Sep 3, 2022 1216 reads

Adapting New Tool for Our Automated Jobs: Apache Airflow

Performance marketing combines advertising and innovation to assist merchants and affiliates expand their companies in any aspect. Each retailer's campaign is carefully targeted, ensuring that everyone has a chance to succeed and win. When all the operations on each side are done correctly, performance marketing offers win-win situations for both merchants and affiliates. As Tech Team, we gave a decision about writing new blogs about the digital marketing projects we build with the software engineering skill sets. We mainly produce new solutions for different brands and our main goal is to increase their performance with data analysis and automation projects. On that sense, we decided to publish new blogs related to our projects. What do we produce as a team? As a tech team, we adopted the modern performance marketing ideology and as a result of this, we produce an automation project using Airflow to schedule product reports for our customers. On our product reports, we are gathering information about the unique codes, availability, discounted prices, discount percentages and many more related features about the products by visiting their URLs. Moreover, we have a solid background on Google Sheets to add more power on our automation projects for more monitoring & reporting purposes. Furthermore, we also used docker container technology to adapt the Airflow environment into a virtual environment for the problems that we can face during deployment phase. To be more clear, Airflow is an automation tool to create data pipelines for multiple purposes. The main reason we work with Airflow is, rather than cron jobs, Airflow provides us a UI service to monitor all the processes in almost real-time. In addition to that, analyzing the logs on the platform has a significant impact on catching and regulating errors during the process. Moreover, when an error occurs on the system during the processes, with the configuration file, we can get emails for any kind of errors and it provides us a service for instant interference. First of all, the whole process depends on scraping and on the performance side of the whole process, we mainly use parallel threads working asynchronously and with that way we can scrape all the data in minutes for a large scale of URLs to be checked. We designed multiple virtual machine templates on Google Cloud which can operate all the required tasks in a given order. The most significant part of the order is to deliver data through the processes in a single template for the upcoming reports on the Airflow platform. What is Airflow? Let’s get more deep inside into the main structure of Airflow to understand how it works and how we can adapt this data pipeline environment to different projects for future purposes. “A DAG specifies the dependencies between Tasks, and the order in which to execute them and run retries; the Tasks themselves describe what to do, be it fetching data, running analysis, triggering other systems, or more”[1]. Basically we can think of Airflow as a way more complex version of cron jobs. In Airflow we are using workers as threads to operate all the Tasks. First of all, we need to know that all Airflow tasks work on a pre-structured object named ‘DAG’, which is a terminology to annotate each task we scheduled on the Airflow system. For example; with DAG( "Company_X_Product_Report", schedule_interval='@daily', catchup=False, default_args=default_arguments ) as dag: 1- We can define DAGs using Context Manager. DAG structure has so many features such as time scheduling, naming and retry options in case of any errors, helping us to regulate and set each of them on the data pipeline environment. In addition to that, we also have default-arguments to add more features on the DAG structure. For example; default_arguments = { 'owner':'AnalyticaHouse', 'start_date':days_ago(1), "sla": timedelta(hours=1), 'email': ['analyticahouse@analyticahouse.com'], 'email_on_failure': True, } 2- We used multiple functions to operate each task in a DAG. To be more clear, whole process can be expressed as: url_task >> scrape_task >> write_to_sheet_task >> find_path_task >> parse_message_task >> write_message_task 3- We also separate each task with corresponding functions using PythonOperators. Mainly these operators are responsible for the Python functions handling the required duties. One of the most used ones are Bash Operators and Python Operators for executing bash and python scripts. In our project, we mainly used Python Operators for executing each function one by one. In this example we showed that each scheduled python function needs to get implemented in such a fashion that Airflow will interpret all the implemented format as a job. We used more than 5 main functions to operate the whole scheduled job and we can think like we are adding the scheduled jobs to a stack structure. In this manner, all the PythonOperators will be added into a line and get executed one by one in a row. If one of the tasks fails (if exception raises), all operations fail and Airflow informs us. url_task = PythonOperator( task_id='get_url_data', python_callable=getUrlData, ) Combining the Airflow architecture with Docker Docker is a free and open platform for building, delivering, and operating apps. Docker allows you to decouple your apps from your infrastructure, allowing you to swiftly release software. In that sense, we also used Docker in our development stages and at the end of the day, we created a docker image based on Apache’s docker image on DockerHub[3]. We came up with small changes such as network bridging and port directions for other purposes. Basically, while we are developing the Airflow environment, we are faced with different minor and major problems including packet incompatibilities and version problems. Moreover, before we started working with Airflow, we did research about how we can adapt Docker technology to the Airflow project and then we made several meetings to have a common sense about the advantages that Docker can bring into action. Shortly after, during the development process we got stuck in so many points and every time we crash into the wall, rather than removing Airflow from the server, we deleted the container that we created and re-deployed it with the same Docker image. In addition to that, composing or creating a Docker container helped us to save so much time during the development part of the project. Advantages: Time saving in case of any unexpected errors during the development phase Easy to configure networking and volume features for the development of the project Isolated environment which is good for managing small bugs and errors Containerized structure brings easy configurations for each build time Challenges during the development Before we start implementing the project, we made a lot of brainstorming to figure out the critical parts of it because every time we come up with an architectural design, we were always adding more features on top of it to make it the best in the industry. We are a team sharing the ideology of creating a product in an impeccable way. As a result of this ideology, the starting point of the project differs from the end product. First, we built the project on Google Cloud VM and then with the other projects we developed, it started to get harder for us to manage and deploy all of them. Then, as a team, we decided to work with Docker to make everything easier. We are a young team eager to learn and build new projects with the latest and reliable technologies. In that manner, we also implemented error-catching modules because while we were developing the project, we faced server and Airflow crashes for no reason. Catching errors has an essential impact on us because customers that we are working with need to receive product reports daily, and during the flow of the whole automation project, in case of any errors, it results in undelivered reports. References [1],[2]-https://airflow.apache.org/docs/apache-airflow/stable/concepts/overview.html [3] https://hub.docker.com/r/apache/airflow

