SEO is a big thing for all online businessmen. Most of the operation depends on the website’s performance. Therefore, there are a bunch of technologies to analyze the performance of their website. An SEO dashboard is thus helpful in making a report on the performance of the website. Luckily, there are a bunch of such dashboards but you need only the right one. A neophyte makes stuck at the point of choosing the right one hence we are here to help you.

What does SEO mean to your business?

Lots of people do SEO of their client’s website while others do it just to help their friends. It, thus, depends on the budget level you have. You can utilize any cheap or free tool if it’s just your beginning or you are doing it for your friend’s new website as a trial. However, if you serve the SEO services to your client then the cheapest or free application may not be so worthy. Your clients always expect the best from you.

A real-time view

Report or a dashboard- What do you want? A performance dashboard tracks the regular performance of the website by taking shots of the current moment on the website. On the other hand, a report will give a historical view of your site where you can check the monthly report or yearly report of a website.

Whatever you need depends on your client’s needs.

It may take hours and even months to create an SEO client dashboard. For anyone who needs a quick report or dashboard have to wait? Therefore, an automated tool is what you need to save tones of your time and of course your money as well. Various tools offer great value for money only when you invest in the right tool.

Right usage of the dashboard

How much your target audience care for the use of an SEO dashboard? If they don’t then no need to invest, a free tool is best for the job. However, if your audience or client is depending on each piece of information that you send us a report, then it’s better to invest in the big guns.

What about detailing?

Your decision to invest in a tool depends on your client’s needs. Would they take a detailed report on everything related to their site? Or are they fine with a simple report? This will impact on the price and features of the tool you are selecting. And it will, in turn, impact the result.

Integration matters

An SEO client dashboard offers varied data sources in one place that’s an obvious benefit for the client. Everything is displayed on one single page. So, check a tool that integrates all the data sources and results and display it on the page. However, it will again depend on how your client would like to see the report.  

Importance of white labeling

Some tools focus more on white labeling while others don’t even care about it. It again depends on you whether you would like a report as per the company’s brand or not. Is it important or not? Deciding on this matter hence take white labeling as one of a factor as well.

Now, come to the main part- how to create an SEO report? Well, after working for so long maybe your client or boss doesn’t appreciate you for the report you have generated using an SEO dashboard. It’s okay, don’t feel down, we will show you how you can grab the attention of your client with a good report. They will appreciate your work. And you can keep working with them in the future.

Use our 3 basic steps

1. Objective matters.
2. KPIs establishment.
3. Report building and sharing.

For all online businessmen, SEO is a big investment. Hence, effecting strategies are needed to create an SEO report. Some may create a report every week while others do daily. Generally speaking, creating a report every month is best.

Let us discuss the steps in detail.

1. Objectives

Without knowing the objectives, you cannot move forward. So, ask the clients about the objective he has and then plan a strategy. Ask what their current goals are, and then analyze. Do an SEO audit first to know whether the objectives of business align with your strategies. Some of the set goals of your client may be:

• Sales increasing.
• SERP improvement.
• Seeing improvement in their engagement.
• Bringing more traffic.

Generally speaking, your client will have all these goals. You cannot focus on all of them at the same time so get some time to each goal.

But while improving one goal its impact will be seen on another goal as well. it is because all of them are connected. For instance, it doesn’t mean that a website with more traffic results in more sales. On the other hand, getting too much or too little traffic also affects the engagement level as well.

Therefore, determining the objectives is important before you choose an SEO client dashboard.

2. KPI

What is KPI and why to include? First thing first, your report should show a measurable goal. It is because people rely on hard numbers. Moreover, your report should include results for

• Traffic
• Conversion rate
• Page speed
• Website performance
• Links
• Engagement

Your client needs a report showing positive results on these factors.

3. SEO report

Automatic or manual preparation of SEO report is the way you can build a report. An SEO dashboard will generate it automatically. How?

It does it by connecting your integrations and creating a report as per the template you choose. You can customize it as well using comments, images, KPIs, and even headers. Simply attach the report to an automatic email and dispatch it to your client.

But if you like the idea of creating it manually then it will eat up your some time. We suggest you prefer an SEO dashboard rather than building it on your own.

All your work will be completed in less than an hour. Moreover, It will automatically update the new data monthly. Get an SEO client dashboard and give a report to your client that’s worth appreciating.

The post An SEO dashboard- The ultimate guide on picking the right one appeared first on Tricky Enough.

Here are 5 black hat techniques that are a serious no-no:

When it comes to creating an online marketing strategy or going for a long term business then you should go with White Hat SEO techniques. I will even recommend you to go with White Hat over The Grey Hat SEO technique. Beuse The Grey Hat SEO is the combination of both Black and White Hat SEO techniques.

