In today’s episode we discuss social media and tips and tricks and how planning can make these efforts more effective. To that end we talk about:
Why businesses need a Facebook page dedicated specifically to the business and what the About Us section can do for you.
The importance of being an expert, owning your brand, and cultivating that persona across social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Why you need a different strategy across platforms and why knowing your business, what you do, and your target audience is critical for each.
The importance of graphics and pictures on social media platforms in engaging users.
Planning your posts several months in advance and the benefits of doing so.
The importance of creating a Google My Business page and regularly posting to it with graphics.
Why it is critical to respond to business reviews as they come in and encourage further commenting on various posts.
Why responding to a review can reach a further audience than just the person you are responding to.
Being authentic in your social media and blogging efforts to facilitate credibility and highlight your unique personality.
No matter what type of business you have, for the holidays see a better buying time. Many small business owners though don’t always handle this all right.
It’s passe’ but making sure your website is mobile-friendly is often and can work well with a mobile device. We are now to a point where more transactions are conducted on a mobile phone rather than on a computer/laptop.
We discussed the issues you may have from a technical standpoint and how to make sure your website is a racehorse at the time of the year you need it most.
We tried to cover as many different good practices we could as well as answered many of our participant’s questions.
In today’s Internet, Marketing Clinic decided it was a good time to go back to basics and talk about some basic tips that are often overlooked, forgotten, or just poorly executed especially when SEO is a goal for your website.
Last week I was talking a web design client who asked me to ‘do’ SEO to his website. And that is something I commonly hear. SEO is something we do. What I answered him back was that SEO was a lifestyle, not something you do once or twice stick. Sure there are some things that if you do them right fundamentally will allow you to float along, but in no way does it mean you are living the SEO lifestyle. What I answered him was if you eat Quinoa, it does not mean you’re are eating and living healthy. It just means you eat Quinoa.
So what is SEO anyway?
I tried to clarify what it actually that with my thoughts on how SEO is a holistic behavior that is ongoing and long term. Its how you live as a website owner and not just a one time only behavior.
Being Relevant
We talked about how you are relevant to your users and why if you are relevant to your users you are also often relevant to Google.
Quality Content
This is the one that most people have issues with yet is the fundamental building block for your digital marketing campaign success. It’s not just writing a page, but how do I take that page and make it relevant and useful. Does it represent us well. In even this post your reading now. This post is being written around the class. Learning how to hit all the high points with one effort is effective, time conserving, and allows multiple ways for the user to consume your content. The most important still remains that the better the quality, the more likely a favorable SEO result.
User Experience Consideration
After all, each page we build is for the end-user. How can we make sure we are building an effective page that also ranks. Or how can we build a page that ranks well but is also easy to use for the customer? I know it should like those are the same things but they are actually not. Your site always needs to look like a million bucks, but you also must take Google factors into account and lay your pages out in a way that appeals to both.
Responsive Web Design
Although I cannot say this enough, I still find sites that are not mobile-friendly or use huge images with no consideration for how good or bad a page ranks.
Building Internal Linking
So I think this is the most underutilized ranking variable out there. The better your internal linking structure is in execution, the higher your site will rank. Its really simple but so often overlooked. I see the error constantly being made. Its is a great way to help offset the lack of external links. And you can overcome some of those hurdles by simply setting up a strong internal linking structure.
Authority
How are we building authority to our brand and to our website? This is an important situation and needs to be addressed by every website owner. I touch on this point, but it is a class all on to itself.
Title Tags and Descriptions.
Oh so overlooked and one of the leading reasons a page ranks or doesn’t Poor keyword placement in the title tags, Lack of a quality description. This all needs to be done and one right and often the title is left to only mimic the page title someone puts in word press…you know home, about these highly descriptive terms that everyone uses…note the sarcasm. Ignore quality title tags and descriptions at your own risk.
Schema
So let’s just say this, schema is a must. There are plugins to help but its an absolute must to compete in today’s Search Wars.
