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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

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

SEO: Looking Beyond the Rankings

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With several algorithm changes in the past years, the definition and primary focus of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has changed immensely. These changes have caused confusion amongst many business owners. Although many businesses understand the importance of SEO and have benefited from it, few are aware of the process that goes into it. Most believe that SEO is all about rankings. Yes, SEO will increase your rankings in the search engines, but that’s a byproduct of the process, not the end goal.

SEO

What is SEO?

Wikipedia defines SEO as, “the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page.” While this is true, it is far less descriptive than it should be. SEO refers to the consistent development of a business’s online presence to increase reach and visibility to a target audience. The development process is based on search engine algorithms that are regularly updated and modified. That being said, there has always been one factor in these algorithms that has stayed true and consistent: Good content. The algorithm updates ultimately work towards determining how well a site meets the needs of the user. With fresh industry related content, users will likely visit more pages, stay on your site longer, interact (comment, like, download, etc), and convert on sales. All of these metrics are reflected positively by search engines and are reflected in the rankings.

Several business owners tend to get tied up in the thought of keywords and rankings. While keywords are important, they don’t mean anything without the right content containing those keywords. Sure, you could rank well for certain areas of interest, but if your web page does not follow SEO best practices and does not have updated relevant content, it will actually have a negative impact on your online presence. Websites with poor or no SEO will have a high bounce rate, when visitors leave after viewing only one page, which will drastically decrease a Business’s positioning in search engines. More importantly, that means a loss of visitors and sales. This means businesses should put less focus in stuffing your website full of keywords and more focus on maximizing the user experience.

The purpose of SEO is to increase visitors to your site and their retention level, increase brand awareness, and most of all increase sales and leads. With effective SEO, all of these will be accomplished which in turn will lead to an increase in rankings.

What can SEO do for my Business?

It’s 2015, business is no longer just walk-in sales. Businesses are seeing a huge percentage if not their majority of visitors and sales via online. Evermerchant reports that e-commerce sales generate more than $1.2 Million every 30 seconds! Without an effective SEO campaign, your business will miss out on a great financial opportunity.

With that being said, more visitors to your site does not directly correlate to an increase in sales or leads. An effective SEO campaign enables your business to target relevant consumers with relevant content or products/services. Good SEO speeds up the process of generating traffic to your webpage and makes it much easier for consumers to find just what they are looking for. Search engines distinguish the most relevant content to match a user’s search query, so the way you create, maintain, and position your website’s content is vital to your business’s success.

A properly optimized site should answer 9/10 questions a visitor has regarding the topic they searched for. This means that the page they land on should have up to date useful content as well as easy to follow navigation that points visitors in the right direction. Let’s say for example you’re searching for a new cell phone. After adding your specifications to your search, you click on a cellphone distributor. If this site has been modified effectively, you would hope to see a list of relative cell phones, content about them, and even comparisons amongst them. The page should also have links to other internal or external pages that provide more information. That is what a site with good SEO looks like. The goal is to help the customer as much as possible and provide them with enough information so they are comfortable enough make a purchase or to interest them enough to generate a lead.

Rankings aren't Everything

“If you ain’t first, you’re last” is the common misconception regarding SEO and search engine rankings. While it is true that ranking higher in search engines leads to more visitors, it does not mean these visitors are the ones you’re targeting. Having an effective SEO campaign is all about quality over quantity.

Years ago the rankings within search engines were a decent method of evaluating a sites performance and relevancy but those days are no more due to several algorithm changes. Now search results are much more personalized with the user’s experience as the top priority. Google, for instance, takes search history, geographic location, social media, as well as the device being used to search all into consideration when a search is conducted. All of these factors take less control out of the website owner’s hands with regards to rankings.

Let’s say for example you own a small plumbing company and you are interested in improving your business’s SEO. You, as many businesses owners do, search Google for “plumbing” or “plumbing services” to evaluate your site’s performance. The problem with this method is that what you see is not what everyone else sees. Google’s search results will adjust its ranking order based upon what sites you have visited already with regards to plumbing. This will more than likely boost your site assuming that you visit it more than other sites. It will also show you local listings of plumbing companies in your area near the top of your results. These local listings are not only tied to your business’ website but also to your business’ profile on Google My Business and other local directories, which do indeed increase relative traffic. Google will also include sites that your Google+ friends or associates have either followed or interacted with.

