Seo Is Still Relevant In The Online World Of Trade And Commerce

Is SEO Really That Important for E-commerceOnline marketers and social media promoters who’ve already cast aside SEO as passé and antediluvian, would be pleasantly surprised to know that search engine optimization is more germane than it ever was. Simply put, local SEO plays a key role in helping major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo as well as net surfers track down your business website. At the same time, it does not need to be emphasized that in the present times, almost 80% of prospective customers go online for viewing and/or reviewing products and services before purchasing.
The upshot of the above assertion is that it still makes sense to optimize or sync your site with the search engines so that the portal gets a rank almost on the top of SERPs. Vice President of marketing at Boostability, Kelly Shelton also shares the opinion that local SEO can prove instrumental in enabling your business to claim a listing on Google’s first SERP. According to Kelly, almost one and all browse on Google when they wish to find answers to a question or search for a product.

And Google’s search algorithms always deliver. No wonder why Google is the world’s most popular search engine. Google makes use of a string of parameters for according a rank to a business site including but not limited to website design, textual/visual content quality, page load speed, and navigability. It is quite shocking to note that though most of the consumers nowadays browse on the net before buying something, there are still a good number of businesses that do not even have a website.

A good proportion of those running small businesses are hamstrung by misgivings and mistaken notions about the Internet. Many businesspersons strongly feel that they’re small fries compared to the ecommerce behemoths like Amazon, eBay, and Wal-Mart. And there are those who think hiring an online marketing specialist for creating a small business SEO strategy can be quite expensive.

If Kelly is to be believed, then there are approximately 40% of small businesses that are still managing without a portal. However she adds that these establishments are gradually recognizing the internet’s potential in boosting business prospects in the web realm. If you do not have a website yet, then you’d be happy to learn that getting one designed and developed is not only simpler these days but supremely affordable as well.

Creating and having a portal of your own is a sine-qua-none in this digital age just for the sake of keeping your business afloat, let alone make profits. As a small business owner, maintaining a constant presence in the world of websites can be quite challenging for you. Apart from having a target-oriented small business SEO strategy (which you should consider as given), what else can you do to bolster your business’s online presence?

Create a Google My Business Page

You’ll definitely get results if you take the trouble of increasing your visibility on the most admired search engine in the world-Google. To be specific, it pays to have a Google My Business account, particularly if your business is localized and you’re looking to attract local customers. And you do not need to have a website to be included in the Google My Business listing.

Boost your brand’s popularity in the online medium

The best way to entice the niche segment that will use your product or service is to establish a rapport with the same. There are so many ways of forging a relationship-write a blog and update it regularly, create social media profiles, and so on.

Make your website informative

Your website is the book or reference manual that users and your potential customers will turn to for picking up info about your product. So, make sure you update original and creative content that describes your ware or service.

Ensure that the portal is coded appropriately

It goes without saying that your site should be coded appropriately, especially for fast downloading on smartphones.

Jacksonville SEO can help you out with designing a target-based SEO strategy for your ecommerce site. Call 904-425-9679 for complete details.

How Important Are Customer Reviews For Seo?

Why Customer Reviews Are Important for SEOIn order to have a happy life, you shouldn’t care that much about what people say about you. But when it comes to online businesses, this actually matters way more than you can imagine.

Besides trying to come up with new SEO ideas, in order to build some high-quality links and help your website rank well, you should also keep an eye on its day-to-day performance. Specifically, we’re talking about research, product development, sales fulfillment, or even customers service.

Forgetting about these aspects or even not caring about them that much can lead to a series of negative customer reviews, which can make you lose potential customers and even hinder your rankings.

Let’s take a few moments and understand how reviews can affect your SEO efforts, in both negative and positive ways.

They are actually user-generated content!

Just think about it: while you’re trying to integrate some specific keywords into your content, many of them feel very natural to the users who use them in reviews. And Google is seeing them as signals, therefore noticing your online presence.

