A bounced visitor is a colloquial term for users who quickly leave your website and never return. Unfortunately, it often surfaces as a disgusting problem for digital marketers. When users don't find what they are looking for on your website in the first few seconds of landing, they bounce ā and so does all the marketing value you could have gained from them. Luckily, a step-by-step process can drastically reduce your website's bounce rate.

What is Bounce Rate?

The bounce rate is the percentage of your site visitors who spent a few seconds on it and then left. Usually, they view only a single page. Bounce Rate is an important metric to consider when evaluating the success of your website.

The higher your bounce rate, the more people are quickly turned off by your website content. Using this metric, you will easily determine which pages on your site aren't attracting visitors.

Remember: A bounce is a single-page session to a website.

How to Check Bounce Rates?

Here are the different ways to check bounce rates based on various factors through Google Analytics:-

• Behavior > All Pages > Bounce Rate (see which pages have higher or lower bounce rate)
• Acquisition > Channels > Bounce Rate (see what type of traffic has the lowest bounce rate)
• Acquisition > Source/Medium > Bounce Rate (see which referral mediums have the lowest bounce rate)
• Acquisition > AdWords > Campaigns > Bounce Rate (see how your AdWords campaign fares when it comes to bounce rate)

Why Should You Care About Bounce Rate?

The bounce rate is important because a high bounce rate percentage is directly linked with a low conversion rate. In addition, a high bounce rate may negatively impact your clients' website rankings on search engines as it indicates a low-quality user experience.

The good news is that once you determine your client's bounce rate percentage, you can implement plenty of tactics to entice visitors to stay longer and, ideally, make a purchase.

What's a Good Bounce Rate?

According to HubSpot, a good bounce rate was estimated to be anywhere between 26% to 40%, though it depends more on the industry.

We can assign no standard numerical value to a "good" bounce rate as it's a variable factor. Your client's site objectives and the business they are in can impact the bounce rate. However, a bounce rate that exceeds your client's industry average can be a red flag.

Image Source: Siege Media

Sometimes, your website provides instant answers to user queries such as Questions Answer sites like Quora, and websites that provide information on currency rates, stock market updates, weather updates, etc. Here a high bounce rate is obvious and not bad, as people quickly find what they want.

However, it's only true for some queries a user enters into a search engine. People often leave the website because it provides them with information about bananas when looking for apples. Irrelevant content can aggravate the bounce rate. It may also happen when the website is a bit difficult to navigate.

So, there is no such thing as a "good" bounce rate. The metric is highly variable and depends on multiple factors. However, you need to monitor it constantly and set a benchmark so that you can track your progress.

Tips to Improve Your Website's Bounce Rate

A page's bounce rate is the percentage of visitors leaving the page without interacting. It indicates that your content is not engaging visitors or meeting their search intent.

High bounce rates may indicate problems with the site's content, such as unclear navigation, broken links, or a lack of compelling content. They may also suggest that users need help finding what they are looking for quickly enough.

How to Improve Bounce Rate?

If you've done everything in your capacity but still can't deal with this annoying issue, check out these 13 tips.

1. Optimize Your Homepage & Use Google Analytics

The homepage is usually the first place a visitor goes to on your website, so it should be fully optimized to capture their attention and direct them to the desired action.

Avoid unnecessary clutter and keep your homepage concise and to the point. Ensure to include the most important content up front. Try to keep the homepage's length below three scrollable pages.

Make it visually appealing and easy to read by breaking up long blocks of text with subheadings, bullet points, and short paragraphs.

Google Analytics is one of the best tools to start with. You can also use the DashClicks Analytics App, which integrates with numerous platforms and analytics tools to provide a vivid and clear picture of your website's performance.

2. Add a Call-to-Action (CTA)

Don't forget to add a call to action on every website page. CTA is a chance to engage a customer who is about to leave your website.

What's a Call-to-Action (CTA)?

CTA is an action the webpage's visitor can take, such as clicking a button to receive more information or make a purchase. Research has shown that adding a call-to-action to the bottom of each page increases conversion rates by more than 30%. According to a MixPanel study, including one clear CTA in emails boosts clicks by 371% and sales by 1617%.

If they're interested in your product, inform them where to buy it. If they want more information, tell them how to contact you. Whatever you want visitors to do, make it obvious with your CTA. Follow these tips to keep those bounced visitors from leaving your site. By addressing these issues, you're sure to win over more users and keep them returning for more.

3. Improve Your Website Design and User Interface (U/I)

Use an effective website design that is both user-friendly and visually appealing. Make navigation easier, so the visitor can find what they are looking for in a minimum number of clicks. Overall, the content and design should be so engaging that the visitors stay on your website for some time. Deliver relevant information on the landing pages to boost conversions.

Your website is a key factor in your success. It shouldn't be outdated. Your website needs to be professional, engaging, and easy to use in today's digital world. It should represent your brand and drive traffic to your site.

Agency Tip: You can use our Sites App to design professional-grade websites that are designed to load faster, rank higher on search engines, and engage visitors with the right content and design. These websites are developed using niche-based templates and are content ready. All you need to do is inject your clients' contact & business information and logo into the software, which will provide you with the complete website in a few seconds. To create bulk websites, you can use our InstaSites App.

4. Develop a Responsive Website

A website that is not responsive can turn potential customers away. Implementing a responsive website design will increase your online traffic and sales. A responsive website will look the same on all devices, making it easier for people to do business with you no matter what they use.

Companies are now noticing the importance of a mobile-friendly site. Customers who visit your site on their phone or tablet will see an optimized design for their device. Statistically, more than 50% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices, and nearly 60% of all purchases are made from them.

5. Use the Right Keywords

Keywords are the bedrock of any successful content marketing strategy. First, you need to perform a brief research and then identify what keywords you want to rank for. It must include both short-tail and long-tail keywords. You should then tailor your content on a page-by-page basis to fit those keywords in a natural way that provides value to the reader and is relevant, given the context. You should also find the keywords people use during voice searches.

