International SEO and search trends: How does it all work?

If your business sells internationally, then your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts need to operate around the world, and international SEO Service can be complicated.
Multiple countries, multiple languages, and often, multiple languages within a given country. It’s easy to get tied up in knots. And even easier to confuse a search engine and create a number of typical SEO issues like duplicate content.

Fortunately, good international SEO is achievable; it just needs a little planning and the right approach for your unique situation.



What is international SEO?

International SEO is the process of organizing and optimizing your webpages to allow search engines to identify the countries you are targeting, the specific content and language for each user in a given location.

In many ways, this is a similar to how we provide SEO for small businesses that target multiple locations, since they often organize by towns, cities, counties or states.
Domain names for international SEO
You may want to consider a few things when choosing a domain name for your international SEO campaigns.

Some domains, known as country code top-level domains (ccTLD), will default to a specific location. Other top-level domains (TLDs) can be geotargeted to point at specific countries.  The sub-folders and subdomains on these TLD domains can be geo-targeted to different countries as well.
The main takeaway here is that you must ensure you have the correct domain for your international SEO requirements.

Just to confuse matters, these rules can sometimes be broken, and one such example is when promoting content with SEO. Even ccTLD domains or geotargeted TLD domains can rank informational content internationally.
This is a little contradictory to international SEO thinking, so let me give you an example.

My company operates out of the United Kingdon (UK), but we have customers all around the world. The majority of our customers find us through articles on our blog, which runs on a UK ccTLD. This proves that in the right situation, informational content can still rank internationally from a ccTLD. Go figure!

This is not to say you should disregard geotargeting; for the majority of industries, this is not the right approach. Ranking internationally is about providing the right content for the right audience, often for specific business reasons.

You want to make sure Google does not get utterly confused with the several versions of your site and bury you in the deepest, darkest depths of the search index.


How to target a specific country

The following is a basic checklist for targeting a specific country with international SEO:

Use a country-specific domain.
Specify the location you are targeting in Google Search Console.
Register your business address with Google My Business.
Include the street address of the business on the website.
Host the website locally (as much for usability as for SEO).
Get links from country-specific websites.
Use local language(s).
What we are trying to do is send a clear signal to Google about where you operate and who this content is for. Multiple signs send a clearer signal, so try to include all items on the checklist.

International SEO strategy

Typically, most international SEO efforts include targeting multiple countries, which means you must scale your approach across all desired locations.

There are a few ways to approach this which may or may not be suitable for your situation. Here are two approaches applicable to the majority of serious international SEO efforts.

 1. Content marketing
As I mentioned earlier, targeted content marketing can help pages rank internationally, even from a ccTLD site. If you can generate leads through content, then promoting your content with SEO can be the simplest option. As an example, Search Engine Land ranks internationally as a content provider, but so does the informational content of my company, which is based in the UK. This is technically easy, but you must also make sure this is a viable business model for your company. For companies that exist online, this is often a good fit, but for more traditional businesses, this is often not the right way to go about things.

2.  Single TLD site
In some industries, you will often see automatic international search results. There is a company in Australia that sells safety harnesses. It is a niche business, and without any specific international SEO, they rank pretty well across English-speaking countries such as Australia, the UK and the United States. If they wanted to focus on international SEO, they’d have little trouble doing so; a more traditional SEO process would likely be all they’d need.

The takeaway here is to do your research before you dive into a complex international setup.

3. Subfolders and geotargeting

If you require country-specific content, one of the easiest options is to create localized sub-directories on your own site. These sub-directories can be geotargeted in Google Search Console and can contain country-specific content and language. Here is an example and the pros and cons of each:

example.com — root site targeting the USA.
example.com/uk/ — UK.
example.com/de/ — Germany.
There are three key benefits to this approach. First, you are only expanding your existing site, so there may be less technical management and overhead, e.g., hosting.

Secondly, the sub-directories will inherit authority from the parent domain.

Lastly, you only have one site to promote, so while you will want country- and language-specific links, this is still simpler and more cost-effective than promoting multiple sites.

As for the cons, users may not recognize geotargeting from the universal resource locator (URL), and you will have a single server location. This can be a relatively easy way to get started with true international SEO, but it is important to understand the limitations of this approach.

4. Country-specific domains

This approach can use country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) or subdomains on a TLD. In a way, they are two slightly different techniques to achieve the same end goal.

Geo-targeted subdomains. These TLD subdomains will need to be geotargeted in Google Search Console:
www.example.com — US.
uk.example.com — UK.
de.example.com — Germany.
Country-specific ccTLD domains. These will automatically target the country associated with the ccTLD:
Amazon.com — US.
Amazon.co.uk — UK.
Amazon.de — Germany.
For businesses with a physical presence, operation or local offline marketing in the target country, this is typically the best approach– although not the most cost-effective approach, as each site must be configured and marketed independently, typically by the local marketing team.

