Link building is hard.

That statement is simple, but the truth behind it is complicated. You know you need to get links from other websites – high-authority, relevant websites, no less – for your website to do well enough in the search engines for your customers to find you.

But how do you convince the strangers running other sites that your website is worth linking to? It’s not their job to help you out.

Asking someone else to give you a link is asking for a favor – which is awkward and very likely to get met with a “no” if you don’t have some kind of prior relationship with the person you’re asking.

The best strategies for link building are about finding ways to make the relationship more reciprocal. You want other websites to want to link to you because there’s something in it for them or their readers.

Here are a few things you can try in order to do that.

1. Guest Post on Relevant sites

This is a tried and true tactic, if you do it well. When you write a really good guest post for a website, you’re providing them something of value. Most websites that accept guest posts therefore expect and are okay with letting you include a relevant link or two back to your website in the posts you submit (but don’t overdo it, just stick with one or two).

In addition to earning you links, this tactic gives you a chance to reach a new audience that may not be familiar with your website or brand yet, potentially bringing you new traffic and followers.

For guest posting to work, you have to be strategic about it and do some real work. You should be careful to find blogs that are targeting the same audience that you want to reach and that are relevant to your industry or products.  A guest post on a completely unrelated blog isn’t worth your time. Also look for blogs that have readers and authority. A guest post on a blog that no one visits that doesn’t have any real SEO authority isn’t worth your time either.

Once you’ve identified blogs that are worthwhile targets for guest posts, take some time to research the topics they cover, the style they write in, and who’s reading them. Any topic you pitch needs to be valuable to their audience for them to accept it. And while it does require a lot of work, make sure the post you write for them is top-notch content. At worst, lazy content won’t get published and you won’t earn links after all. But even if it does get published, it won’t convince anyone in their audience to come check you out.

2. Create Content Partnerships with Relevant Sites

There are brands out there that provide something similar or complementary to what you sell, without being direct competitors. These are good brands to consider for content partnerships.

You can work out a deal to create content for them (with some links back your website), while they make content for you (with links back to theirs). On both sides, you have to make sure that the content created makes sense for the other brand’s audience and is relevant and fits in with their overall content strategy.

Or you can think of ways to create content together, like joint webinars or working together on a research study. By working together, you can tap into the talent and resources that you both have to offer and expand your audiences by reaching all of the people both of you have attracted. And you’ll both get some new external links in the process.

3. Partner with Local Businesses

When you’re an eCommerce business, “local” doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as it does when you have a business with a storefront.

Even so, your business is based somewhere. There’s a local community you can get involved with to create new connections and opportunities. Get out to local networking events and get to know some of the businesses in the area.

The connections you make in your own business community can turn into partnerships that benefit both of you, including in the form of more links to your website. If you join local professional or industry organizations, you can get links in their directories or by participating in their events or marketing. A local business owner selling complementary or related products to yours can become a promotion partner. If you sell dog collars, the local business owner that sells homemade dog treats could promote your collars in a blog post, while you promote her treats in a giveaway that raises her profile while benefiting your customers as well.

Turning local relationships into partnerships that benefit you both (and earn you links) can require some creativity, but it can be a useful way to increase awareness of your brand and earn some valuable links at the same time.

4. Look for Sponsorship Opportunities

There are definitely events and organizations in your industry that seek sponsorships. Becoming a sponsor will cost you money, but the money pays off both in good will from the community that appreciates those events or organizations, along with links back your website and mentions of your brand in any materials associated with the event or put out by the organization in relation to your sponsorship.

This is a good way to earn karma and good PR along with links.

5. Offer Free Products for Review

Look for websites that do product reviews for items similar to what you sell and reach out with an offer to provide them with a free product in exchange for a review.

Obviously, this idea only works if you’re confident in your products (which you should be!). You can’t demand good reviews, you can merely hope for them. But if you make the offer specifically to website owners you’re confident are a good fit for your product, getting reviews raises (hopefully positive) awareness of your product and will usually earn you a link back your website as well.

6. Host PR-worthy Events

Branded events can take a lot of different forms. You could host an awards dinner for your industry, put on a concert, or create a workshop. Whatever event you come up with, if it’s interesting, exciting, or helpful, then it’s PR-worthy. You can promote it to relevant publications and writers to drum up interest and get coverage of it around the web. With that coverage will inevitably come links.