6. Create a Seamless User Experience

Users will look to interact with your site in a way they're comfortable, but if the flow to accomplish tasks is awkward or interrupted because of broken links, etc., they'll bounce without thinking twice.

What can you do to resolve this?

Check your site's usability: Conduct user testing to ensure your site is easy to navigate and use.

Pro Tip: Make sure your website loads quickly, as a slow-loading website will increase the bounce rate and decrease time on site. According to Maura Monaghan of Website Builder Expert, even a one-second delay can drop conversions by 4.42%.

7. Develop Quality Content

Without engaging content, you won't make it through your funnel's first step. In the absence of quality content, bounced visitors will likely click away before even seeing what you have to offer. On the flip side, a high bounce rate could also result from a high click-through rate ā but the users don't stay long enough to find out. This problem is called a "false exit." To resolve it, make your value proposition clear and concise. Also, follow up with the right messaging to bring back users to your website.

Remember: Bounced visitors aren't necessarily lost customers ā they aren't ready to buy yet.

Pro Tip: Use videos and images to boost engagement. Visual content can be highly engaging if used creatively to offer value to your clients and educate them.

8. Determine the Root Cause of Your Bounce Rate

You've improved the website usability and design and added engaging and mobile-friendly content, but your bounce rate remains high. In such a scenario, you need to determine the root cause of the problem before moving forward to fix it.

Check your site's analytics. You can also use the DashClicks Analytics app. Also, ask a friend to glance at your site and tell you what they think is causing them to leave quickly. Another option is to use emotional triggers. These can help you determine what, if anything, is spurring people to go.

Remember: You may need a lot of time and effort to eliminate every cause for a high bounce rate. So, you should focus on the most pressing issues and implementing solutions.

9. Don't Overload Your Site With Ads

While ads are a great way to make money from your site, they can also frustrate visitors. If they are placed to take over your screen and make it impossible to view the content you came for, you've got a serious problem. Avoid pop-ups and auto-playing video ads that can annoy those seeking information. If you have ads on your site that trigger a high bounce rate, try using fewer of them, and make them less annoying and distracting.

Image Source: Opera Blogs

10. Use Animations and Transitions

Modern websites use animations and transitions to navigate between pages, a significant advantage in today's internet landscape in terms of user experience. Try to use animations and transitions that make sense and move your users from one place to the next without confusion.

11. Don't Make Users Hunt for Key Information

The key information about your products and services should be easily accessible on your website. Also, ensure that your company name, address, and contact information are easy to find. Users want to know who they're dealing with and don't want to spend time hunting around for it.

12. Don't Surprise or Shock Users With Unexpected Behaviors

Remember that unpredictable behaviors you display on your site can cause users to leave. If you have the following things, you may lose visitors.

• Unexpected animations or transitions
• Content that is out of order
• Difficult to read content

13. Test, Then Test Again

So, you've implemented all the tips above, but your bounce rate is still high. What now?

Remember, standard solutions don't always work. That's why it's important to test, test and test again. Once you find the best solution for your situation, make it a priority to keep your site clean and updated. You'll lose visitors if your site is cluttered, outdated, or otherwise difficult to use. Stay on top of the alerts in your analytics to detect issues before they become serious problems.

Final Words

Generally, a high bounce rate is not a good thing. We have given a lot of tips above to address this issue. Still, if you are stuck and a high bounce rate continues to frustrate you, use DashClicks Analytics App to figure out the possible reasons. Perform a competitor analysis to see what's going wrong and what your competitors are doing to minimize the bounce rate.

To develop trouble-free websites, use our Sites App or InstaSites App (for building bulk websites.) You can create and manage your websites using our white-label drag-and-drop builder for agencies without IT or coding knowledge. Edit these websites with our CMS like a breeze and handle many such issues without having to contact the developers.

Today, the most successful strategies can be seen taking an integrated approach. The biggest example of such a strategy is the integration of both your SEO and PR (public relations) efforts.

Now, you may wonder ā SEO is about rankings, while PR is about the management of a brand's image. What can they possibly do together?

Well, as digital marketing strategies continue to evolve, the lines between the actions and objectives of different teams have started to blur; SEO and PR are no exceptions to this. Both can work hand in hand to expand the online impact of one another.

In other words, here's what we are talking about:

When it comes to moving ahead in the competitive business landscape, online presence and performance are both top priorities for a business. Therefore, pairing your SEO content strategy with your PR efforts can definitely work as a winning combination. When SEO and PR work together in tandem, every message of your brand can capture attention, resulting in greater online visibility, increased brand awareness, and a potential boost in sales.

In this post, we take a closer look at how both SEO and PR can work together and how a solid SEO PR strategy can benefit your brand. Let's begin:

What is PR?

PR is the set of strategies and techniques associated with managing how information about a company or an individual is disseminated to the media and public in general. The principal goals of PR are:

• Maintaining a brand image.
• Disseminating crucial company events or news.
• Putting a positive spin on any negative event.

PR can occur in the form of a company press release, social media posting, news conference, interview with journalists, and much more.

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Also, do you know what PR professionals are skilled in?

Creating content that captivates the audience, generates buzz, or becomes newsworthy.

What is SEO?

SEO, short for search engine optimization, refers to the optimization of websites and pages so that they are easily found via Bing, Google, and other search engines.

Simply put, SEO is when you take steps to help a content piece or website rank higher on Google.

Why Is Digital PR Important for SEO

You may already know about traditional PR (newspapers, television, magazines, and radio). But in this post, we are going to talk about the importance of digital PR to SEO.

Digital PR tries to build and establish a trustable brand reputation online, which gives a push to your SEO efforts too. After all, both PR and SEO are about developing authority in some or the other way.