Both of these approaches allow the business to use local web hosting and build clear location signals with country-specific links to the URL. These are strong signals and should be considered when making a decision to enter a competitive international market where you may be competing with companies resident in that country.

If you can use ccTLDs here, I tend to favor that approach over subdomains; but it requires you to own all the international ccTLD versions of your domain. Doing this can confer strong branding benefits where users prefer to click on their own ccTLD.

Folks in the UK are used to .co.uk sites, people in France prefer .fr sites and so on. SEO is just part of a larger conversation, so the right approach should be determined by the wants and needs of the target customer.

Conversely, using subdomains is not as popular, as users may not recognize or understand the domain, which could impact trust and click-through rates.

This is the approach favored by the likes of Amazon and eBay. So, if money is no object and you are playing the long game, this is typically the approach we would recommend for international SEO companies.

An important consideration here is that any problems can be multiplied across your entire portfolio of sites. So, you will want to make sure your initial site is technically perfect before you create international sites.









Referance Link:  https://searchengineland.com/international-seo-and-search-trends-how-does-it-all-work-292140

SEO content strategy: How to grow visits by 300% in one year

Content strategy is an essential part of SEO — after all, content and links are among the top three ranking factors in search.

However, you can’t simply create content for content’s sake and expect to achieve any results. Millions of blog posts are published each day, so you need to create content that stands out and earns worthwhile links. This is where the strategy part comes into play.

Strategic content planning and execution involves:

prioritizing lower difficulty topics and themes.
content layering and optimal internal linking.
understanding linkability and identifying opportunities.
regular upkeep and maintenance of existing content.
A complete SEO content strategy will include these processes.

With the glut of content published daily online, you must be strategic to garner the attention needed for success. Many brands believe publishing blog post after blog post will lead to more links, higher rankings and increased website visitors.

However, SEO is not so simple — you need to be linkworthy to secure links, there are a variety of factors beyond content and links that influence rankings, and you must build strategic buyer funnels to sustainably build relevant traffic.

Today, I want to share a content strategy we’ve used to grow several clients’ site visits by ~303 percent over the past year.



Real data, but anonymized

Prioritize lower-difficulty topics
The first step in building your content strategy is to identify which topics your content will cover.

Effective strategies begin with research — start by analyzing the keywords and themes relevant to your business. For this post, I’ll be using SEMrush (although there are plenty of viable tools available) for my research.

During your analysis, you should evaluate three main criteria:

Search volume
Competition/keyword difficulty
Traffic value/cost
The sweet spot that you’re looking for in your research is high search volume and value with low difficulty. However, all your important keywords will not fall within this ideal cross-section, so you should also prioritize lower-difficulty topics.

In SEMrush, you can quickly get an estimate for keyword difficulty by clicking “Keyword Analytics”=>”Keyword Difficulty”:


Again, there are several tools to choose from to gauge keyword difficulty; just make sure you use the same tool when comparing the difficulty of potential topics.

Of course, you can also manually assess difficulty by simply analyzing the SERPs. Examine the pages currently ranking on page one — if you see well-known brand names or high-authority sites, it likely means higher competition. Conversely, low-quality and/or low-authority results mean lower competition and a potential opportunity to fill a content gap.

Unless you’re already an established, authoritative brand, you’re going to have to prioritize lower difficulty topics. Targeting these less competitive spaces will guide your content marketing strategy, helping you focus your efforts where they will make the most impact.

Layer content and optimize internal links
As you strategize and plan content, consider opportunities where content layering and internal linking are possible.

Content layering refers to the practice of “layering” middle-of-the-funnel content on top of bottom-of-the-funnel content by covering relevant, complementary topics and internally linking between pages.

Finding and executing on these opportunities provides a wide array of benefits, including:

shared authority. Middle-of-the-funnel content is typically more linkable than bottom-of-the-funnel content, and through internal linking, valuable equity can be passed from the links pointing to your mid-funnel content through to your converting pages.
increased brand authority and recognition. Ranking pages for mid-funnel queries can build authority and recognition that pays dividends later in bottom-funnel searches.
link acquisition for converting pages. Promotion of mid-funnel pages can yield links for bottom-funnel pages if they’re strategically and contextually linked within the content you’re promoting.
Content layering and internal linking need to be part of any content strategy. By layering content and linking internally, you can structure your site in a way that’s easy to follow for readers and search engines alike.

Focus on linkability and opportunity
Any SEO strategy — particularly a content strategy — must account for links.

