Author Archives: owner

When To Cut Bait With Your SEO Provider

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When To Cut Bait With Your SEO ProviderIf you’ve hired a SEO provider to do your SEO chores, you’re spending a good amount of money to do so and expect some ROI of considerable notability. Sometimes the subject of SEO is so complicated that clients like yourself can get lost in the sauce of what is going on. There is hope, however, in determining if the SEO firm you’ve hired is worth the money or you need to cut bait with them.

First of all, all the talk in the world means nothing. Statistics are the primary proof you need to know if your SEO campaign efforts are paying off. Not necessarily indicated in sales and conversions, but in basic organic traffic and other valuable metrics that you can analyze and use to your advantage.

A SEO firm is going to educate you regarding the basics so that you’re not left in the dark along the way. They’ll make sure you understand the realistic goals regarding budget and time to see results. It’s not an overnight success thing, but a methodical process by which sound fundamental principles are adhered to so that guaranteed foundation building success can be established. Now and then in those rare cases a client’s products and services go viral thus producing a bonanza in traffic and revenue.

You need to have access and learn how to study your site’s statistics and go over them with your SEO firm. The minute you see something out of the ordinary you need to ask questions and get things straightened out. If your SEO firm gets shaky or standoffish for any reason, you need to cut bait.

Quality content from the marketing end of your SEO firm has to be mandatory. Quality content is just about everything. Search engines and the public know rotten content when they see it, and if your SEO firm is using hack writers, you’ll find out quick enough as you’ll end up being penalized by Google and then you’re in a whole new world of hurt. Graphics, cartoons, videos, are all the rage now as they’re constantly being shared on social media. Your SEO campaign has to have these items and well described, and tagged. Poor quality art won’t get listed well nor shared and reviews by surfers and customers will beat you down. Demand to know who and how your SEO firm creates the content. If they hesitate one iota, it’s better than even money they’re using some hacks from a dungeon in a foreign country who are being paid with bread and water.

One more thing to lookout for are bad inbound links. An old trick is to have links to your site from nothing more than linking mills. They’re useless sites whose sole purpose is to send useless traffic to your site to make the search engines think your site is of some importance. This old trick is dangerous. All it does is associates your site to these disreputable sites and opens the door to penalization from the search engines.

Overall, it’s up to you to police your SEO provider. You need to have a hands on approach and do the due diligence necessary to make sure they’re doing their job and you’re doing yours. If at anytime you feel something is amiss, cut bait, it will save you much time, money, and misery.

Looking At Today’s Backlinks In SEO

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Looking At Today's Backlinks In SEOBacklinks have been a valuable asset in SEO and it has had its ups and downs. In the old days certain tactics and strategies worked admirably, but today, those procedures might get you penalized by the search engines. Here is why we need to look at the value of what backlinks are and how you can better be at an advantage.

First of all you need to do some evaluation of your website. If you have backlinks coming in that aren’t beneficial then you’re in jeopardy. What the search engines are looking for now are backlinks that come from relevant sites, sites that provide organic traffic, and sites who have authority and good standing.

If you’re getting links coming in from a backlinks network like a web-ring, you need to get busy cleaning it up right away. These sites used to be useful but are a clear sign to Google and the other search engines that you’re just trying to gain advantage unfairly and providing the surfers with less than valuable content. These kinds of inbound links might be on websites no longer monitored or maintained and that calls for some real work. If you can, get them removed, if you can’t, well here’s to hoping.

Backlinks that come from sites or relevance that are of kindred niches, is far more important. They provide organic traffic that means surfers are actually looking for what your website has to offer. They won’t have to dig around to find something of value, the organic link takes them to what they’re looking for. Google sees this as important and that your site is providing a service to others. Get as many of these kinds links as possible but do so in ratio to the following variables of authority and good standing.

Sites that have proven themselves to their niches and are popular gain what is called authority and good standing, and trust. This level of character carries a huge amount of value. They’ve proven themselves over time to be trustworthy and ethical. To be linked to from them adds your site to that level. People who trust the authority site will see that the site trusts you. It’s a platform that means you’ve somehow earned that accolade and that will turn into lots of organic traffic and boost your chances of sales, leads, and conversions. It’s the best backlinks strategy you may want.

Don’t even think of coming up with or applying black hat tricks to your backlinks strategies. Google’s SE algorithm is getting better by the day. The old adage of “honesty is the best policy” is going to be the hallmark of SEO from now on. It thus behooves you to analyze your site, every site that is linking to you and get busy optimizing things so you look good in Google’s eyes.

