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Home » SEO practices » Page 6

SEO practices

December 9, 2016 by Bill Treloar 6 Comments

8 Small Business SEO Essentials You Need to Understand

On December 9, 2016 / blogs, directories, links, local search, page content, SEO practices / 6 Comments

How You Can Compete With the Big Boys

Learning about SEO is an investment in your business.Large companies and national franchises have an obvious edge in search visibility over your small business.

  • They have thousands of inbound links giving them authority or importance on the web.
  • They have a budget for SEO that probably far exceeds your own.
  • Their websites have more pages and deeper content than you can afford to create.
  • At least some of them are bound to have been around longer than your company has.

But that doesn’t have to stop you.

SEO is no longer just about who’s been on the web longer, who has more pages on their website, or even who has the most links. It’s about which web page has the most relevance to what was searched and who has the best answer for the searcher’s question.

You can do this.

Here are eight things for you to understand and put in place on your site.

1) Focus on Quality Content

If you sell products, you need to go beyond the manufacturer’s stock product description that everyone has on their website. Add valuable information about how to choose the right product or what extra value you offer that makes your company the smart choice to buy from.

If you sell a service, explain your Unique Selling Proposition: what sets you apart from your run-of-the-mill competitor? What questions should a customer ask to tell if the company they’re considering is the best?

Provide extra value to the searcher in your content and you’ll be rewarded with higher rankings.

2) Backlinks are Essential

Link Popularity — the number and quality of other sites that link to yours — is an essential tie-breaker for search rankings. Google doesn’t want to show lousy web sites on the first page, and the more other web sites think you’re good enough to link to, the better search engines assume you must be.

Backlinks are essential to good search rankings.Quality is more important than quantity here; sites with a good authority or importance themselves bequeath more value to you via their links. The more important sites that link to yours, the higher is your Domain Authority or importance on the web.

Relevance is also a factor: a site that’s related to you is a more valuable link than one that’s not. Links from sites in similar businesses or in the same Chamber of Commerce or professional association tend to count more than sites that aren’t.

If two web pages address a given search equally well, the one with a higher level of importance on the web will almost always outrank the other one.

[Update 1/4/2020:] The folks at T-Ranks have published a thorough article on How To Get Backlinks.

3) Don’t Try to Fool Google

So-called Black Hat SEOs have tried for years to fool Google into ranking websites higher than they deserve. And sometimes their tricks work — for a little while. But when Google catches them their clients suffer.

Don’t do it. It’s as simple as that.

8 small business SEO essentials you need to understand.

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4) Take Advantage of the Long Tail

Long tail distributionThe term long tail refers to the ends of a normal distribution bell curve.

The head portion represents the more generic searches people use: shoes, plumber, lawyer, restaurant.
The long tail portion represents more specific searches that aren’t searched nearly as often: women’s Muk Luk boots, plumber in Morristown NJ, criminal defense lawyer in San Diego, Mexican restaurant in Fargo.

Competition is much less for long tail keywords and your chance of ranking well is vastly improved.

5) Leverage Local SEO

If you’re a local business that interacts with your customers on a face-to-face basis, you need to take advantage of Local SEO opportunities. Google recently explained how to improve your rankings for local search. The three main factors for local search rankings are:
Increase your local visibility on Google.

  1. Relevance — how closely your content matches the searcher’s intent
  2. Distance — how local you are to the search being conducted
  3. Prominence — how widely known you are based on SEO rankings and information Google has on you from reviews, links, and listings in local directories, maps and apps.

You handle relevance through your normal SEO process of keyword selection and keyword-focused content. Distance requires that your pages include your address.

Prominence is a bit more challenging in that there are dozens of directories and other locally-focused websites you need to be listed on. That brings us to the next item:

6) You Need Widespread and Consistent Citations

Some of the sites in PowerListingsIf you show up in lots of local sites with a consistent NAP (name, address, phone), search engines have a higher degree of trust about who you are and where you’re located. If you don’t show up, there’s less trust and that translates into lower rankings. Also, if you’re listed inconsistently with previous addresses on some sites, variations of your company name,  or bad/old phone numbers there’s less trust as well.

