Taking The Best Advantage Of Citations For Local SEO

Posted on by · 2 min read

Taking The Best Advantage Of Citations For Local SEOCitations are those posts of information regarding your site that people post on directories. They’re like mini reviews about your website and business that allow for surfers to find you when they query search engines. These citations are far more valuable as they may seem, and there are ways to gain the upper hand, especially for local SEO.

You’re going to have to do some work to maximize the value of the citations about your site. Find as many as you can and triple check them for accuracy. It’s not always a matter of having lots of citations as it is in having accurate citations. Having the wrong name and location or phone number and other contact and descriptive information can ruin your chances of getting maximum efficiency in search traffic, especially that treasured targeted organic traffic. If someone is surfing for your site, let’s pretend here that your site has query data for “Joe’s Aquarium Supplies in Los Angeles, California, 123 ABC Street” and the citations have “Joe’s Aquarium Store in California, ABC 123 Avenue” instead, then you can see the damage being done. Surfers are getting your site’s name right but the address is all wrong. This could be due to a typo in your promotion or some other site goofed up. Either way these things have to be corrected and depending on the volume, it could take a while.

You’ll need to do some backtracking to find out where and when the error occurred and get to work immediately on correcting things. Of course this means the tedious chore of contacting each site to edit the info that you can’t and they may or may not be reluctant to do so depending on how difficult it could be. If it appears that things will be difficult, then respond to the citations themselves with the correct information. At least the correct information will appear next to the incorrect data.

The same goes for the products and services you provide. You can get far on synonyms, but only so far. Descriptions and lists of your products and services has to be correct as well. If you’re lucky enough to have an advertisement jingle that accompanies your promo, all the better. People like to post popular jingles to commercials they like, especially on social media. If you do have an audio video commercial with a jingle, make sure it’s posted on all the social media video sites and in those ads, announce the correct products and services as well as contact and location info. Never leave anything to chance. Establish your ground and keep it.

Precise information in those citations could mean the success or failure in this area of SEO. As you gain more fans make sure to bring to their attention that if they mention you in any citations to include the info you provide for them. Do this especially if you have a mailing list. Sometimes people get lazy or drunk or are in a rush and while posting info about you and your business site, they make mistakes. Getting them to correct them is just too much of a task, but you can at least try.

Remember, citations are just part of the arsenal you have to improve your local SEO rankings. Don’t underestimate their value nor shirk your responsibility in making these citations as accurate as possible.

Google’s Rumored Local Business Cards

Posted on by · 3 min read

Google's Rumored Local Business CardsIn another game changer for the SEO field, Google is reportedly working on a new way for local businesses to get indexed in a new way.

Unofficially called “Google Local Business Cards”, this new approach is only offered via invitation to brick and mortar local businesses. Previously, Google had experimented with soothing called ‘Candidate Cards’ which allowed political candidates to showcase their agendas. Now this process is being applied to business, especially local businesses. Google Local Business Cards is not open to e-commerce sites which could cause a major bone of contention as it may appear and actually be a leg up for the brick and mortar stores and the e-commerce businesses will be left in the dust.

The local businesses are displayed in a horizontal scrolling venue. Much like you’ll see on Facebook when you choose a video or a post. A horizontal scrolling bar featuring like minded content appears.

This new test may well usher in a new age for local SEO. The results only businesses and Google will know. You can bet this field test is going to have SEO pros, businesses, and Google sitting on the edge of their seats for a while.
Businesses who want to participate have to ask Google for an invitation.

Local SEO pros will be cleaning up with this new venue. SERPs have become more efficient and the traditional SEO tactics are being challenged. A website today is measured more by its interactivity than backlinking. Google wants to rid itself of any tactics and opportunities that hackers and spammers use to compromise the quality of their search engine results.

Google has been upending apple carts for over a year regarding SEO. They’ve not only changed algorithms without warning, but they’ve also minimized their communication with the SEO community. They’ve also implemented new AI systems like RankBat seems to be getting smarter every day. It’s so smart that one might expect it to provide the best results before a person even enters a search query.

These advances and tests of new procedures are all meant to make the surfer’s life more pleasurable online, especially when using Google. Google can’t afford to lose surfers because of rotten webmasters and marketers who exploit every avenue to get the high spots in the search results only to lead surfers to malware sites or other unscrupulous sites.

As much as a game changer and worrisome thing this is for hard working webmasters and SEO experts, in the end it’s the best thing for one and all.
For the time being, what the SEO pro should be doing is keeping a tab on this Google Local Business Cards new feature. Use keywords your sites use and see what happens in the search results. This will allow you to practice your keyword research and more to better take advantage of this new feature when it becomes available to other businesses that are web based. If you have local brick and mortar clients, then jump on this opportunity now. Don’t wait, ask for acceptance by Google and if approved, do the best job you can and wait for the results. Each and every statistic will be valuable in this process so don’t let an hour or day go by where you don’t analyze your statistics. You’ll be ahead of everyone else so that when this option goes live, you’ll be able to let your clients know you were on the ground floor and as an SEO pro, can better accommodate them to get their sites indexed professionally.

Overall, Google is doing this to make the search experience more efficient and trouble free. This bodes good for one and all and if successful, you’ll need to be on the ball to best utilize it.