1. Paid Links:

Buying links for SEO do have a few advantages but it can get you banned from the search engines and get action taken against your web presence. A company goes ahead and pays the third party to create backlinks to the original domain. This way, the ranking of the website gets increased. Recently, an expert from Google said that the search engine can easily identify which one are the paid links and they can go ahead to ban the website from their search engine. Paid links make it easier for companies as they do not have to worry about the quality of content posted. It is better to create original and high-quality content to attract viewers rather than collecting them with money. An alternative to this technique is that you can start accepting guest-posts and that will help increase traffic to your website and build relations with other blog owners.

2. Spam Comments

Even if you do not know the full form of SEO, you must have seen spam comments somewhere on the internet. These are the annoying, non-related, out of the blue, and a total spamming way to put a link on another website. If you read blogs or watch videos online, you must have seen comments with a link put in, that are not-in-sync with anything related to the page at all. It gets the company no gain in their online strategy as the links in comments are ‘NoFollow’ already. Still, it is one of the most popular techniques of SEO black hats that are still used all across industries. It only helps the reader know that a company like yours exists but in no way helps the ranking. Although, Blog commenting is considered good for SEO over doing the Commenting and reaching out to all blogosphere can be very dangerous. I have also posted a post about how to make good comments and get your comments approved.

3. Duplicate Content

The content on your website should be original. It is okay if some of the content is not original unless it is meant to increase the ranking of your website and dupe the search engines. You can check your website on plenty of tools to adjudge if you have duplicate content available on your website. If the search engine finds out that you have duplicate content made to dupe the search engine, it will penalize you in form of de-indexing your website. If you are using duplicate content, you must show it to search engines that you are not doing it to trick them at all. Another risky move; my advice, write original content if you do not want any troubles with the search engines. You can check the plagiarism of content with the help of the plagiarism checker tool.

4. Article Spinning

A nastier form of duplicate content, article spinning is used to change the words of an article and publish it again. The same article is rewritten with the help of software; it changes the word but makes the article really hard to comprehend as it is changed with the help of a tool. The reason to do this as it is really hard to put the same links in different articles. You can go ahead and create a thousand version of the same article and send it forward. It makes search engines determine that the websites are really popular and it pushes the ranking up. Now, search engines like Google have gone deep to differentiate between a spun article and an original one. If the search engine identifies that you are using this method, it will de-index you and make presence weaken all over the internet. It is not a sustainable strategy and even if you get organic traffic, going through content that makes no-sense will turn them away. Just like the Trustedtutors update the original content of reviews to reveal the truth of writing service.

5. Invisible Text

This is one of the oldest black hat SEO techniques used to promote a website and improve its rankings. Black hat experts put some keywords on the same color of the background or get text with’0’ font and publish it. They also put links in between texts to make it seem innocuous. This also results in keyword stuffing and if caught by search engines, it will only end up harming ranking of the company. Using techniques like this can also cause search engines to identify the link as spam and therefore de-index it. Search engines like Google have come a far way to recognize techniques like this. Using this technique would be a really risky move you could make.

6. Keyword Stuffing

Sit in any meeting of SEO experts and you will hear the term ‘keyword’ more times than any other terminology. It is because keywords are essential to the art of SEO. Different search engines allow for different percentages a keyword can be used. You need to make your keyword relevant to the website and for user searches. Black hat experts use this technique to fill the website with more keywords than necessary making the content seem unintelligible. They also fill in keywords with the same color and background so to make the site appear in different searches. It is not an ethical way to go about it; Search engines like Google have now come up with different algorithms that allow them to easily find out if a website is using a high keyword density to make their site appear in user searches and rank higher. If you want the website to appear on user searches; do not go for this method as it will only harm your website if found out by search engines. Instead, Use keyword synonyms to overcome the problem of Keyword stuffing.

7. Cloaking

It refers to a technique where other content than what is on the website is shown in user searches. This is a serious black hat method taken up to fool the search engine spider and browser to read some other content than what is actually present on the website. Basically, it is against most search engine guidelines because it dupes the user into landing on a page that is not relevant to their searches. It is mostly done to make a website rank higher. It is a risky method because if the search engine finds out that you went this way, they will de-index your website harming it exponentially.

What Not To Do

Simply put, never go for any SEO method that sounds too good to be true. Ranking your website higher on search engines is a careful task that requires patience along with a sound strategy. Going for any method mentioned above will only end up harming your website and eventually getting de-indexed from search engines. It is a long way back from there and you should not risk it. If you are hiring SEO experts for your website, do not fall for any method that might sound convincing but is against the search engine guidelines. As search engines keep on getting smarter in their algorithms, so should you.

Suggested:

Things That Hurt SEO.

Conclusion

In this day and age, you cannot build a business online through unethical means much less advertise it. You will have to follow what is termed as white Hat techniques that will help you build a business organically and with a strong foundation. Using any of the black hat SEO techniques means that you are not looking to have a lasting business and so are using petty techniques to get higher rankings for a short period of time. As technology advances, search engines will keep on coming up with complex algorithms to differentiate between the right and wrong. Going for black hat techniques would be a dark path to tread on.

The post 5 Risky Black Hat SEO Techniques Used Today appeared first on Tricky Enough.