Properly Tagged Images
So for the most part images should have tags. Am I guilty of ignoring this one, yes I am? When I am already number one on something, I don’t want to be stuffing more keywords into a page. I have seen cases wherein removing the title tags, the page has drifted downward. In fact, I have a website right now that is down by 30% after a new marketing manager arrived and ran and put alt image text because she had read that you needed to do that on some blog. Yes, you need to do it but if you are number one, maybe don’t.
Domain name and File Structure.
This one too could be is own blog topic and class topic. But lets just say a few high points.
Keyword rich domains can be good if you understand how to do that well. Don’t make a pile of websites though.
Understand that www.domain.com domain.com and http and https are 4 totally different places and that needs to be buttoned up properly. If you don’t know what your doing you should probably ask for help or you can destroy the entire link profile of a site or possibly bifurcate it.
And lastly understand the way directory structure works and then how that is still a thing even though the internet is run off database and parsed permalinks and not directories on files now .
Headlines
These are extremely important for engagement as well as rankings. Be smart, be funny, be pithy.
Comments Comments Comments
I would appreciate comments on this blog post. But don’t turn off comments. They are needed now to prove your worth. So leave ‘em on .
Google My Business and Local SEO
Local SEO is an imperative. We teach this as a stand-alone subject so I don’t want to cover so much here. I do explain some of it from a high level but every small business own needs to participate in the Google My Business Program.
Social Media
This means many things to many people, but you have to have a sustainable plan to post on social media is important. We have some plugins here that we talk about to help that process and then talk about how to execute that as well.
What not to do’s
They include Keyword stuffing. I know we all like stuffing especially being thanksgiving is coming, but really what we are talking about, I cramming keywords into or onto a page to make google rank. Usually the opposite will happen so simply just don’t to it.
Don’t buy links, or make annoying ads, Google hates them too
Don’t make duplicate content, and don’t copy someone elses work and claim it for yourself. I know it sounds stupid that I have to say this in 2020, but yeah I just had client score a 30% on a plagiarism check after swearing to me up and down the content was original. Yup he was right it was original, because he wrote it and posted it else were. So no duplicate content.
And then for the last silly thing, no hidden, you know the old white text on a white background trick. Can you just believe this still happens?
Any questions or comments please leave them below.
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October 14, 2020
22 Essential Tips to Optimize your Website
Topic: HWCOC Marketing Clinic (Forum)
Time: 11:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)
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Oct 28, 2020
The Ultimate SEO Checklist Part 4
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Okay I’ll admit it, I am a big fan of WordPress. The whys of course is multi-faceted. Although we talk a lot about the ilks of web site builders, the other side of WordPress is how flexible it is and however even Google is now building plugins.
So what are plugins. They are ways to expand the functionality and capabilities of a basic WordPress site. And there are thousands of them.
I am often asked what are the best and I think in fairness it depends on what you are trying to do. But in today’s Podcast I go into detail about some of the most popular plugins and make some recommendations.
RankMath Vs. Yoast
For a long time Yoast stood alone at the top of the SEO plugin pile. Then came RankMath. It does all the things Yoast does, just better. And it does more than Yoast. It gives a more far more granular control. The numerical value of correctness is handy and easier to make a determination of what you may or may not want to address. If you’re new to it, RankMath is simple to set up and takes a lot of guess work out of what elements on your page needs to be addressed.
The list of features are too many to mention but we recommend RankMath as the SEO plugin for 2020
Google Web Stories
This is a Google created plugin for websites to house web stores, pages designed specifically for small screen browsing. This is on our radar of things to watch and this is a brief overview of the things you can do with it.
WP Bakery
We think WordPress is powerful, but the user experience is important. There are multiple versions of design helpers that allow you to build better pages. We like WP bakery because the code is clean, and it keeps things loading quickly. Builders like Elementor are solid but add a lot of bloated code in the background. Divi builder is a solid alternative but I don’t think its as intuitive and not great for those who are new to building websites. So it depends on your user level .
Then there is a pile of ones that are not well maintained and often come with Themes and speaking of themes, pick a solid lightweight and flexible theme that allows customization. We recommend U-design for those who ask.
WPRocket
Speed is important. We have found that WP Rocket has all the tools needed to speed your WordPress install up. It also has a built in CDN that is easy to configure, which is important.
