Ever struggled to find specific content, service, or a web page on a website? When people usually don’t find what they are looking for in the dropdown menus, they turn to sitemaps for guidance. Sitemaps help website visitors navigate through your website as well as help search engines and crawlers discover web pages on a website. Wondering what is a sitemap, well read on. In this article, I will also share with you info on HTML and XML Sitemap Generators.

Most SEO experts know about Sitemaps and XML Sitemap Generators as it can help your website rank higher for relevant keywords. Want to know how that happens and how you can generate a sitemap?

Read on.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is a file containing all the important information about images, videos, and web pages on your website. It keeps you and search engines like Google, updated with the recent changes on the website. A sitemap helps search engines discover every inch of your website.

As we know, search engines like Google, Bing sends crawlers all over the internet to go through websites. When spiders visit a website containing thousands of web pages, they can’t go through every webpage. A sitemap helps Google bots identify web pages that you think are important to scan these web pages intelligently.

Types of sitemaps in SEO

Sitemap XML, HTML sitemap, Visual Sitemap, Image Sitemap, and Video sitemap are the few types of sitemaps your website needs for better visibility on search engines.

Types of Sitemap in terms of audience

Depending on who is the intended audience, one can divide sitemaps into two types:

1. The sitemap for Humans: HTML Sitemap
2. The sitemap for Search Engines and its crawlers: XML Sitemap

More about the two below soon in this article.

Types of Sitemap in terms of Resources or content on a website

This type of sitemap is needed only for search engines and their crawlers. Needless to say, this sitemap is in machine language called Extensible Markup Language (XML), and therefore it is known as XML Sitemap. In XML sitemap you create separate sitemaps depending on the type of content available on the website. Below is the type of XML Sitemap:

XML Sitemaps primarily have two types.

1. Index Sitemap (This is the sitemap of various types on index a website have)
2. URL Sitemap (This is essentially the actual webpages or URLs on the webpage that is accessed by humans)

Sitemap Index XML can further be divided into 3 different categories.

1. Webpage sitemap (commonly known as XML sitemap in the SEO community)
2. Image sitemaps (This is the sitemap of all the available images on the website and their URL’s)
3. Video sitemaps (This is the sitemap of videos embedded on the website and their details). Image sitemap and Video sitemap help Google find and understand the image and video content hosted on web pages on your website. They increase the chances of the website ranking higher in Google’s image and video search results.
4. Post Sitemap (This is the sitemap of all the blogs available on a website)
5. Product Sitemap (If yours is an eCommerce site, the Product sitemap have the URL of all the product pages)
6. Post Category Sitemap (This is the sitemap of all the available post categories)
7. Post tag Sitemap (This is the sitemap of all the available post tags on the website)
8. Product Category Sitemap (This is the sitemap of all the available product categories)
9. Product tag Sitemap (This is the sitemap of all the available product tags on the website)

Why do we need a sitemap

A website contains different types of information on its web pages. Different kinds of sitemaps help crawlers to read this information efficiently.

Here is a deep dive into the different types of sitemaps you should look into.

XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is a specific format to encode information on the website. This format makes it easy for search engines to read the information on your websites.

If you have a large website containing thousands of pages, it’s essential to know which of these pages are crucial. The important URLs should be the pages which Google bots should crawl as Google only allows the scanning of a limited number of pages on a website. XML sitemaps help crawlers identify these web pages.

Apart from a list of URLs, sitemap XML also contains additional information such as how frequently the web page’s content is updated and more such information. This tells Google’s website bots to crawl a particular page more often as it contains updated content.

HTML sitemap

HTML sitemap contains the visual representation of the website structure similar to an XML sitemap. The only difference between them is that HTML sitemap is easy for humans to understand while XML sitemap is machine-friendly.

HTML sitemaps list the most important pages of your website. With the help of visual representation, it portrays a clear hierarchy of the website. It also increases the understanding of the locations of page content for search engines.

This makes it easier to find pages that are difficult to find on a website’s navigation menu.Use HTML sitemap generator to create HTML sitemap online. Here is an HTML Sitemap Example.

Visual sitemap

Creating a visual sitemap is the first step of website development. It’s a blueprint of the structure of the website. It provides you with a clear understanding of the organization of content and guides you through the website’s navigation options.

What is Sitemap XML role in SEO?

Search engines’ primary function is to display the most relevant results for the search query. They use crawlers to identify, organize, and index information on the internet. XML Sitemaps make it easier for these bots to read the content of the website.

Sitemaps promotes a better way of handling and organizing URLs. It is more necessary to have a sitemap for your website in some situations. For example, if you have a website with thousands of web pages and a large number of external links. This situation is ideal for using a sitemap as compared to a website containing only a handful of web pages and few external links.

As a single website can contain multiple sitemaps, it is easier to handle different website sections individually because of it.

So, do all websites need to create an XML sitemap?