Here’s more on how digital PR benefits SEO:

• Digital PR helps SEO by offering opportunities for valuable mentions and backlinks across multiple channels and mediums. A vital key to increasing organic search rankings is high-quality links, and PR can help provide the same.
• PR also increases awareness of your brand, management, offerings, and company. This, in turn, helps build a solid reputation and authority for your brand.
• When your PR campaign is successful, the trust and authority you gain through it passes to your site. Google takes note of this because the search engine always wants to show its searchers trustworthy, high-quality sites in SERPs.
• Digital PR concentrates on social media and influencer outreach, often resulting in links back to your brand and offerings. The result of it all? You reach more people and build your audience. It can increase your SEO and rankings as well.

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How SEO and Digital PR Can Work Together?

Now that we have established how digital PR can benefit your SEO, it's time to double the impact. For this, you need to look for ways to integrate SEO into your PR activity. Here are some SEO PR tactics that help do the same:

1. Use Keyword Research

Something that forms a huge part of an SEO strategy is keyword research.

What is it really?

It is the process of identifying those phrases or words that individuals are searching for. The ones you choose are linked in some specific way to your brand, its offerings, etc.

Keyword research and usage helps a brand produce content that holds relevance to their audience. This, in turn, helps increase the chances of the brand's website achieving a higher ranking in the SERPs.

Now the catch here is, you can provide a list of your research keywords to your PR professionals so that they integrate them into their content too. This way, you utilize keyword research to integrate SEO in your PR activities.

2. Concentrate on Earning High-Quality Links From Digital PR Campaigns

Developing great digital PR campaigns demand effort and time on behalf of your PR team.

The good news is, with every effort your PR team makes, you can let your SEO soar too.

How?

One SEO PR tactic you can follow is to focus on gaining high-quality links from your digital PR campaigns.

Links that result from these campaigns, such as the ones included in renowned news sources, lead back to the landing page of your site.

These links help strengthen your brand's authority, resulting in increased rankings on SERPs.

Interestingly enough, digital PR is a clear winner when you talk of link building tactics. Take a look at the pie chart below:

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3. Request Links

A lot of times, when a blog or a news site mentions your events, offerings, management, or brand, they may not include a link back to your site.

If you notice this, you can ask your PR team to contact these blogs and sites and request them to include a link back to your landing page.

But how will you if someone mentions an element of your brand in their content?

It's fairly simple. You can use Hootsuite or Social Mention for the same. Or, you can set up Google Alerts (ideal for small businesses).

4. Collaborate on Content

To integrate SEO into your PR activity, bring both your SEO and digital PR teams together to collaborate on content. It will enhance both your brand's image as well as boost rankings.

How, you may ask?

For instance, both the teams can work on creating interactive content, and then the PR team can get in touch with influencers to help spread the word about your brand's offerings.

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5. Focus On Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is another important element of a solid SEO strategy. It is linked with the actions you take outside your site in a bid to improve your SERP rankings. An example of such an action is link-building.

The great thing is, you can obtain better links by combining your PR knowledge with SEO.

For instance, PR teams often build relationships with famous bloggers and social media influencers with a huge following. Your PR professionals can encourage these bloggers and influencers to share links to your site with their subscribers, dedicated fans, and followers. These links can make your website appear more trustable and authoritative to the search engines, which will, in turn, lead to an increase in your rankings.

Analyze Your SEO PR Activity

Tracking, measuring, and analyzing your SEO PR activity is important to know if you need to re-strategize. It also helps see what's working for your brand.

To check if your tactics are working or not, determine which KPIs and metrics you will track. Select the ones that shed light on what you should know and also help in making improvements to your future campaigns.

Examples of such metrics include:

• Keyword rankings
• Backlinks
• Organic website traffic
• Number of referring domains
• Click-through rates (CTRs)
• Domain authority

Now, the question is, how can you obtain these metrics? Use a free online tool called Google Analytics.

We also recommend that you use DashClicks' Analytics app. It helps you monitor and report on all your marketing campaigns in a single place. You can easily check granular data insights on this best-in-class white label reporting software.

DashClicks White Label SEO Services

Are you a digital marketing agency that lacks the time or the resources to provide result-driven SEO services to your clients? If yes, then you can consider hiring DashClicks' white label SEO services. If you choose these services, you can get your client's site ranked at the number one spot for different search terms in Google.

Wrapping It Up

So far, it's easy to see how SEO and PR can work together as teammates when it comes to gaining positive results for your brand. Ensure you utilize keyword research, focus on building backlinks to your site, and collaborate on content marketing efforts to combine digital PR and SEO. It will help you expand your audience and increase your rankings on SERPs.

Lastly, don't forget to analyze your results. This will help you know what's working and what needs re-strategizing. Good luck!

Have you ever experienced a sudden drop in SEO ranking?

You've struggled so hard to rank your pages at the top of the search engines and now you sit and watch your hard work going down the drain.

The huge organic traffic drop from Google is due to the Google Algorithm Update (also termed as a Google Core Update).

The thing is, Google makes major modifications to the search algorithms and systems many times a year. The reason it keeps updating its search algorithms is to simply offer more authoritative and relevant content to its searchers.

In this post, we'll discuss what you should do after a Google Algorithm Update. You will also learn the best practices to follow in case you see huge fluctuations in Google SERP positions and a drop in organic traffic from Google.

Let's dive right in:

How to Check if A Google Algorithm Update Has Affected Your Website?

Before you start taking steps to recover your site after a Google Algorithm Update, you should wait for at least a few weeks for the update to completely roll out.

We say this because Google can also decide to reverse the modifications in the update. If this happens, your site can recover without you having to take any measures from your end.

In case your site doesn’t get recovered, here are the initial steps you should take:

1. Add your website to Google Search Console and SEMRush to monitor the change in SERP positions for your keywords.
2. Create a list of pages that show a decline in traffic and SERP rankings.
3. Jot down the keywords you have lost, or those which went through an unexpected drop in SERP rankings.
4. Now, search the primary keyword of every web page and check which site gained a better SERP ranking.
5. Create a list of all the winners and losers in the Google Algorithm Update.
6. Also prepare a list of all the mistakes and differences you can find. This will help make further evaluations or any necessary improvements.

