SEO

Here’s How to Start an Online Business (9 Steps to Success)

Published

1 year ago

January 17, 2023

Here's How to Start an Online Business (9 Steps to Success)

Starting an online business changed the course of my life forever. It allowed me to live my perfect life, travel the world, and set my own hours. It taught me more than my four-year college degree and any job I ever worked.

An online business allows you to take control of your life in a way that nothing else can. It’s one of the few ways to create true financial freedom.

But it also comes with its challenges. There’s a lot to learn, and it takes time to see the fruits of your labor. I started five different businesses before finally finding one I loved enough to stick with and make it work. Since then, I’ve built three separate six-figure companies.

It would have never happened if I didn’t allow myself to “fail” over and over again to learn what works and what doesn’t. Luckily, I already failed plenty, which means you get to learn from my mistakes.

So how do you start an online business? And how do you grow it to become your primary income source? Here are the nine steps to building an online business I’ve learned in my decade of entrepreneurship.

The first step of starting an online business is getting your head in the right place.

Know that you will “fail.” Probably a lot. You may lose some of your investments. You may spend money on ads that don’t convert. You may stock products that never sell.

That’s not only normal—it’s a good thing.

Every time you mess something up, it’s an opportunity to learn what doesn’t work. In the words of Thomas Edison, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

What matters is not that you mess something up but that you keep going despite the hiccups. Learn to look forward to your mistakes, and you will succeed in any endeavor.

There are many ways to make money online:

Making and selling your own physical products
Dropshipping
Affiliate marketing
Services (web design, copywriting, etc)
Infoproducts (courses, ebooks, etc)
Subscription models
Display advertising
And more

I have done almost all of these at one point or another in my career. I’ve sold SEO services, dropshipped jewelry and other products from China, made home decor items by hand and sold them both locally and online, done affiliate marketing for other brands, sold display ads on my websites, and more.

Each has its own pros and cons, and each can work. It depends on what you prefer to do. Here’s a quick and dirty overview of each:

E-commerce

Making and selling your own physical products, or even buying and selling them using a manufacturer, tend to have bigger profit margins per sale than dropshipping.

However, it’s more labor intensive and costs more. You need to handle the production, shipping, handling and storing inventory, and customer service.

Dropshipping cuts out a lot of this excess labor by off-loading the inventory management and, in some cases, the customer service to another company. But it comes at the cost of a lower profit margin.

You can either start your own e-commerce website or sell on websites like Amazon, Etsy, or eBay. Again, it depends on how much labor you want to put in—building your own website is best for profits in the long run but requires you to handle more variables.

Services and info products

Another lucrative option is starting an online business by offering services such as freelance writing, graphic design, coding, etc.

You can either offer these services via a website like UpWork or Fiverr or build your own website and work with clients directly. Many people start on the former and move to their own brand after seeing some success, which is the method I recommend.

Info products like courses and ebooks are also a great way to make money online. If you have nearly any skill, you can turn it into an info product you can sell. I’ve spent over $100,000 over the last 10 years buying online courses and info products to learn how to do everything from SEO to speaking Spanish, playing instruments, investing, and more.

Subscription models

There are a ton of subscription-model businesses these days. It could be a monthly delivery of your products or a membership to your club or course materials.

The great thing about subscriptions is recurring revenue, which is crucial to growing an online business. This model is best used in conjunction with other models.

For example, say you sell dog toys. You can capture recurring customers by adding a subscription box with dog toys that ship every month, like BarkBox does.

Display ads and affiliate marketing

The method I have had the most success with is affiliate marketing. Basically, you promote other people’s products and services and make a commission from any sales you make.

It’s my favorite because I like having as few responsibilities as possible. I don’t have to handle customer service, inventory, or any of that stuff. I just talk about the products I love and make money.

For example, I wrote a guide to buying a rooftop tent and included affiliate links to each tent:

Affiliate marketing also pairs well with display advertising. This allows you to monetize the supporting content you need to develop topical authority in addition to your direct affiliate content.

For example, let’s say you’re writing about the best mattresses for side sleepers.

You can promote specific mattresses and make a commission on them. But if you want to fully cover the mattress niche, you also need content covering things like “When should I buy a new mattress?” and “How to get rid of bed bugs?” These won’t typically convert well, but you can still display ads on those pages to monetize them.

My recommendation is to pick a method that sounds interesting and try it. But don’t be afraid to try different methods to see which ones you like. You may hate affiliate marketing but love making and selling your own products. You won’t know until you try.

Steps #2 and #3 can be done interchangeably. You may find you want to stick to a certain niche then figure out how to monetize it later, or you may decide you want to make a course or do a particular type of monetization and figure out the niche later.

Either way, choosing a niche is one of your most important decisions. It can take one to two years of work before you start making significant money from your business, so ensure it’s something you’ll be OK with talking about for a long time.

Some niches will be more competitive than others.

A good niche is one that:

Has high-paying affiliate programs or products with a high margin.
Isn’t too competitive.
Has a large variety of things you can talk about.
Is interesting enough to keep you working on it for a long time.