The honest answer is, not really.

Criteria where XML Sitemap is a must

But, definitely go for proper sitemaps if your website meets the following criteria:

• Large website – If you own a website with many web pages, then there is a high possibility that Google web crawlers will miss out on scanning some essential web pages. A sitemap will help you in this department as it will help crawlers identify important URLs of your website.
• Isolated web pages – Web pages that are not linked to each other in a website are a matter of concern if you want Google bots to crawl your website. Because the web pages are not interlinked, crawlers don’t have the resources to look through each of the website’s web pages. Sitemap helps ensure that crawlers don’t overlook some of the essential pages on the website.
• New website with few external links – Google favors quality external links because it shows that the website has reliable and updated content. Google spiders usually crawl web pages by following links from one page to another page. If you don’t have any external links, then the bots’ ability to visit your page is restricted.
• Rich media content- Media sitemap or video and image sitemap helps Google understand where media content is located on the website. It also helps websites appear in Google’s video and image search results.

How to create a sitemap?

Decide which pages are to be crawled and indexed on your website before creating a sitemap. Creating a sitemap is not a complex process.

Many online XML Sitemap Generator websites help you create an XML sitemap with ease. Websites built on CMS such as WordPress will require a dedicated plugin like Yoast SEO to create a WordPress sitemap.

To create a Yoast SEO sitemap, you must install the Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress. There are many other WordPress sitemap plugins available to choose from.

Free Sitemap Generator

If you are looking for a free online service for creating a sitemap, then many websites provide that option. Free sitemap generator provides service with conditions such as the number of pages should be less than 300.

Free Visual Sitemap Generator Online

Well, a visual sitemap is something I recommend much before you start developing your website. It is a hierarchical diagram which serves as the blueprint of your website.

Just like you need a blueprint before building your house, you need a visual sitemap for your website. If you do not plan it well, you will get caught in the labyrinth of URL, keywords, and whatnot. Here are a few free visual sitemaps generator tools online:

1. Octopus
2. GlooMaps
3. PowerMapper
4. Visual Site Maps

HTML Sitemap Generator

HTML Sitemap is nothing but a separate web page with links to all the internal pages of a website. It is like a Table of content or an index of a book. Please note that this page is critical for the success of a site as this is also indexed by search engines. Here are few HTML Sitemap Generators:

1. My Sitemap Generator (Link)
2. Simple Sitemap for WordPress sites (Link)
3. PrePostSEO

XML Sitemap Generator Online

Several xml sitemap generator tools are available. Here is a list of some of them:

1. Yoast XML sitemap generator for WordPress
2. Free Online Generator (Link)
3. My Sitemap Generator (Link)

Conclusion

After reading this blog you must have a fair idea of what sitemaps are and how to create a sitemap for your website. Keep yourself updated on similar topics through our website.

Sitemaps give great visibility to search engines. You can even notify Google of the changes you made to your sitemap. Images, videos, and external links all can be easily read and organized by a sitemap. Google bots travel from one link to another, this is how they discover web pages. Sitemaps prove useful here as they highlight important pages for a website with fewer external links. It’s a boon to creating a sitemap for your website as it is one of the most effective SEO strategies.

FAQ’s

We come across a lot of content on the internet in our day-to-day lives. But are they all worth a pleasant read? Do they all rank #1 in search rankings? Definitely, not! So, what do you think might be the reason behind their poor engagement or ranking? Well, there can be several answers to this. But today, we will talk about READABILITY and the use of TRANSITION WORDS, in particular, and their impact on rankings.

So, what is readability? In simple means, it defines how clear a content piece is for reading and understanding. But let me tell you, readability has no direct relation with search rankings. But the fact that writing in simple and understandable language can get you more visitors, content with good readability can impact a page’s search ranking.

And transition words play a crucial role in improving the readability of any content. So, let us learn more about transition words and their role in SEO.

What are Transition Words in writing?

Words that help to link two sentences to make it easier for users to understand its context are transition words. Words like ‘but’, ‘and’, ‘therefore’, ‘so’, etc., are all transition words.

As Yoast says, “Transition Words prepare the readers for what’s coming”. Further, such words offer structure and organization to your sentence or a piece of content.

To make it clearer:

Using words like “Conclusion” in your content, the readers will get an idea that you’re concluding the copy. Similarly, using transition words like first, second, third, etc., will make them understand you’re summing up the things.

Types of Transition Words

• Enumerate: “also”, “in the first place”, “finally”, “in addition”
• Comparison: “like”, “while”, “likewise”, “rather”
• Emphasis: “even more”, “above all”, “certainly”, “the best”
• Cause: “and because of it”, “due to”, “because”, “because of that”,
• Ambiguity: “perhaps”, “seems”, “maybe”, “probably”, “almost”,
• Conclusion: “therefore”, “to finish”, “in conclusion”, “therefore”

We use most of these words because of the need to tell our story. However, many authors use a few of these words when writing, making their sentences long and difficult to read.

