the better. Search engines love fresh content.
Mobile Friendly Website
If you have a website that looks great on desktop, but looks awful on mobile devices… guess what, this will impact your rankings. Google recently changed their search algorithms meaning that websites that were mobile friendly would get better rankings than those that are not mobile friendly.
This can also be factored in with your web hosting, if your web hosting slows your website down a little, this could impact the user experience and hence affect your rankings.
Search engines are constantly looking for ways to improve security, and users want a website they can trust. By having an SSL Certificate on your website, it has shown to rank better in the search engines down to that trust factor. If you have a website, but do not want to pay through the nose for an SSL certificate, there are web hosts out there that provide an SSL Certificate as part of their membership.
At this point I would like to point out something that will have a detrimental factor on your rankings – Duplicate Content!
Copying someone else’s content is the cowards way of producing content and the Search Engines reward that cowardice with negative rankings.
Please do not be tempted to copy and paste someone else’s work, that is Plagiarism.
I would also suggest you stay away from any products that claim to be on autopilot by using high-quality content – guess what, they are duplicating someone else’s work?
To be successful and rank well, do the hard work yourself. You will see the rewards from it.
Rankings Do Not Sit Still
One thing I would like for you to understand at this point is the fact that rankings do not typically sit still. Just because you get one post ranked higher, it doesn’t mean that they will all rank high.
But by having a high ranking post, it can positively affect the rankings of your other posts. Consistency is the key to success.
Online Marketers will tell you that you need to remain consistent with posting high-quality content 3-5 times a week. That is a great target to sit with. The more active your website is, the better your rankings will be.
But what some bloggers are unaware of is the impact of taking a break can have on their rankings. I remember a blogger I know talking about that as he had started earning good money from his blog, he was going to go travelling for 6 weeks.
We would all love to do that, but he didn’t realise the impact on his site as he didn’t post any content for that 6 weeks. This told the search engines that it was not active anymore. When he started posting content again when he was back, it definitely took longer to get back to where he had been before.
If all you can achieve at the moment is one post a week, then stick to it – Google loves consistency and you can tell them how frequently you plan on posting content too.
You might think that I personally prefer creating content for Google, but when you look at the numbers you will find that making sure your content is Google Friendly will have more of an impact than Bing or Yahoo, but by making sure it is Google Friendly you are also making it ready for Bing and Yahoo too.
To get your content ranked, we need to first get your website indexed into the Search Engines. We do this by submitting a sitemap to Google and to Bing. We will be starting with Google.
How to get your Website onto Google
Between Google and Youtube (which is owned by Google) they own two thirds of the search traffic online.
That is why you need to ensure it gets onto Google and is right to get ranked high enough. You will get traffic through Bing and Yahoo, but we are going to start with Google.
Google is very good at finding new content and is actively looking for new content to submit to its search index. But there are also a few things you can do to make it happen a little quicker.
Using an SEO plugin such as All-in-One SEO or Yoast is a great start for making sure your website is search engine friendly. the next stage is using a free tool that Google provides called Google Search Console.
You may have seen it around called Google Webmaster Tools, but it is the same thing but the Search Console is the updated version and is so much easier to use for your SEO strategies. Here is my complete guide on Google Search Console.
By adding your website to Google Search Console, you can submit a sitemap to it so that Google can crawl your website fully and understand what the structure is like, what content is included and index it ready for ranking it.
They also include a cool tool called URL Inspection. It allows you to request indexing. Why would you do that? A new website wants to get into the search results as early as possible, right?
The easiest way to add your website to Google Search Console is by having a Google Analytics account. You are going to want to fully use these tools to get your website ranked and understand the traffic you are receiving. See below, the relevant guides to do this:
By submitting a sitemap to Google, they will regularly crawl your website for new content and rank it. But I personally use the URL Inspection tool to great effect with a new website and manually request indexing on every new post I write. You then get to a point where you can get indexed within a couple of hours or even minutes with the right methods and quality content.
If you have followed my guide to adding your website to Google Search Console, submitting a sitemap takes seconds to do.
From the left-hand menu in Google Search Console, select ‘Sitemaps’. Add the URL for your sitemap (typically your domain name followed by /sitemap.xml and you are good to go.
Even if all you did was install the All-in-One SEO plugin and submit your sitemap to Google, they would find and rank your content in due course.
How to get your Website onto Bing & Yahoo
We must not discount Bing and Yahoo, as they still have close to the other third of the global search traffic. But they are not as good as Google at finding your content. You definitely need to submit a sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools to ensure they start crawling your website and content.
You will notice that I am talking about the two of them together and that is because they are the same search engine. Whether people use Bing or Yahoo, they are actually the same search engine. If you submit your sitemap to Bing, you will be indexed into both Bing and Yahoo via Bing Webmaster Tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Whilst Google will find your website, even if you didn’t submit a sitemap. Bing does seem to take its time to find your content, let alone indexing and ranking it.
