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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

6 SEO Tips for Businesses

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As online search continues to increase, so does the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Almost every business (big and small) in America today has some sort of online presence. Here are 6 SEO tips for businesses every owner should follow.

1. Have Web Analytics in Place

Business owners are always looking for ways to increase their overall success. Well, how can you improve something you don’t measure? You can’t. However, by using analytics business owners can see everything they need to know about their business. It allows you to see the users visiting your site and their actions. It also shows you which pages are popular, which aren’t, and potential errors with certain pages. In analytics, you can define your business goals and track to see if you accomplish them. These goals could be a user filling out a contact/registration form or even making a purchase. Having analytics set up on a business’ site is absolutely essential for a successful SEO campaign.

2. Take Advantage of the Tools the Search Engines Give You

Many business owners share the misconception that online diagnostic tools are too expensive. This is not the case. In fact, Google and Bing offer these tools for free. By using Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, a business owner is given the ability to see how search engines view his/her website; seeing which pages are eligible to show as results when someone does an online search.These tools also show search traffic, technical errors, and will offer tips on how to improve your online presence.

3. Start a Blog and Join One Too

An effective way to improve your SEO is to create a blog. Search engines love fresh content. Regularly updating your blog will improve the reach and visibility of your site. With that being said, why should you do all the talking? Join in on other industry related blogs and discussions. This not only allows you to see what is being said about your business/industry, but it also allows you to establish yourself as an expert in the field. The more user engagement, the better. If users feel that there is a relationship between them and the business owner, they are far more likely to visit your site, recommend you to others, or even better, purchase your product or service.

4. Earn Links and Build Relationships

Link earning and building are extremely important aspects of SEO. Obtaining links from other reputable sites tells search engines that you too are reputable and most likely have something important to offer to users. While this task may sound simple enough, it can be a difficult and lengthy process. Start by acquiring foundational links from trusted directories such as DMOZ. From there, try to earn links for trusted sites in your area, such as the Chamber of Commerce or a local business directory. An effective way to receive these links are by releasing newsworthy press releases. This also helps your business develop a relationship with news stations and the local community.

As you continue to gain high-quality links, your domain authority will increase. At this point, start looking for link opportunities on authoritative sites within your industry. For example, a link from MOZ would be huge for a digital marketing agency such as ourselves.

5. Dominate the Local Market

Local SEO is becoming more relevant and important than ever before. It is absolutely crucial that a business performs well locally. To do so, there a few steps you have to cover. First, make sure the name of your business, address, and phone number are prominent on each page of your site and consistent. The next is that you need to be listed and verified on local listings (Google My Business, Bing Places, and Yahoo Local). These listings will prove the validity of your business to users and search engines. The last step is to take advantage of your local directories. Being listed in your local business directory will help you gain more visibility which in turn should drive relevant traffic to your site.

SEO Tips for Businesses

6. Include and Update a Sitemap

What’s the point of consistently adding content if search engines can’t find it? Sitemaps are a way to tell search engines about pages on your site they might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, an XML Sitemap is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that search engines know about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by their normal crawling process.

If creating a sitemap sounds far too technical for you, don’t panic. Simply go to a sitemap generator and it’ll take care of all the work for you. Once created, submit your sitemap to Google and also submit it to Bing.

Having an effective SEO campaign for a business is absolutely crucial for their success in today’s digital world. By following the 6 SEO tips for businesses listed above, your business will gain visibility, customers, and a leg up on your competition.

For more tips and information regarding Search Engine Optimization, Contact Us today!

By: David McDowell

5 Tips for Mobile SEO

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Earlier this year, Google released an algorithm change that essentially said that websites that were not mobile friendly would be penalized and fall in their rankings. This algorithm change means that it is vital for every business to make sure their site has a mobile design to perform well. Here are 5 tips for mobile search engine optimization (SEO) every business owner should follow to make sure their website is successful.

1. Have a Responsive Design

Many business owners fear that by creating a mobile site, they will either need to have a complete overhaul of their current site, or create a new, separate site. Fortunately, this is not the case thanks to responsive design. A responsive design means that the appearance of your site will change based on the device being used by visitors. With a responsive design, you only use one URL, which eliminates the possibility of being penalized for duplicate content. A responsive design is also recommended by Google because it is more efficient for Google to scan and review, which will help increase your businesses rankings within search engines. Shown below is the desktop view of our site (left) and the mobile design (right) using responsive design.