Personally, I only work in niches that I am interested in learning about myself. Even if I don’t know a lot about something, if I’m at least curious about it, I will be able to stick to it. I’ve tried working in niches I don’t care about, and it doesn’t work for me. You may be different.

To come up with niche ideas, answer the following questions:

What do I know a lot about?
What am I curious about?
What do other people tell me I’m good at?

The answers can help guide you into a niche. Alternatively, you can just pick something random and try it. I did that for a few of my own businesses—I just had a random idea one day and went for it. In the worst-case scenario, you learn a lot and figure out what you don’t like.

Another way to come up with niche ideas is by looking at affiliate programs, then choosing one based on high-paying affiliate partners. From there, you can either build an affiliate site or build your own competing business with that affiliate. If the affiliate program pays well, the business likely makes a good profit margin on its products.

For example, if you head to AvantLink’s merchant list (you have to make an account to see it), you can browse affiliate programs in any niche and sort them by things like commission, category, conversion rate, and more.

I like to sort the list by commission rate (high to low) and go from there. But you can also continue to step #4 if you can’t decide because doing keyword research will help you find more opportunities.

As you develop ideas for a niche, it’s crucial to figure out how difficult it will be to break into it and where people in that niche are spending their time.

I always start with keyword research because it shows me the potential of the niche and the kind of content I’ll have to create to compete in that niche.

It starts with “seed keywords.” These are broad, generic keywords that cover the biggest topics in a niche.

For example, if you’re interested in the coffee niche, some seed keywords may be:

coffee
cappuccino
french press
nespresso
Etc

Use these keywords to find the big competitors in your niche that most closely represent your own website or the one you’re trying to make. If the results are too different from a niche website, you’ll need to get a little less broad.

For example, if I Google “coffee,” I see sites like Starbucks, Wikipedia, Peets, etc. Obviously, these giant brands are not my competition.

Instead, let’s try something a little more niche, such as “how to use a french press.” Here, we find a website called homegrounds.co.

Google SERP for "how to use a french press"

This site is closer to an affiliate marketing site, which is what I’m looking for. Now, I can plug that website into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and see what other keywords it’s ranking for and the page ranking for that keyword.

Organic keywords report based on a coffee-focused website

You’ll also see how many people search for that keyword per month (volume) and an estimation of how difficult it will be to rank for that keyword on Google (KD or Keyword Difficulty).

By scrolling through these keywords and looking at the potential volume, KD, and what page is ranking for them, we can get an idea of how hard it may be to enter the niche and what kind of traffic we can expect. We can also browse the website to see how it monetizes its content (paid ads, affiliates, products, etc.).

Do this for three to five websites in your niche to better understand how to tackle entering the niche and make money from it.

In addition to keyword research, you can use a tool like SparkToro to get an idea of where your potential audience spends their time (which social media channels, forums, etc.).

An example SparkToro report based on an audience that talks about coffee

If you like what you see, continue to step #5. If not, continue researching other niches.

The name of your business won’t make or break it, but it’s still important. Here are some tips for choosing a good business name:

Be clear, not clever – Your name should be easy to understand and spell.
Pick a name that doesn’t limit you too much – You may start selling chairs, but you want a name that allows you to expand into selling other furniture or even other things entirely.
Shorter is usually better – This is especially true for an online business where your customers may need to type out your URL and social media handles.

You also need to make sure you’re not encroaching on any trademarks or existing business names. If you’re in the U.S., you can look up whether a name is available or not on your state’s local government website or with a service like LegalZoom.

Once you’ve decided on a name, it’s time to set it up as a legal entity. Note that I’m not a lawyer, this isn’t legal advice, and my knowledge is limited to the U.S.

Sidenote.

This step doesn’t need to be done right away. You can do it at any point before you actually start earning money. Check out this Business Insider article for more info.

Typically, you can get away with a sole proprietorship to start. This is the bare minimum requirement to do business in the U.S.

However, once you start making decent money, it’s a good idea to upgrade to an LLC (limited liability company) or even eventually a corporation to limit how liable you are in the event of legal action, as well as to benefit from tax savings.

I recommend talking to a business attorney to help you set this up when you’re ready. But don’t feel pressured to do it from the beginning; you can worry about it once you’re making some money.

Beyond setting up a company, you also need to register your business and obtain any relevant permits. How you do that and if you need permits depend on which state you live in and how you monetize, so I’ll leave it up to you to research. Consider calling your local SBA (Small Business Administration) office for advice.

At this point, you should have a business entity set up and be ready to buy your domain name and build your website.

Your domain name will typically be your business name with a top-level domain (TLD) like .com or .co.uk at the end. You can get a name from a service like NameCheap or GoDaddy. Or you can buy one directly from your hosting company if you want to spend a little more but have an easier time setting it up.

Hosting is a service that allows you to “host” your website on the internet. Think of it as digital rent. I use Kinsta or SiteGround for WordPress blog websites, Shopify for e-commerce websites, and Wix for everything else (services and local businesses).

Sidenote.