Holding Your Course With Your SEO Goals

Posted on by · 3 min read

Holding Your Course With Your SEO GoalsAll the tricks and tips, tactics and techniques one may use for their SEO campaigns won’t mean jack squat if one doesn’t keep an eye on the prize and a solid hands on the helm.

What we’re talking about here is both planning and discipline. Focus and sanity. Knowing what you can and should do under any circumstances. If you plan properly you’ll be able to remedy any situation that rolls up on you.

First of all, combining your SEO strategies with your SEO friendliness. Both are important and shouldn’t conflict with one another. It can be done relatively easy and you shouldn’t try to bulldoze your way through, just take some time to analyze things objectively and sanely. This means having a knowledge or the technical end of SEO and the social and entertaining end of SEO. Basically a combination of the science of SEO and the art of SEO.

One might think that SEO doesn’t deserve to be listed as a science or an art, but in effect it does deserve such classifications.

It takes a lot to get the technical grip on SEO to make those SEO strategies work. It takes insight, innovation, creativity to make SEO friendly sites. There’s some style here and making a marriage between the two is the goal. Once that’s done, your efforts should be more simple.

Next, is knowing what Google and the other search engines want. That’s simple enough because the fundamentals of a successful site haven’t changed much and are applicable to one’s mobile SEO efforts as well. This means a well laid out website that has enough relevant and significant information regarding your business niche. Here is where staying focused comes into play.

Knowing what your audience wants and needs is the first stage. Providing that via text, video, pics, graphics, is the next phase. The final phase is combining all of that into a coherent site that gets the attention of the search engines to such a point that it ranks high for the keywords, keyword phrases, and keyword groups.

That’s the basic approach and sane one. Mobile calls for a bit more as its still new ground but growing at an alarming rate. There are tools at Google to help out and more on the way but with Google upgrading their algorithms and applying new software without notice, they can upend one’s SEO efforts considerably and this is why being thorough with the basics is most important.

Remember, all the bells and whistles may make your site look good, but without sound balance between technology and strategy you’ll end up in trouble. Things like Flash and other visual apps might not register right with the search engines. What does is HTML text and that should be applied everywhere applicable. All objects should have that alt text to them with no spelling errors. That text had better contain relevant words and phrases to the site’s niche too. Especially where blogs are concerned, you’ve go to understand that blogs on a website boost that site’s traffic immensely. Statistics prove this out and that blog should be updated regularly and any pics or videos presented have to be titled and tagged relevantly.

That’s all it takes to have a balance between SEO strategy and SEO friendliness. Knowing the tools and techniques and technologies behind them all isn’t that difficult even for newbies. It’s when you get unfocused, confused, your eyes getting too big for your belly, do you end up in trouble.

So buckle down and stay focused. Keep those eyes on the prize and keep sailing on.

Getting Local SEO Done Right

Posted on by · 2 min read

Getting Local SEO Done RightLocal SEO is of far more importance that most people realize. Far too often the data from location incorporated with SEO techniques can make or break a website regarding Google and search engine rankings. Getting Local SEO right isn’t that much of a challenge, but you’ll have to use some sound application and industry skills.

Local SEO exploits the location of the website’s content. A dog grooming shop in Brooklyn, New York, would have the keywords that contain the location and the zip code and anything related to that area that can be used with relevance. If you neglect to put your location data where applicable on your site, including videos, pics, copy, graphics, then you’re just putting a hole in your boat.
First things first, look over your site to make sure it’s professionally put together. All the bells and whistles of a website don’t mean jack to search engines. What matters is professionalism, relevance, quality, and if you don’t start off at these then you’re a lost cause. You’re representing a location, you want to capitalize on this. Just location alone can send immense amounts of traffic from surfers who didn’t know your store or website existed. People from your location will feel team proud of you and mention you on social media. Those well tagged videos, pics, and graphics will go a long way and gradually push your site up the search engine ladder.

If you’re going to represent an area, location, region, then do so with quality content. Your site might be about dog grooming in Brooklyn, NY, but Brooklyn is huge. It’s all of American history rolled into one. These landmarks, celebrations, events, can all be incorporated into the site and become part of the search engine landscape and your brand will be associated with positive local things and increase your search engine presence.
Link building is something to be done very carefully. Google will penalize for outdated or bad inbound and outbound links. You’ll want certain, relevant local inbound links and you want to breakdown your outbound links to local sites in the right categories. For example, if you’re posting on your blog about a parade in Brooklyn, then you would link to some official site of that parade. You would capitalize on it by taking pics of the dogs you’ve groomed that were shown off at that particular parade. You would post videos and pics that are well tagged with your location and contact data. It’s real, relevant content that exploits locality thus making it Local SEO.

Of course, you must make sure your title tags are optimized with your location. Don’t let those slip past you because Google ranks by pages, not by websites. The pages you create with the right Local SEO will be seen, indexed, and vaulted by Google.
When all your ducks are in a row, you then register with Google. This way Google doesn’t have to patchwork your site together. You’ll be starting off on the right foot.

Overall, Local SEO is indeed a more specialized form of SEO, but its importance can never be understated.

When To Cut Bait With Your SEO Provider

Posted on by · 3 min read

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

Posted on by · 2 min read

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

Posted on by · 3 min read

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

Posted on by · 2 min read

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

Posted on by · 2 min read

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.