Now that I am done discussing about How to Add Emotions in Your Website? (Part 1) and How to Add Emotions in Your Website? (Part 2), I will go ahead and share tips on how to apply the said principles to your website.

In this blog post, I will share concrete examples on how to use emotions to your advantage. It is time to apply the rules we have tackled previously and add certain elements to make your website more appealing and relatable to your audience. Upon viewing your site, there should be emotions felt. In order for take action on buying your products, you should trigger positive emotions.

SENSE OF HUMOR

• Let’s start with humor since it is the most universal out of them all. No matter what language, we all like to laugh. So, humor is definitely a sure way to reach people and tap on their feelings.
• Another reason why humor is effective? Because it can break the feeling of awkwardness. When you laugh or smile, it means you are comfortable. Whether you are on the store or a website, it works well because it lightens atmosphere.
• However, you have to know that humor can be very subjective. This is one obvious downside because what may be funny to one person may be insulting or offensive to another. So, don’t just drop one joke after another.
• Before you add humor, be sensitive to the people reading it. As discussed previously, know the context and know your target audience well. Without this, you may offend other people. But when you know your audience, you will share jokes that are really funny to them.
• For an example on humor, look at the mail service MailChimp. The logo and mascot of this website is a Chimpanzee named Freddie!

FACE AND BODY RECOGNITION

• When humans are looking for something, we always search for a link, a sort of emotional connection in other objects, in other people, etc. This is the reason why we immediately notice faces of people on ads. Once we see a human face, it is easy to empathize. Whether this face looks happy, sad, or worried, it’s easy to recognize the emotion and understand what the person is feeling.
• In everything we do, we always relate it to ourselves. Thus, the golden ratio is an important because  the human brain is designed to look for symmetry. It is hardwired to be attracted to the symmetry of things.
• By seeing our own selves in a web design, we form other connections to it. Adding the golden ratio concept is enough for humans to conclude that this design is indeed symmetric and harmonious. Hence, making the design more relatable to humans.
• An example for this is the news site Mashable. The website divides the articles in such a way that the latest headlines are on the left portion, and the details on other relevant news updates are on the right.

More tips will be discussed on Tips in Implementing Strong Emotions to Your Website (Part 2)

Sitemaps are one of the most critical components of search engine optimization. It ensures that every page of your website is indexed properly. However, many website owners often neglect this part, thinking that it’s just a small task that they can live without doing. So if you’re now planning to create your website’s sitemap, you should know the following points.

XML isn’t the only sitemap format

While XML is the most common sitemap format, there are also the likes of Google News Sitemap, which is exclusive for those in the news industry.

Aside from that, you can explore the RSS feed widely used for websites and blogs with regular content. On the other hand, the mRSS feed is reserved for websites with large and regularly updated video content. Lastly, there’s an alternate language sitemap, also XML, if your website is written in various languages aside from English.

You’re not supposed to add all URLs

As much as sitemaps are the lists of URLs within a website, not everything should be added to it. Always exclude duplicate and canonical pages, no index pages, server error pages, and redirection pages, among others. Overall, if you don’t want search engines to detect a specific page, you shouldn’t add it to your sitemap. This is an important part of those who have duplicate content.

Sitemaps don’t always apply for all websites

Yes, not all websites require a sitemap. Usually, large websites with rich media content require a sitemap. This is also the case with sites that still have few external links and has a large archived content.

But if your website is very small or even if it has just one page, you may not need one at all for Google to index it correctly. On top of this, you might not need a sitemap if you use a website builder like Wix, as these sites tend to create them for you.

You should keep your sitemap private

Linking your sitemap to the robot.txt file might sound like a great move, but think twice before doing so. The robot.txt file is a public file and anyone can easily access it. If they do, they can easily know their way around your website.

For sites with massive organic search traffic, the privacy of the sitemap is golden. One way to make your sitemap private is by changing its URL name. From the typical yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, you can change it to yourdomain.com/this-is-a-private-sitemap.xml.After changing the name, always submit to the Google Search Console so your pages will be indexed.

Know the limits

Sitemaps have limits too. For example, your sitemap shouldn’t have more than 50,000 URLs at a time and the file shouldn’t be bigger than 50 MB. case you exceeded the file size, you’re allowed to split your sitemap into two separate files. Just take note that you can only have up to 50,000 sitemaps in each sitemap index. Also, you can only create and upload up to 500 sitemaps on your Google Search Console. Overall, this is already a lavish allowance for almost all websites.

Link building is essential for good SEO. But it can be hard to get started. If you’re confused, we recommend starting with one of the following tactics that make for great and effective links.

Linking through guest posts

Guest posting is tricky and time-consuming. But there are few tactics that are better at generating the kind of high-quality links that Google loves.

Remember to write for users and not search engines when submitting guest posts. Although you want to please Google, you’ll only get your guest post accepted if it is of high quality.

Educational content

Educational content is some of the best performing content you can write. It is the best way to provide value to readers without being salesy. That’s why other site owners are happy to link to it.

This tactic can be as time-consuming as the first one, however. That’s because you have to write the content and then reach out to other bloggers.

Internal linking

Getting links from other websites is important. But so, too, is linking between your pages. This way, you can make sure that your high-ranking pages share all of their lovely traffic with less-visited pages on your website.

Don’t fill your pages with dozens of links, however. A few well-placed links are enough to seriously improve your on-page SEO and site navigatbility.

Offer an affiliate program

If you want a way to create loads of links without doing a huge amount of on-going work, try running an affiliate program. These are a great way to have other people create links to your website on your behalf.