Links remain an important ranking factor and have numerous benefits beyond search. Because links are so valuable, you should focus on linkability as you plan content.

Linkability, or “linkworthiness,” simply refers to the potential for securing links. People link to other sites in a variety of ways online, so to evaluate linkability, you need to think about why someone might link.

The first place to start is with the potential outreach market for your content. These are the people who might be interested in sharing and linking to your content if you contacted them and let them know it existed.

A few factors to consider as you analyze a potential outreach audience include:

search volume for associated keyword. If nobody is searching for this topic, it’s likely nobody will be interested in linking.
the number of unique domains linking to top results. If the top results can’t muster many links, you will likely struggle as well.
types of pages linking to top results. A quick manual review of the linking pages will give you a sense of whether these types of links would be achievable for your site.
Along with evaluating the outreach market, you need to analyze link opportunity. Analyzing opportunity essentially boils down to one question: Can I create something better or more useful than what is currently ranking?

SEO expert Brian Dean’s “skyscraper technique” — in which marketers identify great content, create something better, and then reach out to relevant parties who have linked to similar content — is a great option for capitalizing on link opportunity. However, you must adapt the technique to meet your specific situation.

The key portion of the skyscraper technique is creating something better than what is ranking. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to spend hours creating the most comprehensive resource imaginable — sometimes it only takes small tweaks to deliver something better.

Some common options for improving on what’s already ranking includes:

creating a more searchable title.
improving readability and formatting (headers, sub-headers, bullet lists and so forth).
optimizing for page speed.
citing reputable authorities and source (also provides built-in promotion opportunities).
expanding on or exploring the topic in more depth.
sharing original or new research.
Along with these improvements, another way to elevate your content above the competition is to add extra formats. Perhaps the topic would be better suited to a video? Maybe you can add original photography or animation to create something that is best in class.

Adding extra content types can require more of an investment, but it’s worth it. Investing in at least one sunk cost differentiator — photography, video or design, for example — will truly set your content apart and help you secure the links needed to outpace the competition.

Regularly update and maintain existing content
While most content marketing strategies focus on crafting new content, a complete content strategy will also account for existing content and pages.

As you identify potential link opportunities and content gaps, don’t forget to take stock of your existing content. Sometimes it can be easier (and more effective) to update existing content rather than create something from scratch.

In fact, many of the methods for improving content listed above can be applied to your own pages.

Adding extra content types can be particularly effective for upgrading existing content. For example, adding a video to a long-form how-to post adds extra value and linkability, and can even capture bonus traffic and attention via YouTube — as I demonstrated in this post.

An alternative option to upgrading is repurposing. Rather than adding extra content types or formats, you can repurpose an underperforming content asset into something that better serves the needs of searchers. Analyze the SERPs you want to rank in, see if there is a prevailing content type, and then match that format.

Finally, a simple way to keep your existing pages fresh is to add a “Last updated” tag at the top of the page. This tactic will allow you to continuously update and improve a page as the topic it covers evolves over time, keeping your page fresh and competitive in search. Including the last updated date will also inform readers how current the information is, serving as a form of social proof.

Your SEO content plan should largely concentrate on how you can deliver new, engaging content to your audience. But don’t forget to dedicate some time and effort to improving existing pages as well.

Outline of an effective SEO content strategy
To recap all the information shared here, follow this outline and implement these practices in your content planning.

Prioritize lower difficulty topics.
Analyze opportunities based on search volume, keyword difficulty and traffic value.
Manually review SERPs to find gaps and low-competition phrases.
Layer content and optimize internal links.
Layered content benefits your converting pages through shared link equity, increased brand authority and direct link acquisition.
Focus on linkability and opportunity.
Evaluate potential outreach markets.
Analyze link opportunity, make improvements and execute something better.
Invest in at least one sunk cost differentiator.
Regularly update and maintain existing content.
Improve and upgrade existing pages.
Repurpose existing assets into something more linkworthy and useful.
Include a “last updated” function to manage content freshness.
We’ve used this SEO content strategy time and time again to help our clients grow their site visitors, and I hope you find success with it as well.

Website Design Service Jharkhand  | SEO Service in Jharkhand

Buying a pre-owned domain? Check these things first

Purchasing a previously owned domain can be risky, but columnist Stephanie LeVonne has some tips to help you vet the domain and ensure a smooth site migration.

With over 1 billion websites on the World Wide Web today, it comes as no surprise that the domain name you may want to use is already owned by someone else. Luckily, in some cases, the current owner might be willing to part with it — for the right price.

Acquiring a pre-owned domain can have a drastic impact on your SEO efforts, so it is important to approach such a purchase with caution. It is recommended that you do your due diligence — it’s not uncommon for a domain name to have changed hands many times, and just like buying a used car, it’s often difficult to get the full history.