Google and other search engines are businesses and search results are their product. They want their product to be of the highest quality it can possibly be, so search engines have shifted the focus towards improving the user experience. So what does that mean for your business? It means to worry less about rankings, and more about developing and updating all platforms in use, as well as evaluating your current data to identify your strengths and weaknesses. If your website is seeing an increase in activity but is not necessarily ranking high, do not sound the alarms. You can’t always control your ranking, but you are in control of improving your visitor’s experience. Put your efforts towards providing up to date industry related content and watch the numbers speak for themselves.

Conclusion:

As a business owner, understanding and utilizing SEO is vital for both financial growth and brand awareness. Years ago, evaluating rankings were a clear depiction of how well your SEO campaign has been but not any longer. Now business owners should look past the misleading rankings and focus more of their attention on the analytics. The process of SEO is not a sprint, it’s an ongoing marathon. If you’re seeing a steady increase in traffic, mentions, leads and sales, keep doing what you’re doing and let the rankings take care of themselves.

By: David McDowell

2015 Guide to Kickstart Your SEO Strategy

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The office holiday parties are over, the gifts have been opened, and the New Year’s ball has dropped! 2015 is officially underway and so it’s time to move you and your clients’ SEO strategy into this year and beyond. If one thing is certain, it’s that big changes to the organic search algorithm are on the way. With that being said, here’s your guide to the big ticket items that will impact your 2015 SEO strategy.

Improve Organic Search with Mobile Devices for a Successful 2015 SEO Strategy

According to the November 2013 Google/Nielsen Mobile Path to Purchase study, search is the most common starting point for mobile research. Mobile organic search and smartphone usage continues to increase and makes information accessible in real-time. This trend undoubtedly will continue in 2015. But it won’t just be about finding your products or services; it will be the entire mobile user experience across multiple devices (tablet and smartphones) and operating systems. Focus on having customers find you, navigate seamlessly, and discover relevant content based on their search terms.

The mobile components in your 2015 SEO strategy will be more important.

Use Different Content Types with Intent in Mind

There are “different strokes” for your different audiences, so it’s important to use different content types for search platforms (images, videos, text) as well as considering demographics, interests and a user’s intent. For example, are customers looking for product instructions, directions to a storefront, or comparison shopping? I would recommend that your content represent the brand voice and follow brand guidelines for consistency. Regardless of the different content types, organic search does not exclude branded search terms and your brand can and will appear in different forms. By diversifying your content, you’ll have more opportunities to achieve the goals of your SEO strategy.

Search terms and varying types of content will be a major factor in SEO in 2015.

Invest in Video as Part of Your SEO Strategy

Based on a recent eMarketer study, watching videos is on the rise, so have you given thought to communicating with your customers with video content? More than 77% of all tablet users will watch video programming on their devices at least monthly, and that penetration rate will grow to 87% by 2018, totaling 149 million tablet video viewers. My recommendation is to start brainstorming, create relevant content, optimize your videos, and leverage video platforms that connect prospective customers to your brand. Consider transcribing your videos into text to improve visibility and additional link earning as well. And remember, YouTube isn’t the only video platform on the planet! Find the best fit for your brand’s message and pursue it.

Build Relationships to Strengthen Your Organic Search Strategy

In my opinion, brand relationships will be critical to driving SEO strategies in 2015. I use the word “relationships” because it’s about the people and the relevant content that’s associated with them (what brand advocates like vs. what your prospective audience likes). By building relationships, you will increase visibility for your brand, create linking opportunities, and engage with influencers that resonate with you as well as your brand. Think about ways to develop an effective outreach program and reconnect with bloggers, journalist, reporters, etc. to get you started.