Mobile SEO Responsive Design

2. Consider Mobile Design first

According to Google, more searches happen on their platform via mobile than on desktop in the U.S. We can predict that these numbers will only continue to increase as more Americans obtain mobile devices, thus putting more importance on mobile design. More mobile traffic means that when designing your site, you should consider the mobile design first. Once you’re finished the design, use your mobile site as a core basis for developing your desktop view. There is nothing you can put on the mobile version of your site that you can’t put on the desktop version.  Progressively enhance your desktop view with extra information and a more extensive navigation (as long as it’s relevant).

3. Design for the Existing & Prospective Customers

Just as you should design the desktop version of your site with the user experience in mind, the same applies to the mobile design. With that being said, there is a slightly different art to it. For one, the navigation of the mobile version should be condensed to only include the most important pages that drive the most traffic. Also, the buttons and links on the site should be designed for bigger fingers. Bigger buttons and links will increase the ease of use that will certainly impact the user’s actions. If the buttons and links are too small, many users may become frustrated attempting to travel through your site, which will likely cause them to leave.

 The page speed and load time of your site are not only a ranking factor but also impacts the user’s experience. Obviously the faster the speed of the site, the happier the user will be. In order to reduce loading time, rich content (images and video) should be optimized (fitting the size of the image to the screen size) and used sparingly.

4. Enhance Your Site for Local Customers

Just as mobile has become increasingly important for search engines, so has local SEO. In fact, they are directly correlated. According to Google, 50% of consumers who conducted a local search on their smartphone visited a store within a day, and 34% who searched on computer/tablet did the same. This means that your business name, address, and phone number should consistent all throughout your site, and off your site as well on local listings (Google My Business, Bing Places, Etc). This allows search engines to associate your business with a specific geographic location, which in turn increases your business’s local search rankings.

5. Add a Click to Call Number

The goal of a successful SEO campaign is to generate sales and leads, so why not make it easy for your customers to reach you? Adding a click to call number on every page of your mobile site allows users to take the next step in your sales process. Here at DaBrian Marketing, we use a click to call number on our mobile site, as seen below.

Click to call button

As the number of mobile devices and traffic continue to increase, so will the importance of Mobile SEO. To make sure your business does well, it is imperative to adhere to the tips listed above.

For more advice or information about mobile SEO, please Contact Us today or leave us a comment below!

By: David McDowell

Giving Thanks to SEO

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Thanksgiving is a popular Holiday for many Americans. The abundance of delicious foods and the gathering of family and friends is certainly something to get excited about. Traditionally in most households, members are sitting around the table saying what they are thankful for in their lives. Here at DaBrian Marketing, we wanted to give thanks for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by offering some tips to assure your website performs well.

Cover the Entire Table of Local Listings

When you think of Thanksgiving dinner, you imagine a table covered in food, right? The same is true for an effective SEO campaign in regards to local listings. Local listings are becoming an increasingly important ranking factor. People are frequently using search engines with local intent. In fact, a study by Google shows that 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information such as a business’s address, hours, and products/services offered.

Imagine your listings as different dishes. Being listed on Google my Business, Bing Places, and Yahoo Local listings should be your top priority. This is the main dish, the turkey. But don’t forget about the side dishes either. Being listed on other platforms such as Yellow pages, Yelp, Foursquare, etc, help as well. These are your stuffing, your mashed potatoes, and your cranberry sauce. The more you have covered, the better your meal (website’s performance) will be.

When preparing your Thanksgiving feast, you want to make sure everything is perfect. Before you place the food on the table, you should give it a taste test just to make sure. Similarly to SEO, you need to make sure your listings are perfect as well. This means claiming and verifying your listings, as well as making sure the listings are completely filled out and are consistent with each other.

Know Your Audience: Invite Relevant Traffic to Dinner

Thanksgiving isn’t just about food, it’s also about spending time with those who matter the most. When planning your celebration, you invite the most important people in your life. The same is true for SEO. As a business owner, those who matter most to your business’s success are your customers. So how do you invite them to your site? Well, it all starts with your content. If you regularly develop great content that speaks to your audience’s interests, relevant traffic will increase.

Besides stuffing our faces at the dinner table, we also engage in conversations with our family and friends. They speak to us, and naturally, we respond back. This same formula should be followed for social media. As stated in my previous blog about SEO predictions for 2016, content marketing and SEO have merged. This means that businesses must be active on their social media accounts, providing great content frequently, and engaging with their followers. An effect social media strategy will help develop relationships with your followers, which typically leads to them sharing your information with others, increasing your brand’s awareness. All of this comes back full circle to an increase in customers and sales.