Let us take some more examples to comprehend transition words better.

Transitional Words and Phrases Example Sentences

Adding transition words to your content changes the structure of your content, thereby making it easier to read and comprehend. Consider the following examples and see it yourself.

1. Without transition words: I’m not a fan of Bollywood movies. I do love Hindi songs
   With transition words: I’m not a fan of Bollywood movies. However, I do love Hindi songs.
2. Without Transition words: Garlic tastes good in every dish. It really highlights the flavour of tomatoes.
   With Transition words: Garlic tastes good in every dish. In particular, it really highlights the flavour of tomatoes.
3. Without Transition words: Several factors contribute to success. Hard work is the most important.
   With Transition words: Several factors contribute to success. Above all, hard work is the most important.

Transition Words List

While transition words are mostly single words, readability tools like Yoast also consider certain phrases when rating your content. Some of these are:

• Above all
• All of a Sudden
• As a matter of fact
• As a result
• At any rate
• As can be seen
• As has been noted
• At first
• As I have said
• As long as
• Even if
• As much as
• As soon as
• Due to
• As well as
• Even more
• Even so
• For example
• Even though

However, one important thing to note here is, these phrases must be uses exactly as listed. If you insert any word in them, Yoast will no longer count these as transition words.

Yoast SEO Transition Words Checker

Yoast SEO plugin is certainly one of the most used SEO plugins for WordPress today. Besides providing with focus keyword analysis, Yoast SEO plugin also offers readability analysis.

Let’s admit, writing good content doesn’t come naturally. However, plugins like Yoast acts as a great aid here. It helps you to improve your writing by giving valuable readability suggestions. This plugin, in particular, uses certain metrics to evaluate your content. And one metric that seems especially hard to achieve is the Transition word.

The transition words checker in Yoast SEO judges whether or not you there are enough transition words used in your content. If at least 30% of the sentences in your content contain a transition word, it will approve of the text with a green bullet. Further, if the transition score is between 30% to 20%, you will get an orange bullet. But if it is below 20%, then you will get a red bullet.

Transition Words in SEO: Why are they Important

As said, transition words make it easier for readers to read and understand your content. In short, it improves the readability of your text. And as you know, readability is essential to SEO. While transition words don’t impact SEO directly, these are one of the key considerations for readability.
Further, transition words play an important part in structuring your content. Well-structured content attracts readers to your website and contributes to SEO! How?

The more ‘readable’ your text is, the more attractive people are likely to find it.

This means readers will spend more time on your site. This is one of the metrics Google and other search engines notice when determining search rankings.

Let’s understand the benefits with an example:
Text A: Without transition words
Today I woke up tired. I was starving. I had to prepare my meal. The dry cleaner had not returned my clothes. I couldn’t go out. I spent the entire day indoors, hungry.

Text B: With the use of transition words
I woke up tired AND hungry today. At first, I had to cook. The dry cleaner had not returned my clothes. Eventually, I couldn’t go out. As a result, I spent my entire day indoors and hungry.

Can you see the difference? Did you feel the connectivity while reading both the texts? This is what the purpose of transition words – helping the readers to read and comprehend a text without having to struggle to relate.

How to Improve your Use of Transition Words

Using transition words in the text often seems daunting to the writers. While everyone uses them in some way, using them correctly is challenging. There are some writers who don’t use transitions like ‘but’, ‘and’, ‘or’, etc. Also, for most authors, using these words doesn’t come naturally. It is an art which needs practise and a couple of things to understand.

Consider the follow things:

1. Know the Transition Words

To make use of something properly, you need to know and understand its meaning. The same concept applies to using transition words. Whether you are a native speaker or a non-native speaker, you could benefit from studying transition words. Just look up a list of these words and study their definitions.

2. Understand the relation between your thoughts and ideas

Authors who have a better idea of their text structure use more transition words effectively. For those who just start writing and then add transition words later, we recommend them to relate their thoughts and ideas first to structure their text. This will help them identify which transition words they need to use.

3. Know how to apply transition words properly and in context

This is simple! Just break your content into introduction, body, and conclusion. Make sure to understand the goal of every paragraph. Now, analyse your text on a sentence level. Look for opportunities where you could use transition words to add sense to your text. If you find it difficult to do so, try reading your content aloud and see what’s missing. You can also consider reading the work of other authors and see how they use transitions. And you’ll master the use of transition words soon.

The Final Say

Improving readability isn’t very difficult if you learn and apply them in your writing. Transition words are one of the ways to improve readability for users. If you want to keep your readers glued to your site and minimize the bounce rate of your site significantly, then creating engaging content is a good idea. And using transition words naturally in your text aids here. It could be hard, but you can still master it. So, study, understand and practice a lot. Just remember that an adequate understanding of your content and its structure will help you to find the best transition words, and place them as required.

