How Local Traffic Affect Search Engine Results?

Many people might not be aware that local traffic can influence the Google rankings. How? Let's explore.

Nowadays, search engines, specifically Google started understanding the search patterns of the users. They show results according to the search pattern of a particular person or device. For example, If you are regular searcher of jewellery, then when you search for Ruby, it will show you the result of ruby gems instead of the ruby on rails - programming language. You also might have noticed that when you are searching for some restaurant or coffee shop, the local results will be on the top. Another example, when you are logged into your gmail account and searching something, you will see some of the Google+ results.

How Local Traffic influence search results

Have you ever thought why this happens?

The answer is search engines are moving towards behavioural results. It means it tries to understand the pattern and searching behaviour of the person and show most relevant results to that person which can match his likes and  purchase habits. It also shows Google+ results because somebody in your circle has liked the same and as per human tendency, we usually like things which our friends & family like or recommend.

So, This is how search result gets influenced by person's searching habits. Now, the important question how does it influence the search rankings? 

Well, as I mentioned Google and other search engines started moving towards the behavioral results. So if your website gets tons of local traffic or a majority of its traffic from particularly one country or region, search engines will start assuming that your services or site is more popular amongst that particular region. This will make your site perfect fit for the audience in that region and you will get higher rankings and exposure over there.

For example: If your site gets maximum traffic from India. Then the chances are high to get top rankings while someone is searching on Google.co.in or someone is searching when he is logged in his gmail account where he has mentioned his country as India.

So this is how your local traffic can affect your search ranking.

You may try a few searches on your own and experience how Google shows biased results as per your searching pattern.

Hope this helps. If still have any query then feel free to ask queries in the comment.

Ash Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

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Posted in: local search,local search influence,SEO Tips,serp factors

Bounce Rate – A Considerable SEO Factor

SEO Facts related to Bounce Rate

Today I am going to discuss one of the basic factors of SEO. The "Bounce Rate".

What is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is a measure which shows the percentage of visitors who leave website by visiting single page. More specifically, visitor bounces back from the website from a single page and doesn't navigate through the website.

Why Does it matter to take care of bounce rate?
The bounce rate is one of the 200+ factors Google [and other search engines] consider in SERP [Search Engine Results Page]. Now, consider the scenario that your website ranks in the top result of search engine. A visitor searches for a query and visit your website. The visitor leaves your website by visiting single page, may be within a few seconds. Now, assume 95% visitors leaves your website by visiting only one page of the website. Now, think from search engine's perspective which wants to show the best match result to visitors. As your bounce rate is so high, the search engines will start assuming that your website is irrelevant to that query. As a result, search engine will start de-ranking your site/webpage for that search query.

Factors which can increase Bounce rates

• Too many popups.
• Irrelevant topic/title/ heading and content.
• Irrelevant anchor text and links. For ex. giving link of cauliflower on anchor text "flower". 
• Poor/irrelevant landing page.
• Poor design.
• Poor menu item names.
• Mobile unfriendly website, i.e., Unresponsive website in an era when people surf on their tabs and mobiles.
• Developers who open website in live instead of local for minor issues [Don't do it if it isn't really required] .
• Testing team who open website for single page testing in live [Don't do it if it isn't really required]  
• Team members like HR, BD, developer, designer, QA who opens the single page to get some information [which can be gathered from local version, database, admin and many other related sources].
• Many More

In general, anything which is irrelevant to the user will lead user to leave your website. Bounce rate effect not only rankings, but also the conversion rate. Thus, it is advisable that you keep all the points in mind from the user's perspective when optimize your website. Try to reduce the possibilities of bounce rate and make it an engaging website for users to enjoy good rankings.

Hope this information helps! Still have confusion? Feel free to ask your questions via comments.

Ash Vyas is working in Internet Marketing field for 6+ years. Have experience in handling projects of SEO, SMO, SEM, Content Marketing etc.
Likes : Blogging, Learning, Networking, Traveling, Photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

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Posted in: bounce rate,ranking factors,search engine optimization tips,SEO Factors,SEO Tips

Poor Grammar Effect on your SEO Efforts

Content Writing SEO Tips

Matt Cutts, The Google Web Spam team head has revealed some insight on the effect of grammar and other language related factors on your SEO factors.