Analyzing Drop In Your Google Organic Traffic

After you gather all the above information, you need to analyze the following:

1. Check what the winning web pages contain that your web pages don’t.
2. Check if they have outbound links to stuff you don’t.
3. Check what elements you don’t have.
4. See which Schema and links you don’t have.
5. Conduct a content gap analysis.
6. See if you need to add more relevant videos or images.
7. Check content via NLP and look for missing entities.
8. Look for missing ‘Related Queries’ or ‘People Also Ask’ queries from Google SERPs.

After this analysis, you can take the necessary steps to tackle the issues you have recognized with your website after the update hit.

Use Google Search Console

An amazing tool you must use when a Google Algorithm Update happens is Google Search Console.

Why?

This is because you can easily know when the update hit your website and how severely it affected it. Google owns this tool, so the data you will get is accurate.

Plus, here’s also some useful information you can get from the tool:

1. The amount of time it takes a user to load your content.
2. The number of people who are searching your site.

Tip: Learn how to use Google Search Console for SEO and you are set!

Use DashClicks' Analytics App

If you want to monitor and report all your marketing campaigns in one place, then you can choose DashClicks' Analytics app. When you use this app, you get a bird's-eye view of all your marketing campaigns.

The best thing about the app is that you can track your keyword performance and also view granular data insights.

Reasons for a Dramatic Drop In Your Google Rankings and How to Fix It

Different reasons can be behind an unexpected, dramatic drop in your Google rankings, such as:

1. Low-Quality Pages

The algorithm will recognize low-quality pages on your site, if, for instance, the Google Core Update that hit your site is content-related.

If the algorithm recognizes pages on your site that it considers low quality, it may demote those pages and your site rankings may then see a decline.

To recover from a content-related update, you must go through your site and delete low-quality pages that can hamper your site rankings.

Tip: We recommend you conduct a complete website content audit every month to eliminate thin content web pages. The audit will also help you recognize worst-performing pieces that you can improve.

2. Link Rot

Over the course of time, the backlinks pointing to your site begin to lose their power. This is called Link Rot.

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We suggest you build new links to your website in a consistent mannerāthis will prevent Link Rot.

3. Your Site Was Manually Penalized

Your site receives a manual penalty when Google (either its algorithm or employees) reviews your site and deems it violates Webmaster Guidelines.

You can check Google Search Console for manual penalties. Here's an example of a manual penalty:

Now, what to do in case you receive a manual penalty?

Manual penalties are mostly link-based. See if you have received the penalty for unnatural outbound or inbound linking practices and accordingly solve the issues. For example, if a lot of spammy links point to your site, do all you can to remove them.

4. Your Rivals Got Better

Sometimes, your website can see a decline in rankings and traffic even when you think the links and content are extremely good.

Why does this happen?

This is because your competitors got better.

If your rivals are building more valuable backlinks and content than you, there is an increased likelihood of them moving ahead of you in the SERP positions.

We suggest you keep a consistent check on your competitors to know what they are up to. Check what they have that you don't. If you notice that some stuff is missing, take steps to incorporate it on your site right away.

5. You Lost Crucial Backlinks

Your site may be suffering from link loss and hence, causing a drop in your rankings. Use SEMrush to check all the links you have built so far. This will help you identify any crucial backlinks your website lost.

All you need to do is enter your domain URL and select Link Building > Backlink Analytics.

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If you see that your website has lost a crucial backlink, try to recover it if you can.

But, how to recover it?

If the site is operational, email its owner and request them to embed your link again.

6. Technical Changes Were Made to Your Website

If certain technical modifications were made to your website but not carried out correctly, you would see a potential drop in your site's SEO rankings.

Examples of such technical modifications could include:

• Using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to help your website pages load in a more efficient manner.
• Migrating your website to a new and improved web host.
• Transitioning to premium add-ons and plugins.
• Performing technical SEO.
• Redirecting an aged domain to your website.

If such technical changes have been made to your site, check if they have been correctly carried out so that they don’t hamper your rankings.

Here are some tips you can follow in this regard:

• In case you change your hosting, ensure you fix the DNS records in order to point to the right hosting. People and search engine crawlers will be able to access your site only after you execute this step.
• Your developer can forget to allow Google Bot to crawl your website. So, ensure you check this.
• Check if media-rich images that were helping SEO are still there or have been removed.

How to Recover from a Google Algorithm Update Hit?

Here are some crucial steps you need to take to recover your site from a Google Algorithm hit:

1. Check Google Search Console and identify any technical issues or any other related issues. If you find certain problems, you can go ahead and start fixing them for your site to function to the best of its abilities.
2. Ensure links pointing to other pages aren’t pointing to irrelevant or broken pages.
3. Join some SEO communities and discuss an SEO strategy that can help you counter the update. These communities may also provide you with algorithm-specific information, helping you figure out why your site suffered a hit.
4. Check if the sites you are linking to aren’t flagged as suspicious and spammy.

DashClicks' White Label SEO Services

If you are a digital marketing agency, you can use DashClicks' white label SEO services to get your client's site ranked at the top spot for multiple search terms in Google.

When you hire these services from DashClicks, the fulfillment is carried out by SEO experts. Hence, in the end you get to deliver only the best results to your clients.

Wrapping It Up

Leaving your site at the algorithm's mercy is not something you should do because then it will only result in decreased ranking and traffic to your site.

Whether the update is focused on a specific niche or is a broad core update, you need to take specific actions to tackle it. You can always recover your site from Google updates if you carefully follow the steps we discussed. After you make the necessary tweaks to your internal linking, site content, backlink profile, etc., ensure you check your web pages to see which ones went up. This will help you update your editorial/writing guidelines for future use and reference.