Do you still have any questions about transition words? Please feel free to share with us in the comments below and we are ready to help you.

FAQ’s

Digital competition is indeed at its rage. Today, every brand wants to be at the top. Each one of them is looking for proven SEO techniques that can help them be at #1. However, SEO professionals often overlook certain small tricks that can help to do so. Permalink is one such SEO tactic that can boost your SEO rankings significantly.

Read on to know more.

SEO Permalink Meaning

The permalink is the complete URL you see in any browser. A permanent link or permalink includes the domain name (www.avinashchandra.com). Plus, it also comprises the slug, which is the part of a URL that suffixes the domain name. Permalinks make a URL easy to comprehend both for the users and the search engines.

Let us understand it more deeply.

What Is A Permalink

The URL given below is a permalink.
https://www.avinashhandra.com/blog/what-is-permalink

Permalink is the complete URL of any website or a webpage. Just like you have a permanent address to your home or office, every page that is on the internet has a permalink.

Best Permalink Structure for SEO

A permalink constituent several things, including:

• The domain name: the site’s name with extension. Simply, it’s everything before the “.com,”
• The slug: everything after the backslash.

Please note here that slugs are important in SEO and for permalinks. They tell web browsers and search engines how to index your site.

Now, let’s understand how permalinks should be structured. Consider the below two examples of permalinks:
Ex 1: Avinashchandra.com/blog/what-is-keyword
Ex 2: Avinashchandra.com/post-id?=342ghfmiens

Which of these URLs can you understand and remember?

Definitely, the first one.

A URL with a lot of random numbers and letters fails to attract visitors. Also, it isn’t even optimized for search engines.

Permalink and Keywords

Good slugs use keywords to describe webpages. Keywords, when added to the slugs, add immense meaning to them. This is because keywords tell the search engines and the readers, what’s on the webpage.

Let’s consider the above example once again. The slug in the above permalink, i.e. “what-is-keyword”, the reader and Google will come to know that the page houses information about keywords and is targeting the keyword, “what is keyword”.

Also, since keywords have search volume behind them, it helps your webpage to rank on Google. They’re also the virtual key that makes sure your content is found by the people you want to reach.

Read more about keywords in SEO here.

The Importance of Permalinks

Permalinks are significant primarily for two reasons:

• Usability: With permalinks, visitors who wish to visit your site can anticipate what your page is about. If it matches what they are looking for, they are more likely to visit it.
• SEO: With permalinks, search engines get to know what your page is about. This helps them in indexing your pages and improves your chances of ranking.

Permalinks – Major Considerations

Always choose a permalink structure that matches your marketing goals. For instance, if your blog is a brand new one, it might make sense to add its publication date to the URL. But if, you are writing an article that has to stand the test of time, adding its publication date won’t make any sense. Instead, the date in the permalink could make the content look ‘old’.

It is always a good practice using a simple and clear permalink structure. In most cases, adding the post name to the domain name usually makes sense. Hence, in WordPress, it’d be the /postname/ option. Further, in some other cases, appending a category will help create a hierarchy in the URL. However, one thing to consider here is, this could make your ULRs look too long.

Why Should Permalinks Remain Unchanged?

Once you’ve published a particular webpage or a post, you should not change the permalink for that page. This is because any external links arriving at the page or post will then point to a missing URL.

If in case, changing a permalink on your blog becomes unavoidable, you must set up a proper 301 redirect. This will clearly tell search engines that your page or post has now moved to the new URL.

To set up a 301 redirect, you can use a free WordPress plugin like Quick Page/Post Redirect. However, if you happen to change the permalink of an existing page without setting up a 301 redirect, it will generate, what’s called a broken link.

And as you all know, broken links are bad for the SEO health of your website. It simply annoys a user when they click a link but are redirected to a page that “no longer exist”.

Hence, broken links can lead to a high bounce rate with visitors constantly leaving your site one by one.

Further, when search engines notice an increased bounce rate for your site, they will decrease your organic rankings accordingly. And if you’ve multiple broken links on your site, search engines will likely penalize your website as a whole.

Using Permalinks with WordPress

The default permalink for any post in WordPress isn’t optimized. It consists of slug comprising the date of your post, followed by its full name. Let us first learn how to create and edit permalink in WordPress.

Creating or editing permalinks is a fairly simple process. You don’t need any technical skills or to install plugins to do so. Both of these methods involve just a few more steps.

How To Create Permalink in WordPress?

Please note that a backslash (/) separates each custom structure. Further, each tag starts with a percentage (%) sign. You can get the complete list of all of the WP structure tags available. Some of these are hour, author, and category.

How to Change Permalink in WordPress?

If you want to change the permalink of an existing webpage or post, follow these steps:

1. Go to your WordPress dashboard. Choose the page you want to edit the permalink for. You will see an EDIT button next to your permalink.
2. Now, change the text to include the information you want, like your post title, SEO keywords, author, etc.

