Look at this big fat word called the “Search Engine Optimization”! It isn’t as difficult as you might think. Are you worried about How much SEO will cost you? But, before you decide whether your business needs SEO or not, let us start with a Mini-SEO-Dictionary.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website for search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Search engines use various algorithms to rank web pages based on their relevance. Almost 89% of marketers believe that SEO is a successful strategy.

So here are the 3 main SEO jargons out of our Mini-SEO-Dictionary that you must keep in mind.

Title Tag – They allow companies to accurately describe what their websites contain on the search result pages and help users know what the page is about.

Meta Description – Meta descriptions are a unique type of content that showcases what a specific webpage or web domain can provide. They can be a couple of sentences long, and they normally follow the title tag in terms of the description of the landing page.

Keywords – Words or phrases that allow your website to be found by people who might be interested in the services or products you offer are called keywords.

SEO – the need of the hour

Search engines use different algorithms to rank the websites that are most relevant to the search terms. The algorithm looks at the links that point toward a website, the content inside, keywords, and over 200 different ranking factors that play a crucial role. If a website is considered relevant to a search term, then the search engine will rank that site higher in search listings. If you are interested in learning more about the importance of SEO today you can read this article.

The primary focus of on-page SEO optimization is to make sure your website is coded and designed so that Google can easily read it and understand what your website is about.

If you optimize your website properly, you will increase the search engine rankings, thus, increasing your website traffic.

Being up higher on the results helps sell more of your product. It boosts your online brand exposure and reach, allowing you to be seen by more interested customers and convert them into customers.

Although it may seem costly at first, SEO saves money over time because it’s cheaper to advertise through search engines than other channels. Invest in SEO today and receive its benefits in the long run!

SEO – an income and expense!

How much do SEO services cost? – This is the question that most entrepreneurs have in their minds while adopting SEO practices in their business. So in this section let us help you understand how SEO is an investment and an expense.

Why is SEO an Income?

Search engines like Google and Bing are an enormous funnel of potential customers. If a website performs well in search engine results, then it will attract new visitors.

A well-positioned website will generate a huge amount of leads if the right approach to SEO is followed. Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to reward sites that are valuable to customers.

SEO is a profitable expense!

Organic searches are categorized as a necessary business expense since they drive customers to your website. Without a suitable lead generator, your website is at serious risk of going un-discovered because people will not be able to find it online!

As a result, SEO is an expensive endeavor. But, what if we say SEO services cost isn’t an expenditure but an investment? What? Surprising? Read on then.

SEO is an investment in your future business. Businesses that invest in SEO see a return on their investment in 3 to 6 months (depending on the business category and competition). A ranked product niche can put eCommerce startups in front of their customers in a few months, even if they have just started out.

Top 3 factors influencing your SEO costing

You see, there is no one size fits for all pricing when it comes to SEO. So here are the top 3 factors which will determine your SEO pricing.

1. Location:

The number of local businesses you compete alongside and your company’s geographical location will have an impact on how much an SEO costs. Having your business in busy local neighborhoods may cost more due to the amount of competition and traffic. Thus, location always plays a crucial role in determining the cost of SEO.

2. Your site’s ranking and technical health:

Your SEO costs will be influenced by the health of your site’s technical aspects. Your odds of investing in expensive SEO services are higher if you have a long way to go in ranking your site high. Google’s algorithm changes constantly, so what worked a few years ago may no longer be effective.

There are some instances where your SEO cost may be lower. For instance, if the necessary steps were taken with regards to optimizing your site long ago and only need fine-tuning, or if one is starting with a completely new website. This results in not having to spend time and money on reworking on building something from scratch.

3. The current competition in the market:

Effective SEO pricing starts by evaluating your own goals, resources, and assets. You need to make sure that you take a critical look at the social media campaigns and content marketing strategies of competitors as your base for comparison.

• See what they’re doing in terms of both quantity and quality of engagement on each platform.
• Are they using Twitter? If so, how much?
• Do they have an active Facebook page with several posts and shares per week?
• Is the company engaging with its community or do they just promote their products?
• And is the website easy or difficult to navigate through visually?