So it’s not a matter of how many backlinks you have anymore, it’s a matter of relevance and authority, and trust. Without these you’re just asking for trouble. Just one major penalty and you could spend months or years getting your reputation and standing back. That’s why you use an SEO professional who can manage and fix backlinks. They usually know the tools to resolve the really tough problems.

Remember, backlinks are like testimonials are to one’s character. Getting the good ones means you’ll be looking good across the board.

SEO Is Becoming A Full Time Job

Posted on by · 2 min read

SEO Tips: SEO Is Becoming A Full Time JobIn the good old days, keyword stuffing, links, and spam were a great way to get your site listed in the search engines and the search engines loved these kinds of sites. It became an industry with all sorts of variations to a theme. Nowadays, however, those tactics aren’t the goldmine in SEO like they used to be.

Nowadays you’ve got to work for your rankings. You just can’t depend on backlinking or keywords anymore. You have to have your site mobile friendly, update quality content, have social media presence and interaction, email lists, advertising, proper design, page speed, accessibility, knowledge graph, local SEO, globalization and more.
You’ve got to incorporate all these options and it calls for lots of work and maintenance. Not like the old days where you could slap up a website with some bells and whistles, keywords and keyphrases, backlinking and let it ride.

Not any more.

Now you have to expand with promotion via social networking. Not just Facebook either but a presence on just about all the social networks and the small but growing ones. Of course Google wants you to use as many of their venues as possible and that helps your rankings as well, and they supply lots of free tools for webmasters and digital marketers.

Your site had better be mobile friendly as mobile computing is expanding at alarming speeds. So is voice search. Those two alone are the future of computer interaction as people are shying away from traditional laptops and desktops. All your data has to be properly structured as well. You have to make your site easy to access, load fast, easy to navigate, have lots of valid and relevant backlinks, copywriting that is nothing short of fluid and superb, videos and pictures well tagged and described and all of that with your location prominently mentioned in every post, email, ad, and whatever, especially with your social media marketing.

It’s becoming a 24 hour job to operate a website nowadays if you want to rise up to the top positions on Google. Professionals who do SEO are finding it much more frustrating and time consuming but only these professionals get the super top results. They have to do 5 times the amount of website analysis they did just a year ago and even then, Google’s updates and the rise of other trends can throw these experts off guard.

Categorizing Your Website For SEO Efficiency

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Categorizing Your Website For SEO EfficiencyOne of the biggest battles you’ll have to go through regarding your SEO campaigns are knowing that you need to know where you stand regarding SEO and the major areas you need to be applicable with it.

This means, primarily, the first step which is the region your site’s keywords and keygroups and keyphrases cover. There is local SEO for companies confined to a specific area. Your site should have your location displayed prominently in every area of your site from writing to photos to videos. Not only that but your email lists and other communications. If your site caters to a national base, then you need to emphasize it in your copy, titles, pics, videos, etc.. If people don’t know that they can order your goods or services from their locations, you’re losing out on traffic, customers, and revenue. Now, if you have a global market which most affiliate marketers have, you need to emphasize it as well. Not only do you need to show your location in your site’s copy, pics, vids, and communications, but in social media as well. This will show up in the search engines so that people who are looking for what you have can find you and order.

Making friends with the big boys. This is the practice of becoming allies with the big sites that sell the same products and services you have in your niche. This takes skill and good character while communicating. You’re looking for links from such sites on a default basis but also on a direct basis especially through social media. Larger sites sometimes will mention or link to a smaller site for specific reasons, usually because the smaller site has something to offer. When this happens it’s for your betterment and makes you look more authoritative. See if you can make friends with the big sites by visiting the industry forums, joining their email lists, or peppering their social media pages with compliments and very brief explanations of your company so that others can see you’re both in the same business but not competing.

Check your site for technical issues. Does your site have spelling errors? How about untagged pics and videos? Do you have error pages popping up when people clink links to your site? How fast does your site load? Do you have a ridiculous amount of pop-up menus? People hate pop-ups and nag screens. Clean your site up. Start from the top tot he bottom and if you’re not the webmaster, don’t try to do a job that you’re not trained for. Let the professionals do it.

Is your site tech friendly? This means are you using the latest technologies so that your site is being accessed by the public? One primary thing is making your site mobile friendly. Mobile is the largest of the upcoming platforms and will be outdistancing desktops and laptops very soon. If you’ve not gotten around to making your site mobile friendly, you had better get your gear in order and do so immediately. Google has free tools to help webmasters at this so don’t waste time.

