Advancements in the SEO are reshaping the way people do online business. Today, more and more websites are coming forth and applying SEO knowledge and skills to achieve top rankings and traffic. However, only few companies enjoy the real success because they often commit certain mistakes that should not be done at all. They must avoid such mistakes and combine deep SEO and industry insight to gain top rankings. In fact, websites can improve their traffic and gain competitive edge, if they avoid making certain serious mistakes, such as:

• Keyword stuffing – Integrating keywords naturally in the content is the best way to attract search engines as well as users. However, keyword stuffing can make the content messy and may repel the search engines. So try to avoid this mistake and keep your content balanced.

• Broken links – This is more frustrating than any other element on a website.You shouldperform link audit every time to stay away from these broken links.

• Duplicate content – Nobody likes duplicate content, if your website has duplicate content, your customersaremore likely to leave your website. So never create duplicate content. It also increases customer engagement.

• Duplicate title tags – Most of the people keep same title tag throughout their website, which is a harmful activity. Therefore, it is important to create unique title and description tag for each page. It helps both users and search engines to know about your page.

• Non credible links – Linking to low PR sites can damage your online reputation. You should always focus on quality links rather than quantity. Try to achieve links from high authority sites or authoritative blogs for good credibility.

• Avoiding analytics – Most people never use analytics, which is a big mistake. It is important to measure web traffic, traffic sources and other critical elements of your website. In fact, you should use both Google webmaster and Google analytics to gain exact insight into your website.

If you are struggling to get high ranks or traffic and unable to understand the reason, avoid committing these mistakes and then measure your website’s impact. Remember, a properly optimised site shows much better results and help your users to find your website fast and easily.

Website owners make their website attractive, content rich, super fast, user-friendly and easily navigable, but when it comes to making their website trustworthy, only few websites adhere to the standards and basic norms of authenticity. Despite having exceptional content and easy navigation features, most of the websites show high bounce rate, which may be due to the lack of trustworthiness or inability to impress users. Therefore, it is important for the website owners to make their website trustworthy and highly qualitative in order to win the hearts of users.

Here are some of the ways to create a trustworthy website:

• Use authentic images – In order to maximise the visual appeal of your website, always use authentic images. Such real images do much more than expected. In fact, you must look for content-specific images for greater visual appeal and authenticity. It will add distinctive flavour to your website, improve the quality of your web pages and engage users also.

• Add Social proof – This is especially effective and a strong indicator. Social proof plays an important role in creating trust and relationship. For that, you need to ask your clients to provide feedback to display on your website. It is also useful in influencing your potential customers. In fact, it is an effective method to gain customer’s confidence.

• Create better content resources – It is important to create helpful and valuable content that can address the problem of users. You can also use blogs to disseminate business-related information. You also need to share whitepapers as well as case studies for better understanding. It is the best way to create trustworthiness and impress customers.

• Put your audience in the middle of stories you tell – It is the finest way to establish a good relationship with your customers. By using "you" in your blog post, you can convey your message in a powerful way. You also need to publish stories of customers’ empowerment.

These elements will make your website more authentic and engaging. In fact, it will engage more customers and decrease your overall bounce rate. So if you want to shape your website in a desired way, make it trustworthy.

Tumblr is one of the fastest evolving microblogging and social networking websites that helps global business owners to communicate directly with their customers. Its services and features are flexible and allows users to post multimedia and other content. Its interface is quite interactive and dynamic, which encourages people to share their stories and experiences on it. This shows that Tumblr can do wonders for your business.

Quick facts:

• Tumblr is the fifth most visited site throughout the U.S.

• Tumblr has 550 million monthly users.

Businesses can use Tumblr to upload text posts, images, videos, quotes or links to engage customers and strengthen their market grip. In fact, they can schedule their posts for customers for the maximum possible engagement. In addition, Tumblr also allows users to edit their blogs’ theme according to their own choice. So, use this winning platform to overpower your competitors.

Here are a few benefits of using Tumblr for business purposes:

• Increase brand exposure – Businesses should use Tumblr to expand their reach and increase their brand exposure. You can create convincing stories for your customers and share it with them. You can attract younger customers by sharing high quality visual content.