Ranking highly on Google requires more than just an optimised site and relevant content – any webmaster can do these things with time and effort! How much your site needs SEO depends on how low its current ranking is, and what goals you have for your future marketing efforts. These are a few things that you should consider while doing the competitor research and in return, you will also get to know the estimated cost that you will be spending on SEO.

Below is the list of the Top 6 SEO tools

• Ahrefs
• Semrush
• KWFinder
• Moz
• Ubersuggest
• Google Search Console

Why is SEO a long process? Algorithms today!

The reason why it’s a long process is that many factors affect your Google ranking:

• Content on your website & how good it is,
• Links pointing to your website,
• The relevance of your content,
• Other relevant factors.

It takes time to test each factor, and the overall effect of each change may not be visible instantly. There is a lot of trial and error and patience involved too. But gaining visibility on Google is a long-term strategy and it would not be wise to expect overnight results.

According to us, Quality content is the real SEO!

Here’s a small case study you will be interested in to know the power and the SEO process.

Nathan Gotch believes that an effective squeeze page explicitly designed to entice readers with a little something extra to opt-in is the key to bringing in new business prospects for your organization. As a result, the question was: how do you create a squeeze page that is a success? To create a 74.5% conversion rate squeeze page, Gotch crafted a nine-step process!

Here are the 9 Valuable lessons that we learned from the case study. These small practices can be a game-changer in your overall SEO success.

1. It is important to select the right audience for your emails on a squeeze page because this will deter people from mistaking your content for spam.
2. Offer lead magnets in order to get visitors on their mailing list to opt-in right away instead of boring them with a tedious subscription process.
3. With all the fancy design templates and graphics-covered pages out there, it can be tempting to want to spend a lot of time on your squeeze page. The best solution is to keep it simple.
4. Benefit-driven headlines can be used as an effective strategy to make your subscriber feel like they’re getting benefits out of their subscription. This goes along the lines of simplicity.
5. Pages must be swift, straight to the point and easy to use. No flashy banners or other unnecessary things should be tacked on.
6. Asking for information visitors don’t want to give (or have already given you) can be a huge turn-off. Besides, answering your questions isn’t always a pleasant activity. Again keep it minimum.
7. When generating leads and prospects, don’t assume they’re aware of what you’re expecting. As the seller, it is your responsibility to be the one to educate them with each and every step.
8. “Subscribe” has been a popular call to action for so long. While it’s still one of the most effective words, right now it can be seen as pretty old-school. Instead of saying “subscribe”, ask your readers to join you instead. Nobody enjoys being asked to subscribe.
9. Every sales page should make a prospect feel comfortable giving you their contact info and be assured that they’re speaking with a professional. If the doubt crosses their mind, stop and start over!

Why should you be hiring SEO experts?

Search engine optimization is complex. You need to know about the latest algorithms and code changes, but this knowledge is continuously changing. There are lots of SEO companies out there, but we’ve got a solution that will make your head spin!

At Wild Creek, we utilize a team-based approach to businesses seeking a competitive edge through digital marketing that extends beyond search engine optimization. We bring together SMO, Web Design and Development to create an effective and efficient plan of attack.

We make sure clients are producing highly engaging content that effectively sells their story on the pages of their website as well as on social media platforms where they need exposure.

You brewed splendid content, kept it visually appealing, practiced the best marketing strategies, and it has still not resulted in SERP? No good traffic to your website and business?

6 Low-Value SEO Techniques That You Should Avoid at All Costs

Oh! Then maybe, you’ve hit a roadblock with some outdated SEO tactics. What are they? Why is it essential to revisit your existing strategy?

Get going down!

Not all SEO tactics work in favor, said the famous search engines.

Many web pages suffer from search engine ranking failure. Why’s that?

Change is constant, and the same is true for SEO practices. So, should you be keeping an eye on the ever-evolving practices? Well, that’s a partial yes to that question.

Nevertheless, there are a few low-value or even terrible SEO tactics that you might be ignoring. Check them out.

1. Never write for search engines, please!

Always remember, search engines can’t be fooled. The majority of search engines clearly define the guidelines for optimization. Pleasing SEO for ranking is acceptable, but providing skillful content with valuable information takes priority anytime.