Mail Optin
This is a great plugging for sending email from your blog posts as well as building and maintaining a mailing list. We love this plugins because of its versatility as well as its ability to customize our news letters.
Blog2Social
This is another biggie when it comes to our list of favorites. This plugin has allowed for auto posting of our social media posts and has tied it back to our website unlike some of the services that have high prices monthly subscriptions has a low cost annual to it. We setup our blog posts and off they go. It also allows for us to repurpose our content and keep our readers. Best of all it allows for auto posting to Instagram and to GMB. This one is a must have for serious marketing.
There are multiple other plugins we discuss, including some that we include with our hosting plans. We hope you will find this episode a must listen to guide for WordPress.
I’ve seen many things through the years and one thing that puzzles me is a small business owner who has trouble justifying SEO (search engine optimization). Sometimes it comes down to money, and I get that. But, sometimes it is the misnomer that bigger businesses need SEO. I often here no one comes to my website so why should I worry about it. These are misconceptions I think and in part why I am working on creating a beginner’s guide for to small business SEO. Whether you own a t-shirt making business, a local bakery, or an international travel agency, you can do more than just incorporate SEO to help people find you online, you can make it work hard enough for you to potentially increase your revenue stream.
Taking Down Roadblocks Keeping You From SEO
Before we get too far into this, let’s acknowledge some of the common roadblocks to small business owners using SEO and how to get around them.
Roadblock #1: “I don’t really know what SEO is.”
This is not a roadblock, this is an admission of truth. I can almost promise you that at some point even the now big corporations weren’t sure what SEO was either. Or, do it wrong. I can rattle off several larger businesses or publicly traded companies that do it flat out wrong and have circular conversations, work in an echo chamber and not do not move the ball forward.
For the purposes of this post, let’s define SEO or search engine optimization as a method of optimizing the pages on your website to rank higher on Google or other search engines so that when an end-user searches for a business like yours, your company pops up in the first page of Google search results. When done correctly, your increased visibility can lead to more website traffic which can result in sale conversions. You need to know what something is before you can learn how to effectively use it, so spend a few minutes checking out my post on what SEO is here (link to previous post about what SEO is).
Roadblock #2: “I don’t have a website.”
Believe it or not, this can actually work in your favor when starting out. An SEO professional who also does web design can help build a website from the ground up to fit SEO best practices. This may also end up costing you less money in the long run as a website that is designed from the ground up with SEO in mind will perform better than those websites that are often built with antiquated SEO principles in mind. Most companies that do only web design have a habit of saying they don’t know SEO.
Roadblock #3: “I don’t know how to do SEO or build a website.”
That’s okay. I don’t know how to fix my air conditioner if it breaks, but I know who does. It is not about the skills you possess as much as it is being able to find a reputable and reasonably priced SEO or web design professional who does have those skills- and in spades. Outsourcing this type of help is usually cheaper than hiring a SEO expert in-house.
Roadblock #4: “I can’t afford it.”
This is usually the final roadblock to SEO for most small businesses. My question to you is, “How do you know you can’t afford it if you don’t even know what you need?” We work diligently with clients to customize a SEO strategy that optimizes effectiveness for various price points. Think of it this way, even if you are only able to do small chunks of SEO work at a time, it will still do more for you than doing nothing ever did. (Can link this to article I wrote about Cost of SEO).
Basic Steps for A Small Business To Get Started In SEO
There are several steps a small business can tackle to get started in SEO. Although it can sound a bit self-serving, I do want to mention here that working with an SEO professional on these very basic steps can have a more significant yield in your success in the long run. Let me show you what I mean.
Build Your Website Right.
If you’ve never built a website before, it can be tempting to choose a cookie cutter web program to build your website. Think Squarespace, Wix or other programs along those lines. The issue with this is not necessarily with the program, but it’s efficacy. In other words, it is crucial that the pages on your website are easy to navigate. This means making it easy to get back to the homepage, having drop down menus keep your page organized, and having page meta titles that help the user easily find what they are looking for. A SEO professional that is also a web designer should be able to do this in their sleep. The drag and drop site builders have a lot of issues that prevent them from being properly recognized and providing Google’s algorithm the right information to score the site properly and therefore rank it. This topic is so important to me, that I have an entire 2 hour seminar on this actual topic that I encourage you to watch on just this topic.