Whether we’re talking about general keywords in your niche or long-tails, they are all necessary for your SEO strategy. Good reviews can take your ranking scores a bit higher, while negative reviews will bring you down if you are not careful.

They help you compete in your market!

Besides affecting your SERP rank, customer reviews can also affect your overall market performance.
Specifically, when somebody searches for a term in your niche, a list of results will be displayed. Some results have customer reviews, while some of them don’t.  Let’s take things logically: won’t you be tempted to check out the result with reviews, as It looks legit?

It was proven that people are more likely to trust an online business with a mix of reviews, whether they are positive or negative. By displaying these, a company shows that it’s far from being perfect, not to mention that it somehow guarantees that the reviews are real!

They provide a lot of value for local SEO campaigns!

When a user leaves a review, which contains local references, your local SEO efforts receive an unexpected boost. This review is a small piece of organic content, after all. The more you get, the stronger your presence will be in Google’s eyes.
The more positive customer reviews integrating local terms you’re competing for, the better for your business.

They help you establish a relationship with clients

When somebody wants to buy something online, Google offers the information about the product or service they are after, giving the best possible options available. As for customer reviews, these are real deal sealers.

Some people like to go through a couple of reviews before making the final decision, so it’s obvious that what past customers have to say matters a lot. Their opinion makes your business feel genuine and if the reviews are good, potential new clients want to feel the same thing.

Make sure you always answer the reviews, including negative ones, as you will help people know you better.

Keeping up with all reviews can be a bit overwhelming sometimes. If you want to build relationships with your clients, but also improve your presence in Google, SEO Jacksonville is here to help. Competitive search engine optimization packages, able to help you make a difference for your business, are just one call away, at (904) 425-9679.

Guidelines on safeguarding your site from black hat SEO

Safeguarding from Risky Black Hat SEO TechniquesNegative SEO has been discussed animatedly and has been in the news of late. But what exactly is it? And to what extent does it prevail? Are there enough valid reasons to be worried about negative or black hat SEO? In case your website is broken into and hacked using negative SEO techniques, what steps can you take to restore your portal and preempt as well as prevent such malicious attacks in the future?
This blog takes you through the guidelines you have to follow in order to safeguard your site from the damaging aspects of a SEO strategy. But first let us familiarize you with the common features of a negative SEO campaign.

Defining Negative SEO

Negative SEO usually implies unscrupulous tactics that a hacker or an aggressive competitor of yours resorts to for bringing down your site’s ranking on SERPs or search engine results pages. Negative methods of search engine optimization also referred to as black hat SEO has to do with infiltrating and sabotaging a website by stationing innumerable spam links to the portal. Owing to the harmful impacts of such stratagems, the affected site’s ranking takes a beating and the site eventually loses quality traffic.
Instead of waiting for the hacker or the jealous competitor to bring down your portal, it’d be better on your part to thwart such spiteful attempts much before they cause heavy damage.

1. Keep Regular Watch On The Speed with Which Your Site Loads
The speed with which your portal loads on the browser is a significant ranking parameter. In case, the loading of your site is inordinately delayed on a regular basis, there is good reason to suspect that your site has become a victim of negative SEO. Thereafter, when you take the help of crawling software to detect what you have been suspicious of all along but cannot trace anything but your site loading is delayed, then you can be sure that your site has been.

If you are technically competent, you can weed out the culprits on your own or else you have to fall back on your web hosting service or the webmaster.

2. Carry out Link Audits Routinely
Carrying out link auditing frequently not only contributes towards improving the ranking of your site on Google’s or Yahoo’s SERPs (search engine results pages) but also helps in screening out links to unauthorized portals. If your site is linking to quality backlinks, the graphs and flow charts for ‘backlink progress’ and ‘linking domains’ will have a more or less smooth gradient. But if you espy a steep drop or spike in the slopes, then there is a good possibility that your site has been hacked into. Either conduct an audit manually or take advantage of auditing software app.