Be aware that putting on an event is costly. It will probably be more worth the cost if you have goals for it that go beyond earning links – such as larger media attention, new customers, or some other benefit to be a part of your overall goal. But it’s definitely a good way to earn links as well.

7. Start Charity Projects

There are a lot of websites that are happy to amplify any charitable projects. It’s an easy way for them to feel like they’re helping out. If you set up a charity drive through your business, start a scholarship, or choose a week to donate a percentage of all your profits to a notable cause – those are all things that other websites are likely to cover or promote to their own readers.

Again, this is a strategy that will have a cost for you and is best to do for reasons other than just getting links (like in this case, helping other people), but it can be a good way to earn links as well.

8. Do Original Research

Buzzsumo’s research into the what types of content most consistently earn links found that original research is one of the most reliable ways to build links to your website. If you wonder why that might be, just look back at the beginning of this paragraph. Whenever someone cites a statistic or finding that comes from your research, they’ll link back to you.

Creating original research isn’t necessarily easy, but it’s very effective and can be worth the resources you put into it. Consider questions that your readers and other businesses in your industry have that you could help answer with a survey or analysis. If you see an opportunity for statistics or research that hasn’t been done (or that you can do better), take it!

9. Look for Brand Mentions Around the Web

Anytime someone mentions your brand around the web, it’s an opportunity for a link back your website.

First you want to find websites that have mentioned your brand. You can use Google for this, but can probably find more websites faster with a paid tool like Fresh Web Explorer. You should also set up a Google Alert for your brand name so you’ll get an email every time a website mentions your website anew moving forward.

Then, try to identify information on who’s running that website so you can contact them to ask them to add a link to your website where they mention your brand. For this tactic, you take time to visit the webpage before you contact anybody to make sure that:

• The website is actually mentioning your brand and didn’t just happen to use a phrase that included your brand name (this is especially important if you have a brand name that includes words people regularly use); and
• The mention of your brand name is positive. Chances are, a website owner that doesn’t like your brand or product isn’t going to help you out with a link.

You’re still asking a stranger to do you a favor here, so there’s a good chance a lot of people you contact will ignore you or refuse to make the change. But since you know these are websites where you’re on their radar and they’ve already mentioned your brand, they’re more likely to add your link than someone with no connection to your brand at all.

10. Look for Relevant Broken Links Around the Web

Broken link building has become a pretty big subset of link building in recent years. The idea is that if you can find examples on another website of a link that no longer works that previously went to content similar to something you’ve created, you can contact the website owner to recommend they change the link to your resource.

You’re doing something helpful for them by finding a broken link they don’t know is there yet and suggesting an easy replacement, which means they’re that much more likely to take your suggestion and add your link to their website.

Finding relevant broken links can be time consuming, but there are SEO tools that can help make it a little easier and faster. You can start with this tactic by looking for examples of broken links likely to match content you already have, but you can also expand this strategy to begin creating high-value content that can would make a good replacement for broken links you find.

11. Feature Influencers

People tend to link to websites they know, and they’re that much more likely to link to a website that mentions them in a positive light.

Identify some of the most important influencers in your industry and consider if there are some good ways to collaborate with them. You could ask them to provide a quote for a blog post you’re working on or if they’ll be the featured guest in a webinar you’re setting up. If you can offer them something that serves to help them promote their brand, they’ll be more likely to participate and to promote the content you’ve featured them in.

This can be tricky to do well because the more well known an influencer is, the more often they’ll be getting requests like this from other people. You don’t want to be one more annoyance in their inbox, but you do want to start a mutually beneficial relationship with them.

Make sure you really think about what you can offer them here and consider reaching out to people and brands that aren’t super well known just yet.  That person in your industry with 1,000 followers is going to be quicker to help you out then the guy with 1 million, but still provides an opportunity to expand your reach.

12. Feature Customer Stories

This is good marketing advice in general. When your potential customers can see positive stories from your current customers, it makes them more likely to convert. But it can also be helpful for link building.

A good customer story can serve as a case study to demonstrate principles someone might point to evidence of in a blog post. For example, that writer claiming that a good pair of running shoes really does make a difference would link to your customer story about someone who increased their running time after buying your shoes.

If you’re able to capture a particularly moving story, it could inspire people to share it due to the emotion it evokes. The couple that found each other through their shared love of your products and got married in spite of great odds could leave people feeling inspired and wanting to share the tale.