So the first step you need to complete is creating a Bing Webmaster account. You can use either a microsoft, google or Twitter account to sign up with Bing Webmaster Tools. Follow this link to get started.
Submitting a Sitemap to Bing & Yahoo
The first step once you have created an account is to add a website to your account. Start by adding your URL in the box that looks like the image below.
Once you have done this, it now asks for your sitemap that goes with it. I have used my other website as an example below. Make sure you leave your traffic as All Day. Until you know when your traffic will be around, there is no point guessing.
It will then take you to the part where you need to verify that you own the URL, that you are going to add to Bing Webmaster tools.
Again it will give you the option of copy and pasting a code into the header of your website. But this means any time you update or change the theme of your website, you will need to redo it. There is an easier way.
When you look at option 2: you will see a long combination of numbers and letters. It will normally start with a number then go into captial letters. Just copy that combination. (Do not add any symbols or punctuation marks).
Then we are going to go back to our WordPress editor and go into the general settings of out All-in-One SEO Plugin.
If you scroll down the general settings, you will get to a section called Webmaster Verification. There are 3 options, the first being Google. (This is the alternative way than using Google Analytics).
The second is for Bing Webmaster Tools. Just add that code to that box. Make sure you scroll down and select save.
Now, you need to go back to Bing Webmaster Tools and click ‘Verify’.
That’s it, you are done verifying your website and submitting a sitemap to Bing.
This will load you to your Bing Webmaster’s dashboard. It probably won’t show a lot yet, but on the left hand menu, if you select ‘Configure My Site’.
You will see a menu heading called Sitemaps, select it. You should see a screen like the one below, and whether it was successful or not. (We know it was successful, as the verification would not have worked if you had an issue).
This will show a Last Crawl section. Now considering Google last crawled my site yesterday, Bing has not crawled my sitemap since the 30th December. This shows just how you need to tell Bing about your website, and I would also suggest that whilst you get going, don’t be afraid to resubmit your sitemap, via the options on this page too.
Final Conclusion
The first step to getting your website and content ranked within the search engines is to first get indexed. Submitting your sitemap to Google, Bing and Yahoo will tell them to start reviewing your content regularly. But that is only the start.
If I am honest, the best way to get your content ranked is “Creating High Quality Content that Helps!”.
Pure and simple, as long as you are doing just that, the URL Inspection tool is a great feature to use with Google. If they see that you are creating high-quality content on a regularly basis, they will start to automatically start crawling your website more frequently to a point where you may not need to use it.
But a new website or a struggling website can definitely work off those 2 things, quality content and posting it regularly.
Hopefully now you know what it takes to get your website ranked in the search engines, but I will leave you on one last thought.
One of the key things we want is getting our content ranked high enough so everyone can see it and start clicking on our website. Everyone wants that, but what we sometimes lack is realistic timescales.
A new website will struggle to acheive this straightaway. The search engines want trust, we as readers want trust and the website owners want trust.
It is a big trust cycle, we do not get to know someone well enough to trust them straightaway – It works like that for rankings.
If you post 3 articles a week for 3 months, that is 36 articles. That shows the search engines you are starting to get serious about this website gig. Another 3 months at the same rate, that is 72 articles. That is typically when most websites start to get organic rankings and organic visitors coming onboard.
So my point is, submit your sitemap and remain consistent with creating high quality content that is better than what you find in the search engines for the same keyword you are targeting and give it 6 months. You will definitely see some positive results with regards your rankings.
If you find you are struggling get your website or online business up and running or want to find a way of learning everything you need to know the right way with support. Then I do suggest you read up on my No.2 Recommended Product, On first glance they may seem like it only works for affiliate marketing but online marketing is the same regardless of the business model. They offer fantastic education, awesome website tools and experts on hand to help with any queries or problems you may have. Check out my review of Wealthy Affiliate and see how their training can transform your online business.
If you have any questions on this topic or anything related to it, please write them in the comments below and I will definitely come back to you with an answer as soon as I can.
If you have been searching for how to submit a sitemap to Google, then you have definitely come to the right place. Whatever your online business, getting your SEO strategies off to a great start will work towards your goals of achieving high rankings and that all important traffic that will help you achieve your targets online.
In this guide, I will be describing what is a sitemap, how to create a sitemap and how to submit that sitemap to Google via Google’s own Search Console.
What is a Sitemap?
Put simply, it is a map of your website. It lists all the posts and pages within your website, how it is all structured and a sitemap allows Google to thoroughly and intelligently navigate your website. This allows it to better understand it and, more importantly, index it correctly.
How to Create a Sitemap
With over 50% of the websites being used using WordPress as their content management system, the first way to create a sitemap that I will describe will be a great WordPress plugin which will help in a lot of different ways when it comes to making sure your website is Search Engine Friendly. That plugin is the All-in-One SEO Plugin.
It is a free plugin and designed to ensure your website is search engine ready and also creates a sitemap for you to submit to the search engines included.
If you are not running WordPress, don’t worry I will also share with you a way to create a XML sitemap for you to submit to Google too.