While examining the SERPs and scanning for any spammy links may be a good first step, it’s important to conduct a thorough assessment to ensure that the domain does not have a manual action penalty or warning from Google. There are many small issues that may not initially be cause for concern; however, in aggregate, these problems can seriously hamper your domain’s ability to rank.

If you’ve bought, or are looking to buy, a pre-owned domain, read below for 10 things you should check before proceeding with a site migration:

1. Google Search Console

Obtaining access to the Google Search Console account is critical for analyzing the health of the domain you’re looking to acquire. If you don’t have the credentials to this account, it’s worthwhile to reach out to the current admin and request access. Likewise, if this property hasn’t been set up, you can request forOnce logged into the Search Console account, you’ll want to go to Search Traffic > Manual Actions and look for any notes on the account.

You can also click on Security Issues, which will notify you if Google suspects that your website has been hacked.

While you can still make a valid assessment about the domain’s health by performing other checks, it’s highly recommended that you access Google Search Console if possible, since this is the only way to see manual action penalties on the domain.

2. Google Analytics & Bing Webmaster Tools

If you have access to Google Analytics (GA), poke around the account and make note of any abnormal traffic patterns or unusual URLs receiving organic traffic. You can also look at referral traffic to determine if spammy websites are mainly responsible for driving traffic to the site. If the site does not have GA set up, you won’t be able to backfill the data, therefore making this check null and void.

Similar to Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools has a site security section that will alert you about malware, phishing attempts and changes in your sites SSL certificate status. You can also visit the “Page Traffic” report under Reports & Data to assess the top landing pages, much like GA.

3. Site indexation (SERP analysis)

Use the site search operator [site:yourwebsite.com] to conduct a Google search, and check for any spammy or malicious landing pages in the SERPs. You can also add on the search operator [inurl:keyword], replacing “keyword” with red flag terms like “online games,” “gambling,” “porn” and so on.

While Google typically displays a warning in the SERPs when it detects a hacked site, not all content may be flagged. Read here for a more comprehensive look at a hacked site.

4. Blacklist status

Your domain may be blacklisted if there is a history of sending spammy emails, which may in turn lead to your email server’s IP address getting blocked. You can check the Blacklist status of the domain you seek to acquire by using Site Securi.

5. Internal & external linking

One telltale sign of domain misuse is link manipulation. A compromised domain may use overly specific anchor text phrases to link out to other spammy content. In some cases, when hackers want to remain even more elusive, the anchor text will remain unchanged, making link manipulation even harder to detect.

Fortunately, you can use a tool such as Screaming Frog, which allows you to crawl up to 500 URLS for free. Once in the program, click the “outlinks” tab at the bottom to see what a specific URL links to.

When looking at external linking, you can use a tool like Majestic to get a snapshot of the backlink profile. From here, you can take a deep dive into other off-page factors, such as the referring domains which send the most backlinks to the site.

You can even get as granular as seeing which TLDs (top-level domains) your backlinks are coming from. For example, if you have a US-based website and notice that 90 percent of your backlinks are coming from Taiwan, that may be cause for concern.

Similarly, having a disproportionate amount of backlinks coming from one or more sites that may imply that the domain used a pay-to-play strategy to acquire those links, or perhaps the site has been the unfortunate recipient of negative SEO.

6. Anchor text usage

Another important but often overlooked off-page factor is anchor text usage. Anchor text is simply a word or phrase that is hyperlinked and takes a user to your website. Anchor text signals topical relevancy to Google — for example, if you have a page about women’s fleece pajamas, it would be ideal for other sites to link to that page using that phrase or something similar.

f you plan to wipe all content off the domain you are purchasing, these anchor text phrases will lead to 404 pages, thus having no effect on the site. However, if there are any links pointing to the home page that use anchor text that is not in line with your content, it’s recommended you reach out to webmasters to update their anchor text or remove the links altogether.

This could be a problem if numerous sites are linking to the domain you plan to acquire using location-specific anchor text. For example, if you sell women’s designer shoes in the US, and most of the anchor text says “Designer boots Paris,” then you may be sending Google mixed signals and implying that your company is based in France.

7. Local citations

Local citations that reference your business’s NAP (Name, Address and Phone number) are a critical local ranking signal. A citation is whenever your NAP information shows up on another website or directory. Before migrating to a pre-owned website, you should identify all instances of NAP that appear on the web and update them. There are several ways to make these updates:

Identify which, if any, big data providers (e.g., Localeze, Factual, InfoGroup) were previously being utilized. Updating citations via these local content managers allows you to concisely manage your local listings across the web.