People relate to people, so creating content that features the people your brand exists for and because of can give other people something to connect with. It’s those connections that often lead to shares and links.

Do you know that Facebook is the most used social networking site in India by business owners? For business purposes, Facebook can be used in both ways (paid and free (organic)). Unfortunately, it appears that the free use of Facebook does not always have the desired effect. That is why we have brought some tips that can enable you to increase your organic reach on Facebook.

Tip 1: Focus on qualitative followers and likers

You know them: The typical win-and-like actions on Facebook. Many Facebook users like or share such a message because they have a chance to win a nice goodie. As an entrepreneur, you can count on many likes with this. Nevertheless, in practice, it appears that you have little to do with this. Many likers are only interested in what you give away and are not interested in the company behind the action.

To help your company further, you must have interaction with your Facebook page likers and followers. It is therefore smart to collect as many qualitative followers and likers as possible.

It’s not just about the numbers, it’s about quality. Many likers on your Facebook page that are not really interested in your business are the same as a store full of people who do not buy anything. It looks nice, but you get nothing.

Tip 2: Post messages that ask for interaction

A second tip is to focus on posting messages that ask for a reaction or a like. You do this by, for example, asking a question in your message.

Consider: “Who would you like to share this dish with?” for a restaurant or “Who do you see driving in this car?” for a car company.

If people like you or share your message, or respond to it, they will most likely see your messages appear on their timeline (see also tip 3). In addition, their friends will see the comments and likes on your message also appear in their timeline. As a result, the Facebook messages of your company will build up a higher organic reach and you will come into contact with new (potential) customers.

Tip 3: Be aware of the algorithm of Facebook

Unfortunately, with only qualitative, shareable messages, you do not automatically build up a large organic reach on Facebook. Which message does or does not appear in a Facebook news overview, namely Facebook determines with an algorithm. This algorithm is called the EdgeRank. Three factors play a role in determining EdgeRank: Affinity, Weight and Time Interval.

Below you will find more information about these factors:

Affinity – The affinity is determined by the interaction history of a Facebook user with your page. As we already saw in tip 2, it is more likely that a user will see messages from you more often when they share, like or respond to something.

Weight – The weight of a message depends on the type of content (text, photo, video or link) in the message. On the basis of a study, it can generally be said that visual content such as photos and videos more often provides interaction than, for example, a status update. Nevertheless, the weight factor is personal: If a user interacts more often on photos, for example, Facebook will also show more photos. Entrepreneurs should try out different messages and then draw conclusions about what works best for them.

Time Decay– The time interval has to do with the time that elapses after a message have been placed. The following applies: A recent message scores better in many cases than a ‘parent’ message.

Tip 4: A message reaches 80% of the potential range after 2 hours!

Did you know that a message on Facebook already achieves 80% of its potential reach after 2 hours? So if you post a message at 1:00 pm, your message will already have 80% of its potential reach around 3:00 pm. Tip: Your time-based announcements about, for example, a shopping Sunday or an offer that lasts only for a few hours, should be best placed a few hours in advance on Facebook.

Tip 5: Post not only during office hours

In practice, it appears that many companies post almost exclusively during office hours. Yet research shows (see image below) that Facebook users are most ‘engaged’ between 3:30 PM and 11:00 PM. The probability that they like, share or respond to your message is, therefore, larger around 5:00 pm than around 1:00 pm. Therefore, it is certainly advisable to change the times at which you post.

Tip 6: Consider whether you would like or share your message yourself

When posting a message, think carefully about whether you would like the message yourself to share it if you come across it on Facebook. Is the answer ‘no’? Then your followers will probably not do this either. Consider rewriting your post in such a situation.

Do you not come out or do you doubt? Then you can of course always submit your post somewhere else. Preferably choose a group or a community that falls within the target group of your products or services.

Tip 7: People come to Facebook to be entertained

People use Facebook to keep up to date with updates from their friends, but they also use it for entertaining themselves. It is good to take this into account in your posts, especially large organizations.

Large organizations – in contrast to small businesses – often have a separate social media team or agency that devises such posts for them. Yet there are also enough moments for small business owners to be able to post original content. Think for example of holidays and current events, and also products or services you offer.

Implement these tips for improving your organic reach on Facebook. If you have something more to add, feel free to share it with others in the comment box.