This principle also governs content posting frequency. Search engines often ignore low-quality content. The hack of frequent posting fails miserably if your content quality is not on similar expectations.

Produce consistently valuable content for your readers. It can be just a few times a month too. But what are you leaving for the audience that they would want to get back to you again? It’s like a subtle CTA. Try experimenting with different publication schedules to see what works best.

2. Backlinks are a serious thing!

Backlinks play a crucial role in getting discovered by search engines. They help to build content relevance and domain authority. But the craze of buying backlinks was a long back story. Now, search engines prefer websites that have more backlinks earned than bought.

Nevertheless, backlink slots are still sold frequently. A monthly guaranteed number of backlinks is a great way to ensure your SEO success. But in reality, quality and relevance rarely meet expectations through this approach.

What are you going to do to earn those many backlinks? Businesses can survive without physically acquiring links or buying them. Creating invariant and link-worthy content is the solution.

That simply means striving to bring authority content that makes the audience a part of the journey. It can become a source for them to discover, explore, like, share, trust, and connect with your content in resonance. But, it’s a long journey that requires consistency and commitment.

3. Playing the keyword game all wrong

Just read this sentence below –

Keyword stuffing is bad because keyword stuffing will reduce the user experience and might result in bad keyword practice.

Is something off in it? That’s precisely how search engines feel when content is stuffed with keywords. Sorry to say, but that practice has died out long.

Of course, keywords are the main ingredients in this SEO recipe. But it’s essential to know the SEO tactics to avoid – overstuffing or underusing keywords. So, by that, we also mean the over usage of anchor text.

Outdated and flawed SEO keyword techniques can adversely affect your web ranking and user experience. Search engines know the black hat methods and can penalize your website. Additionally, keyword-driven content is also outdated SEO. It might also miss the search intent.

Use descriptive keywords for anchor text when linking to a page or idea – if needed and only suitable. Relevant, natural, and long-tail keywords which are more organic can gain attention seamlessly. Besides, short keywords are no longer fetching anything since the usage of specific/targeted search intent has become more prevalent.

For example, Google voice search, Alexa, and Echo devices need specific search queries to draw the relevant information. Don’t forget to target each keyword only once. It is actually more detrimental to focus on the same phrase on multiple pages or posts.

Then it becomes keyword cannibalization. You are causing your own web pages to compete with each other and hurt their search engine rankings. So be wary of it and thoroughly check the exact keywords and search intents across the site.

4. Go beyond Google

The majority of people have traditionally focused their SEO efforts on Google. Due to its popularity, this approach may make sense. Nevertheless, shutting yourself off from other platforms can lead to significant traffic loss.

There are a variety of search engines other than Google. Such as Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, etc. Consider optimizing your content for search engines beyond Google. This way, you can diversify your presence across the search engines while attracting traffic.

5. Content Spinning & Plagiarism

Do you know that the most common SEO error is duplicate content? Also, the most outdated SEO practice is to have such content on your website.

Be it ideas, strategies, or simply rewording content can escape direct plagiarism but gives a clear picture in the litmus test by the search engine algorithms.

In today’s world, where we have both free and paid versions of AI content generators and paraphrasing tools, content spinning has become a business of its own, encouraging a legitimate theft of copyrighted content.

We understand that creating content needs ideas. But producing your original still depends on your creativity. Simply repurposing someone’s work can never make you rank higher on the SERPs.

Make sure your articles are unique by refining your brand voice. Make your posts more personal that offer a solution to the reader. Only then can you prevent your website from being downgraded.

6. Outdated Website Design

In simple terms, an outdated website design leads to obsolete SEO tactics. How’s that? Every time the SEO guidelines keep changing, a website needs an improvement on the same level to match the user experience.

A failure which leads to lengthy load times, unpleasant user experience, impacted online presence, faded credibility, low attraction rates, and trust issues. All this can directly influence the user experience and business as a whole.

Websites are the first person modern customers encounter from your business. An updated website design not only works as a facelift but when matched with up-to-date SEO practices, can help in faster page loads, seamless user experience, attractive site performance, and security.