You need to make sure you’re listed correctly on as many of these sites as possible. We have a product called PowerListings that automates that for you and locks in your information. You can learn more about PowerListings here.

7) Achieve Freshness on Your Blog

There are lots of ways a blog helps you rank well in search engines.Having fresh content on your site encourages the search engines to visit more often and helps with your rankings. But beware of people who tell you to change or freshen up the content on your optimized pages. In our experience that’s likely to de-optimize your pages and hurt your rankings.

Instead, host a blog on your site and write informative content for your target market at least monthly, Weekly may be better if you can manage it. That’s all the fresh content you need, and it provides you with an opportunity to share your blog posts on social media and an email newsletter.

8) The Value of Google+ and +1 Signals

Google's G logoYou probably know that you need a Facebook page and perhaps a Twitter account. But lots of small businesses ignore Google+ and that’s a mistake. If you have a strong, active Google+ presence you’re likely to earn +1s. They’re similar to Facebook Likes. The folks at Moz noted that next to your web authority, the number of Google +1s is most highly correlated with great search rankings.
In addition, links back to your web pages from Google+ carry more weight than links from Facebook and Twitter because they’re the only ones that convey actual PageRank value.
Update May 2019: Sad to say, Google+ never lived up to its potential and is being discontinued as of October, 2019.

Rank Magic can help!

We’re the small business SEO experts.

We focus on what I call “small and very small businesses” and we address all eight of these factors and much more for our clients. We recognize that as a small business owner you have your hands full with running your business and have little time to spend paying attention to all of your marketing efforts.

Please give us a call to discuss your website. I’ll be happy to personally look at your site with you and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses so you can determine if we’re a good match for what you need.

Did you find value here? If so, please share with the buttons on the left.

We value your opinions! Let us know what you think of this in the comments below.

November 25, 2016 by Bill Treloar Leave a Comment

25+ Common SEO Mistakes That Kill Your Online Visibility

On November 25, 2016 / SEO practices / Leave a Comment

Good SEO practices …

can help customers find your website easily because they help you show up prominently when customers search for what you do or what you sell. Failure to apply these best practices obviously doesn’t help you show up in Google, Yahoo & Bing. There are also quite a few things that small businesses actively do on their websites that hurt search rankings.

Bad SEO practices …

Some of these mistakes may be due to some persistent SEO myths that people still believe. But most of the time these mistakes happen by accident. Here’s a handy list of 25+ SEO mistakes you should avoid. If they’re not obvious or clear to you, please ask questions in the comments below … or call us.
common SEO mistakesThanks to the folks at HostingClues.com for this helpful infographic.

If you suffer from any of the mistakes above, Rank Magic can fix that!

Please share this with friends and colleagues with the social media share links on the left.

July 18, 2016 by Bill Treloar Leave a Comment

3 Ways to Learn Effective SEO — Effectively

On July 18, 2016 / SEO practices / Leave a Comment

A guest post by Murris Johnson

Learn effective SEO — effectively.Why SEO is so mysterious

Although digital marketing is a billion-dollar industry that seems to be growing each year, one of the most commonly known sectors — SEO (search engine optimization) — is still something that very few people have a full grasp of. This could be due to the fact that there is no well-known schooling, curriculum, or certification for SEO currently available that’s widely accepted within the industry. It’s for that reason, and others, many individuals and business owners have a hard time completely understanding SEO best practices and the methodologies and strategies that are most effective.

Why learn how SEO works?

There are a variety of benefits to learning SEO, even from the most basic things like content creation, keyword targeting, keyword research, link building, navigation structures, etc; read more about the SEO process here. One of the largest benefits to getting an idea of what search engine optimization is all about is the fact that applying SEO techniques allows you to get your target audience looking at your product or service organically; when they are searching for what it is that you have to offer. Instead of using other advertising methods that require you to put your offering in front of people even when they’re not interested, with SEO you can make sure your website is easily found when the people that want what you have are looking for it.
With that said, here are 3 ways to learn SEO effectively; doing so in a way that won’t waste time but will get you the information you need to succeed.