All-in-One SEO Plugin
Some will suggest Yoast, and there is nothing wrong with that. At the end of the day, they both allow you to create a sitemap for you to submit to the search engines included. So, my only advice is do not install another sitemap plugin to create one.
Any WordPress owner will tell you that Site Speed is important, so why install a plugin if you have no need for it. It will only slow your website down.
You need an SEO plugin, that is a given so if you are going to install one – the two that are the most recommended are All-in-One SEO and Yoast. I will be showing you how to create a sitemap via the All-in-One SEO plugin, as that is the one that I use.
If you haven’t already installed the All-in-One SEO plugin, then you can search for it from the WordPress plugin directory and install it, then activate it.
If you are not sure around how to install a WordPress plugin, check out this helpful guide.
Once you have it installed and activated, it is really easy to generate a sitemap from the settings.
From your WordPress editor. You will see ‘All in One SEO in your left-hand menu. Hover over this, and you will see a number of options come up. You want to go to XML Sitemap and click on it.
You will notice that actually, you do not need to do anything else. Your sitemap is already ready to go and use, just from having the All-in-One SEO plugin activated on your website.
If you click on it, and you will see what information Google take from seeing your sitemap.
What you will also notice is that your sitemap ends up being just an addition to your normal website URL. It will look like http://yourdomain.com/sitemap.XML
Create an XML Sitemap
If you are not running WordPress, you can still create a sitemap for you to use, which will achieve the same thing. Just go to https://www.XML-sitemaps.com/ and get started by typing in your website URL (domain name).
You will have a sitemap ready to use shortly after.
Now that we have your sitemap ready to submit to Google, we can now submit it to Google. To do this, we need to use Google Search Console.
How to Submit Your Sitemap to Google (Google Search Console)
Google provides a suite of tools that are free and are great additions to your business. You can use them to understand a number of things including problems with your website that need resolving and information about the traffic that visits your website. The one tool is Google Analytics and other is Google Search Console. Installing Google Analytics is by far the easiest way to add your website to Google Search Console and I have written a guide for both Google Analytics and Google Search Console that will help massively with adding them both to your website.
If you have not added your website to Google Search Console, you will find that you need to complete that step before you can submit a sitemap, as you need to prove that you own the website that you are adding a sitemap for. But it is actually quite easy.
First off, you need a google account. just follow this link to Google Search Console, and you can either log in or create a free account.
Go to Google Analytics and add your URL. You will get a tracking number, which you can use the All-in-One SEO plugin for again. In the general settings you can add the tracking number to the box for Google Analytics.
This means Google can find information about your website. You can then go to Google Search Console.
When you choose to add property (your website), choose the Google Analytics option and it will be added without you having to worry about adding a code to your website.
Once you have added your website to Google Search Console, you can go about adding your sitemap.
You will see an option on the left-hand side of Google Search Console for sitemaps. If you do not see the screen below, then you are still on the old Webmaster tools.
You can still submit it that way, but if you click the button stating ‘use new Search Console’ it will take you to the screen above and is much easier to submit your sitemap.
Click on sitemaps and it will allow you to type in the URL of your sitemap, which will mean you only need to add sitemap.XML and click submit. You will see the screen below once you have successfully added your sitemap to Search Console.
Google now knows where to find your sitemap and will regularly check back on it to see what you have been up to. From the screenshot above, you can see that I resubmitted my sitemap on December 15, 2018 and Google last read it today and it discovered 529 URLs.
How Often Should I Resubmit my Sitemap to Google?
To be honest, there is no real need to resubmit your sitemap once Google is aware of it unless you have made some major changes. I have seen some advice saying you need to resubmit it regularly, but there is no need.
If you have done a major overhaul of your links, structures or posts then it might would be worth it.
But for any changes, you are much better off using the URL Inspection tool instead. Say you create a video and want to add it to a post that is already ranked within Google, then you can use the URL inspection tool to tell Google you have made changes and want them to have a look. There is no need to resubmit your sitemap because of this.
This change would be picked up when Google crawls your sitemap again, but a new website would benefit from a URL inspection request.
Google is really good at finding out new content, but adding a sitemap allows them to fully understand your website and the structure of it. Google Search Console is a fantastic tool for new website to help get it indexed and ranked within the search results.
If you would like to learn more about Google Search Console, then I have put together this guide on how to get the best out of Search Console and ensure you are using it correctly to your benefit when first getting started with a new website.
Submitting a sitemap will help you get onto Google’s index, but if you would like to really achieve something with your content, you need to learn how to get your content ranked properly. If you still have any questions or want any more help please write me a comment below and I will definitely come back to you as soon as.
Google webmaster tools has been a key tool for website owners for years, but it has always been a little complicated to understand. Now, they have released a newer version called Google Search Console. Hands down, it is much easier to navigate and understand and it means website owners can really understand where their website is ranking, be able to submit your posts to get ranked and also see where the opportunities lie. In this post we will be going through exactly how to use google search console and throw in a few tips too.