Sep 3, 2022 1088 reads

The Key to Personalizing your Content: Persona Building for Digital Marketing

If you’ve ever wondered how classical marketing has evolved over the years into personalized marketing, this blog post right here presents one of the building blocks of the matter. The digital age presents us with a constantly evolving environment when it comes to marketing practices. When some brands are flexible and agile with keeping up with these evolvements, some are having a much harder time adapting. Our deep dive will begin by explaining how classical marketing is evolving into personalized marketing, and continue by explaining the importance of building spot-on personas that align with our key performance indicators. Classical Marketing vs. Personalized Marketing We’ve been observing different ways of managing masses ever since the 1928 release of Edward Bernays’ Propaganda studies, which goes into detail of how people can be manipulated into taking action around a common goal. It is safe to say that the classical understanding of marketing formed around this idea, way before the concept of digital. Before, products were presented by creating a hype around them, a hype that assures that individuals are missing out on something by not owning them. However, in modern society, when there are innumerable products and services, is there really one type of hype that motivates all individuals? This is exactly when personalized marketing comes into play. Individuals that are motivated by the exact same needs do not exist in modern society anymore. Sure, there are some commonalities between different individual needs, but there are many varieties that did not exist beforehand. Whether you are a world famous, well-routed brand or a beginner, this is one fact that applies to all: We must acknowledge the existence of not one but multiple different target audiences that our brand can attract. Later on, we must find the common purchasing motivations within these audiences and form our ad creatives accordingly. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What is a Persona? A persona is basically a fictional character that we create in marketing studies in order to get to know our target audiences. Personas’ characters are defined by their characteristics via demographic details along with their interests, behaviors, motivations, fears and goals. These characteristics should align with our brand’s value proposition and be identified accordingly. Creating personas can be interpreted as designing interactions with our audiences. With our personal interactions, as we understand what someone is motivated by, we shift the way we talk to them. It is a very similar case for a brand. As a brand, we have an established tone of voice and we shift our messages according to the wants and needs of our personas. Now that we know the “what” of personas let’s move onto the “how” we create them. How to create personas for marketing operations We’ve established that personas are fictional characters that are formed to represent certain percentages of a population. However, we must not rely on our imagination while creating them. Characteristics of a persona should be defined according to research and/or data gathering processes. If you are a rooted brand that is already engaged in digital operations, the best thing to do would be to analyze your existing customers and group them under certain criteria. This part may sound like classical CRM methodologies and we cannot say that they are totally unrelated. The real challenge is for new brands or brands who wish to reach a completely different audience profile than the ones that existed beforehand. The first thing we need to do is market research. As any source on marketing will tell you, knowing your audience is the key. However, the research should not stay limited to the people who are most likely to use our products. If our product is a rather expensive one, we can assume that it will be more desirable for people with higher income. But is that all? Aren’t there moments in other people’s lives where they save up intensely in order to become an owner of our product? The answer is yes. Therefore, our biggest challenge would be to determine these moments for our audience and choose where we will catch their attention. That is why, when creating personas for marketing operations, aspects such as motivations, fears and interests are much more relevant and important than generic demographic segmentations. In order to presume our audience’s moments of intent, we need to be looking into their other habits so that we can decide on what part of their life journey our products or services would fit the most. If you wish to dig into this way of thinking more, you can start by researching what an empathy map is, but that is not what we are mapping out today. How we get to know our audience is done through data gatheration. Whether the data comes from website cookies or general publicly available research findings, we need to make sure that our presumptions about our audience is as accurate as can be. Not sure where to start? Well, there is always Google Trends which shows the related searches your audience is more likely to make if they show an interest in what you offer. There are websites such as Statista that publish research reports and give you a wider understanding of your audience’s habits. Keyword Planner is also a crucial source as it offers related search terms that might be outside of our scope when trying to understand our audience’s behavior. When you think you have different enough characteristics to compile under different personas, start creating the structure. If some personas have a lot more motivations or fears than others, perhaps they can still be divided into different personas. If they have less motivations or fears than others, perhaps there isn’t much need for taking them into account separately. After your personas are done, start building your creative structure accordingly. How to create personalized communication for different personas Now that we have decided on our personas, it’s time to decide how we communicate with them. Since we know that all of our personas are differentiated with their motivations, we need to come up with different visual assets and texts that will feed into their motivations the most while reviewing our brand. Do we use video assets or static ones? Do we ask intriguing questions to our audience or do we simply state how awesome we are? The answers all depend on how we’ve built our personas and how we think we can best catch their attention. Let’s talk about Spotify for a moment. They provide the ability to stream music, and everyone likes music right? Then why does Spotify use different ad creatives? Well, it has several different premium packages that apply to different types of people. Everyone listens to music, but not everyone’s motivations for listening to music are the same. Even our own motivations may differ during the day! That’s why it is crucial for us to see different ad visuals that will attract different kinds of emotions and users. Taking a look at some of these visuals, it is possible for us to compile them under 4 different motivations to use Spotify. The first image reflects capacity, which implies that it is an all-in-one platform for your music needs and you will most likely find what you are looking for in there. The second image talks about finding your own beat, which emphasizes your individual music taste, and no matter how typical or edgy you are, you have a place within Spotify! The third image talks about finding your own rhythm, which suggests that no matter how your mood can vary throughout the day, Spotify has got the song to match your level of emotion. The last image focuses on the price aspect of Spotify, which does not apply to a more particular need than financial benefits. Depending on our mood, all of these visuals may have an effect on us at some point. Regardless, they are likely going to hit all their potential users in the right spot for choosing different benefits to talk about all at once. It is important to note that there is prejudice when it comes to personalized marketing, and it is believed that it is the costlier way to go. While that may be true in some cases, spending a large budget on a standard mass audience does not allow you to test out what you are doing right. Although mass targeting is a viable option for the awareness stage of the marketing funnel, we still need to understand what makes the funnel go more and more narrow.