Shopify and Wix are two-in-one platforms: They are both a content management system (CMS) like WordPress and provide website hosting. This makes them a bit easier to use and set up than WordPress with a separate hosting service.

My preferred method of building websites is with WordPress. If you’re planning on doing affiliate marketing or blogging, it’s the best option because it’s the most flexible.

Keep in mind that WordPress.com and WordPress.org are separate things. I use the .org version, which you must install on your website using your hosting provider. Usually, this is a one-click install. The .com version is a competitor to Wix, but I don’t like it personally.

With SiteGround, you just purchase its WordPress hosting plan and it will set it up for you.

Once the backend is set up and you’ve finished purchasing your domain name and hosting, you can log in to your website by typing www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin.

Once you log in, the backend of your website looks like this:

This is where you can manage the appearance of your website via themes and customization, the blog posts and pages on your site, and more.

You’ll need to choose a theme to start building the frontend of your site. Most WordPress themes are well optimized these days, but you should focus on picking one that looks good and also loads quickly. Choose one that only has features you will use.

At this point, there’s a lot to learn and do to build your site. Rather than going through every single step in this article, here are some guides I will refer you to:

Regardless of the type of business you create, content is king. Publishing blog posts, videos, or podcasts is the best way to promote your business and get sales online.

Therefore, learning how to create and promote valuable content is one of the most important skills you can learn as a digital entrepreneur.

What makes content “valuable” depends on the platform. When it comes to SEO, valuable content means satisfying the search intent of the person using Google to find your content.

But “valuable” content on TikTok may mean your video is entertaining, YouTube may mean your video is informative or visually fascinating, and Facebook may mean your content sparks discussions.

My best advice is to figure out what content does well in whatever medium you’re creating content in, then master the fundamentals of that type of content.

For example, I write blog posts with the goal of ranking highly in Google search results. The content I create needs to be informative, helpful, easy to skim, and (when possible) entertaining.

To get better at my craft, I studied writing tips to become a better writer, researched how the Google search algorithm worked so I knew what it was looking for, and constantly pushed to find information I could include that no one else in the search results had.

I also spent well over $100,000 on online courses and mentors to teach me how to be better. It has been a constant game of self-growth and improving my craft.

All of these efforts have resulted in the sale of one of my websites for nearly half a million dollars. I can’t show the figures for that site, but I’ve since started another website I’m working on that is getting over 7,000 visits per month in less than one year as a side hustle:

Organic search-focused content is the main traffic generator for many websites; chances are it can be for yours too. It’s free, recurring traffic.

That said, you can figure out the type of content to create by studying your competitors and seeing what does well for them, then creating your own version of that content.

For example, say I want to break into the golf niche. I would look at my competitors on Google and social media to see what content they’re creating that’s working well and how they’re promoting it.

If we search for “golfing” on YouTube, we see three different kinds of videos from three different competitors that are each doing well:

To take it further, we can use Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer to find keyword ideas to rank for on Google and to see what kind of content our competitors are creating.

However, these competitors are already well established, and it may take a lot of work to beat them. That’s where Ahrefs’ Related terms report comes in handy.

Ahrefs' Related terms report for "golfing"

For example, the keyword “golf tips for beginners” only has a KD score of 12, which means it’s relatively easy to rank for compared to the keyword “golfing” at 31.

If we look at the SERP overview, we can find competitors who aren’t as established, then look at the keywords their website is ranking for.

Ahrefs' SERP overview for "golf tips for beginners"

The website free-online-gold-tips.com only has a Domain Rating (DR) of 36. This means that compared to bigger competitors like Golf Digest, with a DR of 82, it is relatively new to the game. The fact that it’s ranking for this keyword means it’s not as competitive.

If we look at its website in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, we can see other keywords it’s ranking for that aren’t as competitive, as well as the content it wrote that’s ranking.

Doing this can help you decide what type of content to create. Making your content better is another story—here are some other guides to help you with that:

Once you’ve created the content, it’s also important to learn how to promote it so it can actually be seen and give you an ROI in the short term. Basically, your goal is this:

You hustle to get the early site traffic, then SEO kicks in to give you free, recurring traffic.

Now, there are a lot of ways to promote your content. Social media, email outreach, paid ads… the list goes on.

Rather than going over every content promotion strategy here, I’ll refer you to our guide to content promotion.

The final step in becoming a digital entrepreneur is scaling up your efforts or pivoting into another business idea.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this guide, I pivoted five times before I found a business I could scale up. It wasn’t because I failed or threw in the towel. I just realized I didn’t want to continue putting effort into those businesses to make them succeed.

This is a part of the journey. Trying things and being OK with changing and possibly “losing” your investment. It’s completely all right to choose to pivot if you’re not enjoying the process and can’t see yourself continuing in the long term.

If you decide to continue, it’s time to scale up whatever is working. For me, that means hiring a team of writers, editors, outreach specialists, and a virtual assistant. But it also means NOT doing certain tasks that aren’t moving the needle.