Stuffing? - Yes; Keyword Stuffing - NO!

Now we all know stuffing is a must have dish at Thanksgiving. However, for SEO, keyword stuffing is a must avoid. In April of 2012, Google released the algorithm change known as “Penguin” designed to penalize for keyword spamming. While there is technically no optimal percentage for keyword density (how often your keyword appears within your content), your content should sound natural. Here’s an example of what not to do:

“At DaBrian Marketing, we offer Pay Per Click services. Our Pay Per Click services help businesses drive traffic to their site. For more information on Pay Per Click, please contact our Pay Per Click consultant.”

The use of Pay Per Click is obviously being overused. Not only does it sound spammy to the user, but your site will be penalized by search engines. Here’s an example of how to adjust your content to avoid keyword stuffing:
“At DaBrian Marketing, we offer Pay Per Click (PPC) services that are proven to help businesses drive traffic to their site. For more information, please contact our PPC consultant.”

SEO Tips - keyword stuffing

Invite Your Guests Back and Tell Them to Bring a Friend

So the dinner went well and you and your guests had a great time. More than likely you are going to send invites to those guests again. The same mentality should be true for SEO. You should send follow up emails to users that request or fill out any information. This will give you an opportunity to give more information about your business and to set yourself apart from the competition. If done properly, these will more than likely lead to more conversions.

People usually do not wish to hear others critique their cooking, but as a business owner, you want reviews. Traditionally, business owners have cringed at the thought of their customers giving reviews out of fear that they’ll be negative. While a negative review may not shed the best light on your business, it offers you an opportunity to humanize your brand by listening to your customer’s concerns, which leads to trust being established. In fact, A study by Reevoo, a social commerce company, found that 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both positive and negative scores, while 30% suspect censorship or fake reviews when they don’t see anything negative at all. Reviews give business owners an opportunity to adjust their recipe and make things right through great customer service.

Conclusion:

An effective SEO campaign is something a business will be thankful for. Not only will it help a business’s site perform well in search engines, but it will also help increase traffic, as well as sales. From all of us here at DaBrian Marketing Group, we hope you and your loved ones have a Happy Thanksgiving!

For more advice or information about SEO, please Contact Us today or leave us a comment below!

By: David McDowell

How Mobile Friendly Design Impacts Your Website

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Why Should Your Site Be Mobile Friendly?

It is no secret that mobile usage has grown in recent years. Over 20% of Google searches are done on mobile devices, and 25% of internet users conduct their online search on only mobile devices. If your site isn’t mobile, do you think it will still show up in the search results? Google updated their search algorithm back in April. Mobile users that use Google, with Google being the most popular search engine, will only see mobile friendly sites. If your site is not mobile, you will not appear in theses results. To read more about the Google algorithm change, check out our blog on it.

Why Mobile Design Matters

So what does all that mean for your business? If your site is not mobile-friendly, you’re completely missing at least 1/4th of potential customers. According to Think with Google, 94% of Americans with smartphones search for local information on mobile. Meaning you’re missing even more potential customers as well as your current customers are having a bad user experience by not being able to find you.

Users will look at products on mobile devices and revisit later on their desktop hoping their shopping cart is synced. The longer it takes for them to check out the more likely they will not complete the sale. In a study by MediaPost, 48% of shoppers that use their phone said that “ease of use” is the most important quality they look for on a mobile site.

bad mobile
Horizontal scrolling, mismatch of colors, forms too small. What not to do.
mobile friendly
Only need to scroll down. Menu stays at the top as you scroll. This is all good.

What To Consider When Designing For Mobile

You want to go mobile friendly now but not sure what to consider. For starters, any buttons and links should be big enough for anyone’s thumb to click and not have issues. Meaning, it needs to be fairly big. Your “Contact Us” form is the same way as the user needs to interact with it. If it is too small, when they click on one thing they will get a different option making them frustrated and have them potentially leave your site.

If a user is on their mobile phone, chances are they are hunting for something specific and your site can only be 1 column. Get rid of excess and unneeded info / elements. For example, if you have a sidebar on every page with info like a form for them to fill out, blog options, register options, it’s best practice to get rid of them for mobile. You don’t need to shorten your content at all, you’re just making all the useful information easier to find.

Got questions about mobile first design? Ask away in the comments below!