Sep 3, 2022 1178 reads

Top 10 Things to do to Improve your Brand’s Social Media Presence

It is a well known fact that social media presence is one of the pillars of the digital marketing activities of a brand. However, are we using it correctly? When there are so many social media channels to choose from, are we getting lost in the mess when it comes to strategizing or are we simply trying to exist in the most popular ones? Granted, one might even argue that there is content pollution on social media. In a world where each and every individual has something to say, how can brands speak louder? With Gen-Z dynamically dominating their online presence through their selectiveness and creativity in creating content, brands sure have hardships to face. Here are 10 things to do to improve your brand’s social media presence. Remember, these 10 factors can be considered as a form of investment. You need time to acquire the desired results! 1) Channel Selection Not that it should come as a surprise but your brand does not need to have an account on every social media platform. Selecting a channel determines where you as a brand will invest all of your efforts into content creation, so the effort should be worth it. First, determine the visual standing of your brand. Is it image oriented? Does it have more of an illustrative approach? Are you blessed with video assets? How applicable is your brand for aesthetic content creation? If you are a clothing brand for example, Instagram appears to be a must. However, that does not mean you should be overlooking Pinterest as Pinterest SEO is also crucial in reaching your target audience. Make sure you know your target audience and determine which platforms they exist in. Even if you are a well established brand with one high functioning social media account, you might question the need for existence on other social media platforms that are not doing as well. 2) Content Mix According to the purpose of your brand, it is not a wrong move to exist on multiple social media channels. However, it is wrong to post the exact same content on each medium. Every channel has its own algorithm and not producing content in accordance with that may waste efforts in making the channel beneficial to your brand. Therefore, each brand should create a content mix for each related channel that they hope to exist in. Preparing a content mix is no more than simply deciding what kind of content is going to be shared on each channel. For example, an event agency may prefer to announce their events on Meta, post event pictures on Instagram and promote the events via TikTok live streaming. The purposes of these channels can of course be interchangeable according to the interactions they gain on each medium. 3) Post Frequency The one thing that is common for all social media algorithms is that it boosts accounts that are higher in their frequency of posting. In summary, the more you post, the more people see your brand. This is one thing that is easier said than done of course, since content creation for brands requires care and construction. For each platform, there is a recommended frequency of posting. For channels such as Pinterest, this is much less complicated. However, for multi-purpose share channels such as Instagram, the frequency of stories, Reels and regular static posts all contribute differently to how much the algorithm will support your account. Contradictory to popular belief, there is not a fixed formula when it comes to frequency. However, if you are posting one static post and one story from your brand’s Instagram account each day, expecting high organic impressions is not very realistic. 4) Active Follower Times One of the things that brands want to know about the most is when to post content on social media. There is not an exact formula for this particular topic either! The best thing to do here is to check out the analytics of the given social media platform and find out the active times of your followers. The channels determine a time gap for when your followers are most active, and that is when you should post. If you are a motivational account, you might find that your followers are most likely to engage with your content in the morning, as a kickstarter for the day. If you are again a clothing brand, you might find your account to be the last thing your followers check before going to bed. Of course the situation can be vice-versa just as well. If you are just starting off your account and do not have a fixed follower base, you can play around with different sharing times to see which one brings you the most interaction until your analytics has gathered enough of a base to make sensible remarks. 5) User Interaction Another thing that social media algorithms look for is user interaction. The likes, comments, shares, saves and overall engagement you receive on your posts are very crucial in determining how successful your brand is on social media. The more engagement you get, the more the algorithm will push your content to others. This is why calls to action are very important in your captions. Asking your followers questions, starting conversations in the comments, or encouraging them to share your content will boost engagement and improve visibility. 6) Influencer Collaborations Collaborating with influencers who share the same target audience as your brand can be highly beneficial. Influencers already have an established base of loyal followers, and with their help, you can increase your reach, gain credibility, and drive traffic to your brand’s account. Micro-influencers, in particular, can be especially effective because of their close relationships with their followers and higher engagement rates. 7) Consistency in Branding Your social media accounts should reflect the same branding elements as your website and other marketing materials. This includes your logo, brand colors, tone of voice, and overall message. Consistency helps create brand recognition and trust among your audience. If your posts are visually and contextually coherent, followers are more likely to remember and engage with your brand. 8) Use of Analytics Social media platforms provide powerful analytics tools that help you understand how your content is performing. Monitoring key metrics such as reach, impressions, engagement, click-through rates, and follower growth allows you to identify what works best for your brand. Based on these insights, you can adapt your strategy, optimize your content, and allocate resources more effectively. 9) Paid Promotions While organic growth is important, paid promotions can significantly accelerate your brand’s visibility. Running targeted ads on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok ensures your content reaches the right audience. You can set demographic, geographic, and interest-based targeting to maximize your return on investment. A balanced strategy of organic and paid reach can give your brand the boost it needs. 10) Staying Updated Social media is an ever-changing landscape. New features, algorithms, and trends are constantly being introduced. Brands that adapt quickly and make use of these updates are more likely to succeed. Whether it’s adopting new formats like Reels, trying out trending sounds on TikTok, or making use of new ad tools, staying updated ensures your brand remains relevant and competitive in the digital space.