Finally, every science has fundamental principles. The same goes with SEO, the problem is that SEO encompasses many sciences and procedures that can change drastically at a moment’s notice, and if you’re not on top of things you can be left in the dust.

Don’t be left in the dust, get your SEO game hat on now.

Please Contact our Office through our Website at https://www.localseojacksonville.biz or Call directly our Offices at 904-425-9679.  You will speak to an actual SEO professional, who is well experienced and trained in all matters of SEO and web marketing.

Local SEO is the New Yellow Pages

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http://www.localseotampa.com/newsjacking-as-an-seo-strategy-201512/The days of big, fat yellow books being found in every corner of every office building, home, and commercial area is long behind us. While the iconic Yellow Pages still exist, they are often much smaller in size and less ubiquitous than they were 10 years ago and that trend is likely to continue into the future as the Internet has replaced much of the function in this space. Local SEO and the investment that companies like Google have made in local search is really what has driven down the need for physical directories on local businesses and services.

This is especially important for small businesses which are looking at optimizing their marketing strategies. No longer are Yellow Pages registrations as valuable as they once were and in turn, local SEO is more important than it ever has been. For those starting out with local search strategy, it is important to first make sure that your basic business information (such as phone number, name, address, and maybe a small description) is appropriately listed in the major local search engines: Google+, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local.

Beyond that simple first step, there are a number of tactics that need to be carried out and will result in essentially every part of your online strategy being centered around local success. From choosing the right keywords and keyphrases (“dry cleaner in Hoboken”) to building content and links around those search terms, it can be a large task to effectively target local results, but the payoff can also be equally large. This is because the most targeted visitors will be local, especially for brick-and-mortar small businesses. By increasing local traffic by even 10%, it can be a substantial change in sales and may even beat out a much higher increase in non-local traffic. At the end of the day, absolute traffic does not matter, but targeted traffic does.

As with general search, local search is all about relevancy so it is important to have the right content and online presence to support that. Reviews play an additional role in this so it is important to encourage your happy customers to leave reviews for you online whether it be on Google, Yelp, Facebook, or another site. A mix of reviews in a number of places is the most natural way to do it and Google and other search engines will notice.

We are quickly moving to a point (if we have not already passed it) where local SEO is more effective than Yellow Pages in terms of return on investment. It is a must-do for any business looking to really succeed in today’s marketplace and thankfully it does not have very high barriers to entry. So what are you waiting for? If you don’t have a local search strategy in place yet, it might be time to start doing some research on keywords and building your strategy and tactics around that to effectively get all of those people in your town searching for your service to actually come to your website or shop. Go get them!

The Changing Face Of Social Media And SEO

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The Changing Face Of Social Media And SEOGet ready for a ride!

If you think keeping up with social media and SEO then you had better get ready for what’s going to happen down the line. In the coming months and years, what we think of as standard SEO is going to change drastically. The old fundamentals will still apply but the social media marketing end is where the action is all going to be at.

Let’s take a look at what this all means.

First of all, social media itself is constantly changing. Facebook is still king but there are other powerful sites like YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, and who knows what else is being invented at this moment that might take the world by storm. If you’re not participating or if your customers and supporters aren’t participating in the social media experience, your company’s brand name isn’t getting out there.

Social media sites are becoming more powerful than search engines themselves. More precise too regarding organic traffic. The reason being is that any information about your website , pro or con, is going to be mentioned by someone who wanted your services or partook of your services and loved them. You get good mention from an article, video, pic, regarding your company and you could end up swamped with business, enough to make you a worldwide phenomenon. It can happen. You can go viral but you just don’t know when. In order to better your chances you need to be in the game not sitting on the sidelines wishing something would happen.

Soon, social media marketing will be focused on the social media networks to get those targeted organic traffic sources and if your sites aren’t SEO’d you won’t see the boost up in search engine traffic. It’s going to be the other way around pretty soon. Search engines will depend on what people have to say about your site instead of people looking for what you have using keywords and query strings.

The hard work is going to be in your keeping your website popping with life. No more will a static, cookie cutter template website work. It might as a form of electronic business card but don’t expect any miracles if the site isn’t alive with fresh content nor anything for people to get engaged with. Your website has to thrive with action and vibrancy. Just adding a few new pics a week is better than nothing at all. Just pics or vids of new products or happy customers will do. The more the merrier though. Make that site mobile friendly and social media friendly with ‘shares’ and ‘likes’ buttons plastered wherever you have room or get one of the fine plugins that will do the job for you and your readers can use.

