Category Archives: SEO Tips

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.

How to Craft an Effective SEO Strategy

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SEO Strategy: How to Succeed Search engine optimization (SEO) can be quite a complicated machine. Not only that, but it is one that is constantly evolving and that has tons of moving parts. Thankfully, even if you do not have a large budget to outsource SEO services to someone else, there are a few basic principles that you can stick to in order to at least capture the low-hanging fruit when it comes to SEO and in turn to drive some traffic to your website.

As with most important things, the first step in creating a successful strategy is to create a plan- namely to set goals on what you would like to achieve. Remember to keep them SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-based) though as dreams are not the same as goals! From there, it will be much easier to see results as you aim for your defined goals.

When it comes to implementation, it is important to stay focused on current strategies and not the past. Things like an over-emphasis on keywords are really a thing of the past and may even harm you in today’s climate. Keyphrases or long-tail terms are really a better way to think about things as those are what people are searching for. They also often appear a lot more naturally in content and sound better to visitors too. It is important not to focus on these too much too and to keep content are genuine and real as possible, but keeping keyphrases in the back of your mind certainly won’t hurt.

As you develop your content, always keep the end user in mind and you will already place yourself a couple of steps ahead of the game when it comes to doing well with Google and other search engines. Aside from killer content, do your research on everything relevant to your website as possible. This includes keyphrases that people are actually searching for and competition analysis. Incorporate this into your SMART goals and subsequently into your plans to achieve those goals and you will realize some synergies in your strategy.

In addition to on-site changes, it is important to stay on Google’s good side and to provide it with certain information that may help you. Keeping profiles on relevant Google websites (such as Hangouts and if you are a local business filling out local listing details and claiming your business) as well as notable social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter is important as Google derives a lot of information from these sources and growingly is placing more emphasis on them in generating search results.

Once you have a solid social network presence built around a site that has strong content and has some sort of online presence via backlinks (tread lightly and keep the links believable and relevant to avoid getting dinged), it is time to do some research on your competitors and to really see what is working in your niche and what isn’t. From there, see how you can incorporate these ideas into your website strategy in order to improve SEO and drive rankings higher.

If you follow the information in this post, you will have a solid foundation on which to build your search engine strategy. Good luck!

If you have any questions in regards to the SEO optimization for your website please contact us for a free consultation.

Image credit: Robert Churchill

Expanding Your Social Media Presence For SEO

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Expanding Your Social Media Presence For SEOSocial media and social networking is how business is done nowadays. Without a presence, without acumen in how to do things, you’re going to be so far back of the pack that you might as well not even exist.

It’s not a philosophical issue, but one of the reality of today’s marketing. Without a social media presence you’re not going to get far especially if you’re selling your services and goods.
Clients are always looking for the best fort he lowest cost. That’s it in an nutshell. If no one knows you exist, you could have the next best thing to sliced bread and it wouldn’t do you any good.

It’s a nightmare if you don’t know how to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest. You’ll need to hire a social media marketer and they can cost a fortune. These experts charge a lot and for good reason, they usually get results, but the field is chock full of scammers and other criminals who promise to make you a viral sensation overnight but all they do is take your money and either don’t do a thing or do a superficial showcase of their own ill gotten links, trades, shares, that makes Google boil with anger and will get your site penalized or beaten so far into the ground reputation-wise that it would take a miracle to pull you back.

You can study up on how to do social media marketing but by the time you get the course or instructions, the information inside is so old it’s no longer effective. The pros aren’t going to display their secrets, no, they’re going to hog them to themselves because they know there’s no shortage of ne’er-do-wells just waiting to take their place and squeeze them out of the market.

So how does one battle these obstacles? By first realizing that it takes patience. It takes planning and follow up. You’re going to get people to pay attention to you and then your business. Make sure your website or blog is up to snuff. Meaning, it’s professional, with proper spelling, well tagged and relevant pics, good to great copywriting, a sitemap, NAP (Name Address Phone) in prominent placement and engaging presence so that people will show up, convert, and retain. That’s it. That’s your goal and a few simple steps can get you on your way.

First of all, get yourself your personal and business accounts on these social media networks. Once that’s done, become friends with those in need of your services and products. If you’re a pet grooming service then look for people in your area who have pets. Look for the fan clubs of those pets too. Share their pictures and videos and validate them for their posts and contributions. People will grow toward you and when you speak, they’ll listen. Don’t spam them, don’t overwhelm them, just keep conversations natural and never, ever get into a fight or debate.
Soon, you’ll see your influence grow. You’ll be in contact with people who are organically interested in what you do. When that person shows off the horrible haircut their prized poodle got, you dive right in and let it be known that your company would never allow such a thing to happen and how you will offer to fix the problem for free. The person will almost faint. A free doggie do? Others will notice the generous offer and when you’re done and the job is spectacular, you have a legitimate claim to fame that you can milk for years to come. Opportunities like this are what make or break you. Let’s say a comparative photo shows what the poodle looked like ‘before’ and ‘after’ with your URL at the bottom of it. It’s going to be posted on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the rest for a long, long time, ever driving more traffic to your social media pages, websites, and blogs.
See how simple it is? It take patience, it takes some good old fashion good communication and showing off what you do best.