Maintain Your Website.
Creating a website is one thing. Maintaining it is something entirely different altogether. Once a website is up and running, SEO best practices typically call for new content on a regular basis to keep your site relevant. This means ensuring that your pages and links are working correctly, including those that were created months and years ago. Both broken links and broken pages can make a user feel like the website they are navigating is not up to par and cause them to click off of your website which translates to no sale conversion for you.
Ensure the Website Loads Quickly and Runs Smoothly on All Technology Devices.
There is nothing more frustrating for a motivated website user than having to wait more than five to ten seconds for a page to load. This is usually just frustrating enough to have them leave your website and move on to another. Create website pages that load quickly and that look and navigate the same regardless of whether they are viewed on a laptop, a tablet, a smartphone, etc. Finding the right web hosting copy is extremely important. I am often asked who I recommend. We recommend ACTWD. We built our hosting platform specifically for SEO performance.
Make Written Copy on Your Website Work for You.
Ideally, every page on your website will have at least some written copy either to provide instruction or description. A page without any copy can be a red flag for search engines so keep this in mind. Each page with written copy needs to be tagged appropriately with meta titles and subheadings. This is where an SEO professional that is also helping to build your website can really make you shine.
Feature New Content Regularly on Your Website.
The more new content that regularly appears on the website can make it more relevant for search engines if the information is both legitimate and helpful. An SEO professional can help you identify keywords for your written content or a blog that may make it more attractive to search engines. The use of the right keywords and the placement of them throughout written copy is one of the components of an algorithm Google uses to determine which pages land first in search results pages. Lastly, whether it is one hundred words or fifteen hundred words, make sure they include correct grammar and spelling.
Build Links for Your Website.
Particularly with Google, if your company’s website is linked with other sites found by a search engine, it can help determine how high your website will appear on search results provided by a search engine. For example, if you are a web design company, it can be beneficial to have a link to your website from those of clients as well as other companies within the industry. For small businesses, this may look like being linked to your local chamber of commerce page or a supplier’s page.
It is worth noting that these are simple steps that provide an excellent foundation for SEO. Once you and your SEO team have accomplished these objectives and continue to maintain this groundwork, you have essentially graduated from the beginning steps for small businesses getting started in SEO and may be ready to move on to the next level of a SEO campaign.
How To Find A SEO Professional That Understands How To Get A Small Business Started In SEO
When I Googled “SEO companies” the search returned a whopping two hundred five million results. That is a lot. I also feel I need to point out here that not all SEO companies are created equally. A reputable SEO team will be able to:
Understand the needs of and have worked with small businesses
Have expertise specifically in SEO
Do web design
Offer a number of reasonably priced SEO packages to fit the client’s needs
Partnering with a company that knows how to do all of the above, makes them a one stop shop of sorts for clients that need multiple services. This can be both more convenient and cost effective for clients instead of bouncing back and forth between different providers with different price points.
In addition to being able to provide the above services, it is best to keep the following considerations in mind when looking for an SEO professional to help your small business get started in SEO:
Choose a provider that has years of experience, specifically with SEO. This can be tricky because many companies claim to be top performers in digital marketing but that does not mean they know how to do SEO. Make sure the company you hire knows SEO inside and out.
Look for a SEO team that has a reputable industry reputation that can be further verified by talking to clients. A company worth their salt will have clients and peers vouch for their capabilities and customer satisfaction. These referrals, or lack thereof, can be quite telling of a company’s abilities to communicate with their clients and help them achieve their goals.
Partner with a SEO professional that does not require a long-term contract. No SEO company that really understands their craft will require a client to sign a long-term contract. To do so would only indicate that they do not have faith in their own ability to come through for the client.
Like most anything else, half the battle in getting your small business into SEO is learning what it is, what it does, and how you can make it work for you. After reading this post, you don’t have to wonder how a small business gets started in SEO. You’ve stopped wondering, and now it’s time to start doing.