• Good for different industries – Tumblr is an ideal platform for travel, fashion, beauty, home goods and the fashion clothing industry. You can use compelling images and videos to engage your customers. Tumblr can also increase your brand visibility and expand your network.

• Improve interaction – Tumblr enhances your network as well as helps in improving interaction with your customers. Due to its huge user base and variety of messaging options, Tumblr has become the best platform to find potential customers.

• Flexibility – Thereis flexibility of uploadingany number of images, videos and quotes to influence customers. Businesses can post fresh, relevant and original content to improve brand awareness and attract more traffic to their websites. With this you can keep your followers updated.

• Customisable – Tumblr is a completely customisable and a highly intuitive blogging platform. You can change your theme according to your business or industry. Tumblr also allows you to change colours, backgrounds, navigation and even allows you to add custom links.

So if you are looking for new and creative ways to attract customers, you must use Tumblr. You can easily retain your customers and create a better brand reputation in the market. However, for greater impact, you should use high quality text posts, images, videos and quotes. Today, no business can afford to ignore the true power of Tumblr because it has unrivalled blogging and functional capabilities.

Quick facts:

• Tumblr receives over 17 Billion pages views a month.

• Tumblr has over 100 million blogs.

Conclusion

Forward looking companies should take advantage of the unique dynamics of Tumblr and explore new opportunities to transform their business outcomes. No doubt, Tumblr can add value to any business and enhance its capabilities.

Social media is soaring all across the globe like never before. More and more companies are using it aggressively to create, share or exchange information on a regular basis. They are sharing ideas, factual data, user generated content, statistical figures and much more on the most powerful social media channels. Today, they have become the best source of communication and sharing information. In fact, social media connects companies to customers. Some of the most popular social media websites are Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. Innovative companies are already using these platforms to build their brand image and communicate with their customers.

Quick facts:

• There are 2.3 billion active social media users.

• 91% of retail brands use 2 or more social media channels.

However, there are still some companies that do not know the real power of social media. They are still relying on traditional channels to disseminate their information. Therefore, it is important for them to use powerful social tools to stay ahead.

Here are a few benefits of using social media channels:

• Facebook - Facebook is the best business buddy and widely known for its powerful web presence. Facebook helps to connect directly with your audiences. You can use business pages, messages and comments to connect with your audiences. You can use advanced analytics to measure your success. No doubt, Facebook is one of the best mediums to lure customers and grow your business.

• Instagram - Instagram is one of the leading and the fastest growing online mobile photo sharing, video sharing and social networking services. It has some of the most powerful features that can help a company engage the maximum number of customers. This visual platform helps businesses to focus on a targeted group of customers. Moreover, this helps to create instant brand awareness and creatively position a brand in the market. You can use compelling photos and videos to attract customers.

• Twitter – Business owners use Twitter to increase their brand awareness. They use it to communicate directly with their customers. Even customers love to use it to give feedback and comments. You can use analytics to measure your success rate. No doubt, Twitter is the best medium to entice global and local customers and retain sustainable growth in the market. This platform also offers more credible insights to business owners.

• Pinterest - Pinterestis the finest and the most advanced content sharing service landscape that allows members to "pin" images, videos and other objects to their pinboard.This medium is visually inspiring and different types of businesses can use it. The best part is that it drives higher levels of conversion. This innovative and creative platform is also good to understand users’ behaviour, distinct needs, changes in lifestyle, buying patterns and current trends.

If you want to raise traffic and build wide connections with your audiences, use these super fast social media channels. You can use these platforms for relationship development or sales promotion or brand building.

Quick facts:

• Facebook now sees 8 billion average daily video views from 500 million users.

• Facebook adds 500,000 new users every day; 6 new profiles every second.

No doubt, you can easily reach out to millions of people through these vibrant platforms. However, you should maintain quality and consistency for better customer engagement and remarkable business growth.

Today, most online stores struggle to achieve success on the web because they do not execute their SEO strategies systematically. Using a systematic approach and well executed SEO techniques, online stores can easily race ahead of their competitors. So, are you ready to see your business at the top in the ever changing dynamics of SEO?

