Category: Search Engine Optimization SEO

4 Tips For Preparing for SEO in 2017

4 Tips For Preparing for SEO in 2017 by Jason Parks.  Available from <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/young-entrepreneur-council/4-tips-for-preparing-for-_b_13042722.html> [11/21/2016 10:32 am ET]

If the casual hockey fan’s favorite team had the worst record in the league, they’d assume the future was bleak. Analysts, scouts and diehard fans who know the behind-the-scenes activities of the organization would understand that the opposite was true: It means their hometown team had been drafting outstanding talent that had been developing at rapid pace in the minor leagues. Additionally, their team was bound to hold a top three pick in the draft, which would be stockpiled with the talent needed to fill missing holes on their roster.

The future of SEO and PR is similar to the bottom dweller in hockey. There were droves of people saying PR and SEO was “dead” in 2011. As we approach 2017, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Start Drafting Wisely

If you own a business or work in marketing, you need to start planning for the future and investing in digital PR to beat out the competition. You can either hire talent for your own team, or find a reputable marketing agency to assist or consult in this effort. My team has combined digital PR and social media campaigns for Fortune 500 brands that made a major impact on their bottom line.

If you draft your team wisely, your business can catapult from the third or fourth page of Google onto page one. A “digital unicorn,” someone who has PR expertise and a firm grasp on digital marketing, will get your business referenced on external sites through PR connections, outreach and great content creation, which is valuable from an SEO perspective. This person should also know how to create videos and perfect them in Final Cut, edit with Photoshop and code HTML.

It’s important that the person you are looking to hire has achieved past success when it comes to their own digital PR. Have they been published online on a well-known site? Have they had a social media campaign go viral? Whether they achieved success for themselves or the company they previously worked for, make sure this candidate has real life examples to prove that they will be a valuable asset for your business.

Work Around Google’s Core Algorithm

If you follow or work in the SEO or digital marketing industry, you are aware that Google values quality content. Gone are the days where you can manipulate Google’s search engine with low-quality content. You need to constantly be increasing your domain authority.

To do so, start to build trust in your brand. If you are a dermatologist and write content on a health and beauty site about “best facial cleansers,” this is a strength indicator in Google’s eyes, especially if the site links back to you. If you post unforgettable social media content about skincare tips, this will likely result in other people interacting with your brand and visiting your site. Ultimately, the more people talk about your brand, the higher likelihood you will have to acquire powerful backlinks. Try posting video content or plan a half-day photoshoot to truly make your content stand out.

Try Implementing SEO and PR Services

  • Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is one of the greatest tools for PR and SEO any business owner or digital marketer can make use of. It’s free and generates amazing exposure. HARO provides journalists with a robust database of sources for upcoming stories and daily opportunities for sources to secure valuable media coverage. Sign up and use this resource as much as you can to build credibility and establish media relationships for your site. When I started an e-commerce company with my sister, we utilized HARO and we were quoted in well-known publications such as Glamour, Condé Nast and NBC’s Today Show.
  • PitchBox automates the outreach grunt work to help scale your efforts. It handles all aspects, from the prospecting to the emailing, to tracking and managing the workflow. If you are an industry expert looking to contribute content on external sites, PitchBox can help find these sites through its automated software. For startups, it starts at $95 and is a great resource to generate high-quality relationships.
  • If you want to measure success of your SEO and digital PR efforts, invest in Moz. This SEO software will track your keyword rankings and inform you when a backlink hits the web (such as a HARO pitch that went live on an external site). It also allows you to track competitor keyword rankings, optimize your local listings and enhance your local presence (if you have a storefront location, for instance).

Develop a Game Plan in Your Area

Too often, when it comes to SEO and digital marketing, people just sit behind a computer. Change up the pace and do a public speaking engagement for free. I recently did a speaking engagement for a real estate company in Columbus, my hometown. I was able to grow my Instagram follower count by 20 percent by incorporating an Instagram giveaway during the presentation. I made great local connections by staying afterward and speaking with the audience. If there is a powerful influencer on Instagram in your industry nearby, offer to meet him or her for coffee. You never know the ideas they’ll present or the people you’ll be introduced to.

If you invest in digital PR and utilize the aforementioned services, you will score a hat trick when it comes to your SEO efforts. Just remember, it can take time to put together the right team and execute on the game plan.