Sep 3, 2022 2696 reads

How to Do an SEO Competitor Analysis Step by Step?

SEO competitor analysis, in other words, SEO competitive analysis, is a process in which you investigate the keywords, content, links, user experience, and more of your competitors in order to improve your SEO strategies. SEO competitor analysis allows you to enhance organic traffic and the ranking of your website by surpassing your competitors.Performing an SEO competitor analysis for SEO Companies, can help you understand your strengths and weaknesses inferred from the competitors. Instead of relying on guesswork for your SEO strategy, you can create a real plan by knowing your competitors.So, SEO competitor analysis is a strategy that gives you an idea about how to improve the performance of your website by analyzing and comparing the bests and worsts of your competitors. Why Is Competitor Analysis Important for SEO?Before diving into the details of competitive analysis, let's make it clear why it is critical for your business. Performing an SEO competitor analysis is important because it lets you:  Understand your industry better: Numerous different strategies are going on by your competitors. Figuring out which strategies work and which do not can be valuable to specify the SEO strategies you should focus on by outperforming your competitors. Identify strengths and weaknesses of your competitors:  Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors help you to identify what you are doing well and worst. It can help you pinpoint the gaps between your website and your competitors' websites. So that you can work on new strategies to fill the gaps and improve the deficiencies. Reprioritize your SEO strategy:  Once you identify and realize the positive effects of competitors' SEO strategies, you can prioritize your new tactics and existing SEO strategies according to them. How to Conduct SEO Competitor Analysis?Step 1-) Identify Organic Search CompetitorsThe first step of performing a competitive analysis is determining your actual competitors because you cannot make any comparison and work on a new strategy for your business without knowing the competitors. You may think that you already know your biggest rivals in the industry, but they do not have to be the same as your SEO competitors. Depending on the industry and the scope of your business, SEO competitors can be different from your real-world competitors.For example, a vintage store located in the same neighborhood as your store can be an important rival for you in the real world, yet if the same vintage store does not rank for one of your target keywords like red vintage dresses, then that store would not be your organic search competitor. In this case, you would be competing online with other stores that rank for red vintage dresses on the first page of SERP. Accordingly, your organic search competitors are the ones who rank on the first page of SERP for your target keywords, and they may differ from your real-world competitor. Also, please keep in mind that if you work in more than one distinct category, you may probably have different lists of competitors for each service you provide. But, the question here is how will you find your search engine competitors? There are two different ways of identifying your search engine competitors; using Google or getting help from SEO Tools.   Firstly, you should decide on your top keywords for each service you offer. Then, search the keywords on Google and analyze the top sites on the first page of SERP to determine your actual competitors. By repeating this process for all the keywords, you can create your competitors' list from the top pages of particular categories. The biggest problem of this process is working manually. If you have dozens of unique services, unfortunately, the process will take so much time. Therefore, you can always consider getting help from SEO tools such as; Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, Semrush, etc. However, even if you decide to use a SEO tool, we recommend you to always keep an eye on SERP to analyze better in a concrete way (e.g., if the most popular content form is blog posts for your target keyword, you can not know it without controlling SERP).  Step 2-) Conduct Competitor Page AnalysisOnce you decide your competitors according to the scope of your business, the next step to do is perform page analysis to take the competitive advantage. While examining the pages, you should try to understand their performance by looking at which pages of your competitors get the most traffic, rank top, and how. Understanding competitors' performance on a high level will give you an idea about the current SEO performance of your website compared to your rivals. And the easiest way to monitor performance is controlling SEO metrics by using SEO tools which can be free or paid (e.g., Semrush, Moz, Ahrefs).So, the metrics that you should monitor are as follows; Domain authority and rating Alexa rank Organic traffic volumes Page impressions