Reach out to webmasters directly and ask them to update their citations.

Perform outreach to gain new local citations.

8. Hosting location

While hosting location is not a direct SEO ranking factor, it’s important to at least make sure your website is hosted in the same country where you do business in. In fact, IP location has been shown to impact page speed, which in turn can impact your site’s SEO performance. You can use an IP location tool to determine your hosting location.

9. Domain Authority

Domain Authority (DA), a proprietary metric coined by Moz, aims to predict the “ranking potential” of your website. In an ideal world, the site you are looking to migrate to would have a higher Domain Authority than your current site. The higher the Domain Authority, the more likely you are to appear in the SERPs.

While the formula for calculating Domain Authority is proprietary, we know that backlinks tend to play the biggest role in growing your DA score.

If you are acquiring a site with a DA lower than yours, know that rebuilding this score will be a long-term effort. You can expect to see some movement around the three- to six-month mark; however, it may take up to 12 months, or even longer, to match your site’s previous DA.

This shouldn’t deter you from migrating to a pre-owned site; however, you will need an ongoing SEO strategy over the course of the next 12 months to make sure you are moving the needle.

10. Page speed

Last but not least, one of the most important factors to benchmark prior to any migration is page speed. There are a host of free SEO tools to help you gauge page speed, such as Google PageSpeed Insights, Web Page Test, and GTMetrix, for those looking to get extra granular.

While page speed will be influenced by your site’s architecture, if you plan to stay on the same CMS (content management system) as the current domain, ensure that you’re using the most up-to-date version before migrating any content. CMS updates typically include patches for any vulnerabilities –- and many CMSes are constantly optimizing for speed as well.

Final thoughts

Once you’ve completed these 10 checks and resolved any issues, you should feel confident to proceed with your domain migration. Before you begin, there are a few important properties you should make sure are set up correctly so you can start collecting data from the get-go:

Reference link: http://searchengineland.com/buying-a-pre-owned-domain-here-are-10-things-to-check-first-280992

Google Maps local listings can now have videos uploaded

Google announced in the Local Guides Forum that they now are rolling out support to upload videos to Google Maps local listings on Android devices.

The help document explains the feature is currently only available to Android users. Google wrote, “To add videos, you must use an Android device. To remove videos, you must use an Android device or a computer.”

You can add videos from three different areas:

• Add a video from a place’s page.
• Add videos from “Your contributions.”
• Add video using Google Photos or your Gallery app.

Meg from Google announced this first to the Google Local Guides who earn points when they add videos or photos to local listings. Meg from Google wrote:

Today, Local Guides on Android have the chance to add the first-ever videos to millions of places. The possibilities are really exciting: Take viewers on a mini tour of a store you love, or show the bustling scene at your favorite neighborhood restaurant. You can even do a quick review where you showcase a place’s best item or offer tips for visitors.

How to promote to get top rank of Youtube Video??

Marketers were learning that they couldn't just publish a high volume of content -- it also had to be high-quality and optimized in ways that made it as discoverable as possible through search engines.

And once upon a time, that content was largely limited to the written word. Eleven years later, that's no longer the case -- a comprehensive content strategy includes written work like blogs and ebooks, as well as media like podcasts, visual assets, and videos.

That last part -- video -- continues to be on the rise. According to the 2017 State of Inbound, marketers named video as a huge disruptor. "I mostly write content right now," one respondent said, "but I'm afraid it may begin to diminish more and more with video."
Check out our interactive guide to creating high-quality videos for social media here.

And with the rise of other content formats comes the need to optimize them for search. One increasingly important place to do that is on YouTube, which is a video distribution website used by the masses

But how does that work? What are the steps you need to take to optimize your YouTube channel for search? We've outlined some major tips below. And if you're short on time, no problem -- check out the video summary here.


1) Title

When we search for videos, one of the first things that our eyes are drawn to is the title. That's often what determines whether or not the viewer will click to watch your video, so the title should not only be compelling, but also, clear and concise.

It also helps if the title closely matches what the viewer is searching for. Research conducted by Backlinko found that videos with an exact keyword match in the title have a slight advantage over those that don’t. Here's a linear representation of those findings:

So while "using your target keyword in your title may help you rank for that term," report author Brian Dean explains, "the relationship between keyword-rich video titles and rankings is" weak, at best.

Finally, make sure to keep your title fairly short -- HubSpot Content Strategist Alicia Collins recommends limiting it to 60 characters to help keep it from getting cut off in results pages.

2) Description

First things first: According to Google, the official character limit for YouTube video descriptions is 1,000 characters. And while it's okay to use all of that space, remember that your viewer most likely came here to watch a video, not to read a story.