4 Tips For Preparing for SEO in 2017 by Jason Parks.  Available from <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/young-entrepreneur-council/4-tips-for-preparing-for-_b_13042722.html> [11/21/2016 10:32 am ET]

Quick SEO Tips You Can Read In Under 3 Minutes

Quick SEO Tips You Can Read In Under 3 Minutes by Alex Minchin.  Available from <http://is4profit.com/quick-seo-tips-you-can-read-in-under-3-minutes/> [November 07, 2016]

Struggling to market yourself online? These savvy SEO tips will ensure your business will be seen in the right places, without breaking the bank

With 50% of new businesses failing within five years, recent research has revealed that many small businesses are missing out on opportunities to market their business online.

The research found that 73% said they did not advertise online and 42% reported having no digital presence. SEO and other terminology also stumped 48% of business owners surveyed, and only 53% said their websites were easily read on a mobile device.

“Being digitally savvy is especially important for small businesses. It can be the difference between your business being seen in the right places by the right people, and even small changes can have a huge impact,” comments Alex Minchin, founder and director of SEO agency Zest Digital.

Here, Alex shares three instantly achievable tips for small businesses looking to get started with SEO:

1. Sign up to Google Analytics and Google Search Console and add the necessary code to your website

These are two free tools that will enable you to measure performance, even if you don’t understand it all immediately. You cannot improve something that you’re not measuring, and these tools will measure things such as; the number of visitors landing on your website, the best performing content, keywords driving traffic, any broken links or pages, and the links from other websites that are pointing back to your website.

Interested in analytics? Read more here.

2. Start local

Most searches in the micro and small business world include local modifiers such as your city or county, e.g. “Plumbers in Croydon”. An easy way to start to build some gravitas towards your website is to feature on business directories.

This creates ‘citations’ (mentions) of your business name and confirms your address and other details, in addition to pointing a link back to your website. It’s crucial to make sure your information is kept consistent, so finalise your details and use the same information as a template for all directories.

These things will help to increase the strength and trust of your website. Just be sure to focus on reputable directories such as Touch Local, 192, Freeindex, and Opendi for example.

Want to attract more consumers in your area? Here’s 3 attributes your small business can use. 

3. Focus on the real basics and design each META title and description for each of the key pages on your website as a minimum

The title tag and descriptor underneath the search result is considered as a ranking factor by Google, and can positively influence your rankings for a particular keyword. Your title should include your keyword and brand name as a minimum, but try to be as creative as possible with the character limit (55 is the defacto) that you have available.

In the META description, it’s more important to include your value proposition and key information, for example “free delivery on all orders”, or “free quotation”. Remember, you’re trying to stand out to win a greater share of the clicks against the other websites competing for the same keyword so details and usps are key.

“It’s widely reported that somewhere around 90% of all purchasing decisions begin with a search engine and a search query,” continues Alex. “SEO can therefore play a huge part in the marketing strategy of a small business.”

“Sharing your expertise through content and delivering value to your target market is the name of the game, and it’s a playground that, whilst dominated by some larger brands, isn’t policed by them. It’s entirely possible for a small business to compete and win on this channel, and doesn’t have to involve a huge cost in doing so.”

Still confused about SEO? You might still be believing these SEO myths! 

Quick SEO Tips You Can Read In Under 3 Minutes by Alex Minchin.  Available from <http://is4profit.com/quick-seo-tips-you-can-read-in-under-3-minutes/> [November 07, 2016]

5 powerful SEO tips to stay ahead of your competition

5 powerful SEO tips to stay ahead of your competition by Sonal Mishra.  Available from <https://yourstory.com/2016/10/seo-tips-beat-competition/> [October 18, 2016]

SEO can easily be assumed as one of the most competitive domains available today. Even if you are a big organization with enough money to burn on marketing and online promotions, staying ahead and sustaining yourself in the current eco-system can be a tad challenging.

Fortunately, it is not tough to decipher the paradigm of SEO. SEO is dynamic, but once you start getting a hang of it, all you need is an effective strategy to stay ahead of the curve and emerge victorious. So dive in and beat your competitors at their game with the help of these tips:

Know the other side of the bush

The first step in order to reach anywhere in this race is to study your competition thoroughly. You need to know the tactics they employ and the strategies they swear by. Take a deep analytical look at their on-site SEO. Pay attention to how their overall SEO activity looks. Has your competitor made a major change in their strategy recently? Be on the lookout for that. Rather, have a dedicated person in your team to do that.

