Category: SEO

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Digital Marketing SEO

Why Your SEO Needs to Be Executed by Professionals

It’s high time you get serious with SEO.

More than 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. The search engine is the first thing that people use to find something they’re interested in. Even if you’re running an AdWords campaign, you’re still not getting 100% of organic traffic that your website deserves because over 80% of internet users ignore paid ads and people prefer clicking on organic links as compared to paid links.

Don’t relegate SEO to the side. If you’ve been looking for a proven channel for acquiring customer, then SEO is a must for you. The question is: Who should do it? Should it be left to professionals or someone from your team who has no prior experience with SEO?

I would say, let the professionals handle your SEO. But don’t take my word for it, here are seven reasons why you should leave SEO to the experts:

 

1. Save time

Small and medium-sized businesses have a limited workforce. If you own a small business, chances are you’re already short of people so doing SEO by yourself can be a waste of time and resources. Hiring a professional SEO company can save you time.

SEO requires a lot of time – it’s not like building a few links in a couple weeks and you’re done. You’ve got to build links consistently. It can take 6 months to a year before you start seeing any noticeable change in organic traffic and rankings.

Let professionals do SEO for you while you focus on other important business tasks that are of strategic nature. For instance, instead of spending time acquiring more links why not use the same time to find business partners and move into new markets?

It’s all about hiring the right SEO agency that knows what they’re doing. They can work with minimal testing and experimentation, which means an expert will get to link building immediately as compared to an amateur or your in-house team that will spend several months on this testing and experimentation, which ultimately costs you time. Save it for your business.

 

2. Real results

Not every SEO campaign turns out to be successful. In fact, most of them fail. Do you really think SEO is all about building links? Not exactly.

Below is a complete SEO campaign planning pyramid that works at the backend of every successful SEO campaign.

Credit: Qualinsoft Blog

Can you develop such a strategy in-house? Amateurs cannot do it either. A professional will do it and once it’s done, you’ll see results.

Professional SEO experts will drive results, save you from penalties, and help you get rid of bad links. Getting the results you desire for your company can’t be completed by any amateur SEO team – it’s the work of experts.

 

3. SEO is difficult

Search engine optimization (SEO) is like the stock market. Search engine algorithms evolve with every search query. A website that is on page one at 4pm in California won’t be on page one at 4pm in Texas. Search engine algorithm is changed based on the search engine queries – so anything that works today might not work tomorrow.

This is because search engines (like Google) are dynamic and are always busy tweaking their algorithm. Google, for instance, released more than 11 major updates in 2016. Every new update means you have to revise your SEO strategy to make sure you are following the new rules.

If you’re new or unskilled in SEO, you can’t stay updated with all the algorithm updates and even if you somehow know about an update, you’ll be clueless as to what you’re supposed to do next.

You’ve got to understand that SEO isn’t just complicated, it’s difficult because you can’t do it in isolation. You have to stay updated and acquire new knowledge that you can implement right away – this is what professionals do.

The make SEO easier with their experience, industry connections, and knowledge. They make it work for you and your business irrespective of how tough it gets.

 

4. In-depth analytics

In a survey by a research institute, 44% of businesses reported that they don’t have the quantitative metrics to evaluate marketing ROI while 67% businesses don’t evaluate marketing analytics.

Imagine you’ve been spending thousands of dollars on SEO every month for the past 8 months. Your marketing team has undergone several SEO training but you don’t see any results. Your team is unable to tell you when it will work, why it isn’t working now, and when it’s expected to work.

Professionals, on the other hand, can tell you clearly what’s happening and how to make things better because they have the tools and resources to measure the progress and forecast results. You’ll be able to see the value of every single dollar spent on SEO with the help of charts, graphs, and detailed reports. For instance, do you know that you can assign a dollar value to your organic traffic (i.e., visitor) in Google Analytics? I bet not.

While an amateur SEO may know how to do that, he might not be in a position to provide further analytics and reporting on it, while a professional agency will make it easy-to-understand for you.

Besides, analytics don’t matter. How you use analytics for planning, forecasting, and improving ROI is what matters.