If you do choose to write a longer description, keep in mind that YouTube only displays the first two or three lines of text -- that amounts to about 100 characters. After that point, viewers have to click “show more” to see the full description. That's why we suggest front-loading the description with the most important information, like CTAs or crucial links.

As for optimizing the video itself, it doesn't hurt to add a transcript of the video, especially for those who have to watch it without volume. That said, Backlinko's research also found no correlation between descriptions that were optimized for a certain keyword and the rankings for that term.


Dean is careful not to encourage ditching an optimized description altogether, though. "An optimized description helps you show up in the suggested videos sidebar," he writes, "which is a significant source of views for most channels."

3) Tags

YouTube's official Creator Academy suggests using tags to let viewers know what your video is about. But you're not just informing your viewers -- you're also informing YouTube itself. Dean explains that the platform uses tags "to understand the content and context of your video."

That way, YouTube figures out how to associate your video with similar videos, which can broaden your content's reach. But choose your tags widely. Don't use an irrelevant tag because you think it'll get you more views -- in fact, Google might penalize you for that. And similar to your description, lead with the most important keywords, including a good mix of those that are common and more long-tail (as in, those that answer a question like "how do I?").

4) Category

Once you upload a video, you can categorize it under “Advanced settings.” Choosing a category is another way to group your video with similar content on YouTube.

It might not be as simple as it looks. In fact, YouTube's Creator Academy suggests that marketers go through a comprehensive process to determine which category each video belongs in. It's helpful, the guide writes, "to think about what is working well for each category" you're considering by answering questions like:

Who are the top creators within the category? What are they known for, and what do they do well?
Are there any patterns between the audiences of similar channels within a given category?
Do the videos within a similar category have share qualities like production value, length, or format?

5) Thumbnail

Your video thumbnail is the main image viewers see when scrolling through a list of video results. Along with the video's title, that thumbnail sends a signal to the viewer about the video's content, so it can impact the number of clicks and views your video receives.

While you can always pick one of the thumbnail options auto-generated by YouTube, we highly recommend uploading a custom thumbnail. The Creator Academy reports that “90% of the best performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails,” recommending the use of images that are 1280x720 pixels -- representing a 16:9 ratio -- that are saved as 2MB or smaller .jpg, .gif, .bmp, or .png files. If you follow those parameters, it can help to ensure that your thumbnail appears with equally high quality across multiple viewing platforms.

It's important to note that your YouTube account has to be verified in order to upload a custom thumbnail image. To do that, visit youtube.com/verify and follow the instructions listed there.

6) SRT Files (Subtitles & Closed Captions)

Like much of the other text we've discussed here, subtitles and closed captions can boost YouTube search optimization by highlighting important keywords.

In order to add subtitles or closed captions to your video, you'll have to upload a supported text transcript or timed subtitles file. For the former, you can also directly enter transcript text for a video so that it auto-syncs with the video.

Adding subtitles follows a similar process, however, you can limit the amount of text you want displayed. For either, head to your video manager then click on “Videos" under “Video Manager.” Find the video you want to add subtitles or closed captioning to, and click the drop-down arrow next to the edit button. Then, choose “Subtitles/CC.” You can then select how you’d like to add subtitles or closed captioning.

Google has provided great instructions on how to do that here, as well as in the video below.


7) Cards and End Screens 

Cards

When you're watching a video, have you ever seen a small white, circular icon with an "i" in the center appear in the corner, or a translucent bar of text asking you to subscribe? Those are Cards, which Creator Academy describes as "preformatted notifications that appear on desktop and mobile which you can set up to promote your brand and other videos on your channel."

You can add up to five cards to a single video, and there are six types:

Channel cards that direct viewers to another channel.
Donation cards to encourage fundraising on behalf of U.S. nonprofit organizations.
Fan funding to ask your viewers to help support the creation of your video content.
Link cards, which direct viewers to an external site, approved crowdfunding platform, or an approved merchandise selling platform.
Poll cards, which pose a question to viewers and allow them to vote for a response.
Video or playlist cards, which link to other YouTube content of this kind.
For detailed steps on adding a card to your video, follow these official steps from Google, or check out the video below.


End Screens

End screens display similar information as cards, but as you may have guessed, they don't display until a video is over, and are a bit more visually detailed in nature. A good example is the overlay with a book image and a visual link to view more on the video below:

There are a number of detailed instructions for adding end screens depending on what kind of platform you want to design them for, as well as different types of content allowed for them by YouTube. Google outlines the details for how to optimize for all of those considerations here.

It's important to note that YouTube is always testing end screens to try to optimize the viewer experience, so there are times when "your end screen, as designated by you, may not appear." Take these factors into account as you decide between using either cards or end screens.