How to Optimize your SEO Permalink?

Optimizing permalink structure is one of the important SEO techniques. All your permalinks should be user-friendly and search engine friendly. Here are a few tips on how you can optimize the permalink structure of your blog to boost your search rankings.

1. Keep your URLs short: Make sure to create shorter URLs. This is because neither your visitors nor the search engines prefer long URLs. Instead, they like short and meaningful permalinks. Keep your URL not more than eight words. The average URL on #1 page is only 59 characters long. Further, the same study also revealed how short URLs and titles could jump to the first page of search results in just 15 minutes.
2. Use a keyword-rich permalink: As explained above, keywords in your permalinks help search engines understand the content on your page. But how to determine which keyword should you use to boost your SEO? Well, you can use tools like SEMrush to determine search volume stats for various keywords. Also, consider searching for long-tail keywords. Including the right keyword in your permalinks will help you see more organic growth.
3. Avoid using dates in Permalinks: Most SEO do not consider adding dates to permalinks as helpful. Harsh Agarwal from Shout Me Loud conducted a test to study the effects of adding dates to the older content. He added dates on posts he published between 2008 to the present day. And the results were shocking! He immediately experienced a sharp drop in organic traffic.

These were the pages that had been offering steady traffic rates for years. But immediately after adding dates to these page URLs, the traffic dropped down. It was clear that users were apparently finding more relevant and updated content. So, what’s the key takeaway here? Users look for content that is up-to-date and relevant. Hence, keep the dates out of your permalinks to enjoy more organic traffic and high ranking.

Final Thoughts

Permalinks are, no doubt, a major SEO technique when it comes to boosting traffic and ranking of your site. Since permalinks can determine the way Google and users will see your webpages, it’s crucial to structure them carefully. Keep the above optimization tips in mind.

Preferably, set the URL structure from the get-go and stick to it. However, if you do change your mind later on, don’t forget to set up 301 redirects. And you won’t lose ranking and traffic.

FAQ’s

Anchor texts have gained much relevance when it comes to the process of improving search engine optimization. This article covers the important aspects related to anchor text in detail. Ready to explore and learn?

Anchor Text Meaning in SEO

Anchor text is the visible and clickable text in a hyperlink that links a webpage to another webpage. As per SEO best practices anchor text should be an integral part of your SEO strategy.

For the best SEO results, the Anchor text should also be relevant to the page you’re linking to, rather than a generic text.

On general sense, Achor Text is characterised by the blue, underlined text links on a webpage. This is the most common web standard, although it is possible to change the colour and underlining through HTML code.

What is anchor text on a website?

Anchor text is the visible and clickable text in a hyperlink. It is used to link one web page to another and it usually appears as a blue underlined text. It is also known as link label, link text or link title. Anchor texts are, basically, keywords that lead us to the content of the targeted site. it provides information about the link’s destination.

Here is an example of an anchor text.

<a href= “http://www.example.com ”>cheap cake<a>

Here ‘cheap cake’ is the anchor text for the link.

Anchor element “a”

An anchor element tag is the letter “a” surrounded by angle brackets. <a>

Both the opening and closing content is required. The content between the anchor tags makes up the anchor source.

Types of anchor text

There are many anchor text types or variations. Following is a brief description about each one of them.

1) Exact match –

Anchor text is the exact keyword or phrase that a page wants to target. For example, suppose you are Bakers.com, and you sell cakes. You are trying to get a ranking for the keyword “cheap cakes.” So, when you set up your anchors, an exact match anchor would be “cheap cakes”.

2) Phrase match –

anchor text contains the keyword for which a page wants to rank. For example, “best cheap cakes”.

3) Partial match –

Anchor text has all the words but not in the form of an exact phrase. It has the primary keywords, but there’s little variation as well. So, your anchor would be something like “cheap de la cakes”.

4) Branded –

Anchor text is the name of a page’s brand and is totally unrelated to the keywords that the page is trying to rank for. In your case, the branded anchor would be “Bakers”.

5) Naked URL –

Anchor text is totally raw and the same as it would appear in a browser. These are naked link anchors. It’s just the URL. Example, “bakers.com/cheap-cakes”.

6) Random –

Anchor text is a generic and unspecific phrase which lacks the keyword. It is completely unrelated to the page you’re linking to. For example, using phrases like “click here”, “visit website” etc.

7) Image links –

Anchor text is an image which works as a link. There’s an alt tag. Suppose you have a picture of a vanilla Bakers cake. The alt tag that you will use will be “vanilla Bakers cake”.

Importance of Anchor Text in SEO

Anchor text plays an important role in influencing your ranking. It gives a strong idea to the search engines as well as your audience about the page you’re linking to. Anchor texts should be contextually relevant. It also gives credibility to the page you’re linking to. Anchor text is very important while developing a link building strategy. It can also initiate documents and link to various documents.