Don’t Crash Land With Your Local SEO Landing Pages

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Landing pagesDon't Crash Land With Your Local SEO Landing Pages aren’t what they used to be thanks to the updates that Google has been doing, and marketers who haven’t been on their toes are seeing the miserable effects of not having adapted.

Landing pages used to be a great way to get traffic, by adding dozens of landing pages that pointed to the main site or sales page. Marketers and SEO pros would name a new sub domain after anything they could use to point a landing page to the main page or sales page of a site. Well, that isn’t working anymore and for good reason.

Google got tired of this tactic. Their new procedures penalize marketers and local SEO prose for trying this. Instead, what’s really working is the old honesty is the best policy procedures. Basically, your site had better have the right spelling, layout, relevant data, relevant links, blogs that engage and are well written, properly tagged photos,
If you think you’re going to outsmart Google on this, you’ve got another think coming. It’s not going to work. Stop right now and get on the good foot of local SEO.

So what do we do with our landing pages now? Well first of all, don’t put up landing pages with the same or similar content. Google will see this as cookie cutter type webmastering and SEO and that will cost you dearly. Your landing pages should have a sub domain name that is relevant to the ‘action’ of the page, not just the location. If you live in New York City for example and own a plumbing business, you should first have a landing page for your exact location with proper data like name of company, phone number, etc., especially zip code. Now to get other people to zero in on your page, you need to have landing pages that focus on an ‘action’, but put the location in the copy. For example, If you wanted to get the traffic going to Queens, NY, but your office is in Manhattan, you would put up a subdomain that says, yourdomain.com/plumbing/fix_clogged_pipes.html and in the copy, put your location and what you do in Queens and add important info like the zip code for that area and a landmark if possible.

This all adds up in the short and long term and it shows that you’re not just trying to snag up all the traffic, but the relevant traffic regarding the exact services you’re providing.

There are many changes on a theme here, but being straightforward, and being professional will get your local SEO and landing pages in good standing and profitable.

Don’t Rely On Automation To Do Local SEO

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Don't Rely On Automation To Do Local SEOSure it would be nice to have some robot or android to come along and do all your SEO for you, but that isn’t going to be the best option.

Having something like your local SEO being handled by some service or automated process might sound like it would make life easier but in reality, it could well penalize you in the short and long term. It’s about organics. Getting organic traffic and processing organic driven content is fr more advantageous, as Google’s algorithms are detecting these things and putting down the hammer.

What all this means is that you’re going to have to take greater responsibility for your local SEO than you may have counted on. This is in no means a bad thing, actually it’s great news. Reason being is that this puts you in the driver’s seat so that you’ll be on top of things as the effects you create will be of your doing mostly.

See, if you use automated type inclusion services for local SEO or SEO in general, you’re putting your future in someone else’s hands at a premium price. Sure they have subscription services for local SEO but once that subscriptions service ends, you’re back to square one. Suddenly your site doesn’t look like a professional is running it anymore an you’re left out on a limb trying to gain control. Inclusion services, especially for link building can do more harm than good. It’s best to learn how to do things on your own and be the captain of your own ship.

Getting even more involved means engaging with your audience and industry. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, get in deep to find out what people like, need, want. Investigate what the industry pros have to say. They might just let out that bit o f information that changes the game in your favor. If they’re beefing about not having enough of this product or that service, that’s your chance to pounce on the opportunities and optimize your site thus.

Remember, optimizing your site means following basic processes and procedures. The only thing that has changed from the old days is the integrity and honesty level. The ‘Black Hat’ techniques used by the unscrupulous just won’t cut it anymore and anyone foolish enough to try using them, will feel the wrath of Google for a very long time.

Keep things natural, organic, don’t take wild risks with your site as you could bring the house down on you, and you would have to pay big money to get out of trouble. Local SEO calls for more specialized skills than regular SEO, so you’ll need to hone those skills and apply them brilliantly, and honestly to get the most gains from your efforts and invested dollar.

Not saying don’t pay for some things regarding your SEO campaigns, but today’s marketer and web developer have to understand the balance that is necessary to get the best ROI aka Return On Investment, as well as making the kind of impact necessary to stay competitive in today’s online market.