Let’s start with how to add google search console to your website.
How to Add Google Search Console to Your Website
The first thing you will need is a google account. You will require this to be able to sign into Google Search Console and Google Analytics and as both are essential to your website and business, it is important you get set up now.
From your search engine, search for google search console and follow the link. For ease it is also here.
When you click Start Now, you will be asked to either sign in or log into a google account.
Now whilst the new Search Console is a great platform, you will still require the old version to be able to add a property. In webmaster tools or search console, your website will be referred to as ‘a property’.
In the old version, you will see a screen similar to the one below, but you will not have any properties yet.
You will want to click the red button ‘Add a Property’. Then you will want to add your website URL to the box that has appeared.
Make sure the box is selected as Website and you use the full URL for your website. Once you have added your new property (website).
After you have completed this step, you will need to verify that you own the property you are going to add to Google Search Console.
You will see at this point there are two tabs in your options. The recommended method is uploading a html file into your website. But that is a little more complicated, unless you know what you are doing so at this point, I would not suggest it.
If you have already set up Google Analytics, then that is the easiest way as you will just need to select it and click verify (Make sure you select you are not a robot). AS your google account already has been set up with Google Analytics, then it will be that easy.
If you haven’t already set up Google Analytics, then I suggest you do set this up first and here is a guide I created for doing just that.
If you do not want to set up Google Analytics yet, let’s explore the other ways to verify your website ownership.
The best alternative to going through Google Analytics is to add a html tag to the header of your WordPress website.
Select this option and it will display a code to add. Make sure you select all of the code, before you get ready to copy and paste it into the header of your website.
Then you can go to your WordPress editor, select appearance and editor.
From the right-hand side menu, you need to select header. The verification meta tag must be within the section of the page. Here is the guide that Google provide to help with this.
I would say at this point, I would not suggest this method and here is why. Any time that you change your website theme, or your theme has an update, it will remove this code and you will need to add it again.
You will be missing out on a lot of useful information if you do not add Google Analytics, so why not add them both at the same time. It will take you a few minutes to add Google Analytics to your website, and then another couple of minutes to add the Google Search Console.
Once you have completed these steps, you know that Google is aware of your website and you can start to use the tools and reports that Google provides you to get better results for your website.
You will also be able to switch between the old and the new version of Search Console at any time, depending on what you want to achieve, but the first thing you will want to do is submit a sitemap for your website, so Google can explore your website regularly.
How to Submit a Sitemap to Google Search Console
The new way to submit a sitemap to Google Search Console is much easier, so we will go through that method now. If you are still in the old version, press the blue button ‘Use new Search Console’.
You will see the following screen when you are in the new version. It might look a little blank at the moment, but it will look similar to this. This is the Overview report, which we will describe shortly – but back to submitting a sitemap. From the left-hand menu, select sitemaps.
IN the image, you will see that I have already submitted a sitemap. All you will want to do is add the URL of where your sitemap is. If you are using the All-in-One SEO plugin, then it will be simply sitemap.xml to the end of your website URL.
Once you have typed it in, click submit. You will then see it displayed underneath, like mine is.
In my example, it shows that I last submitted it on the 15th December, Google last read it on the 25th December. It was successful and they discovered 483 URLS or links.
Whilst you don’t need to do anything more with your sitemap after this, I do suggest that if you make a lot of changes to your posts, links or website. you come back and resubmit your sitemap using the method we just went through.
The next step that I suggest you take advantage of is the cool tool called ‘URL Inspection’.
URL Inspection – The new Fetch as Google
You can use this tool to actually request Google to search for it and add it to their search results. Any time you create a new post or edit an existing post, come back to this tool to tell Google about it. Many would still refer to this as ‘fetch as google’.
You can get to it via 2 ways. From the menu on the left, or just copy and pasting your URL to the search bar at the top.
If you inspect a URL that is already on Google, then you will see the image below:
It shows that it has already been indexed into the search results on Google. But if you have gone and added any additional content to that post, say a video, then come back and see how it says, ‘Page Changed?’ – just click request indexing.
This will take a couple of minutes to do. I have found that it doesn’t always work first time, but just try again a few minutes later.
It also tells you whether there are any issues with the coverage and AMP version, which we will cover in the report’s descriptions.
You don’t have to do this, as Google is very good at finding new content. But I found by doing this every post when I first started doing this website, it got ranked quicker and now I don’t always need to do it, as Google is keeping an eye out for it. I posted an article yesterday and didn’t submit it and yet it is already ranked in Google. I posted it at 18.29 and Google crawled the post at 20.52. Not bad, eh?
The more content you create, the more Google will want to check out your sitemap.
The Amp report is one to keep an eye out for. Most searches online are now coming from a smart phone, so Google actually searches for mobile friendly websites and potential ranks them better than non-mobile friendly websites.
For your URL, it will not be indexed yet, so you will see the image below:
Just select, request indexing. I would do this on your main home-page, and any posts that you have already written.