Everyone has access to Google Analytics but there are only a few who know that conversion funnels can be created in Google Analytics. Only a few have created the funnels. But there are professionals who know how to reduce funnel leakages, how to boost conversions, or how to fix the low conversion rate of organic traffic. This is something that only experts can do; they just don’t throw reports, but they make those reports meaningful, understandable, and tweak their plan on the results of the analytics.

 

5. Experience

SEO is more about experience than learning.

Professionals are experienced; they have done it in the past, and they can do it again today.

Beginner SEOs, on the other hand, may not know how to do it. Maybe they have never ranked a web page in the past but have read hundreds of case studies, know everything on link building, and can tell you their entire SEO plan in no time.

Would you prefer a professional or a beginner?

The truth is, a professional SEO agency is more than an outsourcing agency – they’re your best partner. Take it as a partnership opportunity.

Here is an example of what experience in SEO means and can do:

Eric Ward was having a live Q&A Google Hangout with his subscribers. During the session, a viewer asked why a certain website was ranking so high in Google despite poor SEO and a few links. Eric used Ahrefs to monitor the backlink profile of the subject website, which had only 6 backlinks and it was ranking on the first page for an extremely competitive search term with 1.6 million results.

Beginners will stop here but Eric moved on and ran a search query to monitor mentions of the website. The search showed that the website was mentioned (not linked to) from some top authority sites. He further inspected the social accounts of the website which had thousands of engaged followers. From there, he showed the viewers why Google was ranking this website despite having only 6 backlinks.

This is what experience can do to your website and SEO strategy.

 

6. SEO evolves rapidly

SEO strategies that used to work in 2012 don’t work today. In fact, what works for one website might not work for another.

Search engine marketing techniques evolve with:

  • Changes in search engine algorithms
  • Competition
  • Advances in technology
  • Search engine market share
  • Geographical location

SEO is a fairly large industry that can’t be conquered in a few days. Therefore, it’s better left to professionals who are in the industry to deal with the external factors.

Of course, your DIY SEO strategy might work exceptionally well for a few months, but a minor change in the algorithm can push you down the SERPs. By the time you’ll realize it, it’d be too late.

SEO experts have deep insights about the future of SEO or at least they try to analyze it. They can thus help you:

  • Avoid penalties
  • Adapt to new changes
  • Amend SEO strategy as and when required
  • Follow the trend

 

7. Consistent links and traffic

SEO is a long-term strategy; it can take as much as 22 weeks to see the impact of a link in terms of improved organic search ranking.

Links that you’re building today will continue to impact rankings for months to come. It’s not a one-time strategy. Instead, how you distribute links over a period of several months (or maybe years) is what’s needed.

This is where professional SEO marketers can come in to guide you. They can craft a strategy for your website and a link building strategy that will boost traffic, conversions, and improve and maintain the rankings.

Imagine engaging your marketing team full-time for SEO? You can’t afford it because your marketing team has to do a lot of other things.

If you stop building links once you’ve achieved the desired rankings, there’s every tendency that you’ll lose your positions. You have to generate links consistently to maintain the rankings. So, let a professional do it for you.

 

In conclusion…

If you need consistent, reliable, risk-free, and long-term organic search rankings for your web pages, better leave it to professionals. Anything less than a professional is a big NO.

Categories
SEO

Mobile Wins: Google Using Mobile-First Indexing

In November, Google started using mobile-first indexing. This move is the first stage of the death of the desktop in terms of ranking sites. Under this process, Google looks at the mobile version of your website first to determine the ranking, and then falls back to the desktop version when it cannot locate a mobile version. Marketers and SEO professionals have known this was coming, as Google made hints at it more than a year ago, but they made the announcement on their own blog. As time goes on, the search engine will continue to place more importance on mobile-friendly sites.

Why? Google gets more queries from mobile devices than it does from desktop devices every day. Before the shift, Google used the desktop version of a website to determine the ranking, but as more mobile searches come in, it just makes sense to evaluate the mobile version in determining what ranks when and where.

After all, there are a lot of mobile pages out there with less content than the desktop version. When the crawlers are evaluating the desktop versions, rather than the page the user actually sees, that can lead to some quality issues with the results – and thus degrades the user experience for the searcher. We preach all the time about how you have to have a stellar user experience online, regardless of industry or niche – and Google is making this change to keep their user experience a good one.