What to do instead? – A quick recap

• Write captivating, valuable, and fresh content for the audience alone. The search engine rankings will automatically fall in place.
• Backlinks are invaluable only when earned. Although buying backlinks is a process followed in many instances, never forget their reputation, which compromises quality and relevance.
• One of the black hat SEO practices comes from keyword usage. Keyword stuffing and overuse of anchor texts result in bad taste, and search engines ignore those web pages. Go with search intent and long-tail keywords that naturally occur.
• Focus on alternative search engines to have an expanded brand presence and authority.
• Always curate and create fresh content free from spinning and plagiarism. Make your content a reliable partner for a customer/prospect who wants to vouch for it.
• A straightforward, attractive, accessible website design can amplify things further.

Finally, SEO is a multidimensional approach. It’s interconnected with many aspects, be it content, user experience, or technicalities. Google or other search engines mainly focus on organizing a content repository based on various parameters to deliver the best answers for any search query.

To do so, they focus on original, qualitative content that brings a new perspective to the reader. The rankings happen with many algorithms behind them. Sure, there’s enough weightage on employing SEO to get featured on the top list. But, there’s more harm in ignoring the unethical SEO practices you should not use anymore.

Now that’s just a confined list of some bad SEO practices to avoid. You need an expert who can guide you to the right ranking approaches. Wild Creek Studio stands as your best partner in all things digital marketing. Want to know more? Get in touch! Are you revisiting your SEO strategy today?

From the characters Maria (Metropolis) and Gort (The Day the Earth Stood Still) to C-3PO (Star Wars) and Agent Smith (The Matrix), humans have dabbled with the idea that intelligent life will exist at some time. That time has now come – Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a household term these days and has already torn down several technological barriers to help human lives.

Intelligence, Intentionality, and Adaptability are the 3 core qualities of AI, and its applications have reached far and wide across countries and sectors. Transportation, Health Care, Retail & eCommerce, Smart Cities, Cinema, and Telecommunications – the list is too comprehensive to ponder upon. Maybe a little less heard of, but AI has deeply impacted digital marketing as well.

 What is AI-Powered SEO?

Were you baffled when you found news article suggestions on American Politics on your smartphone when you googled Joe Biden a few days back? Or maybe a post on Best Places in India to Travel in Winter appeared when you searched Google for travel suggestions that made you go OMG.

This is SEO in action, powered by AI tools that track your searches, cross-reference it with keywords in recent and relevant articles, and throw you these suggestions. If you clicked any of the suggestions, the AI software in the background knows exactly what to recommend to you for the next few weeks!

Some of the popular AI SEO tools include Bright Edge, Can I Rank, Linkhunter, MarketBrew, Squirrly, and many more. The algorithms in these AI-powered SEO tools are built, tested, and calibrated to become a digital marketer’s delight!

How AI is used in SEO

Currently and broadly, AI tools for SEO are used to increase search traffic, generate content that help rank websites higher, find new outlets for keyword research, manage local/global searches, and help increase ranking for existing and new topics. Here we explore some broad applications of AI SEO that show how effective it can be for your business:

Text Search:

AI in text search learns from a user to provide the most relevant, most useful results the next time the user searches for something. The AI can also automatically adapt, if the user starts a series of different topics.
For instance, if you’re looking to buy a Macbook Pro laptop and you googled only the keywords “macb”, your top results will show the closest shops/stores/e-commerce sites that are selling this product.

Content Creation:

An absolute blockbuster of an application of AI SEO, content creation involves finding the best keywords based on a company’s target group, link-building, keyword optimization, and topic suggestion for specific niches. It’s possible to make several leaps ahead in content creation with AI.

Some AI SEO tools also offer keyword insights that you can leverage to stay ahead of competition and create better content. When customers/users are already on your website, AI can understand their search intent and guide them to the right page. It also aids in getting visual content like graphs, images, and infographics ready for improving user engagement.

And optimization? AI allows your existing content to be repurposed by recommending new and better search terms to be included and the ideal length of a blog or website content.

Note: Mind you, AI does have its limitations in content creation – when content needs empathy, passion and high levels of creativity, human writers will always do a better job!