International trade is flourishing, so it is obvious that businesses are exploring overseas markets for expansion. To sell your products and services globally, you must implement robust International SEO strategies.

Agencies are receiving a surge in demand for international SEO Services. Native English speakers make up 17% of the world’s population, but English is a dominant language on the Internet. So, most of the keywords come from the English language. However, it also means that you must catch up on the remaining 83% of the global market.

Your choice of keywords should depend on the country you are targeting. In the US alone, people speak more than 350 languages, Spanish being the second most popular language after English. So, if you want to target diverse demographics, you must consider including other languages as well in your SEO game plan.

This article will discuss all aspects of international SEO, so you become familiar with the best practices, global SEO considerations, and steps necessary to formulate an international SEO strategy.

What Is International SEO?

When your target audience is scattered across different countries and continents, you need to go beyond your regular SEO strategy to encompass all of your prospects. It involves fine-tuning your content to specific countries and audiences with the help of technical SEO. Sometimes, it can be too complex, depending on your target country.

Let’s discuss why international SEO is so crucial in the present times.

Why Is International SEO Important?

Any digital marketer will tell you that SEO depends on many things, which is why mastering it is crucial for your online success. The diversity in the real world makes it even more complex. Leveraging this diversity can make you the undisputed leader in the online space.

Image Source: Moz

Traditional SEO aims to improve the overall website performance, but if you want to target untapped global markets, you should also be aware of international SEO best practices. Luckily, you can quickly and easily rank on SERPs by implementing international SEO because the competition isn’t that fierce.

Fundamentals of an International SEO Strategy

While formulating an International SEO strategy, you should consider the following elements.

A. Target Audience

Like any digital marketing strategy, you need to focus on data first because most successful strategies are data-driven. Google Analytics will help you tremendously in this endeavor.

Begin by identifying your target audience — where they are located and which language(s) they speak.

Image Source: I Que Lab

However, you should ensure that your business operations and target audience are compatible. For example, your strategy can backfire if you are targeting French-speaking people in France and other countries but don’t have French-speaking staff to offer customer support or handle sales queries. Similarly, if you target Chinese audiences but can’t set up an office there because of diplomatic hassles, it will not work.

B. Market Research

A quick Google search can give you a good idea about your target audience, but you cannot use it for professional purposes. If you are serious, you should conduct thorough market research to understand your audience deeper. Learn about their habits, preferences, financial condition, family values, culture, lifestyle, social orientations, legal obligations, and specific needs, if any. Together, these attributes will help you craft better marketing messages and formulate winning strategies.

C. Language

Marketers should refrain from trying to simplify language issues, especially when they are dealing with international audiences. Your SEO heavily depends on it. You should also not go by the official languages of any particular country. For example, the official languages of Canada and India are French, English, and Hindi, respectively, but people speak dozens of languages in both the countries. In some Southern and Eastern states of India, the natives don’t even understand the official language. It would help if you kept that in mind while formulating an international SEO strategy.

D. Keywords

Keywords are highly affected by language conflicts and variations. Never commit the mistake of trying word-to-word translation of the keywords into a different language. People don’t always use the linguistic equivalent of a particular search query in their language. Also, remember that there can be many cultural and local variations to a single language. Hence, you should perform due diligence and devote some time to dedicated keyword research before finalizing your target keywords.

International SEO Best Practices To Follow

Here are some of the international SEO best practices you should follow to get the best results:-

1. Website Structure

The biggest consideration while performing international SEO is having dedicated URLs, especially if you target multiple languages and diverse communities. A well-oriented website structure helps audiences and search engines identify specific web pages’ language.

This is more of a necessity than a result-driven luxury, as search engines can impose a duplicate content penalty if you don’t comply. Google may flag your localized content as duplicates of your original content if the site structure is not taken care of.

Image Source: Moz

Here are the three options you can choose from:-

i. Top-level domain (e.g., www.example.ae)
ii. Subdomain (e.g., www.ae.example.com)
iii. Subdirectory (e.g. www.example.com/ae/)

You can choose your site structure according to your client’s website and business. For example, the top-level domain, such as www.example.ae, can quickly rank on top because of its peculiar structure. But it can be a bit pricey and difficult to manage.

Image Source: Search Ministry

You can also try subdirectories and subdomains according to the strategic priorities of your client. The rules are flexible for international SEO, so you can choose according to your needs and your client’s preferences.

2.  Href-lang Tags

Website developers use these tags to inform search engines about the language and the country your website is created for. Relevancy of content is an important factor for a search engine to index and rank a website, and these tags are designed to help search engines determine it.

Image Source: Moz

If you want to reach the right audience according to their language, you can use Hreflang Tags while performing international SEO.

Here is how you can implement these tags:-

• For the English language: <link rel=”alternate” href=”https://www.example.com/” hreflang=”en” />
• For American English: <link rel=”alternate” href=”https://www.example.com/en-us/” hreflang=”en-us” />
• For New Zealand English: <link rel=”alternate” href=”https://www.example.com/en-nz/” hreflang=”en-nz” />

You need a separate link ‘rel’ and alternate variant to connect to each variation. These lengthy variations can slow down your website. So, implement them only when you have the necessary skill set. The better alternative is to use a website translation tool that automatically fixes these tags.

3. More Content Creation

When doing international SEO, be ready to embrace increased competition and boost your content volume. Since you will penetrate a different market, you need quality content from scratch. Shortcuts would not work here as your website is the only source of information for a foreign audience.

4. Language Consistency

Don’t skip or leave things out when translating your content from the source website. If you do that, it may look inconsistent and incomplete and not cast a good impression on the visitors reading your content in a different language.

Also, avoid using multiple languages on a single page. It does not bode well for your user experience. Ensure to include the navigation menu, footer, user-generated content, image alt tags, etc.

5. Translating Metadata

Since metadata is an integral aspect of SEO and international SEO, you should also translate it along with the rest of the website. These elements are just as important for search engines as visible content on your landing pages. However, you should avoid literal translation in metadata and use extensive keyword research to make it sound natural and native.