Here are a few quick SEO tips for online stores:

• Optimise your landing pages - Optimising your main landing pages is one of the best ways to improve your website’s traffic and overall performance. This helps your website to achieve higher ranking positions on the web. You need to create unique title tags, Meta descriptions and on-page content for maximum SEO performance. In addition, you should also use high quality images, videos and other attractive offers along with CTAs to attract more traffic. This will make your page more valuable, relevant and attractive.

• Write product descriptions – It is important to write a product description for every single product. Most online store owners avoid creating product descriptions and sometime use the same titles and descriptions all across the website, which is the wrong strategy. They should write a unique product description to attract more traffic and a higher conversion rate.

• Use Google Analytics – This helps you to measure your ROI and allow you to track your website’s traffic and their sources. You can have access to conversions and sales statistics. Google Analytics is a free web analytics service which is what most people use. This also helps you to do intelligent marketing and make business decisions. In fact, this is the best platform for consistent growth and efficiency.

• Make your home page valuable – Try to integrate as much relevant information as possible on your home page to distinguish your website from others. Highlight your unique selling points and add relevant visuals to your home page. This will engage more visitors and convert them into your customers. Keep your content consistent throughout the page and remove any sort of blind spots to make it more credible. This improves traffic, accelerates the performance of home page and its rankings on the web.

• Use H1 and H2 tags – You must use H1 and H2 tags diligently across your website. Optimise it according to your keywords. You can use H2, H3, H4, etc. tags as per your content. This will categorise your content, provide tremendous value to your page, inspire readers and make it more readable.

Quick facts:

• The top 5 results get 75% of the clicks.

• Page titles are the most important on-page element after content.

In addition, never ignore your competitors. In fact, it is a never ending task that offers huge benefits and uncovers surprising opportunities. You will learn something new from their websites, which will help you manage your SEO efforts. Your selection of relevant keywords and quality backlinks are equally important.

Online marketing is not just building a website to reach out widely distributed customers, it is more than that. Today, online marketing specialists use high-end digital analytics, indepth market research, refined technological platforms and more aggressive online strategies to attract the maximum amount of traffic to their websites. They also use multifaceted approaches to spread brand awareness and dominate their competitors. However, despite having well written website content, well planned strategies, most online business owners fail to attract customers. It must be noted that online marketing is changing fast; more and more advancements are emerging, making it highly challenging for marketing experts to build a brand.

Businesses need to change their online marketing strategies

According to several studies and online survey results, audiences want everything in a visual form instead of a lengthy format. One of the best ways to convey messages effectively is to use infographics.

In order to remain competitive and advanced, businesses need to change their online marketing strategies and include infographics for their users. It is the best and the most creative way to push your content. It is a smart SEO practice, which helps in gaining a competitive edge in the market.

Nicely created and professionally designed infographics can attract your audience’s attention more easily and convey your message or information in no time whatsoever. In fact, it is a more convenient and hassle free way of educating and informing your customers.

Quick facts:

• Researchers found that coloured visuals increase people's willingness to read a piece of content by 80%.

• Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images.

Advantages of using infographics:

• Attract visitors – Infographics can attract millions of visitors. It can easily grab readers’ attentions and make your content much more appealing.

• Influence readers – Infographics are helpful in making a boring story or content more attractive and meaningful. It can make your content to become more interesting and effective.

• Can explain hard concepts – Through visual content you can easily illustrate hard-to-understand concepts. You can improve the understanding of your customers.

• Act as a strong CTA – Infographics can act as a strong call-to-action while engaging customers in a professional manner.

• Can easily go viral – Great visual appeal makes infographics navigate through the most powerful social channels. Infographics can be easily shared and reach broader level audience.

• Help to achieve more backlinks – Sounds strange? Yes, infographics is one of the most effective ways to receive high quality backlinks. In fact, blog owners love to share infographics and link you back as a primary source. It also streamlines SEO campaigns.

Quick facts:

• 73% of content creators plan to prioritise creating more engaging content in 2016, and 55% plan to prioritise creating visual content.

• 60% of marketers predict that the use of infographics will increase in 2016 compared to 2015.

Infographics has become the cornerstone of online success

Infographics can accelerate your ability to capture potential customers. They have the ability to attract more visitors, improve websites’ visibility, expand an SEO’s capabilities and enhance your brand awareness.