At this point, I recommend you create a brain dump of all the tasks you do to run your business. This could be things like:

Doing keyword research
Creating content
Promoting content
Making sales calls
Finding affiliate or manufacturing partners
Etc

Once you’ve written out every task—even the smallest ones you may only do on occasion—it’s time to organize them into four lists:

Things only you can do.
Things that can possibly be done by someone else.
Things that can be automated with a tool or software.
Things that don’t need to be done at all.

From here, it’s easy to create standard operating procedures around the tasks that can be done by someone else, find tools to automate things, and cut some tasks out entirely.

Here are some helpful related guides:

Voilà—you now know how to start an online business from scratch.

Final thoughts

I have to reiterate that starting an online business has been the single best decision I’ve ever made in my 29 years on this planet. It’s given me the freedom—both financially and over my time—to travel the world and build the exact life I want.

There’s a lot to learn (certainly more than I can teach you in one guide), and it’s a steep learning curve. You will fail, and you will feel disappointment and doubt. It’s all part of the process.

If you start today and commit to learning how to make money online, I promise you will succeed. You may have to pivot, but you will eventually hit a winner. And 10 years from now, you’ll thank yourself for reading this guide and making this life-changing decision.

Related Topics:business Heres Online seo Start Steps success

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2024 WordPress Vulnerability Report Shows Errors Sites Keep Making

Published

10 hours ago

April 18, 2024

Max

2024 Annual WordPress security report by WPScan

WordPress security scanner WPScan’s 2024 WordPress vulnerability report calls attention to WordPress vulnerability trends and suggests the kinds of things website publishers (and SEOs) should be looking out for.

Some of the key findings from the report were that just over 20% of vulnerabilities were rated as high or critical level threats, with medium severity threats, at 67% of reported vulnerabilities, making up the majority. Many regard medium level vulnerabilities as if they are low-level threats and that’s a mistake because they’re not low level and should be regarded as deserving attention.

The WPScan report advised:

“While severity doesn’t translate directly to the risk of exploitation, it’s an important guideline for website owners to make an educated decision about when to disable or update the extension.”

WordPress Vulnerability Severity Distribution

Critical level vulnerabilities, the highest level of threat, represented only 2.38% of vulnerabilities, which is essentially good news for WordPress publishers. Yet as mentioned earlier, when combined with the percentages of high level threats (17.68%) the number or concerning vulnerabilities rises to almost 20%.

Here are the percentages by severity ratings:

Critical 2.38%
Low 12.83%
High 17.68%
Medium 67.12%

Authenticated Versus Unauthenticated

Authenticated vulnerabilities are those that require an attacker to first attain user credentials and their accompanying permission levels in order to exploit a particular vulnerability. Exploits that require subscriber-level authentication are the most exploitable of the authenticated exploits and those that require administrator level access present the least risk (although not always a low risk for a variety of reasons).

Unauthenticated attacks are generally the easiest to exploit because anyone can launch an attack without having to first acquire a user credential.

The WPScan vulnerability report found that about 22% of reported vulnerabilities required subscriber level or no authentication at all, representing the most exploitable vulnerabilities. On the other end of the scale of the exploitability are vulnerabilities requiring admin permission levels representing a total of 30.71% of reported vulnerabilities.

Permission Levels Required For Exploits

Vulnerabilities requiring administrator level credentials represented the highest percentage of exploits, followed by Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) with 24.74% of vulnerabilities. This is interesting because CSRF is an attack that uses social engineering to get a victim to click a link from which the user’s permission levels are acquired. This is a mistake that WordPress publishers should be aware of because all it takes is for an admin level user to follow a link which then enables the hacker to assume admin level privileges to the WordPress website.

The following is the percentages of exploits ordered by roles necessary to launch an attack.

Ascending Order Of User Roles For Vulnerabilities

Author 2.19%
Subscriber 10.4%
Unauthenticated 12.35%
Contributor 19.62%
CSRF 24.74%
Admin 30.71%

Most Common Vulnerability Types Requiring Minimal Authentication

Broken Access Control in the context of WordPress refers to a security failure that can allow an attacker without necessary permission credentials to gain access to higher credential permissions.

In the section of the report that looks at the occurrences and vulnerabilities underlying unauthenticated or subscriber level vulnerabilities reported (Occurrence vs Vulnerability on Unauthenticated or Subscriber+ reports), WPScan breaks down the percentages for each vulnerability type that is most common for exploits that are the easiest to launch (because they require minimal to no user credential authentication).

The WPScan threat report noted that Broken Access Control represents a whopping 84.99% followed by SQL injection (20.64%).

The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) defines Broken Access Control as:

“Access control, sometimes called authorization, is how a web application grants access to content and functions to some users and not others. These checks are performed after authentication, and govern what ‘authorized’ users are allowed to do.
Access control sounds like a simple problem but is insidiously difficult to implement correctly. A web application’s access control model is closely tied to the content and functions that the site provides. In addition, the users may fall into a number of groups or roles with different abilities or privileges.”

SQL injection, at 20.64% represents the second most prevalent type of vulnerability, which WPScan referred to as both “high severity and risk” in the context of vulnerabilities requiring minimal authentication levels because attackers can access and/or tamper with the database which is the heart of every WordPress website.

