What Matters Most? SEO Tips to Boost Your Online Rankings – Guest Post

/ Zach Heller

The following guest post was written by Katrina Fernandez. Katrina is a hardworking individual who always gives her best. As a degree holder, she aspires to establish within the media industry. Expert in building online partnership, she's been working in digital marketing services, Local SEO Search Inc. for several years. 

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Search engine optimization (SEO) can often seem like a mysterious black box. After all, Google changes their algorithm hundreds of times a year, and they don’t share exactly what goes into their ranking system.

However, that doesn’t mean you’re helpless when it comes to using SEO to boost your online ranking. Making an effort to improve the areas we do know matter to Google can make a huge difference in your organic traffic, which brings in more leads and more revenue.

Focusing on what matters most is the best way to get the most return on your SEO investment. Here are the things you should do today.

Use Mobile-First Development

It’s no secret that Google loves content that looks great on smaller screens. In fact, after boosting mobile-friendly content in search results for a couple of years, Google moved all the way into mobile-first indexing.

This means that if you want to do well with your SEO, it’s in your best interest to focus on developing all of your webpages for a mobile screen first, and then add extra features for full-screen users. That saves you enormous amounts of time when it comes to troubleshooting your mobile rendering, and helps you avoid any Google penalties for being unfriendly to mobile.

What about webpages that already exist? The first thing to do is get out your cell phone and navigate your site. Make note of any problems – text that’s unreadable, overlapping elements, or pop-ups that obscure everything – and make sure your developers fix the problems right away.

Focus on Page Speed and Security

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Page speed and security matter a great deal to search engines, but they matter even more to your users. As a result, focusing on these two elements will give you a huge double win as you improve the experience of your visitors while also boosting your page rank.

53% of users will leave a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Google will also drop your ranking if your site is slow. To solve speed issues, make sure your hosting is appropriate to your traffic level. Optimize images, video, and other page elements to load more quickly. Finally, take advantage of caching so that repeat visitors have an even faster load time.

What about security? If you don’t have a security protocol for your website (your domain doesn’t start with HTTPS://) then you’re well behind the curve. Way back in 2014 Google warned that HTTPS security was a ranking factor, and today users may be blocked from accessing your website if you don’t have it.

It’s not just search engines that care about security. Showing that you protect visitor and customer information is important to the general public as well. You’ll gain trust from your users if you make your security policy front and center – which will boost your leads and revenue over time.

Maximize On-Page SEO

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A lot of search engine ranking factors seem to be outside your control. However, the structure of your website, the keywords you use, and where you place your key content is all an essential part of your on-page SEO – which you control.

Make sure your website has a logical structure and is easy to navigate. Carefully consider the keywords you want to focus on. Don’t overlook longer keywords and locally-focused terms – often these will have the most impact.

Most of all, make sure you are regularly creating new content that is relevant and helpful to your customers. Answer key questions relating to your product or industry. Provide useful information in the form of text or video. Build trust and help your visitors see you as an authority.

If that sounds overwhelming, don’t worry. You can work with an experienced SEO consultant who can help you create and execute a high-quality strategy to boost your rankings through on-page SEO.

Manage Your Online Reputation

What’s in a name? Quite a lot, if you Google it! You want to make sure that when people search for your company name or industry, the information they find about you is accurate and mostly complimentary.

How do you do that? Step one is to claim your Google My Business page and make sure your information is fully filled out. From there, encourage your customers to leave reviews after each interaction. Hopefully, you’ll get a lot of positive feedback. This will not only help Google see that you’re a great company, but it will also encourage other potential customers to trust you as well.

With a great online reputation and a consistent presence across all platforms, you’ll make it easy for new customers to find you and realize that you’re the best provider for their needs.

SEO is Essential

SEO may not be your favourite topic, but in today’s digital world you can’t ignore the importance of your online stature. By following these tips you’ll be focusing on the most impactful SEO strategies, which will maximize the return you get for your efforts. Don’t wait – start today!

Does SEO Conflict with User Experience?

/ Zach Heller

If you work with an SEO expert, you have encounter times when her recommendations or priorities conflict with the overall goal of improving the website. This will happen when content changes on the website are written for search engines and not for real people.

Let’s look at an example:

Say you are responsible for your company’s website experience. You sell books online, and some of your key pages are not the product pages for the books themselves, but the category pages for each genre of book that you sell. Your SEO expert tells you that “true crime books online” is a high volume keyword and so recommends adding that phrase into the text of the page sporadically, including in the main heading.

On the surface this is no big deal, but once the copy changes are complete, the page reads as if a robot wrote it and in the language that we use to communicate with other human beings every day, it sounds funny.

That’s because your SEO expert is writing for the search engines.

What should you do in this instance?

In my experience, user experience has to win out over SEO. While I agree that SEO is critical to any site’s success, at the end of the day you have created your website for people to use. And the user experience is priority number one.