Ranking position Ranking keywords Referring domains  According to the metrics above, you can investigate the weaknesses and strengths of your competitors that you can turn to your advantage. However, please note that the higher the competitors' metrics than yours, it will be harder to dominate them.Step 3-) Perform Content Gap AnalysisAfter analyzing the pros and cons of competitors, the next step is performing content gap analysis (also called keyword gap analysis). Content gap analysis is a method that helps you to find the high-search volume and business-relevant keywords that you do not rank, but your competitors rank at the top. Content gap analysis gives you a chance to gain a competitive advantage by ranking for new keywords and threatening the SEO performance of competitors. Therefore, it is a critical part of the SEO competitor analysis.Doing the content gap analysis manually can be difficult because your competitors probably rank for hundreds of keywords on SERP. Therefore, using an SEO tool can honestly be helpful to save your time and not miss any opportunity. You may consider tools like Ahrefs Content Gap tool to perform the analysis and find new opportunities. While performing SEO content gap analysis, you can ask yourself the following questions below; Which keywords do my competitors rank? Why do they rank for those keywords which you do not?  What do they do differently and extra from you?  How do they drive organic traffic to their websites instead of yours?  What can you do next to improve the performance of your pages and outrank your competitors? When you complete your content gap analysis, you can optimize your pages according to the new and existing keywords to increase your traffic and ranking.Step 4-) Analyze On-Page SEO and ContentThe next step you must follow for the competitor analysis is studying the on-page SEO strategies of your competitors. Analyzing competitors' on-site SEO strategies and performance will help you determine what you can do better and differentiate to improve your performance.You should check and try to understand the following parts below; Page title Meta description Headings Content (check content and media types, topics, length, style, keywords, and publish and update dates) Internal linking, breadcrumbs (pay special attention to schema markup and featured snippets for advanced ranking opportunities)  URL structure So, performing on-site SEO analysis and making comparisons with your rivals can help you recognize issues related to your pages which you can optimize and work on to rank better.Step 5-) Study BacklinksThe next step to do is research the backlinks of your competitors. As link building is a significant ranking factor for search engines, it is one of the critical SEO strategies. If your competitors put so much effort into link building and have high-quality backlink profiles then, you should work on your backlink strategies. Otherwise, it will definitely be more challenging to compete against them to improve your SEO performance. You should look at the following features below while working on backlinks of your competitors; Quality over quantity (prefer high-quality backlinks from reliable sources)  Link-type (focus on dofollow links but do not ignore nofollow links which are great sources to increase traffic, brand awareness, and site performance) After finishing backlink analysis, you can work on building your backlink strategy according to the sites where your competitors get their backlinks.Step 6-) Focus Web Design and User Experience (UI/UX)The final step of the SEO competitor analysis is making better the design and user experience of your pages compared to competitors. As it is known that Google has attached importance to user experience with improved page speed, better mobile experience, or rich search results over the past few years. Therefore, if your site is not performing better than your competitors and not working in accordance with the Google algorithm, you should clearly work on user experience. Controlling and focusing on the following topics below can help you to learn what your competitors are doing, what you are currently doing, and what you can do to achieve the best;  Responsiveness (both mobile and desktop) High page speed and performance (both mobile and desktop) Well organized and understandable site structure (especially check site navigation) Meeting with user intent Providing basic but smartly designed pages Thus, if you realize problematic issues after your analysis, this is an excellent chance to get the competitive advantage on your side on SERP. Final WordsFinally, SEO competitor analysis is an ongoing process that you should redo every month that depends on the industry and scope of your business to survive in the market and be competitive. And do not forget that even the basic improvements can matter when it comes to SEO. If you have more questions about the competitor analysis or need any help related to SEO, do not hesitate to contact our team!