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6. Localization

It is also an important factor that determines the success of a website. It includes the design, language, and cultural elements directly affecting user experience.

It should include removing culturally offensive content and creating additional content that matches the target audience’s interest. You should also pay attention to navigation, media components, and website design.

The ultimate objective of this practice should be to achieve better engagement and add relevant and optimized content for search engines. It will help boost traffic from the intended global audiences.

Final Words

Google is consistently trying to eliminate language barriers across the globe, and digital agencies would do better to implement international SEO. It would help if you had the right tools and expertise to develop your website in different languages to reach a broader audience for your clients. International SEO offers a great upsell opportunity for agencies, and they should grab it at any cost.

Google's ultimate business objective is to improve its search results, and it achieves it through its complex algorithms. So, Google constantly rolls out algorithm updates to prevent poor search results from appearing on top of SERPs.

What Is Black Hat SEO?

Google Webmaster guidelines are compiled to help website owners and businesses to stick to the best practices and avoid the shady ones.

Despite the clear guidelines from Google, many businesses try to manipulate and game the algorithms. The objective is to achieve a higher rank in a short span of time. To achieve this end, they won't even shy away from engaging in unfair practices. And that is known as Black Hat SEO. Hollywood movie-makers showed the bad guys wearing black hats in the old cowboy movies. That is the reason why these dubious practices are termed Black Hat SEO.

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The standard way to win the SERPs is to create high-value, high-quality content that solves people's problems. You should also engage in deep keyword research to make yourself visible in front of the people searching for the products you sell.

Google is constantly improving itself while identifying and penalizing Black Hat SEO strategies. So, when a practice becomes prevalent, Google rolls out an algorithm update and penalizes the websites engaged in such malpractices. But this does not stop people from inventing newer Black Hat techniques.

Signs That Your SEO Agency Is Implementing Black Hat Tactics

Here are the nine signs that indicate that your SEO agency might be hurting your website with black hat tactics.

1. They Are Engaged in Link Exchange and Buying Links

High-quality backlinks are extremely important because Google takes them as a signal of your site's authenticity, trustworthiness, and reliability. Backlinks from high-traffic websites also drive huge traffic to your website.

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It prompts some webmasters to buy the backlinks; however, that is completely against Google's guidelines. Google goes one step further and says that it doesn't work. It means that Google is aware of it, and its algorithms can penalize the site if they ever find out it's engaged in buying links.

In some instances, Google can impose an automatic or manual penalty that can impact specific pages or the entire website.

Google specializes in identifying deliberate actions and abnormal patterns to easily identify black hat SEO.

2. They Participate in Link Schemes

Google also despises link schemes such as exchanging links, free products, or discounts. To prevent such links from appearing as a link scheme, make them a no-follow link. You can do it by using the rel= "nofollow" tag. When you use this tag, your backlink will not impact the SERP rankings.

3. They Hide the Links

There are many ways to hide a link, and the prominent ones among these are:

• Placing the link on the footer
• Using it as anchor text
• Hiding it in the background color
• Keeping text off-screen
• Using font size ‘zero’

The easiest way to insert a link is to place it on the footer because there is enough space out there, and people have been doing it since the dawn of the world wide web.

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The worst thing is to use the commercial anchor text, which Google takes as a way of suggesting to rank the web page for the text used in anchor text. Google doesn’t like anyone to tell which site to rank higher. It’s manipulative, and Google hates it.

The worst part is to try to hide the links in the background color or the website text. Google will identify it both ways and penalize your website. The message is loud and clear, “Don’t try to game the system.”

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Another way to hide the backlinks is to post the link in the same color as the background, but you can't fool Google as they immediately detect it.

You should also not try to keep text off-screen using CSS or font size 0.

4. They Have No Activity to Show

If your agency has no genuine activity to show in the first few months, chances are they are involved in black hat activities. What you can expect at this point is:

• A comprehensive website audit.
• Detailed website analysis & optimization report.
• Identification of the target keywords.
• A list of targeted keywords per month.
• The articles or content created and published on the website and elsewhere for organic SEO.

If they have no clue who has done that, it means they are not seriously working on your project and might be doing Black Hat SEO for rankings.

5. Utter Lack of Communications

A professional SEO agency will regularly communicate and update you regarding the necessary accesses, reports, website errors, potentially harmful things on the website, a list of targeted keywords, and previous work on the website.

They might need access to CMS, Google Analytics, previous SEO and audit reports, Google Search Console Tools, and social media handles as part of their regular digital marketing activities.

If they are not doing that, it strongly indicates that they are relying on spammy backlinks creation, which can be potentially harmful to your website.

Most of the digital marketing work requires collaboration between the client and the SEO agency. At times, an SEO agency may suggest you take certain actions or complete certain tasks. It can also be a big red flag if they do not give you any suggestions or recommendations.

6. They Maintain a Layer of Confidentiality

If they don't disclose their tactics and maintain a high level of confidentiality around their activities, it can signal that something fishy is going on.

And when you ask something about the project's progress, their response is, "We are doing a lot of activities, so we can't share them with you at this point. However, you will soon learn about them and their impact on the website."

True SEO involves legitimate activities such as local SEO, guest posting, on-page optimization, and Google My Business listings. There should be nothing to hide if you are implementing it. Only scammers keep things secret. If such a thing happens, this is high time you should fire your SEO agency.

7. Your Website Is Penalized

If you signed the contract barely a month or two ago, and you see your website getting penalized, it may or may not be the fault of your SEO agency. However, there's a strong signal that they might be going in the wrong direction, i.e., practicing Black Hat SEO.

In this case, you should perform your research and try to know the reason for the penalty.

Some of the types of penalties that you might receive are as follows.

• A manual penalty
• A sudden drop in rankings
• A noticeable drop in the traffic

If you receive a GWT notification or an e-mail regarding a manual penalty, it's certainly not good news. If it has been just two or three months since you commenced work with your SEO agency, you can't be sure, but it's a potential red flag.