5 massive SEO and content shifts you need to master right now

Google has thrown a lot at marketers in just the last five years. All of these big changes — from rolling out major algorithm updates to shifting to mobile-first — have essentially had the same goal: to provide the best possible search experience to users. Google wants to show users the best content at the right time on the right device as quickly as possible.

Some marketers have struggled to keep up with and adapt to these huge changes. Meanwhile, other brands are thriving. Why? Because they have learned to stay ahead of Google’s ever-evolving algorithms by focusing on content and quality.

Smart marketers know that they must have similar goals to Google. That means providing content that resonates, engages and converts — wherever, whenever and however consumers discover it.

It’s important to not just look at where Google is today, but where Google is heading over the next six months, next year and beyond. If you can stay ahead of these momentous shifts, you can stay ahead of Google and your competition to dominate online in your industry.

The future in search is now. It’s time to start thinking forward — and fast! Below are five SEO shifts that you need to master as we head into the latter part of this year.

1. From SEO to ‘SEO and content convergence’

Just as content alone isn’t enough to guarantee SEO success, SEO alone isn’t enough to guarantee that people will find and engage with your content. Data is helping marketers understand consumer intent to create intelligent content that aligns with the customer journey to deliver a successful and memorable experience.

How marketers can master this shift:

• Ensure your content creation is based on data. Content marketing without data lacks purpose. Define the audience, engagement and conversion metrics that matter to your brand. Track and measure these to gain the insights you need to create meaningful content that people want to consume and improve future content marketing efforts.
• Foster search, social and content synergy. In combination, organic search, social and content help brands achieve their goals and objectives. Creating high-quality content with SEO in mind from the beginning boosts search visibility. That great content can then be further amplified via social media, which creates demand you can later harvest via search.
• Maximize your search engine results page (SERP) footprint. Create and optimize high-ROI content like articles, videos and infographics to help people (by answering important or popular questions or providing practical information) or capitalize on trendy topics. Then help your brand further stand out in the SERPs by winning real estate with featured snippets, site links, related questions, images, videos and tweets.

2. From mobile to mobile-first

For years, Google told marketers about the coming shift to mobile first — and it finally arrived in 2015, when mobile searches surpassed desktop. Today, optimizing for mobile search, devices and usability is no longer optional. It’s mandatory. Your brand must be mobile-ready if you want to capitalize on mobile micro-moments.

How marketers can master this shift:

• Recognize that this is a mobile-first world. Brands that aren’t mobile-optimized see 68 percent less traffic, according to BrightEdge research (my company). This means that understanding mobile user behavior and intent is essential today. Make sure your mobile experience meets (but ideally exceeds) expectations, or you risk losing market share and revenue to the competition.
• Make your mobile SEO fast and furious. In addition to being attractive and easy to navigate, mobile websites must be fast. According to Google research, 53 percent of mobile users leave sites that take more than three seconds to load. Following technical mobile SEO best practices (e.g., image optimization, redirects, JavaScript and CSS) is a necessary barrier to entry in today’s digital world.
• Consider contextual mobile content. Focus on creating content that mobile users want and will find valuable. Typically, mobile users are in research mode — they are searching for information they need or they need some inspiration. Make sure your brand is there and influences that decision when they’re ready to convert, which is more likely to be on desktop or in store than on a smartphone.

3. From local to hyperlocal

The hyperlocal opportunity has never been greater for marketers. Hyperlocal targeting lets you reach people based on their location. This is an excellent way for brands to capitalize on “near me” searches and “I-want-to-go” micro-moments and become hyperrelevant and hypervaluable.

How marketers can master this shift:

• Own local search. Make sure critical contact information that people search for is prominent or easy to find. This includes name, address, phone, hours and directions.
• Hyperlocal optimization = hyperimportant. Google’s personalized hyperlocal results give more visibility to smaller geographic locations. Optimize your Google My Business page, create localized content and landing pages, use local business Schema markup and monitor the performance of your local keyword rankings.
• Understand the intersection of local and mobile. People who do local searches on smartphones have higher intent: 50 percent of smartphone users will visit a business or store within a day, according to Google. Optimizing for local also means optimizing for users who are on the go. These people have different needs and expectations than those doing local searches on other devices.

4. From text to voice

About 20 to 25 percent of mobile queries are voice searches, depending on who you believe at Google. Although it’s clearly far too soon to declare the death of text searches, voice search is an emerging area marketers need to pay attention to heading forward. Voice search will continue to rise as consumer adoption of virtual assistants (e.g., Siri, Alexa) increases.