Also, keep an eye on what they are not doing. For instance, SEOMoz’s Open Site Explorer will show you how your company stacks up against others. Look at where your competitors are not listed and leverage on those spots. Imagine your top 10 competitors are having more than 100 pages of quality content and 10,000 high authority backlinks. How long would you need to reach that benchmark? Perhaps you need more time to tank your business if it’s just entering the eco-system. Ranking keywords, increasing referral traffic, reducing bounce rate and creating high quality content is a part of the SEO.

Content is the King

Your content can make or break the overall existence of your online business. No matter how much you deny it, content is still the KING, and it is here to stay. Websites like Inch, Forbes, and even YourStory for that matter, get thousands of article submission requests every day, but only high-quality articles are published. The math is simple: the better the quality, the better are the chances of getting tanked on popular search engines. You need to be consistent with content quality. Make sure it is relevant to your site or business. It is highly advised to utilise other mediums, such as videos, podcasts, and infographics, to make your content look more attractive to your target audience. This will instantly boost your SEO ranking.

The idea is to churn out fresh content on a regular basis. The engines have to keep moving – if they become stagnant, your competitors will get an edge over you. In the internet-savvy world of today, when we eat and breathe social media, make your content crafty and creative enough that it has the potential to go viral. One such move and you are right on the map.

Monitor backlinks

Link Mining is an important backlink strategy whereby you see backlinks of your competitors, get in touch with the owner of these websites and put up a review or a guest post of your own. You should maintain a constant log of your company’s backlinks. You can shield yourself from any impending negative SEO attacks and ensure that all the links that lead to your website are relevant sources. Keep an eye out for your competitor’s link strategy. Tools like MajesticSEO can be used for assistance.

Keyword selection is the key

Your keyword selection and execution is the key to unlocking the success. If you have targeted a few keywords and they aren’t doing much to your business’ revenue or traffic, chances are that your current selection is totally wrong.

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to rely on top-ranking keywords. If you find a combo that’s landing in the top spot, don’t assume that’ll help your business as well. You need to focus on search queries that yield the highest traffic for businesses in your category and industry.

Tools like Google Analytics help you monitor different keyword combinations and their related traffic correlations, while tools like Open Site Explorer can help you remain in the limelight.

SEO is an organic domain that changes and evolves by the day. Stay current and have the courage to try new trends as they emerge. Explore the unexplored and you will tend to grow as a company and manage to beat the competition, too. Create an SEO strategy that is ironclad with consistent commitment to your content, competitor research, on-site metrics and current news. Combine the real world results and the future trends to attain high rankings.

5 powerful SEO tips to stay ahead of your competition by Sonal Mishra.  Available from <https://yourstory.com/2016/10/seo-tips-beat-competition/> [October 18, 2016]

SEO vs. Ad Blocking

SEO vs. Ad Blocking by On Yavin.  Available from <http://www.business2community.com/seo/seo-vs-ad-blocking-01673778#zqDkBgb14BTPsACb.97>. [October 11, 2016]

Sea Changes in Marketing Communication

In a way, managing the marketing aspects of a business has always been a major battle for business owners and managers. From the dawn of time to the modern era, the main roadmap for the majority of businesses has remained roughly the same: create a product or service and focus on bringing that product to as many of your potential customers as possible. Since businesses rarely operate in a space devoid of competitors with similar goals and intentions, that means engaging in a battle with your competition in order to win over the customers. However, what is often overlooked is that there is another dimension to the story. There is another group of key players with its own agenda and waging its own battle: the customers themselves.

Just as businesses use various tools and strategies to try and reach their goals, customers do the same. Until recently, customers’ two main goals were finding the products with the best quality and discovering products at the lowest price. Yet, along with the Information Age has come the emergence of customer attention as a new, increasingly important resource, thus significantly changing the metaphorical battleground.

According to a range of studies, the average Internet user is exposed to anywhere from a few hundred to over a thousand advertisements every single day, making the masses ad-weary and fueling the backlash against advertisements in general. So while businesses are continually advancing in their quest to gain more customer attention, customers are simultaneously beginning to resist that change. The result is one of the most dangerous threats to any serious Internet marketer: ad blocking.