5 SEO Predictions for 2016

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an on-going and always evolving process. This year we saw several updates such as Google’s Mobilegeddon. With this year shortly coming to an end, here are 5 SEO predictions businesses can expect to see in 2016.

1. Mobile is Key

According to the Pew Research Center, 64% of Americans have a smartphone and 42% own a tablet. With continuous technological advancements, smart technology is becoming more readily available. Due to this, mobile traffic has been steadily increasing and you can only expect it to go up. In fact, Google announced this year that more Google searches take place on mobile devices than computers in the US.

What does this mean for your business?

First thing’s first, you need to have a responsive design to comply with Google’s mobile- friendly algorithm change. That means that the layout of your site will change depending on which device the viewer is using it on, so that it will be visually appealing. Besides the technical aspect, you also must think with a mobile mindset. Give your viewers a better user and visual experience by utilizing spacing, highlighting the most important parts of your site, and increasing the size of touch buttons to help improve the ease of use.

2. Local SEO will be HUGE!

A study by Google shows that 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information such as a business’s address, hours, and products/services offered. The study also shows that 50% of consumers who conducted a local search on their smartphone visited a store within a day.

Screen Shot 2015-10-21 at 3.46.10 PM

How to make sure your business isn’t dropping the ball

One of Google’s and other search engine’s biggest ranking factor is your company’s NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number). Search engines want to see your contact information clearly stated and consistent not only across your site but also in other listings across the web. To make sure your site performs well, update and verify your local listings across platforms such as Google My Business, Bing Places, and Yahoo local.

3. The Increase of Voice Search

Voice searches have become increasingly popular thanks to the emergence of Apple’s Siri, Google’s voice recognition, and other voice recognizing software. As they become more useful and efficient, people will begin to voice search more often as opposed to typed search.

So how is voice search any different from typed search? Well, voice searches are usually longer and more question focused whereas typed searches are typically straight to the point. For example, a voice search may be, “Where is the closest pizza restaurant in Reading?” A traditional typed search would most likely, “Pizza restaurant Reading.” Voice searches tend to start who, what, when, where, why, and how.

This not only means your local listings should be up to date and verified, but you should develop your content with these questions in mind. If your content answers these questions, you’ll have a satisfied user which tends to translate to a lead or sale.

This also changes your keyword selection and management. Long tail keywords are now more important since voice searches contain more words. For example, instead of just having the keyword “SEO,” you should also look into “how to improve your SEO.” Below is a chart from Microsoft showing the difference between voice and typed searches in terms of keyword length.

Voice Search SEO

4. Merge SEO Strategy with Content Marketing

In the past SEO and Content marketing have been separated. SEO was thought to have been more technical whereas content marketing was creating high-quality content with the intention of retaining customers. Google and other search engines have put a huge emphasis on the user experience and will continue to do so. If you want to have a successful SEO campaign, you’ll have to understand that content is king, and the user experience is what matters the most. Thus, businesses must become active bloggers and also become active on social media. They should share their content and other helpful content as well. This will help build organic links from reputable sites which will increase your brand reach and visibility. All of this comes back full circle to an increase in customers and sales.

5. Bing is on the Rise

While it is obvious Google owns the Lion’s share of the search engine market, do not forget about Bing. Bing is now integrated will Apple’s voice assistant Siri and on top of that, Google and Apple’s search contract for Safari is coming to an end. Bing will have a great opportunity to land that contract. Bing is also integrated with Cortana, Microsoft’s voice assistant, which is packaged with Windows (8.1 and 10) PC and Mobile as well as Xbox 360. According to Netmarketshare.com, Bing is integrated into over 17% of operating systems. If they are able to lock in the Apple search contract, that would push them over 22%. This means that businesses must be aware that there are more search engines than just Google. To avoid missing out on Bing, update and verify your listings on Bing Places to make sure they’re accurate and consistent.

Conclusion:

The main takeaway to help prepare your business for 2016 from an SEO perspective is to be mobile-minded and to be listed accurately and consistently across all platforms with content based around the user experience. If your business can accomplish that, there is no reason why your SEO campaign won’t be successful.

Contact us today or leave us a comment below for more advice or information!

By: David McDowell

Top 5 Technical Issues That Impact Your Organic Search

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Optimizing your site to perform well in organic search is not a set it and forget it process. There are several factors that go into determining your site’s positioning in the search engines. In fact, backlinko.com reports (and lists them for you) that Google uses over 205 different factors! While many business owners tend to focus on the visible on-page components such as content and keywords (which are very important), there are several technical issues that often go unnoticed because they are not visible to the end users. These issues listed below greatly impact your business’s organic search results and should be a top priority when creating and maintaining your site.