Local Search:

If you’ve been grinding it online to ensure your company shows up in local SEO searches but haven’t seen much traction, then AI is here to help! AI marketing gives a leg-up to SEO features like SEO audits, Google My Business (business profile, google posts, search engine visibility), and citation building.

Automating local SEO could start with something as simple as a Content Management Software like WordPress or Drupal. These AI-powered SEO software can distribute and coordinate your content over different platforms and can improve overall productivity.

Keyword Research:

Closely tied with all three of the above points, finding the right keywords is something that comes naturally for AI in SEO. There is a bevy of AI-based keyword research tools that can support in picking the best keywords to effectively improve website search traffic and spread them across your website. But it all started with Google’s Hummingbird – which paved the way for semantic analysis capability for search engines.

If you’re a new business and you’ve been trying to research a competitor’s keywords to find out what sticks, then AI might make it much easier for you.

SEO Scaling:

Did you know AI algorithms can crunch large amounts of data created by companies and organize them into insightful information that can help scale SEO efforts? Performing site-wide audits, content repurposing strategy suggestions, resolution of content duplication issues are some of the SEO scaling activities that AI can perform, leading to time-and-money saving for marketing professionals.

Benefits of Using AI for Your SEO Strategy

If you really want to leapfrog competition and stay ahead with your SEO efforts, AI is definitely a must in your digital marketing blueprint. But understanding what it brings to the table is also important. Check out the broad benefits of AI in SEO:

• Better Ranking: In a lightning-paced technological world, search engines are constantly updating their algorithms and building advanced machine learning tools to ensure that SEO also becomes conducive for companies trying to build their online presence.
• Faster, More Efficient: It’s a no-brainer that AI can help you become faster, more efficient, and more focussed in your SEO efforts. Through AI-powered tools, tedious and time-draining tasks can be eliminated, allowing you to be more productive in business-related work. AI is also really accurate and up-to-date when it deploys its algorithms in SEO, so you can rest assured that whatever suggestions you get – whether it’s about keywords or a piece of content, it’s for the betterment of your SEO.
• Enhanced User Experience: Ultimately all businesses are trying to capture bigger audiences, wider demographics, and farther geographies. When the UX part of your SEO is set on an upward graph, you are guaranteed results. With AI, this can easily be taken care of.

Future of SEO with AI

It’s important to note that AI is evolving rapidly, and as we tumble into an era of machine learning, deep learning, and neural networks, accepting and adopting AI in SEO are of paramount importance. For those who haven’t heard – Google’s RankBrain is the AI on the backend that collects, analyzes, and judges content on websites. As this powertrain of an AI tool becomes better (and it will), it will become crucial to get your SEO right.

Content Quality and Link Relevance – these two buzzwords are exactly how you can get your future SEO strategy right with the help of AI. Any average content or mildly irrelevant links in your website or blogs can negatively affect your SEO. For this, a bit of human intervention would be required, as there is a slight possibility of your AI SEO tool throwing you the 1-odd not-so-important keyword or topic.

Conclusion

There is little doubt that AI will touch every aspect of digital marketing in the future, but the preparedness of your mindset, methods, and attitude will determine how seamlessly you and your business can blend into the working of AI. AI is certainly beneficial for SEO, but it has cast shadows of doubts in some people about the security of their jobs. While this may be true for some industries, it may not necessarily affect digital marketing. Last piece of advice? Don’t wait any further to make some inroads into bringing in AI for your SEO strategy.

For more inputs and advice, contact us at Wild Creek Web Studio and see REAL CHANGE in your digital marketing efforts.

Over eight decades ago, Alan Turing, a British cryptanalyst, paved the way for the idea of artificial intelligence to be born. To quote his wise words ‘What we want is a machine that can learn from experience’ and now that we have built it, we have inferred that AI can not only learn, but it can almost make specific tasks performed by humans obsolete. So, can we say AI is the future? Or is the human race at risk? Well, let’s debate that later.

Now on to the matter at hand. Artificial Intelligence is taking over all avenues possible and is growing at a rapid pace. Ranking number one has become more primal due to the challenging competition. Hence relying on artificial intelligence might seem like the way to go.