Although the benefits of upcoming social media marketing and SEO look very bright, it’s going to take ‘doing’. No more ‘auto-pilot’ sites. You’re going to have to engage with the public or hire someone to do so. Don’t let your niche go without you being an authoritative voice in it.

Yes You Do Need SEO

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Yes You Do Need SEO - SEO JacksonvilleIf you think you don’t need SEO for your online business promotions, products, and services, then you’re borderline delusional if not totally outside of reality.

Not meaning to be so harsh, but SEO is everything regarding your online presence. Getting in the top rankings of the search engines can mean the difference between success or failure across the board. If people don’t know who you are, or where to find you, then being online is totally useless. Search Engine Optimization is a combination of skills, technologies, and techniques by which the engineering of a website allows for the search engines to locate, list, and disseminate information about a website.

The jury is in regarding SEO and there’s no doubt about its effectiveness. It’s a matter of mandatory not optional. SEO makes sure your site is in the right niche, the right area on the web and that people can find it easily among the plethora of sites covering the same subject matter. It’s a brutal game however and calls for expertise. Sure you can do some simple things on your own to shore up your site and it will help, but in the final turn, you’ll need an SEO professional to fine tune things.

SEO is not an overnight success. It’s a long term strategy that calls for precise analysis of your site, your market, your goals and intentions. Your competition will be scrutinized to see how successful they are and what they did to get there. You’ll need traffic that is organic, meaning traffic that comes from surfers inputting the words and phrases they feel will find what they’re after. For example, if you have a landscaping business in your hometown area, you’ll want to rank high in the search results for landscaping in your area. That’s where SEO and local SEO come into play.

Your competitors aren’t going to rest on their laurels. They’re taking advantage of SEO and leaving you in the dust. The longer you wait, the further behind you’ll be.

This year alone has seen drastic changes in SEO. So much so that it’s almost a mad scramble for even the professionals to keep up with. New changes in the software Google and other search engines use to choose which sites get the top spots, advertising procedures, all combine to keep the search engine industry on its toes and if you’re not on top of the changes, to take advantage of them you’re cutting your own throat and losing sales, leads, traffic, and profit.

So the action here is don’t hesitate. He who hesitates is lost is an old saying and it totally applies here. Do your due diligence. Study what SEO is, ask questions of the various companies and don’t fall for companies that promise the Moon and super results. SEO takes time, money, and most of all patience.

It’s your responsibility to get your business going right. If there is a technique or technology that helps in this, then you owe it to yourself to do the best for your business and if that means getting SEO for your websites, then you had better get to it and do it now.

The Small Business Local SEO Battle

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The Small Business Local SEO BattleYou’ve seen it before, and might have had to face it yourself, having a small budget but having big website traffic dreams. Not every small business can afford SEO but there are some things that a small business can do on their own.
First of all, you’ll need to check on your website to make sure it is worthy of recognition. If you have a website that is sloppy, without proper layout and programming, then you end up with a product that is just not up to par with the competition out there. It’s really that simple. You can’t have a website with all sorts of bells and whistles and looks great with lout music and video dancers, but if the site doesn’t convey what your business is about, where your business is, then you’ve failed from one end of the spectrum to the other.

Think simple at first. Keep the site to the point but don’t make it so bland that people won’t remembe4r it nor will it capture their imagination. They have to like what they see, but you also have to penetrate so that your site stands out in their mind. The same thing goes for search engines especially when you’re doing local SEO. Google is coming out with more new ways to examine and index a website so that their surfers get the best results they can. When Google does this, they look for every piece of data they feel is relevant. Your site has to have such data available easily, in your tags, descriptions, and more. You have to make absolutely sure that people can find your name, address, phone number, on down to your latitude and longitude coordinates.

Well, maybe not that detailed, but you get the point.

Once your site meets the standards of a well done website, you’ll need to expand. Things like link building may seem passe’ but in reality they can’t hurt if done right. An inbound link from a reputable source is worth its weight in gold. It shows Google that a site with authority, hopefully a Google news site or some other verified site by Google, will boost you up the search engine rankings and keep you there. Remember, petition to get these links as much as you can. If yo have a dog walking business in your hometown, you need links that help your small business local SEO right off the bat. Google will know if the links come from paid subscriptions and so on so don’t do that. Earn those inbound links and cherish them.

Get photos and videos and articles about your local area that tie into your business. You can take pics of the local landmarks and public events that are perennial headline grabbers and pop them on your site and blog. Make sure you have a blog and social media and mobile friendly options online. Again, let’s say you have a dog walking service. Take pics of you walking the dogs past famous monuments or popular landmarks. Even political campaigns, picnics, anything you can use to boast about and tie in your brand name with the event, location, and other data that will aid your small business SEO.