3 ways to learn SEO effectively

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1) Talk to an expert

More and more we’re finding that successful people in just about any industry are talking about the importance of having a mentor, and how much time a mentor’s advice can save you. When it comes to learning SEO, it’s not often that you’ll be able to find an expert to hold your hand and mentor you, breaking down all the steps you need to take to put in place a successful marketing campaign.
Learning about SEO is an investment in your business.Your time, like theirs, is valuable, so making a financial investment on your part and in return them making the investment of time to help you is a win-win for both parties. By working with an SEO specialist who has a wealth of experience in the digital marketing industry you can ensure that your SEO campaign will have greater success, since they have experience with working on numerous marketing campaigns competitively and in different industries. To get a clear sense of what an SEO consultant can  add to your short term and long term marketing goals, here’s an interesting article on why more people are choosing this type of consultancy.

2) Analyze the SEO strategies being used by websites ranking well

This seems be the easiest and most obvious option when trying to learn SEO. Yes, there might be an initial investment needed to purchase the necessary tools to help you do analysis of the websites ranking well, but it is literally the best teacher there is. You’ll notice an article published some time ago of how this is directly connected to keyword selection and research.
Examine high ranking websites.To put yourself in a position to do this type of analysis, spend some time getting a clear understanding of the ranking factors that search engines most commonly use to rank websites the way they do. Once you have a grasp of this, you can literally search for ANYTHING and begin to analysis why the top 5 or top 10 or top 20 sites rank in the order that they do. Most people find themselves only doing this type of analysis in the industry that they want to rank well in, but an even better way to learn is to search numerous industries and analyze the best ranking websites in all of them.
When you do this type of analysis, you’ll begin to see the same “patterns” over and over; which will further drive home the point of the type of tactics you’ll need to put in place to rank well in your industry of choice.

3) Be willing to read AND implement

Although there are a variety of videos that can be read on the subject, as well as some audio books, this is an industry that has unexpected changes; sometimes from one day to the next. In order to keep up, and stay on top of what’s working and what isn’t you have to be willing to read and analyze what’s happening.
Along with reading, you need to make implementation a priority once you have a clear understanding of how to rank. One of the most common issues people run into when they’re trying to start out with SEO is endlessly reading, and learning, and watching, and asking, and doubting — and ultimately wasting time. Even if you were to research everything that’s ever been said about SEO, and you spent 20 years doing so, it would serve no benefit until that wealth of knowledge was applied and implemented to whichever website you choose to work on.
Learning about SEO can improve your online visibility.One thing that will help with this is to keep in mind that there are no “secrets” to be discovered when it comes to the best SEO strategies. Yes, the algorithms that search engines use to rank websites the way they do is “technically” a secret, but no matter how much research you do, you’ll never discover all of the ranking rules. So instead of endlessly looking for something that will never be discovered, get an idea of why search engines rank sites the way they do by looking at high ranking sites in different industries. That will provide more than enough information to put you in a position to compete and rank with just about any website in any industry.
But again, you have to take action; which is so much easier to say than it is to do. For those of you that need help to do so, here are 5 quotes that can help with that very thing.

In Conclusion…

We’re living in a digital age, and many people consider the internet as a NEED. So learning SEO can be one of the best career decisions you could ever make; even if you have no plans of doing SEO full time — or doing any SEO at all. Maybe you want to learn SEO so as to put yourself in a better position to hire a vendor or a consultant to drive the digital marketing strategy for your business.
Whatever you motivating factor is for making an investment of time for this form of internet marketing, there is a way to do so effectively in order to set yourself up for a marketing campaign that will ultimately succeed. The three ways of doing so described above just scratch the surface of what the possibilities are. But you have to start somewhere, and I hope that these reminders will help you get on the path of doing so effectively.
About the author: Murris Johnson is a digital marketing expert who has been in the industry full time since 2003. His passion for all things digital marketing is fueled by the life it’s allowed him to live while traveling with his family.

A good start to learning SEO is this very blog. We have How To articles dating back as far as 2005, all neatly categorized.

Share this information with other local businesses via your social media  — click on the square Follow buttons on the left or the handy Tweet link above.

June 22, 2016 by Bill Treloar 3 Comments

How Do You Get Your New Website on Google?