A couple of points to consider, when you submit your URL and it has been added to the index queue, do not keep doing it. It will not speed up the process, so is a waste of time. Once it has been added you will see the box below.
Overview Report
Once you have submitted your sitemap and started to get some date, your main Overview page will give you an overview of your website performance, coverage issues and enhancement information.
Performance Report
Your Performance Report gives you an insight into how you are faring with the audience out there. The pre-sets are set at last 3 months, but you can change the timeframes that the data shows you.
Total Clicks – How many clicks you have had from the search results
Total Impressions – This shows you how many times your link has been seen by someone searching for that keyword
Average CTR – the percentage click through from those impressions
Average Position – Is your average position in the search results.
The next table down displays some more specific data. You have a number of different ways of seeing the data. But if you are just starting out, I would focus on the pages tab.
Select the pages tab in the bottom table and select average position in the top table.
This will add the position column to the bottom table and mean you can see what position you are ranking for with your post.
Just click the boxes in the top table, so they are all coloured. This will display that data in the table below.
If you click the position column, it will sort high to low or low to high. Can give you an insight into your rankings.
When your website is relatively new, you aren’t really getting the traffic to accurately decipher the information but it is a good to know where you are ranking, as the higher you rank for a keyword the better your chances of getting traffic.
Coverage Report
The coverage report tells you if you have issues with your website. But I wouldn’t worry too much about some of the errors that come up. If you select a URL to not be indexed by Google (your privacy policy for example), then it will show as an error. But you know that.
You will also see that some affiliate links will appear in the excluded section, again you will see I have a high number, but as this is by link and not post it does seem high. But it isn’t really a problem. So, I do take the coverage page with a pinch of salt to a degree.
If you do see errors, you can see the detail in the bottom table and follow the correct action depending on what the error is.
Error – Pages that couldn’t be indexed
Valid with Warnings – Is a valid page, but it has issues you need to deal with
Valid – Pages that have been indexed
Excluded – These pages were intentionally not indexed.
Mobile Usability Report
The mobile usability report is useful to understand how mobile friendly your website is, it will also detail any errors that you need to resolve to avoid anyone getting to your site and finding a problem.
Error – This is a critical error in the structured data
Valid – Have no errors.
AMP Report
Get to see if there are any AMP errors within your website. Amp was launched as a way of having a condensed mobile friendly version of your website running for ease of use. If you are running an AMP plugin, then this report will let you know if you have any issues to fix.
Error – This is a critical error in the structured data
Valid with Warnings – Are valid, but are missing some data
Valid – have no errors.
Links Report
Who is linking to your website, which pages are linking to each other? At the end of the day, Google loves you linking to other pages or posts on your website. My homepage shows links of 609, yet there are no even than many pages on my website. Internal and external links are important, and you can get an insight into the information on this tab.
Conclusion – Google Search Console
Getting ranked onto the first page of Google is where any aspiring website owner wants to be. They hold the most users and getting to rank number one is the pinnacle and often the trigger for getting a load of traffic.
But if you do not use google search console or google analytics, how do you know how you are ranking or even tell google about your website.
Submit your sitemap to Google, use the URL inspection to get your posts ranked quicker. Check out any errors and see whether they require you to do something about it and watch your rankings.
You can also identify some keyword opportunities within the search results. You will soon notice that you are ranking for keywords that you were not targeting and so it could be an chance to explore that keyword in detail with a post.
If you are relatively new, I wouldn’t also advise that you do not spend a lot of time on it… I say the same for Analytics.
Until you are getting a real chunk of traffic, then the data can be misleading, and you end up wasting your time reviewing it. As a new website owner, your focus should be on creating content. Once you are getting thousands of visits to your website, then it is worth checking it out regularly. Otherwise, use the URL inspection toll every time you create a post and then leave and work on the next post.
Check it monthly, like you should with Analytics and hopefully you will see an upward trend. Hopefully now you have a grasp of how to use Google Search Console.
If you still have any questions, then please write them in the comments below and I will get back to you as soon as I can. John
Being able to convert sales is a key element to your success online, but if you do not know how your audience is interacting with your website then how do you move forward in your online business.
Google provides a suite of free tools to help you with your website and to better understand your audience and we are going to provide you some valuable information on Google Analytics today.
What Does Google Analytics Give You?
At first, it might seem that Google Analytics only shows you how many visitors you have had to your website… But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Google actually gathers a lot of information on anyone using their search engine, and website owners gain access to certain elements that you can use to help target your campaigns better.
Let’s use an example, one of the reports will actually tell you how long people are staying on your website or a specific page. If no one is staying on one of your articles. That tells you a lot, it is putting people off and you need to fix it.
I also noticed on another report that most of my traffic was coming from the US & Canada, rather than the UK. That allowed me to think about the currency I used, I kept going on about British Pounds (because that is where we live) but to improve the relevance of the post, I started using US Dollars. Breaking down the information is a great thing for a website owner.