The poor grammar and language don't directly affect your rankings, but as we all know Google's motto is to "Work for the visitor aka audience and  not for the search engines." If your website has poor content with many typos and grammatical mistakes then it might not get the loyal user engagement. People might not feel to read more and never return back which will affect your brand and number of visitors rather say "Loyal Visitors". So make sure that your content is easy to understand with no spelling and.or grammar errors.

In the recent video of Matt, he also mentioned that Google is becoming more and more intelligent in indexing and screening the content. In the near future, it can categorize the content written by experts or some naive writer. So make sure to give your own touch to your writing. It will help you to create your own brand as well. So write quality content for both audience and search engines.

How does comments on a blog affect the SEO efforts?
If you are writing the blogs and getting comments with poor grammar then you don't need to worry much about it. The audience will concern about the writer's write-up more than the other visitors. If your blog is messed up with some spammy links in poor comments then it might end up with the Google penalty. So do not forget to put comment moderation.

Conclusion:
Write unique and effective content with your own touch to stand out of the cohort of  writers to get value from search engines. Write error free content without any spelling and grammar mistakes to get value from your readers. Do comment moderations to avoid spammy outbound links and do not worry much about spelling or grammar mistakes in the comments.

Hope this SEO Tips will help.

Ash Vyas is working as an internet Marketing manager handling digital marketing activities like SEO, SMO, Content Marketing etc. Likes : Blogging, net surfing, networking, travelling, photography Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

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Posted in: blogging tips,content writing tips,SEO Tips

How Google Shows Title in Search Results?

Many webmasters usually exclaimed on the question like how Google selects the title of the search result? or why Google is not showing the title I have set in my meta? or From where Google picks the title of the page? Many authors have given answer of these questions often and recently in one of his video Matt Cutts, The Head of Google Spam Team has answered this question again.

From where Google Selects the Title to show up in Search Result?
Google usually looks at the title tag of the page, meta tags like H1 of the page at first. If it can't find the relevant title which reflects the user's search query then it looks into the open directories and other related sources and pick up the title which closely reflects the user search query.

Why Google is not Showing the defined Title of my Webpage?
The simple answer is the tile you have set is either not relevant to search query or not short enough to show into the search results.

How Can I make sure that Google Search Result Shows the Title I have defined?
Google considers three criteria for showing the title in search results.
1. Title is relevant to the user query.
2. The title is relatively short.
3. It reflects the web page briefly.

You need to anticipate what the user might search for and then reflect that in your title in brief and accurate language. It must reflect your product and/or service. Misleading title might either increase bounce rates or will invite penalties.

Another myth I would like to conquer is if we extend the title more than the defined character limit, it will be counted as spam and will increase the chances of penalty. There is no evidence of penalty for this case. If your title is more than the defined character limit, Google will simply truncate it and show it with dots. There are few webpages which need long title and it's obvious. So there is no reason to take action against long titles. The example is a news website which has to show the complete headline in the title which might be long. The advisable thing is don't make your title ambiguous and/or misleading. Keep it short and crisp as and when possible.

You may check the video of Matt here:

Hope this helps.

Ash Vyas is working as an internet Marketing manager handling digital marketing activities like SEO, SMO, Content Marketing etc. Likes : Blogging, net surfing, networking, travelling, photography Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

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Posted in: Google Title tag,SEO Tips,Title tag optimization

SEO Tips for Optimizing Website for Bing

SEO Tips for Website Optimization for Bing

The web is flooded with articles and blog posts giving tips and tricks on how to optimize website to get higher rankings on Google. But what if you want to optimize your website for Bing? Before some time senior product manager of Bing webmaster program, "Duane Forrester" had conducted a webinar. In that webinar he described the facts bing consider for websites to get ranked on Bing. So here I have epitomized the webinar with important information.

1. Content is the King
Just like any other major search engine, Bing loves the fresh and unique content. So keep your content stand out to attract the search engine Crawlers.

2. Bounce Rate
Bing crawlers considers the bounce rate as one of the major ranking factors. The high bounce rate might indicate the low quality content or services. It also indicates the high ratio of unhappy visitors. In such case, of high bounce rate, your website might get ranked at lower position.

3. XML Sitemaps 
It is strongly recommended to have an error free XML sitemap. The XML sitemap should not contain the broken or not found URLs. If the BingBot will find single Not found page during crawling process, it might drop the remaining URLs from crawling. So be careful about your sitemap and keep it error free.