How marketers can master this shift:

• More voice searches, more answers. Voice search will bring different types of search results because the majority of voice searches are questions (who, what, where, when, why, how). Fortunately for marketers, these questions also reveal user intent. Identify high-intent keywords, and optimize content that answers these questions to ensure your brand will be found in the changing SERPs.
• Urge to voice search rising. People are adopting voice search because it is now more accurate and useful than ever — it is faster and easier than typing on a smartphone keyboard. By 2020, 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches, according to a forecast from comScore. Identify and provide content in a format that meets the needs of these types of searchers.
• Get smart about intelligent agents. Many voice searches happen at home, in addition to in the car or on the go, resulting in a more connected world. These intelligent agents are using semantics, search history and user interests and behaviors to provide the best results. So, make sure content is aligned with the intent and interests of customers at the right moment of the decision journey. Be the best answer. Forrester analyst Collin Colburn shares some great insights on this topic in this Forrester blog.

5. From data to machine learning

Google relies in part on machine learning, in the form of RankBrain, to make sense of the massive amounts of data and deliver the best possible search results for users. As marketers, we, too, must turn to machine learning to understand the intent, interests and behavior of our audience so we can deliver and personalize content that they want.

How marketers can master this shift:

• View data as a source of truth. Martech stacks are being built around data integrations and performance because we simply have too much data and not enough analysts or hours in the day to make sense of it all. To capitalize on demand, spot patterns and stay ahead of the competition, marketers need to go beyond the “what” of data to understand the “when” and “why” of analytics.
• Utilize AI & machine learning. Machine learning helps marketers spend less time analyzing data and more time creating content that will engage and influence prospects and customers. Let AI and machine learning deliver actionable insights about your audience and content performance.
• Define metrics and measurement. Data allows marketers to make better and more accurate decisions more quickly. Define the metrics that matter to your brand, and monitor your search and content data. This will allow you to track your progress, iterate and improve your content production and organic search optimization for greater visibility and greater share of voice.

                                

                                   Reference site: http://searchengineland.com/5-massive-seo-content-shifts-need-master-right-now-274647

The impact (and lack thereof) of Google’s mobile popup algorithm

Back in August 2016, Google warned that it would be releasing an algorithm to crack down on interstitials on mobile pages. Now that the update has been live for a month, columnist Glenn Gabe shares his findings on the impact.

 It’s not often that Google announces an algorithm update in advance. But when they do, not only can webmasters prepare for that update, we can also track its rollout once Google pulls the trigger. That provides a rare opportunity to gauge the impact of the algorithm update and determine what its effects are.

That’s exactly what I’ve been doing since January 10, 2017.
In August of 2016, Google announced that they would be rolling out an update on January 10, 2017, that could impact URLs employing intrusive mobile popups or interstitials. For example, if a URL presented an interstitial that covered a substantial part of the content, then that URL could be demoted in the mobile search results. The web as a whole cheered, as many users were extremely frustrated by aggressive mobile popups.
So, as January approached, many SEOs, webmasters and business owners wondered what the actual impact would be. Would there be mass casualties, minor bumps in the algorithmic road or something in between? Based on Google’s announcement, you would think that sites employing intrusive popups or interstitials would have gotten smoked by the algorithm. That would make sense, but when you’re dealing in an algorithmic world, the devil is in the details.

Preparing for the mobile popup algorithm

As the rollout neared, I had many questions. Would the update actually work? How extreme would it be? Would there be loopholes? How would it impact branded versus non-branded queries? Would large-scale sites be impacted as much as smaller sites? And so on and so forth.
That’s why I prepared for the update by collecting as many sites using mobile popups or interstitials as possible. My goal was to benchmark those sites and then gauge the impact as the mobile popup algorithm rolled out. I’m now tracking close to 70 domains on my mobile popup list — and those sites are across verticals, including news publishers, entertainment, sports, e-commerce retailers, bloggers, music and more.
Starting on January 10, I began checking my list twice per day to see which sites were still breaking the rules and which ones weren’t. And for the ones breaking the new Google mobile popup law, how much negative impact would they see? Would they see any impact at all?

My travels along the popup algorithm trail

My research took me across many sites, both large and small, across many categories and locations. It was fascinating to see which sites raised the white flag and stopped using popups or interstitials and which ones stood their ground and kept them. It was also eye-opening to analyze the various ways websites employed popups and interstitials in this new world (if they kept them). It was enlightening, to say the least.
And of course, I was able to see many different types of ads and interstitials, including benign newsletter signups, aggressive ads that take over your screen, autoplay video in popups, broken ads in popups, and even malware and malicious downloads from ads in popups. There were times I felt like I needed battle armor while visiting some sites.


Source Link: http://searchengineland.com/impact-lack-threreof-googles-mobile-popup-algorithm-268991