These are the percentages:

Broken Access Control 84.99%
SQL Injection 20.64%
Cross-Site Scripting 9.4%
Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Upload 5.28%
Sensitive Data Disclosure 4.59%
Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) 3.67%
Remote Code Execution 2.52%
Other 14.45%

Vulnerabilities In The WordPress Core Itself

The overwhelming majority of vulnerability issues were reported in third-party plugins and themes. However, there were in 2023 a total of 13 vulnerabilities reported in the WordPress core itself. Out of the thirteen vulnerabilities only one of them was rated as a high severity threat, which is the second highest level, with Critical being the highest level vulnerability threat, a rating scoring system maintained by the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).

The WordPress core platform itself is held to the highest standards and benefits from a worldwide community that is vigilant in discovering and patching vulnerabilities.

Website Security Should Be Considered As Technical SEO

Site audits don’t normally cover website security but in my opinion every responsible audit should at least talk about security headers. As I’ve been saying for years, website security quickly becomes an SEO issue once a website’s ranking start disappearing from the search engine results pages (SERPs) due to being compromised by a vulnerability. That’s why it’s critical to be proactive about website security.

According to the WPScan report, the main point of entry for hacked websites were leaked credentials and weak passwords. Ensuring strong password standards plus two-factor authentication is an important part of every website’s security stance.

Using security headers is another way to help protect against Cross-Site Scripting and other kinds of vulnerabilities.

Lastly, a WordPress firewall and website hardening are also useful proactive approaches to website security. I once added a forum to a brand new website I created and it was immediately under attack within minutes. Believe it or not, virtually every website worldwide is under attack 24 hours a day by bots scanning for vulnerabilities.

Read the WPScan Report:

WPScan 2024 Website Threat Report

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Ljupco Smokovski

SEO

An In-Depth Guide And Best Practices For Mobile SEO

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2024

Max

Mobile SEO: An In-Depth Guide And Best Practices

Over the years, search engines have encouraged businesses to improve mobile experience on their websites. More than 60% of web traffic comes from mobile, and in some cases based on the industry, mobile traffic can reach up to 90%.

Since Google has completed its switch to mobile-first indexing, the question is no longer “if” your website should be optimized for mobile, but how well it is adapted to meet these criteria. A new challenge has emerged for SEO professionals with the introduction of Interaction to Next Paint (INP), which replaced First Input Delay (FID) starting March, 12 2024.

Thus, understanding mobile SEO’s latest advancements, especially with the shift to INP, is crucial. This guide offers practical steps to optimize your site effectively for today’s mobile-focused SEO requirements.

What Is Mobile SEO And Why Is It Important?

The goal of mobile SEO is to optimize your website to attain better visibility in search engine results specifically tailored for mobile devices.

This form of SEO not only aims to boost search engine rankings, but also prioritizes enhancing mobile user experience through both content and technology.

While, in many ways, mobile SEO and traditional SEO share similar practices, additional steps related to site rendering and content are required to meet the needs of mobile users and the speed requirements of mobile devices.

Does this need to be a priority for your website? How urgent is it?

Consider this: 58% of the world’s web traffic comes from mobile devices.

If you aren’t focused on mobile users, there is a good chance you’re missing out on a tremendous amount of traffic.

Mobile-First Indexing

Additionally, as of 2023, Google has switched its crawlers to a mobile-first indexing priority.

This means that the mobile experience of your site is critical to maintaining efficient indexing, which is the step before ranking algorithms come into play.

How Much Of Your Traffic Is From Mobile?

How much traffic potential you have with mobile users can depend on various factors, including your industry (B2B sites might attract primarily desktop users, for example) and the search intent your content addresses (users might prefer desktop for larger purchases, for example).

Regardless of where your industry and the search intent of your users might be, the future will demand that you optimize your site experience for mobile devices.

How can you assess your current mix of mobile vs. desktop users?

An easy way to see what percentage of your users is on mobile is to go into Google Analytics 4.

Click Reports in the left column.
Click on the Insights icon on the right side of the screen.
Scroll down to Suggested Questions and click on it.
Click on Technology.
Click on Top Device model by Users.
Then click on Top Device category by Users under Related Results.
The breakdown of Top Device category will match the date range selected at the top of GA4.

Screenshot from GA4, March 2024

You can also set up a report in Looker Studio.

Add your site to the Data source.
Add Device category to the Dimension field.
Add 30-day active users to the Metric field.
Click on Chart to select the view that works best for you.

A screen capture from Looker Studio showing a pie chart with a breakdown of mobile, desktop, tablet, and Smart TV users for a site

Screenshot from Looker Studio, March 2024

You can add more Dimensions to really dig into the data to see which pages attract which type of users, what the mobile-to-desktop mix is by country, which search engines send the most mobile users, and so much more.

How To Check If Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly

Now that you know how to build a report on mobile and desktop usage, you need to figure out if your site is optimized for mobile traffic.