Develop Your 2015 SEO Strategy with Metrics and Milestones

Take a look at your mobile organic search traffic, assess your existing mobile design and organic search from mobile devices (smartphones and tablets). Identify opportunities to help customers find you, navigate seamlessly via mobile and get to your most relevant content. Test new ways to diversify your content with customer intent in mind. Find opportunities to build relationships via social media, but don’t be afraid to pick up the telephone (they’re people too)! I would recommend re-evaluating metrics/KPIs, establishing benchmarks associated with your organic search strategy’s past performance, setting targets or milestones, and connecting periodically within internal contributors to gauge progress.

Ready to ring in the New Year with an updated SEO strategy? Share your story in the comments!

Your Guide to Measuring SEO in 2015

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Danny Laws, Principal Owner and resident “Sharp Dressed Man” here at DMG takes to our big whiteboard wall to cover the top considerations for measuring SEO in 2015.

Learn the tactics and metrics your team should look to measure, what’s coming down the pipeline, and what you can leave at the door.

Hi, I’m Danny Laws, Principal owner of DaBrian Marketing Group, a full service digital marketing agency in Reading, PA. I wanted to talk to you a little bit today about measuring SEO in 2015 and some of the things that I believe are going to come down the pipeline and have a little bit more of an emphasis.

What we have here is our digital analytics framework: Strategy, Implement, Measure, Optimize. With that being said, when we talk about measurement of anything, we talk about the goals and objectives, the execution of the measurement plan as it pertains to the measurement of all things related to your business, but in the case of this particular scenario, we’re talking about the measurement of SEO. We want to gauge progress, and we want to make improvements as it relates to organic search traffic coming to your site.

Now, in the past we’ve talked about the “ABCs” of measurement, of digital analytics, of web analytics, however you want to define it, and we’ve talked about the Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions. In my opinion, in 2015 when it comes to measuring SEO, we’re going to have a little bit more of a focus on the measurement of the Audience, the SEO-related Audience. From a measurement of the SEO-related Audience, we want to talk about the demographics, the interest information. We also want to talk about the location, the localization of keywords and phrases. Is that the same audience we’re talking about within this strategy, that we’ve identified with KPIs, that we’re concerned with? You want to keep that in consideration.

Also when talking about the measurement of SEO, of organic search traffic, you want to tie this back to Acquisition. When we talk about Acquisition, we’re talking about the search engines (Google vs. the Yahoo/Bing Network). Typically, we see roughly 90% of that traffic within the US coming from those areas. Is that trend holding true? Are we looking at those components consistently? At the same time, we’re talking about the Acquisition via keywords, phrases, themes of keywords. Are we getting users and visitors coming from organic search traffic when we measure Acquisition via SEO? Are we getting what we need or what we thought we were going to get from those keywords and phrases, as well as the appropriate search engines?

The next component when we start talking about the measurement of SEO in 2015 is the Behavior component. For us, we do a lot of creating of content, whether it be video, whether it be infographs, whether it be blog content, those types of components. Is the information, those URLs that we look to do some link earning with, are we seeing traffic coming to those specific URLs that we’ve targeted for people, that we’ve leveraged our relationships for? Are we seeing what we expected to happen from a link targeting, link bait, link earning, however you define it, in this particular area? At the same time, when we’re talking about measurement of SEO, where is SEO in the events that are coming from SEO? Are we seeing a difference there, and what kind of user behavior is happening on the site from a pageview perspective, from a depth of visit, from returning visits, those types of behaviors as well, looking at that information. And my favorite part here within the behavior, is looking at it from a testing perspective. So, when we run tests, have we sliced and diced the data to look at how SEO or organic-related traffic is being impacted from a behavioral perspective here.

The last piece of this is Conversions. When we talk about the micro/macro conversions, measuring conversions from SEO, we want to specifically look at the measurement of keywords, phrases, themed keywords, a group or cluster of keywords specifically, are we seeing organic search conversions coming from that particular area?

What I would recommend at this point when you’re talking about measuring SEO in 2015 is making sure we revisit the strategy to account for the appropriate KPIs associated with SEO in itself. We want to update the implementation, i.e. the configuration, making sure that the configuration is appropriate to capture this audience-related information because of the updates that have happened, a number of systems around collecting audience information. Also the privacy policies, don’t forget about this particular component when we talk about the audience.