Let’s look at AI-driven content creation. Creating a satisfying, marketing-worthy copy could take long hours for a content writer, but with the help of AI and a few keywords, this task can be achieved much quicker. AI content can increase productivity by automating high-quality, engineered, data-based copies.

How does AI-driven content creation work?

When a marketer puts down specific descriptions like the tone of voice, ideas, and keywords, for a certain product, AI tools generate target-oriented content. It is essentially software that does the work for you. The process uses NLP (Natural Language Processing) and NLG (Natural Language Generation) to create relatable content that feels more human-made. With all the information you’ve provided, it also looks for similar data that the AI has access to and helps build copies that resonate with a potential buyer, thereby, eventually making the sale.

Apart from writing the content for you, it can also provide you with future topics with outlines, bringing to light all the angles that are less explored. For this, the tools might use certain NLP strategies. And with all this power in hand, you can now go on to create copies that not only rank higher in SERPs, but can bring you profits.

One AI-driven tool that is revolutionizing how we create content is the Chat AI PowerBrain app for iOS and Android. This advanced Chat AI application harnesses the power of Chat GPT and GPT-4 to provide lightning-fast, intelligent responses for various writing tasks, from essays and emails to tweets and more. In addition, using PowerBrainAI.com‘s chatbot assistant, you can elevate your writing style and productivity, ensuring your content is engaging, relevant, and tailor-made for your audience. 

Ways in Which AI-Generated Content Affects SEO

While AI tools can help you with the basic grammar checks to generate full-on articles, does it alter SEO? The answer is yes it does. Simply for the fact that Google will not differentiate human inputs from that of a robot. The dispute here is whether to create authentically creative information that will ultimately satisfy the end user or simply optimize it with AI content creation tools.

Google guidelines insist on creating genuine, relevant, and reliable content but like everything else, this policy could also be subject to change. According to the search engines, they will be able to crawl and index your website to the user. The rules around web spam are emerging stricter from Google, so this is also a point to be noted for SEO-generated content.

Moving Away From Black Hat SEO

Black hat SEO is where SEO tactics are manipulated into violating the search engine guidelines and eventually making it possible to rank higher. AI SEO content writing will emerge successful in tampering with this practice, thereby resulting in less will full and faulty SEO. The results of black hat SEO techniques are, however, short-lived. It will eventually produce less keyword stuffing and generate authentic backlinks.

Content Optimization

AI content optimizes your webpage and enables improved strategies, marketing, and quality. According to Adobe’s latest digital briefing, top companies are twice more likely to be using AI to optimize and market their content. AI can pinpoint gaps in optimization thereby nulling errors. With the speed and effectiveness that AI offers, we can manage and eliminate real-time marketing challenges. And we all know that digital visibility amps up your digital marketing strategy.

AI Creating Superior Content & Optimal SEO Strategy

AI and GPT 3 have completely changed the way content is perceived today. Digital visibility is paramount when marketing online. AI can make sure to create and enhance content depending on the ever-changing SEO algorithms. So doesn’t that make all the other problems petite?

AI can be used to create social media copies, meta, content analysis, strategies, understanding user intent, increasing targeted web traffic, and much more.

What Threats Does AI-Generated Content Pose?

Just because Elon Musk said ‘AI is a bigger threat than nukes’ does it make it true? We think it can be partly true, when not monitored ethically. Artificial Intelligence, in this context, is here to enhance the way content is delivered.

Creativity is one of the avenues where an AI could lack the human touch. While an AI can write about virtually anything, it can also get diluted when it comes to resonating with the readers. But is there a way to find out whether what you read is written by a genuine writer or a bot? Well, the chances of that happening are low.

While we can argue that AI content has reached a level of human-generated content, will you pick up a book (‘The day a computer writes a novel’) that was actually written by a bot? While some would, the chances of it sinking into your philosophies are arguably less.

AI has all the power and access it needs to create engaging content, but it is based on clear statistics. And when have we ever been interested in that?

In conclusion, we can say that AI does not pose life-altering threats when ‘handled with care’. It must be what it is, just a tool designed by humans to create and enhance performance.

The Wild Creek Web Studio has a team of award-winning professionals who help accelerate your digital presence and offer proven results to captivate the targeted audience.