Best SEO practices for anchor text

Anchor text is one of the ranking factors for SEO. Here is a list of good anchor text strategy for SEO

1. Make sure anchor words are relevant – relevance is the key. Pick anchors are important for the link. It helps in creating a positive experience for your audience. Avoid using random words for anchors.
2. Wise distribution of anchor text – there should be a proper ratio between all anchors.
3. Short anchor text – it should be relevant and without too many words. Search engines might find long anchor text difficult to understand.
4. Format links properly – it should be a convenient process for the users to spot the link. You should try including colourful links which can be easily differentiated from the rest of the text.
5. Surrounding text is important – your audience might read the surrounding words around your anchor text. So, you must avoid using the same anchor words throughout the text.
6. Branded anchor text – they are more relevant when it comes to getting a higher rank for your page.

Strategies related to anchor text that must be avoided

1. Don’t use the URL of the page as the anchor text.
2. Avoid using generic terms like ‘click here’, ‘this’, ‘read more’ etc. They don’t provide enough ideas to search engines on what the linked page is about.
3. Avoid using text that is not connected to the content of the linked page.
4. Try to avoid using exact match keywords.
5. Avoid low-quality links. Concentrate on the links that matter.
6. Avoid earning links from toxic sites.

Anchor Text Internal Links SEO

Well, generally Internal links connect your site content and give Google an idea of the structure of your website.

Internal link anchor text gives a sense of the topic or keywords the source page is trying to target. Internal linking with appropriate Anchor Text helps Google understand the intent of such a page.

Anchor Text Ratio for SEO

Anchor texts should be based on the type of link. You need to build links the way they are intended. Now, you don’t need a perfect natural ratio of various types of anchors. There’s no need of always linking to brand names.

For your homepage SEO, your backlink profile should break like this:

1. 80% to 90% should fall in the Brand, Natural and URL anchor.
2. 10% should fall in the key phrases mixed into anchor categories.
3. 5% falls in the exact match anchor category.

Inner page profile

On your inner page, this is how your anchor text profile should break down:

1. 35% to 45% should fall in the key Brand, Natural, URL category.
2. 50% to 60% should fall in the key phrases mixed into the anchor category.
3. 10% should fall in the exact match anchor category.

You need to understand what you want to target. You should try to create a natural distribution for your anchor text scheme.

Anchor Text and the Google Penguin Update

On September 23, 2016, the face of SEO changed when Google released its Penguin update. This update penalises those websites that use exact match anchor text too frequently. However, according to the update, it should be below 50% exact match anchor text and, in some cases, even below that. Therefore, it is convenient to use a mix of different anchor texts

Anchor Text Over Optimisation

Anchor text over optimisation can easily be avoided by following certain rules. Keep in mind these simple steps and all your problems will be gone.

1. It is very important to link out to websites that you trust.
2. You can link to a website using the brand name.
3. Try to use a variety of anchor text types.
4. Review your link profile properly. A profile with only exact match keywords is not preferable.

Anchor Text Generator Online

Gaining access to anchor text generators is relevant for SEO. They are tools that give you the ideas for building links to your site. Focus on tools that will make your search engine optimization results better. Following is a list of some of the tools that might help you in improving your anchor SEO:

1 Google Analytics

It is free to use and easy to set up. It helps you in creating powerful reports. Your website ranking efforts improve this way.

2 Google Webmaster tools

It is one of the most important tools and is absolutely free. It shares with you a wide variety of keywords that people will ultimately search for. There’s a section which focuses on links. There are other sections like crawl errors, sitemaps, robot.txt.

3 Google Keyword Planner

You can come across the best keywords in your niche through this tool. You can also create AdWords campaigns quickly and easily.

4 SEOJet Anchor Text HTML Code Generator

It is an anchor text generation software. It looks at your backlink profile and gives a personalized plan in order to succeed in Google.

5 Linkio

It provides its users with an effective plan based on the data it discovers. It helps you in knowing the best anchor text in order to improve your anchor SEO.

6 WooRank: Anchor Text Checker Tool

It has the ability to create a customised report in a very less time. It informs you about your top priorities and provides a good geodata.

7 Mozbar

It provides you valuable insight into domain authority, link analysis and search result rankings. It can help you to improve your website SEO to a great extent.

8 SEOWorkers tool

This is a very effective analysis tool because it helps you to plug a website URL and it also generates a quick report for you. It provides ample supply of data.

9 Remove’em: Anchor Text Over Optimization tool

This tool is used to identify your anchor text diversity and highlight those areas where you are at risk for anchor text over-optimization. If you find that you are over-optimized for specific keywords or keyword phrases, you should consider modifying the anchor text of specific links to focus more on your brand or remove backlinks that are using that specific anchor text.

These tools will, certainly, help you in improving your rankings in the search engines.