The other piece here is to validate that the data as it pertains to SEO, as well as the overarching goals and objectives, is being collected according to what you’re trying to capture within the KPIs in general. And then, you want to create hypotheses around SEO. Whether it be checking out themed approaches, keywords, different landing pages, those types of things. Content ideas. Create hypotheses, test these components. Within the framework of measuring SEO in 2015, I wish you the best of luck in taking these items into consideration. The audience, the acquisition, the behavior, and the conversions.

Good hunting, and let us know if you have any questions. Have a good day!

What Cheap SEO Services Actually Get You

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A December 2013 article posted over at Search Engine Watch titled, “How Much Should You Spend on SEO Services?” does a really good job of hinting at what to avoid when choosing a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) provider. Despite the article’s best attempts at deterring business owners and marketers from taking the cheapest route, we still see it happen time and time again. Today, I’m going to make the decision even easier for you. Not by detailing what to avoid, but telling you exactly what Cheap SEO services will do for (and to) your business.

Cheap SEO Services Lack in the Strategic Department

At DMG, we’re huge proponents of this marketing maxim: “Strategize first, execute second.” This is especially important for SEO because as a tactic, it plays a critical role in so many other digital campaigns a business may be running. If a search strategy isn’t comprehensive; that is, covering the client’s website structure, technical elements, keyword research, and content development, to name a few, suffice it to say that this agency is probably approaching SEO like it’s the year 2005.

As an example, imagine there is a retail business that’s currently running Paid Search advertising (PPC) focused on brand awareness and online sales. This company wants to begin incorporating SEO. A cheap service provider won’t perform industry research, conduct any sort of SWOT analysis, or take these PPC campaigns into consideration when devising its SEO strategy. In other words, they’re going to try to increase SEO performance in total isolation. Without a strategic approach that aligns all aspects of search marketing, this client can expect higher costs and diminished returns, both paid and organically.

A Note on “Instant” SEO Results

A cheap SEO provider is one that guarantees #1 spots and “instant results.” To be blunt, this is a bold-faced lie. It’s common knowledge that the search environment is constantly changing, and SEO providers can only base their offerings on what information Google (and reputable news outlets) is willing to make public. What’s interesting is that many of these cheap SEO firms operate as if the search engines can be fooled. Nearly every major change made by Google, Yahoo, and Bing is to combat tactics that work to “cheat” the system.

To move forward and actually help your business in organic search, don’t think about rankings as the goal. Being #1 for a keyword has little to no impact on whether a prospective customer can find you or if they’ll actually buy from you. Any company that claims to have the “secret sauce” to making that happen has a completely inaccurate notion of SEO’s business value.

The Man Behind the SEO Curtain

When browsing a service list for an SEO provider, take a look to see the type of support they offer. Are there any “checks and balances” in place, such as a project management system? How much insight are you given into what they’re actually doing on your behalf? How accessible are they on and off business hours? Over the years, we’ve learned that successful SEO doesn’t happen without transparent communication.

An open dialogue about what’s being done, what’s being planned, and how SEO can benefit other marketing initiatives is critical to a successful agency/client relationship. Failing to provide SEO transparently means there will be no accountability on the execution of the project. Even if the strategy is comprehensive, it takes communication to make sure it’s being executed properly and adjusted when necessary.

SEO website audit
How’s this for transparency? These SEO audits allow us to establish a baseline of fundamental SEO issues on client websites.

Here’s Our Recommendation

When choosing an SEO provider, it’s important to go into the process understanding that every other business out there is competing on the same playing field. And if there was a silver bullet to maximized ROI and sales, it wouldn’t take long before SEO agencies all went out of business. Approach the selection process with key questions, both about the agency’s SEO process as well as how they manage client relationships. Keep an eye out for talk of “guarantees,” because like we said, SEO is too varied and dynamic an environment for that. Finally, do a bit of your own research about what realistic SEO goals actually look like and how they’re measured. Don’t be afraid to put the agency on the spot and ask the question, “How will you prove that the money we spend led to a positive business result?” If they can’t answer these questions with confidence, you’ve got more searching to do.
Have a bargain-bin SEO horror story? Share it in the comments!