While Google removed the mobile-friendly testing tool from Google Search Console in December 2023, there are still a number of useful tools for evaluating your site for mobile users.

Bing still has a mobile-friendly testing tool that will tell you the following:

Viewport is configured correctly.
Page content fits device width.
Text on the page is readable.
Links and tap targets are sufficiently large and touch-friendly.
Any other issues detected.

Google’s Lighthouse Chrome extension provides you with an evaluation of your site’s performance across several factors, including load times, accessibility, and SEO.

To use, install the Lighthouse Chrome extension.

Go to your website in your browser.
Click on the orange lighthouse icon in your browser’s address bar.
Click Generate Report.
A new tab will open and display your scores once the evaluation is complete.

An image showing the Lighthouse Scores for a website.

Screenshot from Lighthouse, March 2024

You can also use the Lighthouse report in Developer Tools in Chrome.

Simply click on the three dots next to the address bar.
Select “More Tools.”
Select Developer Tools.
Click on the Lighthouse tab.
Choose “Mobile” and click the “Analyze page load” button.

An image showing how to get to Lighthouse within Google Chrome Developer Tools.

Screenshot from Lighthouse, March 2024

Another option that Google offers is the PageSpeed Insights (PSI) tool. Simply add your URL into the field and click Analyze.

PSI will integrate any Core Web Vitals scores into the resulting view so you can see what your users are experiencing when they come to your site.

An image showing the PageSpeed Insights scores for a website.

Screenshot from PageSpeed Insights, March 2024

Other tools, like WebPageTest.org, will graphically display the processes and load times for everything it takes to display your webpages.

With this information, you can see which processes block the loading of your pages, which ones take the longest to load, and how this affects your overall page load times.

You can also emulate the mobile experience by using Developer Tools in Chrome, which allows you to switch back and forth between a desktop and mobile experience.

An image showing how to change the device emulation for a site within Google Chrome Developer Tools

Screenshot from Google Chrome Developer Tools, March 2024

Lastly, use your own mobile device to load and navigate your website:

Does it take forever to load?
Are you able to navigate your site to find the most important information?
Is it easy to add something to cart?
Can you read the text?

How To Optimize Your Site Mobile-First

With all these tools, keep an eye on the Performance and Accessibility scores, as these directly affect mobile users.

Expand each section within the PageSpeed Insights report to see what elements are affecting your score.

These sections can give your developers their marching orders for optimizing the mobile experience.

While mobile speeds for cellular networks have steadily improved around the world (the average speed in the U.S. has jumped to 27.06 Mbps from 11.14 Mbps in just eight years), speed and usability for mobile users are at a premium.

Best Practices For Mobile Optimization

Unlike traditional SEO, which can focus heavily on ensuring that you are using the language of your users as it relates to the intersection of your products/services and their needs, optimizing for mobile SEO can seem very technical SEO-heavy.

While you still need to be focused on matching your content with the needs of the user, mobile search optimization will require the aid of your developers and designers to be fully effective.

Below are several key factors in mobile SEO to keep in mind as you’re optimizing your site.

Site Rendering

How your site responds to different devices is one of the most important elements in mobile SEO.

The two most common approaches to this are responsive design and dynamic serving.

Responsive design is the most common of the two options.

Using your site’s cascading style sheets (CSS) and flexible layouts, as well as responsive content delivery networks (CDN) and modern image file types, responsive design allows your site to adjust to a variety of screen sizes, orientations, and resolutions.

With the responsive design, elements on the page adjust in size and location based on the size of the screen.

You can simply resize the window of your desktop browser and see how this works.

An image showing the difference between Web.dev in a full desktop display vs. a mobile display using responsive design.

Screenshot from web.dev, March 2024

This is the approach that Google recommends.

Adaptive design, also known as dynamic serving, consists of multiple fixed layouts that are dynamically served to the user based on their device.

Sites can have a separate layout for desktop, smartphone, and tablet users. Each design can be modified to remove functionality that may not make sense for certain device types.

This is a less efficient approach, but it does give sites more control over what each device sees.

While these will not be covered here, two other options:

Progressive Web Apps (PWA), which can seamlessly integrate into a mobile app.
Separate mobile site/URL (which is no longer recommended).

Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

Google has introduced Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as a more comprehensive measure of user experience, succeeding First Input Delay. While FID measures the time from when a user first interacts with your page (e.g., clicking a link, tapping a button) to the time when the browser is actually able to begin processing event handlers in response to that interaction. INP, on the other hand, broadens the scope by measuring the responsiveness of a website throughout the entire lifespan of a page, not just first interaction.

Note that actions such as hovering and scrolling do not influence INP, however, keyboard-driven scrolling or navigational actions are considered keystrokes that may activate events measured by INP but not scrolling which is happeing due to interaction.

Scrolling may indirectly affect INP, for example in scenarios where users scroll through content, and additional content is lazy-loaded from the API. While the act of scrolling itself isn’t included in the INP calculation, the processing, necessary for loading additional content, can create contention on the main thread, thereby increasing interaction latency and adversely affecting the INP score.