Conclusion

Anchor texts have always proved to be important for improving SEO for any website. Just make sure that you use relevant anchors because that will send positive signals to Google’s crawlers.

As mentioned earlier also, improve your variation strategy. Follow the simple steps and you are ready. Your anchor text strategy will grow and that will boost your SEO.

What are you waiting for?

FAQ’s

Of the many evolutions in SEO, one of the most undervalued, perhaps under-used offerings is the Schema Markup. Despite the significance it has in boosting SEO, many website owners aren’t even aware of what Schema is. So, let us learn the concept of Schema markup and how you can use it to boost your website ranking in the SERPs.

Schema markup helps you improve your SEO efforts by helping search engines understand the meaning of content they’re pulling from your website. Moreover, it also gives you a better opportunity to reach people looking for particular information. 

Let us dig deeper to understand schema markup.

What is Schema in SEO?

Schema or schema.org is a structured data vocabulary that explains entities, relationships between entities and actions on the Internet. Technically, it offers a series of tags and properties to mark up your reviews, products, job postings, local business listings in details. By using schema, webmasters can offer rich, extensible experiences to the users.

With the aim to have a shared language (vocabulary) that allows them to get a better understanding of website content, Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex together developed the schema.org vocabulary.  

Now, don’t scratch your heads wondering what this structured data vocabulary is. Continue to read.

What is Schema Markup in SEO?

Schema Markup or Structured data, typically is a piece of code that you add to your website to offer an extra bit of details to the search engines about your website. Google accepts that it isn’t able to understand the content of a page and hence has to work hard to do the same. And Schema Markup is a way to help Google achieve the same.

Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content.

Google

For example, searching for a recipe that has structured data is eligible to appear in a detailed search result like this:

Schema markup is one of the skills you need to implement technical SEO onto your website.  

So, why do you need Schema Markup?

As said, marking up your website entities – reviews, events, products, job listings, etc., with structured data makes it understandable for search engines. This allows them to comprehend what every part of your site is about. By using structured data in Schema.org, search engines no longer need to guess that a job posting is a job posting. With the metadata you provide about the event, they can comprehend it easily.

For instance, take a look at the search results for “Apple iPod Reviews” in the image below. You will observe:

All the two listings relate to Apple iPod 7 Reviews.

But, if you look at the first one, you’ll notice that there’s a lot more information being shown, in relation to Apple iPod in question.

• There’s a rating card for the iPod (in the form of star ratings).
• There’s information on how many votes were ‘cast’ in order to produce that rating
• It also says who the expert critic is.
• There’s even price information.

With this information, you could easily decide whether or not you should buy Apple iPod, without having to even click and go to the site.   

Significance of Schema Markup and Structured Data in SEO

Schema explains to the search engines what your data means. Once your website content is indexed, it is returned in search results. However, with schema markup, some of your content gets indexed and returned differently. This is because the markup tells search engines the meaning of the content.

Let’s understand it with an example: Let’s say, the word, “BrandLoom” appears on a blog. When Google or any search engines sees it, it produces a SERP entry with “BrandLoom”. But let’s assume that we put the right schema markup around the name “BrandLoom”, which tells that it is a 5-star rated digital marketing company in Gurgaon. Now, the search engine will provide results that display better information to the user who was searching for “BrandLoom”.

Helps Users Get Improved Search Results

So, when a website has schema markup in place, users get to see better search results with additional information. This helps them make a better and quick decision on which website to land. Schema Markup is a user-focused improvement, which any search engines use to offer the best search results to the user.

Helps Your Website Rank Better For All Kinds Of Structured Data (Content)

Schema.org allows webmasters and developers to add a lot of information to your site as structured data. However, not everything is relevant. In order to implement structured data, you must know what you should markup. Whether you have a product in an online store, or you own a restaurant or a local business providing services to the community, you need to know what you want to do and look for possibilities. No matter what you chose, schema markup helps your website rank for all kinds of content types:

• Creative Works (including software applications, games, sculptures, conversations, etc.)
• Articles
• Books
• Courses
• Events
• Datasets
• Job Postings
• FAQs Pages
• Products
• Reviews
• Business and Organizations (including restaurant, local businesses)
• How-Tos
• Q&A Pages
• Music
• Recipes
• TV & Movies
• Speakable
• Videos
• Commerce
• Podcasts

No matter what type of data you have on your website, there’s a good chance that it will have an associated and itemtype.

Therefore, when you use schema markup for your website, it will rank better than websites without markup. 

Leads to Rich Results

By now, you know that by using schema markup, you help search engines comprehend the content on your site. Plus, it gives better search results to the users. But there’s one more thing here: with schema markup, you allow search engines to do interesting things with your content.

How?

By displaying search results in the form of “rich results”. These are the extra pieces of information presented using interactive features on a search result page. Besides showing the meta description, the search results also display additional information like reviews and ratings, location, price, date (in case of events), or extra navigations tools.

