Local Organic Search Marketing Blog

CONTENT IS STILL KING

4/29/2013

You can use all the optimization and linking tricks in the book, but if the content you are publishing is poorly written, obviously written just to garner search results, or simply copied from other websites, you are doing yourself, your business and your web rank more harm than good. In the end, content is still king, and you must treat content like the gold that it is. Social media might increase your visibility, but to be relevant in social media, you have to create content that is interesting and shareable.

Why Content is so Important

Since Google updated its algorithm in 2011, it has become increasingly important to focus on quality content. What does quality look like? Is Google the grammar police?

While we believe what you post on your blog and website should be well-written so that it reflects your level of professionalism, Google isn’t looking at how you spell so much as how you stuff.

In other words, where sites used to be able to get away with writing low-quality posts that were basically search strings put together to make somewhat questionable and difficult-to-read sentences, it’s now more important to provide value with everything you publish. The good news is that what you write doesn’t have to be long; in fact, with more people reading on mobile devices, shorter updates work better than larger ones. But everything you write should give the reader information they find interesting, entertaining or informative.

It Won’t Happen Overnight, but it Will Happen

Building content on your site takes time and consistency. Posting regularly one to four times per week will help increase your rank while providing additional reasons for people to stay and explore your site. Content is only one component of an overall visibility strategy. Give us a call to find out how we can help you expand the search engine rankings for your top keywords in all the local markets you need to reach.

Image Source: Wordle

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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEO AND ORGANIC SEARCH

4/22/2013

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Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a practice that was developed to help businesses publish content that would be found when people searched online for the things they needed. SEO was popular almost as soon as the Internet was, and for a long time, you could achieve results simply by focusing on keyword density (the number of times a particular word appeared in the content).

Then Google got smarter; so did consumers.

Google changed the way they rank pages (which is the way pages appear in priority in search results), and consumers started creating searches that were far more specific. Instead of searching for “Hawaiian hotels,” they now search for “hotels near the beach in Oahu.” And, instead of rewarding websites that offer poorly written content filled with nonsensical search terms, the search engine now focuses almost exclusively on unique, well-written content that adds value.

But what does that mean to businesses trying to gain visibility?

What it really means is that organic search has much more relevance now than it ever did before, but it also represents a real opportunity for both brick-and-mortar and online businesses to truly carve out a niche for themselves by enhancing their content with targeted terms and local search optimization.

And, because so much analytical data is now accessible about customers, you can use that data to further enhance your content marketing efforts by targeting specific demographics – age, location, income and more. Feeling overwhelmed at the possibilities? Give us a call to find out how we can help you expand the search engine rankings for your top keywords in all the local markets you need to reach.

Image Source: MorgueFile

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5 RULES TO CREATE CONTENT

4/11/2013

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We talked previously about how important creating unique and valuable content is to increasing rank. Not all content is the same, however. During a conversation between Eric Enge and Matt Cutts of Google regarding the value of content, they discuss how even writing your own version of content that already exists may not be enough: “While they’re not duplicates they bring nothing new to the table. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with what these people have done, but they should not expect this type of content to rank.”

There are steps you can take to help ensure your content is not simply disregarded by Google. Our 5 rules of content creation are:

What you write about in the body of the blog should be reflected in the title of the blog. In other words, you can’t title your blog “5 Tips for Saving Money” and then write about the best race cars on the market today.
Your content needs to be unique. Don’t copy and paste content from other sites or submit your content to more than one place. And unique doesn’t mean using a thesaurus to change the words of content that has already been published; it means taking a new approach or a new angle to the content in order to share a fresh, new perspective.
Give your readers something of value to share. You want readers to read what you write, but more importantly, you want them to share it, so make it easy for them to share your content to other social media venues with the push of a button.
Keep it simple. People are doing most of their reading on mobile devices, so keep the content simple and to the point. You’re likely to get more reads on a well-written 250 word post than you will receive on an 800-word ramble.
Fill out the meta data for every post. The meta data (title, tags and summary) allow you to further define what your post is about and improves your visibility.

Content is one of many areas in which you can increase your visibility online. Give us a call to find out how we can help you expand the search engine rankings for your top keywords in all the local markets you need to reach.

Image Source: The Boomja Network

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SHOULD MY BUSINESS BE ON FACEBOOK?

4/10/2013

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By now you may have heard how social media is influencing organic search results.

And unless you have been living under a rock, you are most certainly aware just how popular Facebook has become in the social media world. If you are in the business-to-consumer (B2C) world, you probably already know the benefits that can come from having a corporate presence on Facebook. However for those in the world of business-to-business (B2B), the reasons may not be as clear-cut.

When you think of Facebook you think of it as a personal social medium, friends posting statuses to each other and commenting on them. This plays very well into the B2C business world, placing companies and brands in the very spot that their customers are already spending time. Many consumers eagerly “Like” the pages of their favorite brands and enjoy receiving updates and offers in their newsfeeds. The concept is surprisingly similar for a B2C company; after all, your message is directed at people within a company, not the company itself.

In today’s modern world, people tend to have an “always-on” work mentality. Even though they may be on Facebook for a personal distraction and not actively seeking information that will benefit their job, that doesn’t mean your business related blog post crossing their newsfeed at 9:30 p.m. doesn’t catch their attention. Offering up your businesses related content on a platform where potential customers already spend time is just smart. Make sure that post is optimized for mobile use so users can quickly click over to the post to read it or be able to email it to themselves to be read or shared later.

Another compelling reason to set up your Facebook page is search; pages are public and accessible to search engines. When prospects search for products or services that you provide, your business has more ways to show up in those results if you also have social media profiles. Be sure to cross link your company website to your Facebook page and link back to your website in status updates posted on any social media platform.

Think of your website as the place to showcase your brand while Facebook is the personality behind it. This social media channel is not for every business or industry so don’t feel that you must join the masses in order to compete.

Image Source: https://www.facebook.com/BoomjaNetwork

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CONTENT IS STILL KING

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEO AND ORGANIC SEARCH

5 RULES TO CREATE CONTENT

SHOULD MY BUSINESS BE ON FACEBOOK?

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