If you have a website, Google’s free webmaster tools are invaluable resources that you should be taking advantage of.

Chances are, you already know about and regularly use Google Analytics, but if you haven’t yet, you should add Google Search Console to your list of go-to Google resources to help you get more from your business website as well.

How to Set Up Google Search Console

To start, go to the Google Search Console. To access it, you’ll be required to log in with your Google account – make sure you use the same one here you use for any other Google Webmaster tools you use.

Once you’re logged in, look for the red button that says Add a Property. Enter the html for your website and click the button.

From there, Google may ask you to verify you’re the owner of the website. There are a few different ways you can do this. If you’re already using Google Analytics, then the easiest option will be to choose Google Analytics Tracking Code as your preferred method of verification. As long as your Google Analytics tracking code is in the <head> section of your homepage, you’ll be in with no problem.

When you’re on the homepage of the Google Search Console, notice a link on the top left that says “Try the new Search Console”. You currently have two options for using the tool: the old, traditional one which keeps more of the functionality; and the newer version Google’s rolling out that has a more intuitive visual design, but fewer of the features and functionality of the older version. Over time, Google plans to move all the Search Console’s features into the newer version, but for now, a lot of the benefits of the tool remain in the traditional version.

In the images below, the old version is on the left and the new version is on the right:

10 Ways to Use Google Search Console

With access to the Google Search Console, you can now get to work accomplishing a number of different tasks. Here are some of the most important ways to use it.

1. Submit a sitemap.

While Google’s web crawlers can learn a lot about a website and its individual web pages on their own, you can give them a little extra help in learning the information they need by submitting a sitemap to Google.

A number of websites will automatically generate a sitemap for you. Once you have it, loading it to the Google Search Console is extremely easy.

In the traditional version, while on the main page of the dashboard, look on the right side of the screen to see the Sitemaps section. Click on the gray bar that says Sitemaps.

Then find the red Add/Test Sitemaps button in the top right corner of the screen. Click on it and fill in the URL for your website’s sitemap.

In the new dashboard, click on Sitemaps in the menu on the left side of the page, then fill in the sitemap URL where instructed.

2. Learn common keywords people use to find you.

Anyone that finds your website through search used a specific search term to get there. Google Search Console shows you the most common keywords bringing people to your website.

In the traditional Google Search Console view, you’ll find this information by clicking on the Search Analytics bar in the middle of the page in the main dashboard.

A little bit down the page, you’ll see the list of all the keywords people found you with and the number of times someone has clicked on your link after searching each keyword.

By clicking on a particular keyword in the list and using the filter options in the top menu, you can go a little deeper to learn which pages show up for the specific keyword, what countries people are coming from when they search the keyword, and what devices they’re using. And you can see how different keywords fare in terms of clicks, impressions, and click-through rate.

In the new Google Search Console, you’ll find the same information by clicking on Performance either in the left-side menu or in the top box in the main dashboard.

In this version, Google shows you both the number of clicks each keyword earns you and the number of total times your website shows up in search for that keyword (impressions) on the main page, and you can view the other categories (CTR, position) by clicking on the upside-down triangle above the list.

This information shows you if you’re successfully attracting people based on the keywords targeted in your SEO strategy. And it will reveal any keywords people find you with that you weren’t meaning to target at all.

3. Identify your most popular pages.

Every website will have pages that perform better in the search engines than others. Google Search Console will help you determine which of your web pages is bringing the most people to your website.

You can find your most popular pages in the same section you found the keywords, and filtering and viewing different subsets of data works pretty much the same.

In both versions of the site, in the same Search Analytics section you viewed the keywords in, select Pages in the menu.

You’ll see a list of all the pages people have seen and clicked in descending order of popularity, with your best-performing pages right at the top. The default view in the old version shows you the most popular pages in terms of clicks; in the new version, clicks and impressions. You can also see which perform best in terms of click-through rate and position as well.

4. See where your visitors are coming from.

If your business serves a particular part of the world, then it’s more important to get traffic from visitors that live in a set geographic area than anywhere else. Google Search Console will also provide you data on where your visitors are located, so you can make sure you’re reaching the right people.

This is in the same section as the keywords and pages data. In both versions, select Countries in the menu.

You’ll see the number of clicks your website receives from each country, with the highest numbers at the top of the list. As with the other categories, you can also switch to view the results based on impressions, click-through rate, and search ranking position.