I will go into it a little more in detail later, but I would also advise any new website owner to not spend too much time on Google Analytics. This is a great powerful tool to help with your business, but until you are starting to get medium levels of traffic – there is no real point in losing sleep over any metrics that are displayed.
But back to what does it give you.
Valuable insights in the behaviours of your audience
A way of capturing how many conversions you achieve.
Which campaigns are working, and which campaigns are not?
Demographics of your audience
How you acquire your visitors
Before we delve too deeply into any of the reports you gain access to, let’s start with how to set up Google Analytics. Most websites are running on the WordPress content management system, so we will be focusing on that route today.
How to Set up Google Analytics on your WordPress Blog
The first thing you will need to use any of Google’s suite of website tools is a google account. You can sign up here.
Once signed in, you will need to create a new property. Enter the name of your website, the URL (website address), industry and reporting time zone. This will give you your tracking ID.
You might want to check out this awesome training from the guys at Wealthy Affiliate, see it here.
This tracking ID is what you will use to link your website to Google Analytics.
Your tracking ID will look something like – UA-111111111-1.
You will then need to sign into your WordPress Back office to link your website.
The easiest way to link the two accounts is by using the All-in-One SEO Plugin. Click on the plugin general settings and scroll down to the Google box. You will see a box where you can enter your Google Analytics tracking ID.
The alternative to this is the copy the tracking code (different to the short tracking ID). This will need to be pasted in your header.php file in your WordPress editor.
That is why I prefer the All-in-One SEO plugin, it makes it so much easier and works towards making your website search engine friendly anyway.
Breaking Down the Reports
For experienced users, there are a lot of features that Google Analytics offers that we will not be covering in this tutorial today. We want to focus on the 4 main reports that a new blog or website owner would find interesting when they are starting to gain traction and see traffic levels start to increase.
When you are signed in and set up with your website, when you log in you will see this screen first off. Scrolling down will review a number of different metrics. IN the middle, it gives you an insight into your last 7 days. We will go through the metrics shortly. We are going to break down the reports available from the left-hand menu, starting with the audience tab.
Audience Report
The audience tab is where you find out loads of interesting information about your audience.
At first, you get an idea of what they are doing when they hit your website. Some of the metrics are quite obvious, but there are a couple where it may not:
User: Users who have started at least one session during the date range
New Users: The number of first-time users during the date range
Sessions: Total number of sessions within the date range.
No. of Sessions per User: The average number of sessions per user
Page Views: The total number of pages viewed
Pages/Sessions: Average number of pages viewed per session
Avg. Session Length: The average length of a session
Bounce Rate: The percentage of single-page sessions in which there was no interaction.
The bounce rate is the one that confuses many people. It will become more prevalent when you have reached a good traffic level, but if they are not interacting with any of your call to actions or going to another page on your website – it will show in the bounce rate.
There are a number of different levels to the audience tab to help you break this down further. Starting out, I wouldn’t worry too much about any of them. But there are tons of ways of breaking down the demographics to the visitors to your website.
Acquisition Report
How do people come to your website? This report helps you identify which channels are working for you and which ones are not.
Social – Which social media channel is working best for you? Well, this report will let you know. Most of my current traffic comes from Facebook.
Direct Traffic – The number of people who landed onto your website directly. This is the difficult one to grasp, because you don’t really find out how they got to your website. It wasn’t due to a search, or a link from another website. First ideas might be they saved your website as a bookmark, or Instagram is surprisingly not included in the social media searches.
Referral – The traffic that was referred from another website.
Search Overview & Organic Search – This is where all your hard work on SEO routes comes to fruit. This will show you how many people have come to you via a Google search.
If we use an example as to explain how someone may show up. If you have a post that has been shared on social media and someone clicks on that link and hits your website, it will show in the social metrics. But if that same person comes back later on directly to that post – it will show as a direct referral.
If someone searches in google, and your website comes up in the search results and they click on your link, it will show as an Organic Search.
If one of your posts has been included in a round-up post on another website and someone clicks on that link, you will see a referral figure.
Behaviour Report
The behaviour report gives you more detail on individual pages/posts and what your audience is actually doing.
How long are they spending on your website, are they leaving straight away?
There are a number of features included, that can help you track this behaviour too.
Again, this is really for when you are more established, but is a useful feature for tweaking your campaigns.
Real Time
Real time allows you check out what people are doing live. If someone is on your website whilst you are active in Google Analytics, you can see what they are doing. Which page they are on, if they change to another page. Something I find intriguing as well is, you can actually see where they are live on the map.
It does seem a little strange, but I loved the fact when I saw my first live user. See screenshot below, this was me logging in on my phone to show you what you might see.
There is a ton more detail and reports included in Google Analytics, and I still haven’t used everything included. There is some information you need to check on, but as a new user with a new website, there is too much info in a way.
You are best off, checking the basics for now and here is why.
How Often Should you be Checking Google Analytics?
Getting your website set up with Google Analytics is important, don’t get me wrong but until you get a decent amount of traffic, then it is pointless spending too much time on it.