I’ve been doing SEO along time and keywords have been around since the first boolean searches. The premise is simple. You add a word to a page and the Boolean search comes along finds those words and returns the answer. Though the years, keywords were that one talking point that SEO companies used as a metric of success. After all to some degree SEO in the old days centered around the more keywords the more traffic and therefore more success. And although I can say that the more keywords ‘may’ cause more traffic the reality is that it does not always mean more success. The layers are much more these days.
So about a week ago I got a lead from our website (and the Houston West Chamber of Commerce). The call went like this. We are having our web site designed (by someone else) and well someone said I needed to find keywords and I really don’t know what they mean. So it got me to thinking that I haven’t really talked about keywords in a really long time. The core reason why is that the complexity of keywords now and how they are used to be effective seemed to be something that a rookie was going to get. And, I didn’t want to promote this idea that keywords should be a metric for success for SEO. Simply that is not correct. Yes, some will argue that it measures success but honestly my web hosting site ranks on 1000s of keywords but there is only one that will ever net me money, web hosting (seems kinda obvious doesn’t it). It has been that way for 20 some years and counting.
What is that the the fuss about keywords for SEO?
I can make the argument that keywords are the single most important element of a website and without them you site is destined to a life of mediocrity. I’m sure that there will be some SEO people that want to come and talk about the death of SEO and why keywords are not as important as they used to be, all the while making sure they put keywords in their title tags (because of course if they aren’t there the page won’t rank). What they may argue is that the contextual words on the page may null and void the need for the keyword. And while that is true in come niches (ie, movers), in most cases, if they are looking at all the pages on the website a keyword there is a set of keywords that will prevail and be thought a site, almost like a thread that that holds everything together.
Now my friends that’ll will also argue about the importance of links my also feel links are singularly the most important ranking factor. That is a case that can be made but, naked links and links devoid or keywords have far less impact that just simply having a link. Often you make a link containing a keyword in it. So although we can argue one for the other, one is far more effective with a keyword in it rather than not.
In this episode we talk some on keyword history and how we got here. We also talk though how to properly identify keywords and why they are important. But, I also make the point that you should pick about 20 money terms and build around that. Just like this site. I want to rank on SEO and Web Design. Anything past that is gravy to me and my posts usually include some allusion to one of those two words each and every post I make. Additionally you will see me link them to other pages inside my website.
Using the right permalink and how to build one is often lost in modern day web building. For those of us that have been around 20 years, we remember the days of building a site with actual directories and publishing with dreamweaver or Microsoft Front-page. Now with CMS system like WordPress, the old directory structure is mimicked inside the permalink functionality. What most folks don’t understand this is the impact on seo that can be gained from properly structuring you’re URLs.
In today’s episode we take a look at how to do that and how to make that work right for SEO all while still using a CMS system. And why it’s important and the signals it sends.
Also I decided to talk about SSL. I always get people calling the hosting company talking to me about how a website is secure or insecure. In most cases to them it means can the website be broken into or how secure their website is. As a web hosting provider as well as a digital marketing agency. We understand those are two really separate things. An SSL certificate does not make your website ‘more’ secure how average users mean it. The SSL certificate protects the data being transferred from the website to the end user. So while it is true that is less likely that a password or credit card number can be stolen over unencrypted channels, it does not mean a brute force hack is stopped. It does not mean a DDoS attack is stopped nor does it mean a malware/pfishing attack is not launched from or at your website. So I talk about what this is and why in my opinion Google was so insistent to get this done and how it benefits them.
What I will tell you is this thought. Everyone has been trained to look for the padlock. Browsers are popping up warning saying “danger Will Robinson” …well really they say that the website may not be safe. This of course discourages users. So while the warning is a little over the top, most users are not savvy enough to discern the danger or lack there of.
Topic: HWCOC Tech Space Class
Time: 11:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 931 3941 8035
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+13462487799,,93139418035# US (Houston)
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Dial by your location
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+1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
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+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
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Meeting ID: 931 3941 8035
Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/ad4lcAWoh2
Sept 23, 2020
Social Media Tips:
How to create, distribute and convert social media. Sign Up Link will be added prior to class
Local SEO and Google My Business
22 Essential Tips to Optimize your Website