You’ll need to create a commission system, a marketing strategy and an affiliate management system. You’ll also need to attract other website owners to be your affiliates.

Private Blog Networks (PBN)

PBNs have long been a bit of a grey hat link building technique and there is an ongoing debate as to how ethical they are. Technically speaking, Google doesn’t like PBN Networks. That means you have to be very careful if you use them. They are time-consuming and difficult to manage, too, so take care.

Offer a free tool

Do you know why some websites go through the hard work of creating a tool and then give it away for free? It’s because offering free tools is a great way to get publicity, backlinks and lots of great traffic. It can take a bit of effort but it will probably be the most effective tactic on this list if you commit fully to it.

Be a guest on a podcast

One final tactic is to become a guest on a series of relevant podcasts. Podcasts are having a great time of it at the moment, so starring in some or starting your own is a great way to get your name out there. Whatever you do, make sure that the host of every podcast you go on includes a link back to your website in their show notes.

Content is king, as many would say. But aside from writing great copy for your website, you should also ensure that it’s optimized for search. If not, site visitors won’t see your pages no matter how well-written your content is.

Keyword research is indispensable

The first thing you have to do before writing your content is to look for keywords. Aside from optimizing your content with it, keyword search also gives you fresh content ideas. It also gives you a glimpse of what internet users are searching for, what they are interested in, and how often they search for a specific query.

Take note that well-researched keywords are useful for both on-page and off-page SEO. This way, your content will appear in the SERPs when an internet user searches for a specific or relative query.

Use a focus keyword

A focus keyword is a specific keyword that you optimize your content for. It’s the main keyword you’ll use for your text title, headings, body, alt tags, meta description, and more.

Still, using a focus keyword doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to use other keywords. This is where Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords come handy. These are keywords related to your focus keyword. Take note that LSI keywords aren’t necessarily synonyms of your focus keyword.

Search intent is the way to go

Take note that you should write for the people, not for the search engine. This is why search intent is the name of the game when writing your copy.

Take note that over the years, Google has leveled up its indexing abilities to have a better understanding of what its users are searching for. Websites that satisfy user intent are more likely to rank high as they suffice search queries better.

Basically, there are four types of user intent content: navigational, informational, transactional, and commercial.

Optimize your meta data

Aside from the body of your content, you should also optimize the meta data of your pages. Make sure that you use your focus keyword on the title tag, meta description, and alt text of your images.

Also, try to use your keyword on URL, while keeping it short and easy to remember.

Through this, you’re keeping your content relevant to the potential search query of the internet user.

Use headings

Take note that no reader would be fond of browsing through a sea of text. This is why you should always use subheadings for your content. This way, your content becomes visually appealing and less overwhelming for visitors.

Subheadings are also a great way to optimize your keywords. Through this, indexers can easily crawl your pages and understand what it’s about.

Optimize images

Many website owners overlook the importance of optimizing the images on their pages. Although this isn’t written content, you can enjoy additional optimization by using alt texts and proper image file titles.

Structured data is also helpful, though it’s part of the technical stuff that experts can help you with. Aside from that, always reduce the file size of your image before uploading it to your page. This way, you won’t impact the loading speed of your website.

Search engine optimization is a full-time job, especially for big websites. Without it, site visitors won’t find your pages, and you’ll get buried in the depths of search results.

For beginners, SEO can be overwhelming. It’s a task, though the effort is worth it once organic traffic starts streaming into your website.

The following are some of the basic metrics that you have to know even before you start your first SEO campaign.

Organic traffic

Organic traffic refers to the visits you get directly from search engine queries. This isn’t paid or sponsored traffic, which means your website has been discovered by a visitor searching on the web.

In addition, organic traffic is the most valued traffic that a website can ever get. The rate of organic traffic is a gauge of how successful your SEO efforts are.

You can easily check your website’s organic traffic through Google Analytics or another analytics tool.

Organic click-through rates

Click-through rate or CTR refers to the number of people who see your SERP result divided by the actual number of people that clicked through your page. This proportion says a lot about the attractiveness of your meta data and how well you’re targeting your preferred audience.

Basically, your website’s CTR depends a lot on your ranking on search engines. The higher your exposure is, the higher the chance you’re getting CTR rates.

Feel free to experiment on your meta description, titles, and tags. If you have a deeper knowledge of SEO, you can try placing jump to links on your SERP entry to increase CTR.

Bounce rates

Bounce rates refer to how often people leave your website before performing any action. The goal here is to have the lowest possible bounce rate and high dwell time.

Nevertheless, a high bounce rate isn’t always negative. Depending on your niche and type of pages accessed, a higher bounce rate than normal could be acceptable.

For blog posts, it’s quite normal to have a high bounce rate, especially if it’s purely informational. This means that the visitor read and left. The defining factor here is the dwell time.

SERP dominance

SERP dominance pertains to how well your pages are performing on the SERPs in relation to your ranking.

For example, you can rank at #1 and have 50 visitors a day. Meanwhile, you can also rank at #5 and get 100 visitors within the same timeframe. In these two situations, the page that ranks at #5 has better SERP dominance.

This just proves that SEO is no longer about ranking the highest. It’s also about being relevant and attracting visitors to click through your page.

Pages per session

Pages per session measures how many pages a specific visitor visited in average within one session. Take note that one session is 30 minutes by default.

This gives a more accurate measurement of your website’s performance instead of considering time on the page alone. Pages per session indicate the engagement of your visitors. You can find this data on the Behavior Flow portion of Google Analytics.