A good SEO strategy understands that the user is the champion. We are solving for the user first, and the search engines second. And so every recommendation or assignment that they come up with should factor in the end effect on the user.

Most times, there is no conflict. Search engines prefer a page that loads faster, so does the user. Search engines prefer a domain with higher authority, so does the user. Search engines prefer a page that answers the question a user types in, so does the user.

Where conflict exists, it usually comes down to the phrasing that is used in the website copy. And though every attempt should be made to include text that searchers will use to find you on Google, it still must be written so that it can be read and understood easily.

Because at the end of the day, you are writing for the user.

SEO is a Myth, and Other Myths

/ Zach Heller
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People will say almost anything only to get attention – including stating blatantly untrue facts. We all know the problems that this can lead to.

In the marketing arena, there are a great many people posing as “experts” and spouting off advice that, if unheeded, would cause no harm whatsoever. The problem is, people who don’t know the truth read this advice and then go and apply it to their business.

For this reason, some prominent myths have propagated the internet, been read and shared and implemented, only to negatively impact the company or person who believed the lies in the first place.

Let’s review a few of these dangerous myths:

1) SEO is a Myth

Too many people claim that SEO – search engine optimization – is not real. They claim that all the companies that make money selling SEO services to other businesses are scams. That Google’s search algorithm is too big of a secret for any of the common SEO tactics to truly work.

But sadly, this is not true. Though I know many people who have been burned by poor SEO practices, there is still a place for strategic SEO services in the business world. Smart SEOs can track patterns across the sites that tend to rank well on Google and help other sites improve their odds of getting ranked higher.

There are tried and true methods, most of which we might consider best practices for a good website, that are almost guaranteed to help Google rank your website. And if people don’t think this is SEO, they simply don’t understand what SEO is.

2) Negative Reviews Are Bad for Business

Every business fears a negative review. That, by itself, is not a bad thing. The problem is that there are too many companies that believe the myth that one bad review is going to destroy your business.

Every company gets bad reviews. It is nearly impossible to make 100% of your customers happy. And instead of spending your energy hiding from or deleting bad reviews, you can take actions that actually benefit your company when you get a bad review.

For example, you can respond and try to make that customer happy. Or you can use it as a learning experience and change something about your product or service so that you don’t end up with the same problem going forward.

3) Email is Dead

Email is alive and well. It remains the marketing channel with the highest ROI across industries and types of companies. “Experts” have been claiming that email was dead since the first marketing emails were ever sent. But if they gave up on email then, they have missed out on years and years of effective marketing opportunities.

4) The Lowest Price Wins

Too many companies compete on price. That’s because they believe that they only way to win in any competitive environment is to offer the lowest price.

But all we have to do is look at a company like Apple to see how mistaken they are. Apple has never competed on price. Instead, they developed a high-quality brand that people will pay to be a part of.

Lowest price wins when there is no difference between your product and other companies’. But if you can differentiate, you don’t need to constantly compete on price.

5) A Website Redesign is the Answer to Lagging Sales

There are some cases when a website redesign is necessary. Unfortunately, it has become one of the go-to strategies whenever an online business is struggling. And that’s because there are a lot of web design services out there who have been peddling that myth for a long time.

The truth is, you need to do a good bit of research to diagnose where exactly your problem lies. If it’s your website, fine. A redesign might help. But it’s not a cure-all.

6) Your Business Has to Be on Social Media

It’s a good idea for companies today to have a social media presence. However, there are far too many companies out there on social media just because they think they have to be. And it shows.

When your company has a page on Facebook, or a Twitter feed, and you are adding nothing to the larger conversation, you are just posting for posting’s sake. And it is not adding any value to your business.

If you can’t figure out how to make social media work for your company, you don’t belong there.

4 Actionable Tips to Boost Your Organic Search Traffic – Guest Post

/ Zach Heller

The following is a guest post written by Raul Harman. Raul is editor in chief at Technivorz blog. I have a lot to say about innovations in all aspects of digital technology and online marketing. You can reach him on Twitter.

Nowadays, modern businesses compete for both market position and customers. With so many various companies competing for the same thing, it's very difficult to ensure your business can stand out from the others properly. The online world provides many opportunities for companies to make a name for themselves, but not every company is able to do so. The main reason is that businesses oftentimes choose the approach that's not best suited for them.

In that case, you're only wasting valuable time and resources on marketing and promotions without yielding any viable results. If you're uncertain on which approach to take, in order to outrun your competitors, remember that everyone uses a search engine, such as Google to find something online. Therefore, if you want your business to stand out, you need to focus on building your organic search traffic. In other words, you must become more visible and more accessible online. Here are a few easy tips to boost your organic search traffic.

Leverage SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a cost-effective marketing strategy that will boost your online visibility and organic web traffic. The purpose of SEO is to help your website appear on the first page of search results on search engines, such as Google. To achieve that you must rank for the right keywords that your audience most commonly uses in their online search. In addition, those keywords must be relevant to the products or services your business offers.