Building good inbound links to your website is the most difficult task. It takes hard work, thorough analysis; in-depth research, relevant experience and great industry expertise to attract good links from high authority sites. People utilise different types of tools and methods to achieve backlinks for their websites; in fact, they often resort to spamming to achieve backlinks, which is one of the most dangerous methods because ultimately it leads to a penalty. It is also known as a Black Hat SEO and this technique goes against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

One of the most apparent advantages of building good quality backlinks is to get an extensive amount of traffic. It results in a higher conversion rate and a lower bounce rate.

In addition to this, backlinks also help your website to rank higher in the search engine result pages. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you gain backlinks from high quality and high authority sites.

Here are a few ways to build good quality backlinks:

• Maintain a blog – People often neglect this, but it is the most effective, simple and proactive way to achieve good quality backlinks. People love to read great content on blogs and share them instantly, which generates organic inbound links. However, you must write on the current topics and news to attract the maximum amount of customers.

• Write guest blog posts – Write agood blog post on a current topic or any trending subject, and ask blog owners to share it. It is the most authentic way to receive inbound links. However, you need to write compelling, research-based, comprehensive and in-depth blog posts for maximum customer engagement.

• Create case studies - This is one of the most trusted methods of engaging customers, building backlinks and achieving a lower bounce rate. There is a simple formula - if you make your clients look good and valuable in case studies, they will definitely link back. However, you need to make your case study attractive, interesting and extensive, incorporating all the elements from technical to analytical.

• Write book reviews - If you write an excellent, detailed and analytical review of another author's story or content, there is a good chance of getting backlinks from them. This is an organic way to create inbound links for your website.

• Create beautiful infographics - People love to see, read and share infographics that have a professional look. If you create beautiful, fact-based and original infographics, people will definitely link back to you as the main source, which is good for your website. In fact, it has become a popular SEO strategy these days. Sounds good?

Conclusion

You can adopt any legitimate way or technique to generate good inbound links and improve traffic to your website, but do not use Black Hat SEO strategies which is a common practice.

A few key facts:

• Maintain a healthy blog

• Write guest blog posts

• Create compelling case studies

• Write book reviews

• Create beautiful infographics

SEO is ever-changing and it is very difficult to understand its movements; however, you can adjust your marketing strategies according to its movements and updates. Due to its volatile and uncertain nature, business owners try everything to gain higher rankings. However, there is no point in trying everything. Therefore, it is always recommended to perform a detailed competitive SEO analysis to stay ahead of your competition and gain overall long term success.

Empirical evidences also show that proper SEO analysis is vital for achieving good rankings. Benefits of systematic competitive SEO analysis are many, therefore, it is important to perform an indepth SEO analysis.

Here are a few ways to perform a competitive SEO analysis:

• Understand your buyers – To gain a competitive edge, it is vital to understand your buyers’ personas. You need to understand their problems and think about their solutions. This will also help you in choosing the right set of keywords for optimisation.

• Identify your competitors – Identifying your competitors and understanding their move to attract buyers can work wonders. You must prepare a list of their activities and initiatives to understand the market trends. You should sign up for Google Alerts to monitor the industry trends. This will give you a comprehensive insight into the business and industry.

• Embraceinnovative tools and techniques – You need to useGoogle Trends, Google Alerts, Open Site Explorer, Google Analytics, and Majestic - Marketing Search Engine and SEO Backlink Checker and many other tools to gain greater insights. This sort of business intelligence helps you to develop directional SEO strategies for your website.

• Content strategy – To gain an edge over your competitors you need to create engaging blog posts, inspiring case studies, detailed whitepapers, compelling web pages and emails. All these will help you in educating and informing buyers as well as influencing their buying decisions. Be factual in your content to engage users. Your users will certainly appreciate it.

• Social engagement tactics – It’s important to analyse what your competitors are doing through social channels. This helps you to understand their mindset and strategies. You should develop your own social engagement strategies, which should include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram. This helps to propel your brand, establish long term relationships with customers, increase your website traffic and reach out your targeted audiences efficiently.

A key source of competitive advantage

It’s clear that competitive SEO analysis shouldbe an integral part of every company’s online marketing strategy. No doubt, it is a real jewel because it helps websites to achieve good rankings in their niches. Though this might not guarantee your success overnight, yet a systematic use ofit will increase your chances to get noticed on the web.