Ad Blocking As a Major Threat

While ad blocking itself is not a new invention, a few recent trends have shed a new light on this technology. Adblock Plus – one of the most popular ad blocking tools – was chosen as one of the 100 Best Products by PC World magazine as far back as 2007, an eon ago in Internet time. However, ad blocking technology eventually outgrew its role as a merely useful tool for the tech-savvy and is now a legitimate problem for online advertisers worldwide.

According to an ad blocking related study conducted by PageFair in partnership with Adobe, there were 198 million active ad block users in the world in 2015, a whopping 41% increase compared to just a year before. The real shocker, though, is the amount of money that online publishers lost due to ad block usage. The report estimated that losses amounted to almost $22 billion in 2015 alone.

The trend only continued in 2016, as ad blocking similarly found its way to mobile web browsing, making it one of the hottest topics in the online publishing world. Now just six months after Apple’s decision to allow ad blocking on its iOS devices, the numbers from the mobile web are far from encouraging for the digital media industry as more than 400 million users are currently using ad blockers on their smartphones.

And online publishers are not the only ones bearing the burden as advertisers themselves are equally affected by ad blocking. Not only are they left without traffic on their website which blocked ads could have brought, but they are also billed for those ads because ad blocking software works by blocking the ads on the user’s device after they’ve already been served. In a nutshell, that means that as an advertiser, you pay for ads that your targeted customers will never see.

SEO to The Rescue?

As valuable as SEO already is, it just might become even more valuable for businesses that also rely on paid advertising to get Internet users to visit their site. Not only is the number of people using ad blocking on the rise, but even those who don’t use ad blockers have learned to ignore and avoid ads, essentially making them blind to marketing efforts thrown at them.

Obviously, your best bet as a business in such an environment is to improve your organic search engine rankings as much as you can, and that’s where SEO shines. With that in mind, here are a few tips on how SEO can help you fight against ad blockers by putting less emphasis on paid ads and getting more traffic from organic searches.

Offsite SEO Methods

Offsite SEO is an umbrella term encompassing a variety of methods and tactics used to rank your site better on search engines and it revolves mostly around backlinks. By getting good links for your site from valuable sites in your niche, you will improve your organic search engine rankings and get more visitors without having to rely on paid advertising.

If you don’t already have a solid link building strategy, guest posting is a good place to start. By posting your articles on related sites, you help them by providing them with free content and they help you by giving you links and exposure to their audience. Additionally, you can start looking into other tactics such as directory submissions, blog commenting and social media optimization in order to gain the needed backlinks for your site and build your brand.

Onsite SEO Tactics

While offsite SEO methods such as link building are concerned mainly with getting people to find your site, the role of onsite SEO is twofold. Although it plays an important role in improving your sites’ visibility on Google and other search engines, it also serves to attract people to actually visit your site and engage with it in a way that suits you best.

The main pillars of onsite SEO are quality content, optimized title tags and attractive meta descriptions, so optimizing them should be among your top priorities. Quality content will help you grow your audience and get more natural, unsolicited links while optimized title tags and meta descriptions can help you stand out among competing websites in the search engine results, therefore getting you more visitors.

Overall, the marketing world is in the middle of a drastic change due to changes in Internet technology. Businesses and customers alike are changing their habits as the Internet becomes an increasingly important part of their everyday lives. Ad blocking has emerged as a major threat to online publishers and advertisers as consumers become wearier and less aware of ads published online. It seems that SEO may be able to mitigate this trend and a quality SEO strategy can help put many businesses back on their customers’ radar.

SEO vs. Ad Blocking by On Yavin.  Available from <http://www.business2community.com/seo/seo-vs-ad-blocking-01673778#zqDkBgb14BTPsACb.97>. [October 11, 2016]

Choose Wisely: How to Pick an SEO That Will Get Results

Choose Wisely: How to Pick an SEO That Will Get Results By .  Available from <http://www.business.com/seo-marketing/how-to-pick-an-seo-that-will-get-results/>. [September 26, 2016] 

The widely used term “SEO” refers to search engine optimization (or optimizer).