What does this mean for you?

Google will look at mobile websites first to determine ranking, and serve those results to users regardless of whether they are using a mobile or desktop device to initiate the search. There won’t be any [additional] mobile-friendly adjustment, and if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, your rankings will be affected even with desktop searches.

Right now, this is a testing phase for Google, but eventually, it will roll out for everyone. That means you need to make sure you have an optimized mobile presence so you’re ready for when the changes become the new norm.

 

I Don’t Have a Mobile Website?

If you don’t have a mobile website, there’s no need to panic because the algorithms will rely on your desktop version. But, you may want to consider investing in a mobile website just to make sure you can address your users’ needs. Take a look at your analytics data to determine how much of your audience is coming from a mobile device. If a significant portion of your audience uses mobile devices, then you want to make sure you have a mobile-friendly website.

There’s no need to spend a lot of time and money building a completely separate mobile version since responsive design takes care of it for you. It automatically adjusts everything to the appropriate screen size for the querying device. If you’ve already got a responsive design, or a site that otherwise sends dynamic content with equivalent markup regardless of device, there’s nothing you need to do.

If you are building a mobile version of your site rather than opting for a responsive design, don’t launch it until it’s ready. Since your desktop site will be indexed in the absence of a mobile site, it’s better to allow a full desktop site to index than a partially built or broken mobile site to be indexed in its place.

Once you have a mobile website, if it’s not a responsive website, make sure the content and links remain similar enough to maintain the correct rankings so it can be ranked the same way as the desktop version will be. You’ll also want to make sure you’re serving structured markup for both versions of your website. You can use the Structured Data Testing Tool to make sure the structured markup is equivalent for both desktop and mobile versions. Type the URLs of both versions into the tool and compare the output. As you add your structured data to the mobile site, avoid adding large amounts of irrelevant markup. Use only what’s appropriate for the specific information in each page.

If your mobile site has less content than your desktop site, it could affect the ranking of your site simply because there’s no guarantee Google will see both versions of your site when it crawls. The basic theory is that if the content isn’t important enough to be on your mobile site – then you likely aren’t the best result for that query or content.

This is why the responsive design approach is best – all pages remain the same in terms of content and links. You can use the Mobile-Friendly Test tool to determine whether or not Google thinks you have a mobile-friendly website. If you do, but the testing tool thinks you don’t, take steps to remedy the issue, like making sure the crawling bots aren’t blocked in your robots.txt file.

 

My Website Has Expandable Content… How Will I Be Affected?

If your desktop site has content hidden in tabs, expandable boxes, or in accordions, it won’t be weighted highly. But, on the mobile version of your site, as long as the expandable content is done in such a way that it is necessary for, or enhances the optimal user experience, it will be weighted fully. The reason for this is because expandable content makes more sense on mobile devices than on desktops.

 

When Will the Full Roll Out Happen?

The roll-out began in November 2016, and will take months before it is complete. There is not a date for when the full roll out will occur, simply because the company is still testing code. Google will increase the number of searchers once they know the mobile user agent crawler is working well. As more information becomes available, I will update this post accordingly.

 

Mobile Website Optimization Tips

  • Speed: Though recent news suggests speed isn’t going to be an initial factor in the mobile-first indexing, it’s still worth considering overall. According to this YouTube video, you should aim for a site that loads in under half a second. If it goes over two seconds as an e-commerce site – you’ve got work to do. Optimize images, compress your code, cut down on the number of redirects, and make use of browser caching to improve your site speed. Test it with the Mobile-Friendly Test Tool, here, or here.
  • Mobile Design: While I’m a huge fan of responsive design, regardless of which mobile design approach you take, here are a few pointers: stop using popups – you’ll frustrate users, leading to a higher bounce rate and decreased ranking; don’t use Flash – it won’t work on Apple devices. Use HTML 5 or Java instead; and make sure your design is “finger-friendly.” People are scrolling, zooming, and clicking with their fingers, not a computer mouse. Remember that.
  • On-Page Optimization: There’s less room to work with on mobile screens, so keep titles and descriptions concise. This helps the bots understand your site faster, and helps users, too. As such, you’ll likely end up with higher click through rates, which can help improve your rankings.
  • Local Optimization: In September, Google released the Possum update, which was a major change to the local search algorithm. Mobile search plays a major role in helping businesses bring more foot traffic into the store. Research from the search engine giant itself shows that local searchers are ready to act. Half of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visited a store within a day, as do 1/3 of the people who use a computer or a tablet. Local businesses stand to gain a great deal from mobile-first indexing. If you’re a local business and you want to increase mobile visibility, make sure to include your business name, phone number, and address. You’ll also want to include your city and state in the:
    • Title tag
    • H1 heading
    • URL
    • ALT tags
    • Meta description