What qualifies as an optimal INP score?

An INP under 200ms indicates good responsiveness.
Between 200ms and 500ms needs improvement.
Over 500ms means page has poor responsiveness.

and these are common issues causing poor INP scores:

Long JavaScript Tasks: Heavy JavaScript execution can block the main thread, delaying the browser’s ability to respond to user interactions. Thus break long JS tasks into smaller chunks by using scheduler API.
Large DOM (HTML) Size: A large DOM ( starting from 1500 elements) can severely impact a website’s interactive performance. Every additional DOM element increases the work required to render pages and respond to user interactions.
Inefficient Event Callbacks: Event handlers that execute lengthy or complex operations can significantly affect INP scores. Poorly optimized callbacks attached to user interactions, like clicks, keypress or taps, can block the main thread, delaying the browser’s ability to render visual feedback promptly. For example when handlers perform heavy computations or initiate synchronous network requests such on clicks.

and you can troubleshoot INP issues using free and paid tools.

As a good starting point I would recommend to check your INP scores by geos via treo.sh which will give you a great high level insights where you struggle with most.

INP scores by Geos

Image Optimization

Images add a lot of value to the content on your site and can greatly affect the user experience.

From page speeds to image quality, you could adversely affect the user experience if you haven’t optimized your images.

This is especially true for the mobile experience. Images need to adjust to smaller screens, varying resolutions, and screen orientation.

Use responsive images
Implement lazy loading
Compress your images (use WebP)
Add your images into sitemap

Optimizing images is an entire science, and I advise you to read our comprehensive guide on image SEO how to implement the mentioned recommendations.

Avoid Intrusive Interstitials

Google rarely uses concrete language to state that something is a ranking factor or will result in a penalty, so you know it means business about intrusive interstitials in the mobile experience.

Intrusive interstitials are basically pop-ups on a page that prevent the user from seeing content on the page.

John Mueller, Google’s Senior Search Analyst, stated that they are specifically interested in the first interaction a user has after clicking on a search result.

Examples of intrusive interstitial pop-ups on a mobile site according to Google.

Not all pop-ups are considered bad. Interstitial types that are considered “intrusive” by Google include:

Pop-ups that cover most or all of the page content.
Non-responsive interstitials or pop-ups that are impossible for mobile users to close.
Pop-ups that are not triggered by a user action, such as a scroll or a click.

Structured Data

Most of the tips provided in this guide so far are focused on usability and speed and have an additive effect, but there are changes that can directly influence how your site appears in mobile search results.

Search engine results pages (SERPs) haven’t been the “10 blue links” in a very long time.

They now reflect the diversity of search intent, showing a variety of different sections to meet the needs of users. Local Pack, shopping listing ads, video content, and more dominate the mobile search experience.

As a result, it’s more important than ever to provide structured data markup to the search engines, so they can display rich results for users.

In this example, you can see that both Zojirushi and Amazon have included structured data for their rice cookers, and Google is displaying rich results for both.

An image of a search result for Japanese rice cookers that shows rich results for Zojirushi and Amazon.

Screenshot from search for [Japanese rice cookers], Google, March 2024

Adding structured data markup to your site can influence how well your site shows up for local searches and product-related searches.

Using JSON-LD, you can mark up the business, product, and services data on your pages in Schema markup.

If you use WordPress as the content management system for your site, there are several plugins available that will automatically mark up your content with structured data.

Content Style

When you think about your mobile users and the screens on their devices, this can greatly influence how you write your content.

Rather than long, detailed paragraphs, mobile users prefer concise writing styles for mobile reading.

Each key point in your content should be a single line of text that easily fits on a mobile screen.

Your font sizes should adjust to the screen’s resolution to avoid eye strain for your users.

If possible, allow for a dark or dim mode for your site to further reduce eye strain.

Headers should be concise and address the searcher’s intent. Rather than lengthy section headers, keep it simple.

Finally, make sure that your text renders in a font size that’s readable.

Tap Targets

As important as text size, the tap targets on your pages should be sized and laid out appropriately.

Tap targets include navigation elements, links, form fields, and buttons like “Add to Cart” buttons.

Targets smaller than 48 pixels by 48 pixels and targets that overlap or are overlapped by other page elements will be called out in the Lighthouse report.

Tap targets are essential to the mobile user experience, especially for ecommerce websites, so optimizing them is vital to the health of your online business.

Prioritizing These Tips

If you have delayed making your site mobile-friendly until now, this guide may feel overwhelming. As a result, you may not know what to prioritize first.

As with so many other optimizations in SEO, it’s important to understand which changes will have the greatest impact, and this is just as true for mobile SEO.

Think of SEO as a framework in which your site’s technical aspects are the foundation of your content. Without a solid foundation, even the best content may struggle to rank.