Appearing first on search results is perceived by consumers as a recommendation from search engines. If Google placed you on the first page it must mean your business is worthy enough to check out. SEO doesn't only make you more visible, but also improves the trustworthiness and credibility of your website. That means that you'll get much more organic traffic by having good ranking, than by investing in paid advertisement.

Optimize your website

SEO requires that you properly optimize your website, in order to rank well on search engines. However, that's not the only reason you should focus on website optimization. Consequently, you're optimizing your website for the customers and the organic search traffic as well. Customer experience on your website plays a major role in determining not only your ranking, but your reputation as well. If your website is fast, secure, easy to navigate, user friendly and responsive enough to meet customer expectations, you'll more likely to favor referrals and recommendations from your website visitors.

That means that if you give consumers what they need, they'll boost your organic traffic by recommending you to others. As an example, an easy way to achieve this is to make your website super fast. You can opt for a hosting solution, such as cPanel hosting. That way, you can make immediate improvements to your website speed on your own and without having to procure services from web developers or designers.

Guest post on reputable sources

Guest posting is an activity of sharing your content across various reputable sources, such as websites or blogs. The purpose of this activity is to build your authority and presence online, in order to position yourself as an industry expert. Not only that, but with guest posting you're also improving your exposure, allowing you to reach a broader audience. The more relevant and high-quality your content is, the more engagement you'll drive from different audiences.

What's more, you must target only the reputable sources to share your content with, because that way, you'll gain more relevant and more organic traffic for your website. Building your reputation and domain authority through guest posting allows you to stand out on the market. That way, more people will be willing to visit your website by reading the interesting content you've provided across various media channels.

Build your presence on social media

Social media platforms are the main hub for businesses these days. The main reason is that social media networks put you in direct contact with your target audience. That being said, there's no better way to gain organic search traffic than it is to generate leads on social media. This allows you to lead consumers to your website with little to no cost at all. The main reason is that you can build presence on social media organically, which means you don't really have to leverage paid ads if you don't wish to do so.

Engaging in conversations with your customers and sharing content with them allows you to build more personal relationships with your audience. Not only that, but you can launch social media marketing campaigns to build more awareness about your business. What's more, you can leverage social media influencers to ensure that your content and your promotions are more welcomed by the audience present on social media channels. The better your presence is, the more likelihood of people visiting your website or researching your business online.

When it comes to online exposure for businesses, organic traffic is the best way to get the recognition and attention you need. Organic traffic means that consumers are checking out your business because they want to and because you've managed to pique their interest. The more organic search traffic you have, the more chances your business has for outrunning competitors and ultimately more chances of reaching success.

How SEO and SEM Work Together

/ Zach Heller
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Search engines are a primary source of traffic for most online businesses. But there are two distinct types of search engine traffic:

  1. Organic search traffic
  2. Paid search traffic

Organic search traffic is the stuff dreams are made of. This occurs when someone searches a phrase related to your business on Google and a link to your site shows up in the natural search results and gets clicked. This costs you nothing (to say nothing of the time and energy many companies put into search engine optimization).

The more organic search traffic your website is getting, the more success you are likely having.

Paid search traffic is different, mostly because it costs you money. This is the traffic that comes from paid listings on the search results page – ads that show up at the top of the page because you are bidding on searches containing a certain keyword.

If you are like most companies, you are likely aiming for both types of traffic. You would love to get us much organic traffic as possible, but you will supplement that with paid traffic in order to hit your marketing goals. But there’s a right way to do this, and a wrong way.

Too often we put SEO and SEM into siloes, and ignore their obvious overlap.

Here are three ways to fix that:

1. Pay for the words you can’t rank for.

The value in paid search is that it gives the advertiser more control. You control everything from the search terms you show up for, the headline and ad copy that gets displayed, and the user experience after they click. But if you are already showing up near the top of page one organically, there is less incentive to pay.

So you should make sure that your paid search team and your SEO team are in constant communication about target keywords. Spend your money on the terms that you don’t rank well for organically.

2. Use paid search data to instruct your SEO targets.

Just like the recommendation that you pay for those terms that you struggle to rank for organically, your paid search performance should inform your SEO strategy. Reports that show the true outcomes of certain keywords will help you determine which words and phrases to target with SEO efforts.

Your SEO team should be getting regular updates from your paid search team on keyword performance, costs, and competitiveness. Over time, one goal should be to lessen the dependency on paid search.

3. Report on both together.

More than simply reporting on both together, companies that do this well will incentivize these two activities as one. Search should be a domain in and of itself, with two branches thereunder. Instead of reporting on, and rewarding, each separately, bringing them under one roof ensures alignment between efforts and outcomes.

Paid search is essential, but should never supersede organic. If your company can attract quality traffic without paying for it, why would you?