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Google's algorithms are constantly updating, so a drop in rankings doesn't always indicate that it's your agency's fault. However, if you notice a consistent fall in the rankings, use your analytics tools to know why.

A sudden drop in traffic is a strong signal of an algorithmic penalty. Investigate the reason for such a fall. It doesn't indicate that it's your SEO's fault, but you need to be cautious. Get a list of all your SEO agency's activities on your website and check if these activities might be the reason behind these penalties.

8. Your Website Starts Receiving Traffic From the Wrong Keywords

Suppose Google Analytics tells you that you have started ranking for the wrong keywords or are receiving traffic from the wrong keywords. In that case, it's a strong signal that your SEO agency is practicing spammy activities. In that case, ask your agency to furnish details of its actions on the website in the last few months.

Also, share with them the list of the wrong keywords your site is ranking for. If it is an error, they will rectify it, and if it is because of some spammy practice, you should immediately fire your agency.

9. Rise of Suspicious Backlinks

A spike in the number of suspicious backlinks to your website indicates something fallacious is happening. Check your link profile. Your link profile shows how Google should rank your website. In general, if you are an education technology business, you should not receive backlinks from gambling, textile, or spa websites. And if you are a US-based company, and you start receiving links from Chinese-language websites, your link profile is messed up.

It means that your digital marketing agency is using some tools that create spammy backlinks. These backlinks will not help increase your site's authority but will devalue it. In this case, you should immediately discuss it with your SEO agency and share the spammy links that your website has received. So, even if you don't get an honest answer, at least they will do something to fix the issue.

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You can use Google disavow tool to disavow those links or get your agency to do it.

Final Words

When you work with an agency, you need to keep patience, especially when it has been just a few months since they began working on your website. White-hat SEO takes a considerable amount of time to deliver results. Even if you outsource services from an agency, you should constantly research and keep yourself updated with the current market trends.

Signing a contract with an agency does not always mean you are not supposed to do anything. Instead, a professional agency will work with you as a partner and recommend several things you should quickly implement.

These tasks are generally not mentioned in your agency's scope of work but are crucial to getting the desired results.

To summarize, SEO is crucial for your website, and you cannot afford Black Hat SEO. Sometimes the success of your business depends on the SEO. You should give some time for your agency to deliver results, but you should constantly monitor them. If you notice something fishy, discuss it with them, try to conduct your research, and then make a decision.

Today half of the world's population access the internet to look for answers to their queries. Today, Google solely conducts more than two trillion searches every day and has completely transformed the way people browse the internet. With many alterations to its algorithms on a daily basis, Google is absolutely the most significant rule setter of the game.

When the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin first came up with the idea of Google, they had everything planned for the future. In the paper they released back in 1998 at Stanford, they stated how PageRank citation would help arrange the chaos on the internet caused by the increasing web pages. From its very birth, Google has always placed the user's intent and experience on a high pedestal, and to date, it remains the essence of Google's purpose.

What Makes Google The Revolutionist?

Every known name in the search engine league, like Yahoo (founded 1997), Baidu (founded 2000), and Bing (founded 2009), have had almost the same timelines with similar competitions. Google (founded in 1995, formerly known as Backrub), however,Ā  quickly shifted from the slow lane to the fast lane in just two decades.

As mentioned earlier, Google serves its users with the best experience. Google understands that it needs to help people as much as possible, so they return to the search engine whenever they need help.

How Do Search Engines Work?

The primary objective of any search engine is, as the name suggests - searching. You can take the example of a library, where books are arranged according to their subjects in different rows and columns, representing indexes or databases. When you need any book, you simply walk up to the aisle with relevant books and pick out what you think is most helpful for you. Google takes care of all these steps, and the only action you have to take is to search for your problem in the search engine query.

Every search engine principally works through three stages:

A. Crawling

The search engines have crawlers or spiders (Google Bots for Google) that help them analyze the content over the internet. This process of discovering new content gives them an idea about the information your page will provide for their users. The data can be in any format, including texts, images, videos, and PDFs.

B. Indexing

Every search engine also has an index where they store and arrange all the data acquired by them from your website and web pages according to the context where the search engine can use them. Indexing provides your data the visibility it requires to appear as search engine query results.

C. Ranking

The search engines have different factors that define your rank on them, the main aspects being the content, structure, and keyword usage. Ranking simply means ordering the stored data in the most relevant to least relevant fashion.

What Does Google Do Differently?

Google Search is extremely precise in understanding what a website or webpage wants to communicate to its readers. However, if you still wish to choose how Google Bots read and analyze your content, you can select the different filters for the Google Search Console.

Moreover, the AI technology, RankBrain, employed by Google, now intuitively understands what people might be looking for, and that is a massive difference separating Google from its competitor search engines. Using the search history, user behavior, and user interaction on the web browser, Google can piece together all the information about you to provide you with the best answer matching your likes and dislikes.

If you are a movie enthusiast and it sounds too much like J.A.R.V.I.S. from Marvel's Iron Man, you will most likely get the accurate picture. Additionally, you should also note that the privacy policies on Google keep all your data secured and use it only for your provision.

How Does Google Search Algorithm Work?Ā

Google search algorithms have one function: dig deep into the abyss of content available on the internet and return with the most relevant answer to your search query. The significant difference separating Google from other search engines is that its algorithms are so powerful that they do all this within a fraction of a second.

Google algorithms act as a filter to distinguish, rank, and present your answers. For instance, you can open a website for online shopping that views all the products that the seller trades. But to get an accurate product, you would add filters and categorize what precisely you are looking to buy. This job of properly organizing and presenting the data available on the internet is done by the series of algorithms that Google's ranking systems use.

The Google algorithms determine the following key factors to determine relevant search query results:

1. Meaning of the User's Query

If the user searches for a solution, it means they definitely have a problem. Google focuses on the meaning of the user's query, taking care of the different meanings a word can have to provide you with the most relevant result for your query.