3. Weed out Negative Reviews
You could lose quality traffic due to a deluge of negative reviews loaded on your site by a malicious competitor. Find your business listing on Google Maps, select the listing, and click on review summary> reviews, flag the fake negative feedbacks, and complete the report form.

4. Be on the Lookout for Scraped Content
It could happen that your original content is lifted word by word by a hacker and posted on his or her site that gets reviewed by Google before yours. Use a Copyscape software to find out if your content has been plagiarized.

5. Keep a Tab on Click through Rate of Your Keywords
Review your keywords’ CTRs using Google Search Console and if you spot an inordinate spike, report the matter to Google and start disowning the bad links.

6. Keep Checking Your SERP Ranking Once in a While
Although this goes without saying, you need to check your SERP rank routinely just to make sure that your site’s ranking is at least maintained. Make the most of tracking software to check the site’s visibility across the net.

7. Ensure That Your Security Arrangements are updated periodically
Make sure that all your security arrangements are up to date. For instance, ensure that your site is stationed on a server that uses SSL encryption technology.

Effective tips for bettering the local SEO position of your site designed using WordPress

Optimize your WordPress Site for Local SEOOf all the open-source CMS platforms that exist, WordPress is definitely one of the most popular, thanks to its resourcefulness, flexibility and convenience of use, including the fact that the system can be used for free. No wonder then that, nearly 29% of all sites are based on WordPress and the CMS system has been downloaded over 47 million times till date. Another good reason for the CMS platform’s widespread popularity is that it is highly SEO-compatible in that the system can be used easily even by those who are technically not savvy.
A site designed and developed using WordPress can be incredibly crucial for local or smalltime businesses, intending to improve their local SEO ranking but may not have the wherewithal to opt for across-the-board online optimization strategies. Following are some simple yet effectual improvement techniques you can take advantage of so as to make your portal claim a position on the first SERP of Google or Yahoo.

1. Focus on organic link building

Your site’s local SEO standing is considerably influenced by the linking profile-the domains connecting to the site, back links quality, and link anchor text optimization. Do not expect to have organic links overnight and also do not anticipate quality links to start delivering instantly.

The emphasis should be on quality more than quantity-Strive towards having as many quality back links as possible simply because just one such back link is always more valuable than innumerable links with questionable quality.
Be on the lookout for prospective link building openings-Maximize your opportunities for link building by taking advantage of a competitive analysis apparatus that will redirect to competitors instead of you.

Anchor text optimization-Make the anchor text optimal for local SEO search, like integrating the name of your practice or the locality of the city where your business is situated.

2. Content optimization is the key

The textual and visual content of the site is as important as its security standard, loading time, and structure. Pay attention to creating persuasive and engaging content first before you can think of optimizing the same. You do not need to tear your hair out when it comes to on-page optimization; just use the Yoast SEO plugin.

3. Make your site smartphone friendly

You can take it for granted over 70% of your customers will find you using their smartphones. Additionally, Google is according greater significance to sites that are more smartphone-friendly. Use a perceptive WP theme, design the site keeping smartphone users in mind, and make the most of a mobile app for heightening the smartphone friendliness of your site.

4. Make the site more responsive and speedy

Take all the necessary measures to ensure that your website loads within 2-3 seconds on any handheld or tabletop device.

5. Let your URLs reflect location keywords

In case you have several landing pages, where every page is devoted to attracting clients in a specific locality, make sure you embed the location keyword in the URL in order to enrich the experience of the user.

6. Consolidate your WordPress portal with Google My Business

Get your Google Your Business (if you do not have one yet) that will club together significant parameters influencing local rankings including but not limited to business description, user feedbacks, and physical nearness.
If you own a local business and want to increase its visibility across the web, you can visit www.localseojacksonville.biz or make a call to 904.425.9679.