Organic Search
(Image from http://seattleorganicseo.com)

1. Navigation

Before your website appears in a search engine, it must be crawled, and then indexed. During this process, search engines will collect information about your site’s content. Just as users prefer sites that are easy to navigate, so do search engines.

If you wish to perform better in search engines, it would greatly benefit your business to create and maintain a sitemap. A sitemap is a document or a webpage containing all the pages on your site. Search engines evaluate sitemaps to understand the structure of the site. This is regularly done so it is a best practice to make sure this sitemap is being updated when new pages are created.

Your navigation bar is not just for the user either, search engines consider them into their organic search rankings. While (quality) links are always good for your site, not all links are created equal in a search engine’s eyes. Links placed in your navigation bar are deemed more important. Therefore your navigation bar should only contain links that are most valuable to your business. These are the links that generate more traffic and lead to more sales and conversions. Many website owners make the mistake of placing too many links in their navigation. This not only worsens the user experience (which worsens your position in organic search), but it also dilutes the authority/value of your links.

Having descriptive anchor texts, the text that appears highlighted in a hypertext link, is another factor associated with navigation. Having descriptive anchor texts means linking to your pages using content related words and not something generic such as “click here” or “read more.” These generic links tell search engines that the page should be about clicking things, or reading. This appears spammy and can negatively impact your performance in organic search.

2. Site Speed

One of the 200+ factors that Google and other search engines take into account is site speed, or how fast your site finishes loading. Search engines have become focused on providing the best user experience for those searching, so a faster load time to them, means a better experience and will correlate to the improvement of your rankings. Common mistakes that many site owners make that cause slow site speed are things such as large pictures, flash animation, bulky code, and external media. While some of  these things may look nice, it would be wise to reduce or remove them in order to increase site speed. To evaluate your site’s speed, use Google’s pagespeed insight tool.

3. Mobile Capability

On April 21st of this year, Google released an algorithm change requiring sites to be mobile friendly if they wished to perform well in organic search on mobile phones. Before the update, a study from Adobe reported that 45% of business did not have a mobile friendly site. To be mobile friendly, search engines such as Google recommend using a responsive design. This means that all your site’s content will remain the same for all users, it will just appear differently depending on the device the user is using. For more information about the update, please read my blog on Google’s Algorithm change posted near the time of the release.

4. Duplicate Content

Most business owners are aware that copying content from other sites is not only unethical, but will result in a ranking penalty from search engines. However, many are not aware of the internal duplicate content happening on their site right now. When a user visits a specific page, a URL is generated based upon the path they take. For example, a user may search Amazon looking for a cellphone, and once there, they decide they want a smartphone so they click on the smartphone section. After going to that section, they click on their desired phone (let’s say an Iphone 6).  Their URL will look something like this: Amazon.com/cellphone/smartphones/Iphones/Iphone6. Now let’s say another user knows exactly what they want. They go to Amazon and enter in the search bar “Iphone 6.” Their URL will be shorter and look something like this: Amazon.com/iphone6. While this is the same page, they have two separate URLs. Search engines will recognize them as two separate separate pages with duplicate content. Google lists solutions and explanations on how to deal with duplicate content.

5. Include a Robot.txt file

A Robot.txt file is used to direct search engines when crawling. It’s usually used to prevent search engines from indexing specific pages and files. So why would you want to prevent search engines from crawling any part of your site? Let’s say for example you are in the process of updating your site. You’ve began adding pages but they aren’t complete yet. If a search engine were to crawl those pages, they would not perform well in organic search due to lack of content. That places you in a uphill battle from the start. A similar issue arises when you are performance testing different layouts for pages. The pages have identical content, but you wish to see which layout users prefer. A Robot.txt file will tell search engines not to crawl these pages yet until you are finished or have picked a layout. Another reason would be to prevent search engines from penalizing you for duplicate content. For example if you have a print version of a page, you can tell search engines not to crawl it.

Learn more about Robot.txt files.

Performing well in organic search is essential for a business that wishes to improve digitally. A study done by BrightEdge shows that the majority of web traffic (51%) comes from organic search. That is a huge opportunity to miss out on. While having great content may be the priority in some business owners mind, none of that means anything if your website has the technical issues listed above.

Contact Us today to make sure your site is technically sound to perform well in organic search!

By: David McDowell