A new website will not really gain much traction with the search engines until you have been established 3 months. It can then take time to build up traffic to a meaningful point. So, until you get to this point, it is point checking Analytics more often than once a month.
The key reason, it takes you away from the important stuff – as in writing more content for your website.
At first, it might seem interesting to check in and see if you have any real-time customers, but most likely you will only see yourself. Focus on the key ingredients to gaining traffic:
Writing Awesome Useful Content
Making sure your SEO techniques are set up properly
Share it on Social Media
Write more content
Once you have gained a step up in the SEO world and getting regular traffic from the search engines, that is the point where you get involved more in the analytics and learning how to fully utilise it.
This website is only about 3 months old, I check it maybe once or twice a month. That’s it. There is no real point wasting my time, I focus on writing more content and helping others, than I do on Analytics.
Google Analytics gives you a great insight into what your audience is doing, whether you own an e-commerce business, are a blogger using affiliate marketing or are a drop shipper it can and will be a great tool to use.
But I still think we spend too much time on it, for a new website owner Google Search Console is probably more helpful and I will include a guide on that tool soon.
I would just say that spending too much time on it will affect your business, there will be a time when you need to invest some time into it. But if you are new, then it is not now.
I have only one ask, promise me you will ask me any questions you may have in the comments below. We are here to help anyone who wants to succeed online.
One of the most fundamental basics of any online business will be keyword research. Without keyword research you will be walking blind and hoping for the best.
Whether you are targeting SEO or PPC Marketing you need a keyword research tool you can rely on to help you get started and still be relevant when you become an experience Internet Marketer.
Today, we are going to explore Jaaxy. Brought to us from the guys behind Wealthy Affiliate, we are going to see just how it stacks up.
If you don’t know what SEO and PPC are, this will be your chance to fully understand both strategies. But it will also answer the question which one is best for you.
Getting your website found by the search engines is key in getting any traffic. Both strategies are effective, but there are definitely things to understand about them before you choose which one is for you.
We will explore both strategies, let’s start with SEO…
Search Engine Optimisation – Everyone Needs This Strategy
The reason why everyone needs this strategy and will benefit from it is… it is a free marketing method.
By making sure your website is optimised and found by the search engines, it means that any conversions (sales) you have become 100% profit.
Let’s start with the Pros and Cons of SEO Marketing:
The Pros of SEO Marketing
It is a free marketing strategy for online marketing and this makes it an ideal strategy for beginners. It makes it very cost effective and has the better Return on Investment.
When you get ranked in the search engines, it is classed as an organic ranking, which can improve over time with more engagement.
A great way of increasing organic traffic, and also gives you an insight into how you are ranked against your competitors for the same keyword.
The Cons of SEO Marketing
It isn’t a quick method, it takes time to build up your trust and rankings with the search engines
The Search Engines change their algorithms regularly, which can affect any rankings you have built up. (Easy to combat with quality content).
Competition on some keywords will make it harder to rank for it, without the correct strategy.
How Does SEO Marketing Work?
Whilst both SEO & PPC marketing starts with a keyword, they have different things you are looking for.
The first step with SEO is keyword research. You need a keyword research tool; our preferred option is Jaaxy.
In fact, if you are not doing any keyword research you are just writing content with no chance of getting it ranked on page one of Google. With SEO, there is no point in targeting a keyword that gives you a chance of getting onto that page one.
But if you target a keyword with high competition or no searches, then there is no point writing the article.
But in short, you want to target posts with an average traffic of 100 a month and a competition of less than 100.
But do not just rely on the keyword in the title, the key to Search Engine Optimisation these days is Quality Content.
How to Optimise Your Website for the Search Engines
There are some key things you can do to ensure your website is optimised for the search engines.
WordPress is an ideal website choice, it is ideally optimised for SEO, is mobile friendly and with the addition of a simple plug-in, you are good to go and get found by the search engines.
I highly recommend the All-in-One SEO plugin for WordPress, I know others use Yoast – but either way, installing this plugin will be the first step to getting your website onto the Search Engines.
Now, Google is great at finding new content – there are steps to quicken the process, but I will cover that shortly. But Bing & Yahoo, are not so great at it.
To get your website and your posts ranked into the search engines you are best off submitting a sitemap to both Google & Bing/Yahoo.
You will need to use Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools for this.
SEO does heavily rely on both effective keyword research and quality content. Whilst submitting a sitemap and using the right keyword is a start to the SEO strategy, the most effective route is quality content.
Google is constantly changing its algorithm to give its users better results. Things they are now looking at are:
Is your Website Mobile Friendly? More searches are done on smartphones now
Is your Website Secure? Websites with SSL will rank better
Is your Content relevant to what the search was?
Does it get Engagement? – Comments
SEO Rankings can sometimes not be consistent, and they are constantly reviewing it. If your content is highly relevant and helpful to the searcher, gets regular comments and people are staying on your site and really engaging with it – your rankings will go up. You goal is to be on the first page of the search engines.