2. Web Page Relevance

The algorithms then search for the relevance in the data stored with them and match it to the searched query. The compatibility is compared by matching the keywords in the content to that of the question and machine-learning analysis.

3. E-A-T

The quality of the content and reliability of the information provided by the website is a key factor in determining the ranking. Expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of a website can be verified by the number of backlinks they earn on other websites with a good E-A-T.

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4. Accessibility

The algorithms check if the user can access the site on multiple devices and quickly find the information they are looking for.

5. User Behavior

The user's interaction with different websites, their search history, and geographical location - all help the algorithms figure out the most relevant data on the internet according to their needs.

What is the Role of the Google Search Algorithm?

Google adds minor updates to its algorithm almost every day, but the significant changes that can heavily impact your traffic generation are brought about almost twice a year. Although, as mentioned before, all these updates provided by Google are only to enhance the user experience, whether it is quickly searching for a result or finding the most relevant content on the internet.

Back in December 2020, Google's core algorithm was updated and they added more E-A-T guidelines in the bunch to service users' best interests. It was aimed at more creative, unique, and informative content for your reader.

You can check for these core updates every couple of months and accordingly update your website content.

Here are some places you can get your Google algorithm updates:

1. Google Alerts

It is a highly informative application introduced by Google to keep you updated with anything and everything related to you and your searches. Google Alerts sends you a notification every time someone searches a keyword matching your history or any changes to the search patterns.

2. Google SearchLiaison

It is the official Twitter account for the Google algorithm that provides you with every bit of update that Google introduces to its algorithms.

3. Google Analytics

It is a free service by Google that you should opt for as a web creator. Google Analytics serves as an SEO tool and also updates you with the changes in user policies.

4. Analytics Tools

Many independent analytics tools for SEO allow their users to regularly view every change to the algorithms introduced by Google. Tools like MozCast are highly reliable and keep themselves updated with every amendment.

How Does Google Find the Best Results for its Users?Ā

Google only serves the best results to its users. Therefore, you should try to create content that would satisfy the needs of your users, pleasing Google along with it. Several factors help Google analyze your website and judge if it should be ranked high in SERPs or not.

Check out these factors to hit two birds with one stone:

1. Page Content

The content of the page is the primary route for your visitors to enter your website and look around. You should focus on creating unique content that engages the users to stay longer and browse other offerings.

2. Schema Markup

Your web page structure makes it easier for the Google crawlers to crawl through your content and analyze it. These crawlers also organize the content according to their purpose, so it could be used when a related search is conducted. Schema markup also helps the readers swiftly go to the details of the query they need an answer to instead of going through the entire content and wasting their precious time.

3. Page Loading Speed

The search results are provided by Google in a matter of seconds, making it essential that the result it provides should also quickly load when a user opens it. You should ensure that your content loads fast, even if there are many images included.

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4. User-Friendly Design

The website or webpage should support the user to check if the webpage quickly provides answers and has enough information. User-friendly design also means that your website is compatible with any device, from a personal computer to a mobile phone. Moreover, the guideline released by Google ensured that mobile-friendly websites would be potential high rankers.

5. Security

Google supports a website that ensures privacy and security for the user's data. In a major guideline release, Google also added to their algorithm that they would support HTTPS more than HTTP because of the security that HTTPS provides.

6. User Behavior

Google algorithm pays minute attention to the way a user interacts with a website. Behaviors will involve total time spent on the website, bounce-back rates, click-throughs, and website usage data.

How to Improve Ranking in SERPs?

All website creators should focus on how they want their data to be viewed by the user and Google. SEO strategy is created to help website creators and owners optimize their content for higher ranks in the search engine result pages.

Factors that play principal roles in other search engines are easily understood. However, Google updates its algorithms so many times that it is quite hard to stay abreast with the latest changes. Fortunately, some basic concepts never change and can help you optimize your content for the best user experience.

1. Superior Quality Content

It will always be the first factor affecting your ranking in the SERPs. Since the content is the first thing that introduces your viewer to your website, the content is your web page's backbone. Make sure that your content matches user intent and solves their problems.

2. Structuring

Your website or webpage content should have a fixed structure that is easy to understand and read. You should use meta titles, tags, and other on-site SEO components to optimize your content for a better ranking.

3. RankBrain

However, Google has so far only used RankBrain as an incorporated factor for its web page ranking system; it is still the third most crucial factor to take care of if you want a higher ranking on SERPs.

4. Visual Aids

You can add informative images and videos to help your viewers better understand your content. Infographics are known to influence people more than plain texts, which can be perceived as boring.

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5. Audit

You can audit your content and optimize your web pages for on-site and off-site SEO elements, check your ranking regularly, and your website usage.

FAQs

1. What Is the Key Focus of the Frequent Google Algorithm Updates?

User experience has always been the main focus of any updates in the Google algorithms. Google supports websites that ensure their readers will have easy access to all the information and the content will be easy to read through.

2. How Does Google Search Engine Work?

The Google search engine crawls through your website to look for your content, indexes it by categorizing it, and then ranks it to match the search query with the most relevance.

3. Is There a Penalty for Over-Optimization?

Yes, if your content is stuffed with keywords or phrases, Google penalizes your website or web page. The best recommendation is to keep it simple, with about five keywords per page.

4. Main Factors to Improve Ranking in the SERPs?

The main factors that can improve your ranking in the SERPs are mobile-friendliness, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness (E-A-T), and Schema Markup.

Conclusion

Although Google's search engine is quite different and more advanced than other search engines in the race, you can simply focus on improving your reader's experience on your website to ensure your seat in its SERPs. Like every other search engine, the Google search engine crawls, indexes, and ranks your web page. Optimizing the content to suit the user query and being up-to-date with the algorithm changes is the best way to get a higher ranking in Google SERPs.