5. Learn which devices they use.

By now, every business should have a mobile-friendly website. But even if you’ve already taken steps to make sure your website looks good on mobile devices, it’s still good to know what portion of your visitors are interacting with your website on each different type of device. The Google Search Console has you covered there. This is the last piece of data we’ll find in the same section as the last three.

In both versions, select Devices in the menu.

You can see here the distribution of how many clicks you get on each type of device and you can switch over to see the number of impressions, click-through rate, and average position as desired (you know this song and dance by now)

Note that this is the last item on our list that you’ll find in both versions of the product. For the rest, at least at the time of this writing, you’ll be sticking with the traditional version of the Google Search Console.

6. Check that your website works well on mobile.

While it’s a good idea to do mobile testing on your website on your own, you can also use the Google Search Console to confirm that your website passes their mobile usability standards.

In the Search Traffic section on the left-side menu, select Mobile Usability. If everything about your site looks good to Google based on their standards for mobile usability, you’ll see a green checkmark telling you that no errors are detected.

If it identifies something about your website that doesn’t work well on mobile, such as the use of flash or a small font size, you’ll get a message in this section letting you know what the problem is so you can work on fixing it.

7. See which sites link to you.

For anyone focused on SEO, this is important information to have access to. Backlinks are one of the biggest ranking factors, so every time another authoritative website links to you it increases your website’s authority in the eyes of Google’s algorithm.

Under Search Traffic in the left-side menu, select Links to Your Site.

You’ll see a list of websites that include a link on their website back to yours, as well as a list of the pages on your website that other sites link to the most.  Under the section labeled “How your data is linked,” you can also see the anchor text other sites use most often when linking back to yours.

You can find more information on each backlink by clicking on the website, and then clicking on the link listed. From there, you can see specific pages that include the link and visit them yourself to see how it’s used.

8. Check for broken links.

Broken links provide a bad experience for your users and lead people away from the functioning pages you want them to be on. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they also make you look bad to Google and can have a negative effect on your rankings.

In the Crawl section of the Google Search Console, you can find details on any errors Google found when crawling your website, including all URLs that returned a 404 error.

If you click on each entry, you can find information on what the problem with the link is and where the link is located both on your website and others.

This is valuable information you can use to improve your website experience and cut out any frustrating errors your visitors may be dealing with now.

9. Identify website security issues.

Big website hacks are in the news every day lately it seems. Even if your business isn’t big enough to make the news if you get hacked, it can still cause you serious problems. And that goes double if you have an ecommerce site that collects sensitive customer data like credit card information.

The Google Search Console provides a quick and easy head’s up if your website has a security flaw you should be aware of. Click on the Security Issues option on the left-side menu. If you don’t have anything to worry about, the Console will let you know.

If Google does spot an issue, you’ll learn the details you need to figure out how to fix it here.

10. Confirm your schema markup or structured data is working.

Finally, if you use schema markup or other structured data on your website, Google can confirm for you whether it’s set up right to work in the SERPs.

Under Search Appearance, you’ll find categories for Structured Data, Rich Cards, and Data Highlighter, all of which are methods you can use to communicate more information to Google’s crawlers about how to display your web pages in the search results.

The Console provides details on whether or not you have all your coding set up right for these categories, or if you need to make changes.

Conclusion

The Google Search Console is entirely free and, as you can see, thoroughly packed with useful information for any business website. If you care about where and how you show up in the search engines, this is your best resource for digging into the data available and making an action plan for how to improve your SEO moving forward.

Millions of people search for products and services every day. They use relevant keywords to find the business which best suits their interest. If you want to cater such search queries then you must ensure that your online business is ahead of your competition. Make sure people find your business. It means that you need to increase the visibility of your website.

All this makes Search Engine Optimization crucial than never before. If you are not paying attention, then it’s certain that you might not get the traffic your online business deserves. While Google Algorithms and SEO techniques are constantly evolving, it is quite crucial for you to rely completely on the basics.

Your SEO strategy should work in hand with the content strategy where you ought to:

• Know your audience
• Know your business
• Know your goals

Today even the best content needs help getting found. That’s where our tips might help you to rank better across search engines.

Quality Content

Content is king and hence you must focus on publishing quality content. Tell people what makes your product or service unique.