But if your content is the reverse of all this, then it is likely to go down. Be mindful of any platform that works off duplicate content, the search engines hate duplicate content and will just drop your rankings massively. It needs to unique and helpful.
Getting your content ranked relies heavily on the content, but it can be hard when first starting out – See my review of the training platform I learned everything online.
There are many aspects of SEO marketing that are appealing, definitely when starting out and it is the most used way as it doesn’t cost you anything.
Getting natural rankings through SEO will lead to long term marketing campaign that isn’t reliant on anything other than keep posting great content. The more often you post great content, the higher your rankings will be.
Some aspects are harder at first, like getting the engagement side of it – but platforms like Wealthy Affiliate have great features like SiteComments. Where you will get quality comments from other members that will definitely help with your rankings.
If you want to learn a sound SEO strategy, you will definitely benefit from their training.
Whilst SEO is a free marketing strategy, it does take time to get those natural rankings that will benefit your online business. But there is a marketing strategy that will get you to the top of the search results straightaway, but it does mean you will need to pay for it. Let’s go through the Pros & Cons of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) before I delve into it fully.
The Pros of PPC Marketing
Instant Traffic – You don’t need to wait for the search engines to find your content
Very easy to Target a Specific Audience
You only Pay When Someone Clicks
The Cons of PPC Marketing
Has to Be Relevant – You are paying with the hope of it converting
Can be an Expensive Strategy
Will Stop When You Stop Paying
Investing in PPC can be a sound strategy, but it is more important to have highly relevant content with this method. If you are spending money to get it to the top of the search engines and getting people to click your advert – then you want the reader to follow a Call to Action (CTA).
You do not want to get people to your post to just leave, otherwise there is no point of using PPC.
How Does PPC Marketing Work?
If you want to advertise on Google, you will need to join AdWords. Bing & Yahoo use the same platform and you would use Bing Ads.
Keyword research is still essential with PPC marketing, but you are not so worried about the competition figures as to you are paying to be above the natural rankings.
PPC Marketing requires you to choose which keywords you target, and you put in a maximum amount you are willing to spend per click.
You will need to consider your budget, but also how many other people are advertising for that keyword. This will impact the price you pay.
You do not want to bid too low and not getting anyone visiting your site, but also you do not want to pay so high that it doesn’t pay to convert.
It is always worth checking out how many other ads there are for that keyword, as you don’t want to be appearing as an ad on page 3 because you will not get clicked.
Final Word on PPC Marketing
If you can get PPC Marketing right, you can use it effectively to increase revenue – either from expanding campaigns or using it to increase traffic to an SEO post that you have found is converting well.
The key thing to consider with PPC is you are paying, so it needs to convert to have any chance of having a Return on your Investment. But also remember, once you stop paying your audience will disappear too.
You also need to consider what your budget is and stick to it. If you don’t get your PPC campaigns right you can lose a lot of money and if you haven’t got it, it is not worth it. Don’t chase it because it is quicker, use it when you know what you are doing.
SEO vs PPC??
Some opinions out there are that you should choose one over the other. That is simply not the case, I have found great success in SEO without venturing into PPC. I have tried PPC Marketing and it can be useful, but I much prefer SEO and getting natural rankings. But that doesn’t mean I will not recommend PPC.
In my experience, many have used SEO and utilise PPC when they know which campaigns are converting natural and using it to increase their revenue.
So, I would recommend both strategies for the right circumstances. I would advise that if you are still unsure or do not know a lot about PPC, then SEO is more suited to you until you can learn PPC effectively.
The key things to consider with either strategy is that it all comes down to effective Keyword Research and Relevant Engaging Content.
If you can do this effectively, then you will succeed at either strategy.
Where Can You Learn SEO & PPC Marketing Effectively
At this point, I am hoping you have a grasp of both SEO & PPC Marketing, the key differences and which strategy might be better for you.
But I want to stress that for me, the best strategy is to use both – SEO is the core of any online business, it costs nothing and means any Return on Income is 100% profit. But PPC is a great way of growing campaigns that are working.
But if you are still unsure about what it takes to master these strategies, I would recommend you read my review of the platform I used to start my online business.
Wealthy Affiliate has great resources that will help you master SEO & PPC campaigns, create great content and get started with an online business.
Whether you are looking at starting an online business, or you are struggling to get your SEO or PPC campaigns off the ground, Wealthy Affiliate can help anyone with their online business.
I used the knowledge I built up from WA to help with my wife’s online wedding stationary business – but have also been successful in starting an affiliate marketing business out of it too.
If you still have any questions about SEO, PPC or anything to do with Internet Marketing please leave them in the comments below and I will definitely come back to you ASAP.
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I highly recommend the All-in-One SEO plugin for WordPress, I know others use Yoast – but either way, installing this plugin will be the first step to getting your website onto the Search Engines.
business. But there is a marketing strategy that will get you to the top of the search results straightaway, but it does mean you will need to pay for it. Let’s go through the Pros & Cons of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) before I delve into it fully.