 

Will Mobile-First Indexing Cause Major Ranking Changes?

Google representatives have said this really shouldn’t cause any major ranking changes. The company hopes the changes will be minimal, but it’s too early to tell. Their goal is to not have the change in indexing to impact rankings much.

If you’ve followed the advice thus far – Mobilegeddon in April 2015 greatly penalized sites that were not mobile-friendly – then you should be in good shape over the course of the index change. Because of the ranking boost mobile-friendly content has already been given, if yours isn’t already, you’ve likely already suffered the ranking hit you were going to suffer.

 

How Can I See What Mobile-First Indexing Bots See?

Use the Fetch and Render tool in the Google Search Console. Make sure to specify the mobile:smartphone user-agent, as this is the mobile bot. Look at what displays after the fetch and render is complete. What you see here is likely what the mobile bot (Google) sees and indexes from your site. If you notice content is missing, take steps to fix it. Once it’s fixed, run the tool again and see what changes. You are aiming for a desktop and mobile experience that is nearly identical, for best results for not only search ranking, but overall user experience, as well.

You can also test your robots.txt file, to make sure the mobile agents aren’t blocked from crawling your code. Use the Robots.txt Tester Tool. Submit URLs – as there may be some you don’t want the bots to index – to see whether or not the robots.txt file has them properly blocked or crawable.

 

Will the Desktop and Mobile-First Indexing Converge?

Right now, and for some time in the future, there will be two separate Google indexes – one for mobile-first, and one for desktop-first. Some people, though it will be a relatively small group, will get results from mobile-first indexing, while others will get results from the desktop-first index. Users will have no control over which index their results are served from.

As Google starts to see the mobile bots and index as useful and reliable, we expect to see the mobile-first index become the only one in use. However, if the results of the mobile-first experiment don’t work the way Google wants – it’s possible they’ll go back to a desktop-first index as the only option. In their blog post, they say they’re only experimenting with mobile-first at this stage.

 

Don’t Wait Until the Change is Official

There’s still a great deal to learn as Google continues their experiment with mobile-first indexing. But, taking action now can help ensure you have great visibility in mobile and desktop search, regardless of whether there are separate indexes or not. There’s no need to wait until an official change to take action.

Has the shift to mobile-first indexing created any havoc for you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo credit: iStock

Categories
SEO

Local SEO Tactics for Brick and Mortar Businesses

This post was originally published on Sachs Marketing Group.

If you’re a brick-and-mortar business that serves one or more local areas, the traditional search engine optimization (SEO) approach won’t deliver the same impactful results you’d see if you were marketing on a national level. By making use of geographical keywords, local SEO, you’re alerting search engines to the fact that your business is relevant to local results, but you’re also decreasing your overall competition, since fewer businesses are competing for the same keywords within a certain radius of your city or town.

 

Begin with Keyword Research

Think about the words and phrases your customers are using to search for you. This is the beginning of keyword research. Using a tool like Keyword Tool or Google Keyword Tool, you can start with a basic phrase like, “roofer San Diego California” and get a list search volume and similar keywords you may wish to consider using in your optimization efforts.

Now, choose the keywords you’re most interested in using, and search them in Google yourself to determine what kind of competition you’re up against. Say for example you select:

  1. San Diego roofing: 577,000 results
  2. San Diego roofing companies: 865,000 results
  3. San Diego roof repair: 928,000 results

You can clearly see which one of the phrases will be harder to rank for just because of the number of results.