So the bottom line is not to fret. You can make some waves with small business SEO if you plan right and enjoy what you do.

The Mysterious Benefits Of Social Media And SEO

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The Mysterious Benefits Of Social Media And SEOSocial media is still shaking up the SEO world. At first, webmasters and marketers were slow to catch on, but those who did are now wealthy. They saw the advantage of using sites like Twitter, YouTube, and then Facebook. Now with hundreds of social media sites all over the world, the smart marketer knows which ones they can use to maximize their SEO campaigns.

Things can go haywire and become overwhelming. Some marketers do nothing more than take advantage of social media to make anything they want to go viral. They’ll have hundreds or thousands of Facebook pages and likewise pages on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube and more. Each one intertwined with each other as well as their regular websites and blogs. Some of these campaigns pull in tens of millions of people per day. They’re literally engineers of SEO and social media and bring in the big six figures and seven and eight figure incomes.

They know how to push something into the limelight, and the average marketer can’t figure out how to take advantage of social media like the bigshots can but it’s not out of the picture because the social media pie is so huge and growing everyday that by using some simple strategies, the small company can do some serious damage and boost their stats through the roof.

Social media isn’t the place for spam. Start annoying people and the social media networks, the members, and search engines will be chasing you down while carrying torches and pitchforks. Social media expansion of your SEO campaigns means basically knowing the basics and how to blend in and post things that are of interest and unique quality that ties into your site, products, and services, but doesn’t beat the surfers over the head with. There are some Black Hat aka dishonest or disreputable approaches but they usually get the users beat down. You on the other hand have to sign up to the social media sites. Use your business name and make sure your contact and url data is prominent. Post interesting things but don’t emblazon your company name and URL all over the place. People should be able to see that via your name. If you want to get social media traffic to your site and not look spammy, then set up a separate url that focuses on something related to your business that you can post interesting posts about that lead directly to your site. For example, if your business is pool cleaning, then you set up a separate site about funny things regarding dirty pools or funny water play. Pics showing people swimming, having funny mishaps, animals getting into the pools, you would post and repost and comment on.

People will see that and venture to your site where you can then lead them on.
If you’re smart, people will feel a sense a loyalty and dependence on you to provide them with entertainment and will trust you more should you offer your services and products.

Making A Marriage Of SEO And Content Creation

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Making A Marriage Of SEO And Content CreationThis is the combo right here. In the battle for search engine listing supremacy, having both a knowledge of content creation and SEO are paramount in today’s online marketing world.

Content marketing and SEO have to go hand in hand, but not compromising either. This calls for shrewd expertise and is not for the sloppy or uninitiated. Unfortunately, most companies can’t afford to find top quality content marketing pros and SEO experts. They can cost an arm and a a leg, however, it is money well worth investing because in the short and the long-term, you will win. You might not get the top keywords or keyphrases, but you’ll be way ahead of the pack. This isn’t a game anymore of just creating content specifically to take advantage of SEO tactics. Google is hip to that and is emphasizing the content that flows naturally, looks original, and isn’t full of spammy terms, keywords and so on. You’ll find that many content marketing groups still do the same old thing and with the changes in the game, it’s going to upset the apple cart of many an SEO company.

Actually, by emphasizing professionalism and honesty regarding the combination of content marketing and SEO will provide far more excellent results and the public will be well serviced. That’s what Google is looking for.

So how do you make this marriage last? First of all get your SEO fundamentals down pat. Same goes with creating your content. Your content has to be original, relevant, well written and engaging. It has to make the reader want to engage with your site and any links listed. Link building the professional and ethical way is a real winner.

Do your keyword and keyphrase research. Get the latest and dig a little deeper if you can. There are numerous free tools to do this and Google provides many of them.

Evergreen content is always a standard to live by. Picking topics that are always in circulation means you’ll get far more mileage. Fitness, health, beauty, pets, gardening, home improvement, are all niches that will go the distance and more.

Make an attempt to engage the reader to visit your social media pages. Engage in activities there. This will show up in the Google results and add more power to your pistons.

This is all about fine tuning, but not looking like you’re fine tuning. The best approach is just create content fluidly. Don’t even think about SEO. If the content is great, the SEO will take care of itself, which is what Google is looking for. It means from now on, companies will have to do the best they can, hire and compensate the best content creators from writers to videographers, to photographers. No more boiler room content farms from third world countries. Their use us grammar and metaphor is a dead giveaway.

So that’s the only way to win this game. Doing a professional job in both fields and let them meld together naturally.