4. RSS Feed 
RSS Feed is one of the important factors considered by the BingBot It uses the content of RSS as the alert of content update to schedule the next crawling. So Generate error free and clean RSS.

5. Robots.txt File Configuration
Many times it has been noticed by the Bing Crawlers that people mistakenly blocked the crawlers from crawling and indexing their website. It will refrain the crawling bots from crawling the site and index it. So avoid such silly and crazy mistakes which can hurt badly.

6. Use Bing Webmasters Tool
Bing webmaster tool provides you the plethora of information about your website which will help you to take necessary actions to improve the rankings of your website. It is easy to use and completely free tool. So don't hesitate to use it.

Hope these simple but effective tips will help you to get better rankings on Bing.

Ash Vyas is working as an internet Marketing manager handling digital marketing activities like SEO, SMO, Linkbuilding & believe to live in the moments.
Likes : Blogging, net surfing, networking, travelling, photography
Connect with the author via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Pinterest

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Posted in: bing optimization tips,Bing ranking optimization,SEO Tips,Website Optimization

Google News: Hummingbird - New Algo Announcement

Google HummingBird Algo Update

Google - The most famous and widely used search engine hosted a special event at a garage of the Menlo Park (Calif.) where Google born. On occasion of 15th anniversary of Google foundation, Google's VP Amit Singhal given more information about a new algorithm launch of a google, namely, "Hummingbird". So after having animals like panda and update, now Google has launched a bird :D This algo launched before a month and rolled up completely but officially they announce it today.

The name "Hummingbird" is derived to express fast and precise result of the Google search. This algorithm is specifically designed to improve the search result for all devices. After 2010 "Caffeine" algo launch this is the complete algo change of google. The panda and penguin were just an algo update. Means both of them were minor/major changes to the already existing algorithm. While hummingbird is completely new algorithm which will sort and display the search result.

So what about Panda and penguin update? They are uneffective? 

If you are thinking that now panda and penguin are gone and not going to affect you negatively and you got a free sky to spam the net with low quality links and content then you are going to feel bad with my upcoming lines :) The Hummingbird algo change has woven all previous updates including panda and penguin which means Google will make sure all the search result will filter out with the thumb rules of high quality content and authority. So you still have to follow the penguin and panda rules to be in top or to not get thrown out of the search result.

Why hummingbird algo launched?

Google always want to make sure that the users get the best result out for what they are searching for. And for that google used to work day and night to assure quality result serving to it's users. Of course that is the reason Google is favorite of many and home page of many :) So to make result more quality and related to the search of user Google launched this algo.

What will it do ? How will it affect the search result?

Hummingbird algo will try to understand the conversation search and deliver the best result. Now you might wonder what is conversation search? The answer is when someone insert query like conversation, for example "library near my area" "best alternative of joomla technology for website development" . In previous algorithm Google was used to go for a like query means it will show result with all those links which has any or many words from the query. but now Google will try to understand the complete query and will deliever the result as per the query. For example if someone search for  "library near my area", in previous scenario Google might show all the result having keywords "library","near", "my", "are" or any combination of it. But now-onwards Google search algorithm will try to understand the query inserted and will even be more smarter and will also try to figure out your area [could be ahmedabad for me] and then display the relevant result means in previous scenario Google might show me libraries of US and UK and are of different places but now if i'm logged in it will sort result in a way that I see library list near or in ahmedabad. isn't it cool?

If this is really what google is going to introduce then this concept sounds like graph search of Facebook to me. of course not for all queries but for few. don't you think so?

On other note it's quite cool feature from end user's perspective. I mean people who are not master in surfing the net and who are normal end user, this search algo will going to be boon for them i guess. As it will make search easier for them by serving the relevant result and excluding irrelevant results which it was showing before by it's like query practice.

Does it mean Google wont use like query? means Does google exclude result of combination of words of queries? 

No. Google will use like query and will show result with combination of words as it was showing before. But the sorting of result will be in a different way. The most relevant result will be listed first. As simple as that.

Hummingbird algo will hurt your website?

Have you noticed any drop in traffic or results in past month? No? Then it won't affect you. Because this algo rolled out before a month and the it was a smooth process so no-one noticed the change before announcement. After announcement many SEO people might dug their analytics stats :D So if there are any drop or increase in past month in your traffic stat then that's because of hummingbird change. If not, you are on safe side.