Sep 3, 2022 755 reads

What is SEO Friendly Content?

Improvements aimed at increasing organic traffic and made in accordance with the parameters of search engines are called search engine optimization (SEO). The priority of SEO optimizations and search engines is to provide users with a good experience and good content. Search engines reward websites that offer good content by ranking them higher.SEO friendly content is; optimized in accordance with search engine parameters, shaped around a main keyword, appealing to the right target audience, responding to user intent, benefits the user, easily readable, striking, in line with the brand language, enriched with images and infographics, an inclusive, natural and original content. How to Write SEO Friendly Content?While and after writing SEO friendly content, there are some steps to be considered before. The first two of these are to determine the subject of the content and then to outline it.Determine the Subject of the ContentThe topic you choose should be niche topics that your target audience can easily consume and attract their attention. It is important that your content is related to your website and the services you offer. While search engines offers content to users they also adds value to users. Therefore, the content should present up-to-date and new information.Thanks to your competitors with a common target audience, it is possible to see what interests your target audience. In addition, by examining news sites and forums, you can reach the questions that your target audience is looking for but cannot find an answer to.In short, while determining the subject of your content you can check... blog pages of competing brands, forums and news sites. Analyze and Research KeywordsAfter determining the topic, you should identify the keywords that may be relevant to your topic. Keywords can be divided into main keywords and sub-keywords.After your content is indexed by search engines, it is ranked in related queries. The query you want to rank primarily for will be your main keyword. You can think of this keyword as the main topic of a piece of content. The main keyword is the phrase that most accurately, informatively and naturally summarizes your content and is most relevant to your content.Additionally, just like subheadings, there are subordinate keywords. These words should be relevant and supportive of the content and the main keyword. For example, if we set the word “search engine optimization” as the main keyword, “organic traffic” will be a side keyword.There are three key points to consider when choosing keywords so that your content reaches the right people. These are user intent, search volume and competition.User Intent: User intent refers to why a user makes this search, its “intent” when searching. It can be examined under four basic headings as informational, navigational, commercial and transactional: Informational Intent: Here, the user searches for information about a subject. Usually these queries are in the form of questions or these queries are accompanied by question patterns such as: “what, how, why, when, where, who?” An user's search for "What is SEO" to learn about SEO is an example of this user intent. Blog content usually responds to this user intent. Navigational Intent: Here, the user aims to reach a resource. This resource can be a website or a brand. Searches like “AnalyticaHouse”, “Google Search Console” are examples of this user intent. Transactional Intent: It is the searches that users make before making a purchase. Searches like “Top 10 SEO Tools”, “Cheapest airfare” are examples of this user intent. Commercial Intent: Here, users have decided to buy and are searching to buy. “Buy iPhone 13” query is an example of this user intent. The more appropriate the keywords you choose to the user intent of your content, the easier it will be for your content to reach the right people. Search engines are the best source to check whether keywords match user intent. You can measure whether your keyword is suitable for user intent by searching for the keyword you have chosen and determining how compatible the search results are with your content.For example; if your content will be about “digital marketing trends”, it would be wrong to primarily target the keyword “digital marketing” in your content. As you can see, when the phrase “digital marketing” is searched on Google, “What is Digital Marketing?” titled content will come up. We can say that this query is too general for our content topic.Search Volume: Search volume shows data on how much search traffic a query receives, on average. Queries with high search volume are more searched and demanded by people on search engines. However, this does not mean that you will get higher organic traffic by using high search volume words. On the contrary, these queries have more competition and will be harder to rank for.Competition: Competition indicates the degree of difficulty required to move a website to the top of a query. There are three grades: high, medium and low. If your website is new and does not yet have a certain audience, it is recommended to choose keywords with low or medium difficulty.There are some paid and free tools, called keyword planners, that provide you with data about keywords such as search volume and competition. The free ones are the Google Ads Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator and Answer the Public tools.Google Ads – Keyword PlannerSearch engines are the most reliable sources for keywords, as they aim to provide users with the most relevant and quality content. Google, which has a market share of 86.64% according to the Statista's September 2021 search engine market share report data, offers a tool that allows site owners to discover new keyword variations with Google Ads Keyword Planner and indicates the average search volume and competition rate for each keyword.Keyword Planner has a field that asks you to enter the term you find most relevant to the services you provide or your product. The tool will make suggestions related to the terms you enter in this field. You can enter multiple terms in the field and filter the results by language and geographic region. In this way, Keyword Planner better understands the scope of your product or service and offers better recommendations for your target audience. In addition, by adding the URL of your website or your competitor, you can see which keywords your website or your competitor is ranking for and target these keywords.It is possible to filter the words listed in the "Refine keywords" field as "branded" "non-branded" or by customizing them by product or service. In this way, you can select or remove brand-specific words from your selection, and you can find more suitable options for the service you provide.You can see the search volumes of the keywords in the "Avg. monthly searches" field and the competition on the basis of words from the "competition" field. By selecting a certain date range in the "Avg. monthly searches" field, you can view the search volume data of the keywords, as well as estimate how these queries will perform in the future.For example, by examining the results above, you can see that the word “seo” had an average monthly search volume of 27,100 and a moderate competition rate between November 2020 and October 2021.Ahrefs Free Keyword GeneratorAhrefs, one of the most popular SEO tools, offers a free SEO tool called Free Keyword Generator, where search volumes and keyword difficulty are listed.Just like in Keyword Planner, it is possible to filter by geographic regions in this tool. For example, by selecting the region Turkey, you can access the data of the keywords in Turkey.In addition to Google Ads Keyword Planner, Ahrefs also allows you to access the data of search engines such as Bing, Amazon and YouTube besides Google.Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator has two fields, phrase match and questions. Phrase match presents the phrases that contain the query you entered.The “Questions” field shows which questions were asked about the keyword you provided. The KD (keyword difficulty) & Volume fields, which you can see in both the Questions and Phrase Match sections, show competition and search volume, respectively. The field NE has a logarithmic range. 0-10 indicates little competition, 10-31 medium, 31-70 difficult, and 70-100 very difficult. The “Updated” field provides information on when the keyword was last updated given.Answer The PublicAnswer the Public is a free tool that groups Google searches and shows which keywords are combined in alphabetical order.Unlike Ahrefs & Google Ads Keyword Planner, it is not possible to see search volumes and competition for words in Answer the Public. Another disadvantage of Answer the Public is that it does not offer Turkish language support. However, it offers data for calls made through Turkey. After selecting your region, you can search by entering your keyword.Outline Your ContentTo create the skeleton of your content, you must first need to decide on its... length subtitles. Your SEO-friendly article should be filled with up-to-date and reliable information and should cover your chosen topic comprehensively. If you want to rank well with your article, you need to create more comprehensive content than your competitors.SubheadingsSubheadings are the things that will form the outline and scope of your article. Therefore, when choosing subheadings, you can review your competitors' blog articles on the topic you have chosen. You should definitely include the topics your competitors include in your content, and in addition to these topics, you should add up-to-date information that will feed the user.At this point, you can take advantage of the questions in the “Questions” section of Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator and Answer the Public tools, and in the “Users also asked” section of Google. In this way, you can include topics that users are curious about in your article.You need to establish a hierarchy among the sub-headings both structurally, formally and semantically. At this point, it is very important to use heading tags correctly in SEO compatible articles. You can set up the hierarchy between headings by going from general to specific. For example, you can use the H1 tag for the main heading, the H2 tag for the secondary heading, and the h3 tag for the tertiary heading. A hierarchical order should be established between the heading sizes. For example, the heading with the H1 tag should have the largest size and the size should decrease as the heading level decreases.It is important to have SEO keywords in subheadings, therefore heading tags. In this way, you can both direct your users within the content correctly and give more information to search engines about what your content is related to.LengthAccording to Backlinko's research on 912 million blog entries, an SEO-friendly article should be between 1000 and 2000 words long. Also, longer articles get more backlinks than shorter articles. However, you should not forget that how much information a content conveys and how useful this information is for users is more important than its length.Make sure your content is readableA quality SEO content is readable, natural and original content. Your content should be readable by any reader. In other words, it is important that your SEO compatible article is not written in a robotic language, interacts with the user and is fluent. That's why:Paragraphs should not be too long or too short. Approximately 100 to 150 words are ideal for comfortable reading of a paragraph. The important thing in the paragraph is to present the main idea and support it with side ideas. In order not to bore the reader, it is important not to repeat the paragraph or the content.Include images in your content and optimize imagesYou can support your content with relevant images, videos or infographics to increase the understandability and readability of your content. Using explanatory infographics or graphics will not only make the subject easier to understand, but also enrich the SEO-friendly article.Take care to pass the keyword in the file name of the images you will use. For example, "ay-image.jpg" would be a better filename instead of "2017IS232738.jpg".What are the Benefits of SEO Compatible Content?SEO compatible article also means quality and reliable article. The quality of your content helps you stand out from your competitors. Offering reliable content helps increase your authority in the eyes of your users.SEO compatible content allows you to be visible on multiple keywords. In this way, your organic visibility will increase and it will be easier for you to discover potential customers.In short, thanks to SEO compatible content, your brand's conversion rate organic traffic brand awareness brand loyalty increases. SEO Compatible ChecklistHere is a 13-item checklist with the features of SEO compatible content The content should be more comprehensive than competitors. The content should have accurate and reliable information. The content should be written by someone who has a good command of the subject. The content should include images and infographics. The content should be structured around a descriptive, high search volume with a moderately competitive keyword. Synonyms to the main keyword or words that are very close to the main keyword should be used in a way that is still relevant to the context. A title should have at least one main idea and several supporting ideas to follow. The same ideas should not be repeated within the same content by different phrasings. Main keywords should be used in titles and subtitles. A hierarchy should be formed within titles both constructionally and stylistically. The proper heading markings should be done and these headings should be in order in terms of fonts, punto etc.) The manner of expression should be consistent. For instance, the shift between the 1st person and the 2nd person should be avoided within the narrative. Keeping the narrative consistent is highly important. Not switching to one tense to another in a text should be paid attention to. Texts should be fluent and easy to follow. Making grammatical errors and publishing careless content should be avoided as much as possible. Plagiarism should be avoided while forming content. Content should not be used on more than one platform.