Rich Results

Here we have briefed a few existing rich results (formerly, known as rich snippets), which are most commonly being used.

1 Knowledge Graph

You might have often noticed a big block of information on the right-side of google search page while searching for a company, or an institution, or a celebrity. This block is the “knowledge graph” that shows detailed information for a particular search result. Google evaluates the related content on a given subject and fills the information in the graph.

2 Featured Snippet

Also known as the answer boxes, it highlights the answer to the query you put in Google search bar. Since the box is located on top of the organic search results, it is obvious to catch the attention of the user. Hence, having a featured snippet brings in a lot of traffic and proves your credibility on the subject. However, these do not obtain their content from structured data. Instead, they pick the content from the regular webpages to answer search queries.

Source: Google

3 Carousels (for Mobile)

Rich results on mobile are presented in the form of swipeable boxes, called carousels. You could find them while searching for items like a local restaurant, recipe, courses, movies, etc. In certain search queries, carousels also allow you to take quick actions, like booking a flight or movie ticket or booking a table at a local restaurant.

4 Sitelink Search Boxes

This search results appear immediately below the search bar on the search results. Since, it appears above the sitelink, hence the name. Google obtain the content for sitelinks from Schema.org.

Just like SEO, Schema.org is constantly evolving. Hence, structured data even forms the basis for several new developments in the SEO sphere. The recent addition is the voice search. And the future is bound to have more such developments.

Different Types of Structured Data Formats

There are different ways by which you can add structured data to your site. These are JSON-LD, microdata, and RFDa.

1 JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data): Best Schema for SEO

It is a JavaScript-based data format that is implemented in the form of blocks of code. Since the entire schema vocabulary can be written within the <script> tag of your HTML code, it makes it easier to write and maintain structured data using JSON-JD. It is for this reason; it is the most preferred method used by site developers. While both Google and Schema.org endorse JSON-LD, not all search engines have been able to adopt it quickly.

Source: Google

2 RFDa (Resource Description Framework in Attributes)

One of the earliest structured data formats, it needs to be added throughout the HTML code. Because of this reason, developers find it a bit complex. However, there have been revisions over the years to make it less complex to implement for the publishers.

3 Microdata

Schema.org originally promoted Microdata as an alternative to the complex RFDa notation. While microdata is used throughout the HTML code just like RFDa, it’s mainly used within the <body> tag of the HTML code in many cases.

Both RFDa and Microdata are inefficient and error-prone, making it a pain to write and maintain structured data. This is one of the main reasons why JSON-LD has been adopted very quickly.

Schema Testing Tool

So, now you are all aware of the significance of schema markup in search engine results. But, to your surprise, only 0.3% of websites are using schema tools. That means millions of websites are not yet taking advantage of this SEO tactic to stay ahead of their competitors.

Is your website one of them? To check, here are a few tools you can use:

SEO Schema Generator

Following are the schema org generator for SEO:

• Google Structured Data Markup Helper
• Google Data Highlighter

Validators and Test Tools

• Structured Data Testing Tool
• Google Rich Results Tester
• Google Search Console Rich Cards
• Yandex Structured Data Markup
• Bing Webmaster Tools Markup Validator

If your website is built in WordPress, you can even use Yoast SEO plugin to add schema markup to your site.

How To Use Schema Markup For SEO?

The best part about implementing schema markup on your site is that you don’t need to learn any new coding skills. To use schema markup, just follow these simple steps. Just remember, the goal here is to rank better, perform better before the users and do better in SERPs.

Generate your Schema Markup

• Go to Google Structured Data Markup Helper. With this tool, you can code your schema markup for your site.
• Select the type of content/data that you want to markup from the options given.
• Paste in the page URL that you want to markup. Click “Start Tagging”.
• Next, highlight and select the type of elements to be marked up.
• You will be redirected to the “tag data” page.
• You can use the list of data items and highlight other items in your article to add them to the markup list.
• Create the HTML. Now, you will see the HTML code of your page with relevant microdata inserted in the spots that you selected.
• Now, you can either copy and paste the Microdata into your HTML code. If not this, you can simply download the code as an HTML file. You can copy-paste this file it into your source code or CMS.
• Click “Finish”.

If you want to find out further how your page would look like after adding the markup, you can use the Structured Data Testing Tool.

The TakeAway

To conclude, schema markup helps your audience find the information they need quickly. It also helps search engines comprehend the content on your webpages. Also, it makes your website both user-friendly and search-engine friendly.  Further, with the structured data format and Google tools, it is fairly simple to implement. In addition, rich snippets enhance the visibility and improve click-through rates of your website.

With its potential of getting ahead of millions of websites, schema markup is sure to be with us for a long time. So, why not add it to your website and reap the benefits?

Let BrandLoom help you with implementing Schema Markup on your site. For more details, contact us today.

Frequently Asked Questions