On June 22, 2016 / Bing, Google, SEO practices, Yahoo / 3 Comments

Google’s the biggest, but …

Google, Yahoo & Bing logosDon’t ignore Bing and Yahoo! As of last month, Americans conducted 64% of their searches on Google, 22% on Bing, at 12% on Yahoo. That comes to 98% of all the searches done in the US, so there’s no need to worry about any other search engines. But don’t dismiss Bing and Yahoo. Even at only 12%, Yahoo handles more than 500 million searches a day in the US.
Fortunately, the things you need to do to get listed on Google are pretty much the same things that Yahoo and Bing need.

How do I submit my site to Google?

You don't need to submit your site to Google to show up and move up in rankings.You don’t. It’s worth repeating: you don’t need to submit your site to Google, Yahoo, Bing, or anywhere else. Submitting to search engines is kind of a scam from the past and a persistent myth. It’s not necessary as long as you have links to your website from other websites the search engines already know about. We explain that here.

6 Steps to Get on Google

  1. Figure out what keywords you need to be found for. These are the phrases your customers will use to find what you do or what you sell. Think in specifics. The best  keywords are probably not the one or two word basic searches like limousine. That’s too broad. Better would be limousine service in San Diego or car service to O’Hare airport.
  2. 6steps to get your brand new website on Google.Make sure your website is search engine friendly. That means your pages download quickly, your site works well on a phone, navigation is easy to follow, you have a sitemap the search engines can follow to get to all your pages, and so forth.
  3. Block search engine spiders until your site is ready for prime time. Important note: this applies only to brand new websites, not a redesign of an older website. You never want an existing site to become invisible to search engines.
  4. Create lots of content. Make your pages about specific, narrow topics. Focus them on the keywords you determined in step 1, and use logical variations on those phrases. If you do or sell more than one specific thing don’t try to cover all of it in one or two pages; flesh out your site with rich, engaging and helpful content.
  5. Keep creating content. Don’t feel you need to constantly tweak your pages or freshen them up, instead add new pages. The most natural way to do that is with a blog. Be sure your blog is on your domain and not hosted separately someplace like WordPress.com or Blogspot.com.
  6. Promote your content across the web. The easiest way to do this may be with social media: write posts on Facebook, tweet on Twitter, mention (and link to) your content on Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. Each one of these gets the word out to a different population, and each adds a new link to your website.

Search Engine Journal has an excellent article on this topic with good explanations about each of these six steps.

6 steps to get your brand new website on Google.

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That’s just the beginning …

These things will get your website into the indexes for Google, Yahoo & Bing, an essential first step to being found easily by customers. Once in the index, you should show up when people search for your keyword phrases. But if you’re showing up on page seven or eight, that’s probably not good enough. We have lots of ideas in this blog on how search engine optimization works to get you near the top of the rankings. If that’s a concern for you, this is a good place to start.

If you find you don’t have the time or inclination to do your own SEO, Rank Magic can help.

You can share this with friends & colleagues with the buttons on the left or the helpful tweet just above.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

May 11, 2016 by Bill Treloar 1 Comment

75 Techniques for Small Business SEO

On May 11, 2016 / SEO practices / 1 Comment

So much to know and do for small business SEO!

Our readership closely reflects our target market: small and very small businesses. While most of our readers hire us or someone else to manage their SEO and online visibility, a few choose to do it themselves. They often find the subject daunting.

This may help

Whether you want to try to do it yourself or just want to better understand the things we and other SEO companies may be doing for you, we hope you find this infographic helpful and informative.

Killer small business SEO checklist

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SEO checklist: an infographic for small businesses.
[Thanks to Nirav Dave for all the work that went into this. He is the co-founder of Capsicum Mediaworks, a digital marketing agency based out of Mumbai, India, that specializes in all things WordPress & SEO. For some elaboration on the points above, Nirav has explanations beneath the infographic on his website.]

There’s a lot here. If you find yourself overwhelmed trying to implement these techniques for your own website, Rank Magic can help.

If you have comments, observations or questions, please join the conversation in the comments below.

Find this useful? Please like or share with the buttons above and to the left.

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