If you want to take it one step further, you can take note of the top 10 to 20 organic results for each of the phrases you’re targeting, so you can analyze the competition’s backlink profile. This can help you see who’s linking to them, so you can try to get links from those sources as well, and assist you in knowing how many links you should be aiming to get to outrank them. Beyond the number of backlinks, you’ll also want to pay attention to the number of pages and the length of the content on each of those pages so you can make your website a more comprehensive resource.

 

Optimize Your Website and Content – On Page SEO

  • Site Structure: Keep your site organized in a clear, easy-to-understand hierarchy. Build out logically from your home page.
  • Home Page: This may be the only page visitors ever look at – so make it count. Include all important pages – products, services, locations, and more – are visible with easy navigation.
  • Locations: If your business has more than one location, have a dedicated page for each location. This gives you a chance to provide location-specific information searchers are looking for.
  • Content: Your content should be written for users first, and search engines second. You want to naturally weave the keywords in the content as you describe the intention of the page. If your competition doesn’t have a blog, consider adding one to your website where you can add more valuable content for your readers, and include additional relevant keywords to help increase your ranking. For instance, your blog could include topics like: “How to Choose the Right Roofing Material for Your Home”, “When is the Best Time to Re-Do Your Roof?”, and “How Much Does a New Roof Add to My Home’s Resale Value?”
  • Meta Descriptions and Title Tags: The meta description is the small space underneath your link in search results. It’s a place to advertise why users should choose to click your link compared to the others on the page. It should explain what the page is about. Both are excellent places for keywords, along with your city and state.
  • Images: Images should be optimized for quality and speed, and include a descriptive ALT tag with keywords for web accessibility.
  • Page Load Time: The faster your page loads, the better. 47% of users expect a webpage to load in two seconds or less, and 40% of people will leave a website that takes more than three seconds to load. A one-second delay in page load time could decrease conversion rates by 7%. If you sell $1,000 a day, that’s a loss of $25,000 per year. Page load time is a search ranking factor worth paying attention to. If you find that your page is loading slowly, Google Webmaster Tools has advice to help you improve it. The search console can also provide other guidelines and advice about how to ensure your website is properly optimized.
  • Mobile Responsive: In April 2015, Google added mobile-friendliness as a search ranking factor, as mobile traffic becomes increasingly more common than desktop traffic. Working mobile responsiveness into your website design is as simple as choosing a responsive WordPress theme, or adding a responsive plugin.

 

Social Media and Link Building – Off Page SEO

  • List Your Business in Google My Business: Google My Business, formerly known as Google Places, is a directory that allows you get your business hours, phone numbers, and directions on Google Search and Maps. It allows you to keep your business information accurate, and controls how you appear in the results. Pay attention to how you list your name, address, and phone number here, as you should list it the exact same way in every site for the next step.
  • Create or Claim Listings on Review Sites and in Local Directories: Think about Yelp, TripAdvisor, Bing, Yahoo, YellowPages, Angie’s List, and any other niche specific options like Porch, Houzz, and Zomato. However you listed your business with Google, should be how you list your business in all of these.
  • Ask Customers for Genuine Reviews: Never use false reviews. User-generated content like customer reviews helps build trust and credibility in the eyes of your prospective customers, and the search engines alike. 92% of customers read online reviews, so your reputation matters.
  • Optimize Your Social Media Profiles: Include your business information and a URL back to your own website on all of your social profiles, keeping them consistent from one platform to the next. Ensure your Facebook page is categorized as a local business. Encourage your patrons to check in so you increase the chance of appearing in the Facebook search results, and claim any Facebook Place pages that were created as a result of people checking it and not being able to find our business. This allows you to get credit for all the likes and check-ins.

 

Make Consistent Effort

You’re not going to jump from the bottom to the top overnight. It is only through consistent effort, and working on these tactics a little a time that you’ll see results. Watch your analytics and use SEO tools to track ranking over time.

Photo Credit: Adobe Stock

Do you have any local SEO techniques that you’ve seen work well recently?  If so, please share ’em in the comments section below.  Thanks!

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