Keywords Relevant to SERPs

Use keywords which your users are searching across search engines.  Use synonyms and similar terms for a particular product or service in multiple content pieces, as it helps the crawlers to know what your business or site is all about.

Content Refreshment

Constantly refreshing your content at regular time-intervals matters a lot. It refreshes your domain and keep Google crawlers engaged with your website. It also helps search engines to know that your site is up-to-date.

Reviews & Offsite References

Reviews, links and offsite references play a vital role in how your content performs across search engines. Links and offsite references improves the authority of your domain in the eye of search engines.

On-Site Optimization

People often get confused about on-site optimization and relate it to keyword density. But it is simply publishing awesome and most relevant content at the first place. Gone are the days when maintaining keyword density and meta-tags through-out the article will land you on Google SERPs. Google Algorithms are constantly evolving and hence you need to maintain user experience, indexing and value proposition to maintain your authenticity.

External Optimization

It includes optimizing your content for tons of referral sites. Publishing and refreshing your content on external sites helps you build authority on Search Engines. Google algorithms evaluate the type of content you have published on external sites and it indexes every link that redirects to your home page or site-page.

Research Keyword

Combine your keyword research by using Google’s Keyword Planner. When you work for a keyword which is in the low 50s of keyword difficulty tool, chances are quite high to rank well. You can find such keywords using related terms feature in Google Planner. Include these keywords strategically on your content keeping the keyword density < 2%.

Use SEMrush to identify keyword difficulty frequency. Choosing keywords with low competition (< 50%) increases your chance to rank high. However, if your website or blog is well established, then ignore keywords with less than 500 monthly searches.

Keep it Simple

Constantly update few important SEO metrics such as:

• Page Title: The text which depicts the subject of your content in your code. Avoid bombarding it with targeted keywords.
• Meta-Tags: These are the tags that exist in your website code. Enter all relevant tags.
• Meta-Description: These are the snippets of texts which describes your content in your website code. Enter 50-100 words relevant description with maximum three targeted keywords.
• URL: Include prime keyword in the URL.
• Image Name: Depicts the image description in your code. Enter the most relevant name.

The SEO Checks

Choose the Right Keywords: Pick your keywords list as soon as possible and start your content marketing around it. Focus on the long-term keywords and the keywords with low competition.

Refresh Older Content: There are tons of content which you have already published internally and externally. Update the headlines, content and meta-tags in old blogs to better refresh your web-pages.

User-Friendly Landing Pages: Make landing pages which targets your keywords.  Awesome landing pages will convert a reader into a subscriber.

Interactive Content: Publish content which showcases your value preposition and compels users to interact. Allow users to share on social media, comment on blogs and subscribe to RSS feeds.

SEO Road

• Create Goals
• Know Your Audience
• Research Keywords
• Research Competition
• Plan Distribution
• On-Page Optimization
• Off-Page Optimization

Enjoy!

Google analytics is the most important tool which evaluates your site performance. It covers deep insights that helps to draw critical inferences about your user experience and user interface. All you need to know is how to track key insights through Google Analytics.

Below is the list of data which Google Analytics provides:

• The source of your visitors- where they are coming from-helps when you are targeting specific audience
• How they found your website- directly, through referral or through search engines
• Web browser used by visitors- helps you to directly target the browser
• Keywords used by visitors in the search engines- critical for SEO

Apart from these, Google Analytics uncovers deeper insights about your content performance. Thereby, helping you to formulate strategies more efficiently.

Data to Decisions

Google Analytics becomes valuable when it is used as a decision support tool. It is the best way to answer your questions about which strategy is working and which isn’t. Results shared by Google Analytics helps you to evolve your strategies from time to time. Just follow below steps to turn shared data into decisions:

• Compose an idea about site performance.
• Determine parameters to define your site performance.
• Create a report that provides required data to answer your site performance.
• Measure the results of your strategies as per the data.
• Take actions as per your measurements.

There are four important data reports shared by Google Analytics. Each report is the key to understand specific insights that impacts your site performance.

Audience Report

This is one of the most critical reports which tells who your audience is, what their interests are and how they are interacting with your content. It examines the behavior of users related by common attributes.  Through audience report, you also understand how valuable different users are to your online business, based on the lifetime performance.