When you make the choice to hire someone to optimize your website for search engines, it is a huge step and has the power to save you time and improve your website.

If you happen to choose an SEO that is not that great, it has the potential to damage your own reputation as well as your website.

Take the time to inform yourself about the good and bad that can come from using an SEO that is not reputable.

What Does an SEO Do?

SEOs and consultants or agencies similar to this are capable of offering services for websites like:

  • Developing content
  • Reviewing content or structure
  • Advising on hosting, error pages or redirects
  • Researching keywords
  • Training for SEO
  • Coaching on catering to specific markets or regions

It should be noted that Google’s search results pages will include not only organic results but also paid advertisements that are indicated with a “Sponsored” or “Ads” caption. When you advertise with Google, it will not impact on the site’s presence within the search results. Google does not take part in offering a service that ranks websites in their search results, and it costs nothing to a website owner to appear in Google’s organic search results.

Prior to starting your search for an SEO, you should work to become familiar with how the search engines work and you may then regard yourself as an educated consumer. Google offers Webmaster Guidelines as well as an introduction on crawling and indexing.

When you are in the early stages of your website design is when you should be thinking about seeking the help of an SEO. Ideally, one would be hired when you establish that you will be doing a redesign of the website or are launching a new website. When you do this, you will be able to work hand in hand with your SEO to ensure that the website will be optimized and designed coherently right from the start. SEOs may also help to improve upon an existing website as well.

What to Ask Your Potential SEO

  • How long have you been working in SEO?
  • What is your experience in the industry?
  • What are the expected results for the SEO and what is the time frame?
  • How do you know when a job has been successful?
  • Will you show me some of your examples and previous work as well as success stories?
  • What type of guidelines do you follow, if any?
  • Do you have any experience in my geographical area?
  • Do you have any experience in SEO with international websites?
  • What should my expectations be regarding communication?
  • Will you share all changes made to the site and provide insight as to why these changes were made?

There is no question that SEOs provide their clients with important services, but the unethical SEOs have made a negative impact on the industry thanks to their extremely aggressive marketing tactics and actions used to manipulate search engine results in a way that is unfair. These actions violate Google’s guidelines and can lead to a destructive adjustment to the website’s presence in Google’s search results, or the site could even simply be removed from the index altogether.

What to Think About

One common improper practice is for the SEO to place “doorway” pages that are filled up with keywords somewhere among the client’s normal website. The SEO will say that this action makes the web pages more relevant to a larger number of search queries. Technically, this is false information because single pages are not commonly relevant for a wide range of target keywords.

What’s awful about this maneuver is that these doorway pages that have been created will hold links that are hidden and will direct to the SEO’s other clients. This practice as a whole will take away from the popularity of a website and funnel it to the SEO and their clients. There is no telling what these clients do or what kind of content they are responsible for a lot of times it is illegal or simply unsavory.

Another tactic that is frowned upon is implementing “shadow” domains. These will bring users to a website through a series of misleading redirects. These false domains are usually owned by the SEO, and the SEO will assert that they are working on a client’s behalf. There is potential for this relationship to go south, and the SEO then has the power to edit this domain to redirect to another website, even a competitor’s website. If this were to happen, the client has ultimately paid for a website that they have no control over, it is all owned by the SEO.

Look Out for These Red Flags

  • There are no SEOs that can guarantee you a #1 ranking on Google.
  • Trash emails that come from web consultants or SEO firms out of nowhere.
  • Say goodbye to any company that will not clearly explain what it is exactly that they intend to do with your website.
  • You should never be obligated to link to the SEO.
  • Your SEO should be totally transparent about what you are paying for.
  • Carefully consider any firm that you are considering hiring for SEO.
  • If they have had previous domains removed from Google.
  • If they are linking to other clients via doorway pages.
  • If they are owners of shadow domains.
  • When they promise outstanding ranking but do not offer information on your target keywords or unique phrases.

While not all SEOs are taking part in malevolent activities, there are those firms out there and it is vital to have the education that enables you to spot the con artist so that you are not wasting your time or money on them. A well-established SEO will take pride in their work and will be more than happy to show you their successful portfolio.

Choose Wisely: How to Pick an SEO That Will Get Results By .  Available from <http://www.business.com/seo-marketing/how-to-pick-an-seo-that-will-get-results/>. [September 26, 2016]