Is SEO Dead with this algo launch?

LOL. why should SEO get dead with such algos change and update? SEO is just becoming smarter day by day. Each SEO people have to go with an agenda to get the quality services for their clients and that's the only intention of Google. So if Google and SEO both will work smartly to serve the quality result they can better be friends rather than thinking to kill each other :D SEO is not massive linkbuilding tactic anymore. But in very smart way use your logic and vision with thinking of 3rd person who might looking out for a service and what that person might look for? you just need to serve that as simple as that. Because if you do so, you will rank highr in Google as that's what google want to show the users high quality and relevant result. and it will also help in lead generation and decreasing bounce rate by getting massive unrelevant traffic.
In short, SEO is and will be alive but in a smarter way ;)

What can you do to rank higher after hummingbird algo launch?

• Create good quality content and build an authority of your website.
• Try SMO to get others way open for your traffic and lead generation
• Work for user/client and not for search engine's. This is most important. I will write more on this for designer, developers and seo :)

How do I know all these? or how can you know all these?

• Reading and common sense and experience  :)
• Reading the posts and news of authorised writer. Don't read from anywhere as they will make you confuse so read from people having name or authorised in SEO industry
• Don't trust everything you read and use your common sense to conclude the facts because each person might have different analysis or point of view
• Use your or others experience and get the best

Give your queries and feedback in comments. Bye for now. :)

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Posted in: ashseo,ashvyasseo,Google algo update,google news,hummingbird algo,hummingbird algo update,SEO Tips

SEO Tips for Website Testing for Developers, Designers, Testing Team

SEO Tips for website testing

Hi there,

Today I would like to talk about few tips for testing team that includes developers, testers, beta tester, designer, etc. We SEO people usually face a problem in terms of traffic tracking because of testing team sometimes. Because when developers are trying any new development change or designer is going to change an image, logo or design of a site, they used to follow some bad practise which generates some unnatural stats for traffic, bounce rate, etc. and sometimes. Some traffic tracking sites like Alexa start giving stat like maximum traffic from India Though site is developed for a foriegn client. And then to count real traffic SEO people need to apply filters or block ip range of a company. It also make job of SEO tough to explain the clients that why such stats are there. It also affect in other way by showing downfall in traffic in upcoming months when development and testing part is over and they stopped opening sites. Few search engine also measure it as false or unnatural traffic if repeatedly site open requests are there from the same IP address and it can harm a site's performance in search engines, adwords, affiliate, etc. Of course it's not a fault of people who are testing as they do not now this is affecting the SEO, traffic tracking, etc because they are unaware of world of SEO.

So today I am going to give few tips or standard practise which a developer, designer or tester can follow to avoid condition of unnatural traffic and can help SEO people somehow:

• Don't open and close website again and again just to check a small change of code or design. 
• If you are developing or designing anything new and want to test it then better to test in local system first and then upload it on live site. So it will save lots of open close request of live site for small small changes
• If you know that you are about to work on the website for whole day then let it stay open in one tab of 
• browser so whenever you make any change, you can simply go to website and refresh it to check the change. It will save new site load requests and will continue in one session. 
• If you are doing changes in multiple pages, the rather than opening each page in new tab better to open a website in single tab and the navigate through the website in different pages.
• If you have opened a page of website and the test is successfully done and you think you won't need to open website again still do not close the website right away. just stay on the website for a while and navigate afterwards to 1-2 pages and then close it. 

You might be thinking why to do all these? :) or what if we don't follow this. Explanation could be technical and difficult to understand but I would like to point out the factors of it:

• It will save website from getting unnatural traffic stats.
• Decrease unnatural bounce rate [when you stop opening and closing single page it will decrease bounce rate]
• It will increase user engagement, page views and user loyalty.
• It will make job of SEO bit easier by not spending hours in explaining client or filtering the native traffic.
• It will preserve the bandwidth and will use it for actual clients and never gives "509 bandwidth exceed" error to actual visitor :)

now what is bounce rate and what is traffic stat that needs one more descriptive blog post :) So just start this practice and contribute in your site's SEO :)

Give your feedback and queries in comment. As feedback helps in improvement & queries leads to solutions. I will catch you again in digital marketing world on tis blog next time with other digital marketing topic :)

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Posted in: ashvyasseo,basic seo tips,designers,digital marketing,SEO Tips,seo tips for developers,tester