You can determine the lifetime value of a user you acquired through paid campaigns. It will help you to identify a profitable allocation of your marketing budgets across channels. Lifetime value also determines the cost efficiency of each marketing channel. Audience reports lets you know the age and demography of your user, thereby helping you to specifically target a user.

Acquisition Reports

Each traffic to a website has an origin or a source. A source can be Google Search Engine, Facebook Referral, Newsletters or Direct SEO.  Google Acquisition Report determines that source. It provides a deep insight on your user’s Acquisition, Behavior and Conversion (ABC). It shows the total visits to your website, simultaneously deciphering the percentage of new visitors.

Acquisition reports also breaks down the bounce rate for each marketing channel, thereby helping you to identify how well a user from each channel is interacting with your web pages. High bounce rate suggest that users are not getting what they were looking for and are leaving without viewing more than one page.

Behavior Reports

Behavior Reports help you evaluate the actions users take on your website. It helps to improve their user experience while optimizing content which is not performing well. It visualizes the path each user takes from one web-page to another. The behavior report identifies the potential content issue as it discovers the content segment that engages users the most.

Always set up the tracking code in order to track events for the Behavior Flow Report. Click here to download analytics code.

Conversion Reports

It determines whether your site is helping your online business to achieve its marketing goal. Conversion reports tells how many conversions your campaign has received for each user action. It measures the conversion rate of each goal for each source. Thereby, helping you to analyze Cost/Sale and Cost/Engagement.

There are two types of conversions:

• Click Conversion: Tracks all conversions assisted by clicks
• Impression Conversion: Tracks conversions assisted by impressions before the final click.

Conversion report is the great way to identify which keywords are helping the best to drive maximum conversions.

Tracking and measuring your Google Analytics is an ongoing process. You must visits these reports on a regular basis to ensure the best actions and strategies you are implementing for your website.

As the Google crawlers are becoming smarter and more efficient, the process of achieving better rankings is getting tedious. Now it takes optimized steps to rank your website at the top of SERPs. There are many factors which influences Google Rankings and Image optimization is one of the most important parameter.

Image optimization can drive millions of traffic into your website through image-based search engines. Each image element has significant contribution towards SEO. From headline to alt text, image copy to links redirection, elements play a major role in overall SEO of a page.

Always start image optimization when:

• Your product isn’t displayed when you do Google Image Search
• Your ranking isn’t improving despite following Penguin algorithms
• When bounce rate is higher than your expectation

Name Images Properly

When it comes to search engine optimization, using keywords in the image name helps optimization. Without even looking at the image, you should tell Google to know what the image is about. Therefore, create a descriptive keyword rich name. Search engine not only crawls your content but they also search for image file names. We suggest you to use maximum 3-5 words in your image name.

For example if your image is about Email invoicing tool, then your image file name shouldn’t be like ey12345.jpg, but it should be emailinvoicing.jpg.

Avoid Abbreviation

No matter, what your product or business is all about, avoid any kind of abbreviation. For example, don’t use PS for payment solutions, instead use complete name payment solutions. Combine all the elements together and use dash or underscore (- or _) only to separate keywords.

Consistent Naming

Always make a format to name multiple images in a single way. Don’t and mind it never name a single image in multiple formats. For example, if you have an image called “sms-invocing-payment-solutions.jpg”, you don’t want others to name it as “sms-invoice-pay-tools.jpg”.

Google crawlers won’t accept multiple formats for single type image. Multiple names for the same image also becomes complex to manage when you use it often.

Alt Text Attributes

Alt text is added to image when your image isn’t loaded for any reason. Perhaps because the users have turned off images in their browser, or they are using screen reader, the alt text functionality ensures that critical information is not lost. Therefore, alt text should be descriptive in nature. Make sure that you include targeted keywords in the alt text option.

Google includes alt text as the key ranking factor while optimizing images. Vary your alt text for multiple sizes for same image.

Fill Details

Fill important details such as image titles, captions and anchor texts. Image title is displayed when you hover over an image over website. On the other hand, caption text is visible on your website page. Use some of the keywords in your caption text. Remember that every aspect of image optimization should have a unique keyword density.

Always create an awesome user experience in order to score better in Google rankings. Great images are an excellent way to attract Google Crawlers to your website. Quality images can increase website traffic and it appears better on Google SERPS. Always create a standalone landing page for your image, as it helps Google to collect more related information about your page. Remember to provide useful information such as titles, caption and alt text.