Sep 3, 2022 9408 reads

What is Link Building? SEO Guide For Internal Linking

In-site linking and link building are among the SEO items that directly contribute to the crawlability and indexability of our pages. Search engine bots crawl our pages from link to link. For this reason, it can be said that link building and internal linking are the backbone of a site. As we shared with the screenshot below, you can see Mike Khorev's high rate of internal linking and link building in the Google ranking algorithm for 2021.At the same time, in-site linking and link building ensure that the visitors we can attract to a page can discover other pages and make them easy to navigate. It contributes to the prolongation of the time a user visiting our site spends in his session and to increase our page view potential. To sum up, it is very important both for search engine bots and for our visitors to have an efficient experience.What is Link Building and How Is It Done?Link building is a method of navigating users between pages on the Internet. Link building should be shaped according to the importance of the pages on our site. Thanks to this construction, which is the backbone of the site, you can create authority and increase your organic traffic gain by increasing your rankings. As shared with the image below, intra-site linking should proceed in a certain hierarchical order.Since your page with the most links on e-commerce sites can easily access all pages, it is recommended to have Homepage, followed by category pages in order to support the product discovery potential of users.It is known that search engine bots prioritize 360-degree quality, high-relevance and unique websites in the long-term ranking algorithm. As for how link building should be done, it is recommended that in-site linking works be built in a way that directs visitors to relevant and useful links, in order to obtain long-term benefits.E.g; “What is Backlink and How to Get It?” from a page about Link Building. Linking content will navigate users more accurately.Formation of Links and Appearance by Search EnginesIn order to understand how the links, which are the backbone of the site, are viewed and interpreted by search engine bots, we can examine the link anatomy in the Moz - Guide to Link Building content together. Start of Link Tag: The Link Referral Location: The URL pointing to the link. It is the clickable area to switch to the relevant page. Visible/Anchor Text of Link: It is the text that visitors see on the page and click to reach the relevant link. Closure of Link Tag: It is the closure that notifies search engines that the link tag has ended. Google Link Building Algorithm and Link TypesGoogle announced the "PageRank" algorithm, which takes into account the number of links earned by that page to measure the quality of a page. The irrelevant and unhelpful link acquisition from the content resulted in the PageRank metric being manipulated. For this reason, Google published the Penguin algorithm in 2012. With this update, it was announced that low quality link building will not contribute to ranking performance in the long run.Within the scope of link building, link types are basically divided into two. External Links: These are links that point to a different/external domain than the source domain. If a different website links to your site or if you are linking to a different website, this is an external link. E.g; Link Anchor Text Internal Links: Links from the source domain pointing to the same source domain. They are links pointing to other pages on the same website. E.g; Keyword Text Up until this point in our blog, we have summarized the importance of link building in the Google ranking algorithm and the points to be considered until this part. We will continue with details on how to make internal linking to our content. What is In-Site Linking?Internal linking is a method by which you can navigate your visitors among other pages on your site. In other words, a link is output from a page in the same domain to a different page. It helps you transfer your site's hierarchy to search engines.This method does not only provide crawling and indexing of pages. It also enables pages to rank higher. You can improve crawling, indexing, and therefore ranking performance by linking the deeper pages of your site from other useful and appropriate pages.We can list the benefits of in-site linking as follows. It navigates visitors through the site. It improves the crawling performance of the site. The hierarchy of the site is established. The site is more easily understood by search engines. The value of the pages increases. It improves ranking performance among other sites. How to Make In-Site Linking?We can convey the optimal in-site linking structure of a website with the image below. This structure refers to a structure in which there are links from the homepage to all pages. There is a flow throughout the site, increasing the ranking potential of each page.We will first define the term Link Equity within the scope of suggestions on how to do in-site linking. Link Equity (Link Juice, PageRank) is a search engine ranking factor that transfers authority and link value from one page to another. This value consists of various factors such as page authority, HTTP status.Points to consider when linking within the site; Is the Link Related? It is recommended that the other page that you link to any of your pages should be relevant. In this case, you do not manipulate the search engine bots and direct your visitors to pages that are highly relevant to the current page. For this reason, one of the most critical points in in-site linking studies is to make links with high relevance. In In-Site Linking, Do Outgoing Links Go to Related Pages? A visitor expects to reach other relevant pages from the target page they reach. If the number of outgoing links from a page is very high, you should check if the outgoing links are relevant to the topic of the page. You can start by examining the links other than the header and footer links. At this point, your roadmap could be “Which pages the user hopes to reach from the current page?” In Incoming Links, Do Incoming Links Come From Related Pages? If the target page has a high number of links within the site, it means that the page is a source, a high authority and a valuable page. By being detected more intensely by search engine bots, the frequency of crawling is reinforced. At this point, incoming links to the pages should be checked. It should be ensured that the pages with high performance are linked more intensively but meaningfully within the site. Can the link be tracked? Links with nofollow tags are not followed by search engine bots. Such links do not transfer any value. For this reason, it should be ensured that there is no nofollow tag in the links that are requested to transfer value in intra-site linking. In intra-site linking studies, it is recommended to use the dofollow tag in internal links to the site's own domain. Not using any meta tags (like dofollow or nofollow) in link building gives a "follow link" signal to search engine bots. Therefore, you do not need to use an extra dofollow tag in your on-site linking efforts. Where will the link be placed on the page? Links positioned within the content have higher authority than links in areas such as footer or sidebar. These links are areas that can be noticed and clicked more easily by users in intra-site linking. How Many Links Should a Page Have? There is no limit to the number of links to be found on a page. Considering the depth of the site, intra-site linking can be worked on. What should be the HTTP Status Code of the Linked Page within the Site? Pages with 200 and 301 status codes maintain their link authority. The 301 redirected page transfers all the authority it has to the target page. However, in terms of crawl budget optimization, it is recommended to link only 200 status code pages within the site. Links with 301 and 404 status codes should be removed from the site. Does Anchor Text and Link Match? In in-site linking studies, the anchor text gives a general impression of which queries that page is targeting, without the need for a page to be crawled by search engine bots. The anchor text should contain the query targeted with the page. In intra-site linking studies, it should be checked with which link texts the pages gain links. Is the URL Structure of the Site SEO Friendly in Link Building? Search Engine Bot does not prefer to follow URLs that are Directed, Blocked with robots.txt file, Contains keyword stuffing and double content, Containing non-recommended characters (numbers, Turkish characters, etc.), Containing monitoring parameters at the time of crawl. Search engine bots can penalize spam pages to protect their users. Therefore, it is recommended to detect and remove such URLs that are linked within the site. Are Link Headers Used in Your Site Links? In order to measure the quality of the pages, Google measures the performance of the website in terms of user experience under the control of Accessibility with its Lighthouse tool. In the internal linking evaluation, it is known that having the titles of the internal links will enable the search engine bots to understand the link more accurately and easily. For this reason, you should make sure that the links on your website have a title value.References https://mikekhorev.com/seo-ranking-factors  https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link https://moz.com/blog/linking-internally-externally-from-your-site-whiteboard-friday https://moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-link-equity https://moz.com/blog/the-anatomy-of-a-link  https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/