Responsive or Dynamic Rendering: If your site requires the user to zoom and scroll right or left to read the content on your pages, no number of other optimizations can help you. This should be first on your list.
Content Style: Rethink how your users will consume your content online. Avoid very long paragraphs. “Brevity is the soul of wit,” to quote Shakespeare.
Image Optimization: Begin migrating your images to next-gen image formats and optimize your content display network for speed and responsiveness.
Tap Targets: A site that prevents users from navigating or converting into sales won’t be in business long. Make navigation, links, and buttons usable for them.
Structured Data: While this element ranks last in priority on this list, rich results can improve your chances of receiving traffic from a search engine, so add this to your to-do list once you’ve completed the other optimizations.

Summary

From How Search Works, “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

If Google’s primary mission is focused on making all the world’s information accessible and useful, then you know they will prefer surfacing sites that align with that vision.

Since a growing percentage of users are on mobile devices, you may want to infer the word “everywhere” added to the end of the mission statement.

Are you missing out on traffic from mobile devices because of a poor mobile experience?

If you hope to remain relevant, make mobile SEO a priority now.

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

SEO

HARO Has Been Dead for a While

Published

1 day ago

April 17, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Every SEO’s favorite ~~link-building~~ collaboration tool, HARO, was officially killed off for good last week by Cision. It’s now been wrapped into a new product: Connectively.

I know nothing about the new tool. I haven’t tried it. But after trying to use HARO recently, I can’t say I’m surprised or saddened by its death. It’s been a walking corpse for a while.

I used HARO way back in the day to build links. It worked. But a couple of months ago, I experienced the platform from the other side when I decided to try to source some “expert” insights for our posts.

After just a few minutes of work, I got hundreds of pitches:

So, I grabbed a cup of coffee and began to work through them. It didn’t take long before I lost the will to live. Every other pitch seemed like nothing more than lazy AI-generated nonsense from someone who definitely wasn’t an expert.

Here’s one of them:

Example of an AI-generated pitch in HARO

Seriously. Who writes like that? I’m a self-confessed dullard (any fellow Dull Men’s Club members here?), and even I’m not that dull…

I don’t think I looked through more than 30-40 of the responses. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt like having a conversation with ChatGPT… and not a very good one!

Despite only reviewing a few dozen of the many pitches I received, one stood out to me:

Example HARO pitch that caught my attention

Believe it or not, this response came from a past client of mine who runs an SEO agency in the UK. Given how knowledgeable and experienced he is (he actually taught me a lot about SEO back in the day when I used to hassle him with questions on Skype), this pitch rang alarm bells for two reasons:

I truly doubt he spends his time replying to HARO queries
I know for a fact he’s no fan of Neil Patel (sorry, Neil, but I’m sure you’re aware of your reputation at this point!)

So… I decided to confront him 😉

Here’s what he said:

Shocker.

I pressed him for more details:

I’m getting a really good deal and paying per link rather than the typical £xxxx per month for X number of pitches. […] The responses as you’ve seen are not ideal but that’s a risk I’m prepared to take as realistically I dont have the time to do it myself. He’s not native english, but I have had to have a word with him a few times about clearly using AI. On the low cost ones I don’t care but on authority sites it needs to be more refined.

I think this pretty much sums up the state of HARO before its death. Most “pitches” were just AI answers from SEOs trying to build links for their clients.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not throwing shade here. I know that good links are hard to come by, so you have to do what works. And the reality is that HARO did work. Just look at the example below. You can tell from the anchor and surrounding text in Ahrefs that these links were almost certainly built with HARO:

Example of links build with HARO, via Ahrefs' Site Explorer

But this was the problem. HARO worked so well back in the day that it was only a matter of time before spammers and the #scale crew ruined it for everyone. That’s what happened, and now HARO is no more. So…

If you’re a link builder, I think it’s time to admit that HARO link building is dead and move on.

No tactic works well forever. It’s the law of sh**ty clickthroughs. This is why you don’t see SEOs having huge success with tactics like broken link building anymore. They’ve moved on to more innovative tactics or, dare I say it, are just buying links.

Sidenote.

Talking of buying links, here’s something to ponder: if Connectively charges for pitches, are links built through those pitches technically paid? If so, do they violate Google’s spam policies? It’s a murky old world this SEO lark, eh?

If you’re a journalist, Connectively might be worth a shot. But with experts being charged for pitches, you probably won’t get as many responses. That might be a good thing. You might get less spam. Or you might just get spammed by SEOs with deep pockets. The jury’s out for now.

My advice? Look for alternative methods like finding and reaching out to experts directly. You can easily use tools like Content Explorer to find folks who’ve written lots of content about the topic and are likely to be experts.

For example, if you look for content with “backlinks” in the title and go to the Authors tab, you might see a familiar name. 😉

Finding people to request insights from in Ahrefs' Content Explorer

I don’t know if I’d call myself an expert, but I’d be happy to give you a quote if you reached out on social media or emailed me (here’s how to find my email address).

Alternatively, you can bait your audience into giving you their insights on social media. I did this recently with a poll on X and included many of the responses in my guide to toxic backlinks.

Me, indirectly sourcing insights on social media

Either of these options is quicker than using HARO because you don’t have to sift through hundreds of responses looking for a needle in a haystack. If you disagree with me and still love HARO, feel free to tell me why on X 😉