In today’s Internet Marketing Clinic we talked about how to do Email marketing with the SEO411 way of doing this. Since the pandemic SEO411 has started working with email marketing to help our clients stay in touch but also we have realized that we can create a circumstance where we are reminding folks that we are out here and we are available. We have done the same with several clients and we have been able to re-establish relationships with previous customers and restarted a sales dialogue.
Because everything we do is really centered on sending google the right signals we incorporated our IMC and podcast and have used email to help us grow our class and our podcast. Both have been working very well. Additionally we have repurposed these blog posts into social media posts and that also has created foot traffic as well as a way for our clients to keep in touch with us via social media. So although this is somewhat off what we normally do, Email marketing is an important tool we have in our marketing arsenal and should be used. If you don’t know how to use email marketing or where to start, this class is for you.
We do a lot of talking about how to do SEO but we often don’t talk about the tools we use and why we use them. In this episode we talk about the tools but also how I use them to make decisions on how to move a page up in Google. I’ve always said give me a search term and I’ll tell you what you need to do to get here and this is some of the how I make those determinations.
SEO is a series of doing things right mathematically and tools can help you learn what you need to do and how to do it better so that your site lands at the top of Google Search. In today’s episode, we take a look at the tools we use and why. Most of them are free or have nominal price points but it gives an overview of metrics that will allow you to make better decisions. As I teach, I keep saying SEO isn’t something you do but rather its a way of life and a way of thinking. These tools help you stay in that zone. These are free for the most part and are plugins into the Chrome web browser.
Moz Bar – This is a bar that displaces in a google page and shows the links domains have and the domain authority. It allows what you might need to do to pass the person in front of you.
Google Lighthouse – This plugin gives guidance on what needs to be addressed in 4 critical areas and provides some information on how to address the issues.
Serpworx – Is a great tool to see some base metrics. This tool displaces link profiles, technical SEO specifications, and word count. This helps you make decisions about the page your looking at and gives a quick overview on some really important matrix.
SEMRush – Why this all-purpose tool is a smart choice especially if your squeezed by budget.
Ahrefs and why does an outstanding job with links and link reviews.
Screaming Frog – This tool gives a great amount of Techincal SEO info and quickly identifies problems with a website. It also allows you to spot things like thin content tag pages.
Google Analytics plugin is also very handy to see the metrics of a page that is one your site. It allows you to see the traffic to the page and see how people interact with it.
Sometimes it is good to go back to basics. In today’s episode, I take a look at what are the basic principles of SEO and why every business owner needs to have an SEO strategy for their business.
The topics I cover are:
What is SEO anyway? And, why does it matter? There seems to be a lot of confusion on how this is executed and when is the time to ‘start’ SEO instead of understanding successful SEO is more of a foundational item for it to be successful long term.
We talk extensively about keywords and content and how that should be executed.
We talk about links and how they affect a website and how great content should always the best way to procure links.
We talk about Social Media and choosing the right platform as well as having a strategy that supports your content and your keywords.
We also covered WordPress and some of the plugins that will help you succeed. Including Yoast vs. RankMath, whereas I think RankMath is easier for a beginner to understand because it’s more graphical and spells out what is needed.
Episode 112 is something I speak about a lot which is what web building tools or platform is good to use. As I teach these classes many point out their tools/platforms don’t have the ability to do what I’m suggesting. That is because they are platforms that have the most rudimentary SEO functionality built-in but little more and simply do not need the standards that are needed. Additionally it is estimated that 94% of all sites built with tools like Squarespace, Wix Weebly, Web.com or even Shopify are not even indexed by Google let alone appearing in SERPS. Even WordPress.com has these issues.
This bugs me because, in my opinion, they are marketing to unsuspecting small business owners promising a pretty site but there is little consideration for the success of the website. Inherently the website and the story about a tree falling in the woods are similar. If no one comes to your pretty website how effective is it. Additionally and for example, I looked at a 1000+ page website on Friday built in Shopify and every page on the site was marked at no index. And, better yet the images, which are ranking, were coming off the CDN for Shopify. These are the type of problems you can run into using tools like this without an experience level on par with someone like me. Telling Google not to index your site is not the right path and it was not done on purpose.
Although I don’t discuss them directly here Hubspot’s platform, touts being able to do SEO but in no way is that correct. It is in an inbound marketing tool and does that very well. and most Hubspot Users use WordPress in conjunction with HubSpot, which can be a winner. But all these platforms and tools are not built with Google quality guidelines in mind, in my opinion, and you have to ask yourself if your listing to people like me talk why would you choose a vehicle that will not even get out of the starting gate. You can look pretty and rank well but online tools like this are really not the right way to go.
So I do have very strong opinions about this topic and the questions I am being asked was by a group of folks that are very small business owners. Please feel free to leave any questions you may have below. Oh and I am going to apologize because Harley decided to express his displeasure with the neighbor kids. Sorry for the barking, I tried to kill a lot of it but I didn’t want the sound to get inaudible.
Topic: HWCOC Tech Space Class
Time: 11:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/93139418035
Meeting ID: 931 3941 8035
One tap mobile
+13462487799,,93139418035# US (Houston)
+16699009128,,93139418035# US (San Jose)
Dial by your location
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
+1 301 715 8592 US
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
+1 253 215 8782 US
Meeting ID: 931 3941 8035
Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/ad4lcAWoh2
If on your own you’ve researched and implemented some basic SEO on your website but have found the results to be more lackluster than you would like, it is time to look into what technical SEO is and why you should care. SEO in any form is better than nothing, but an SEO team can assist with utilizing technical SEO throughout your website to make it more attractive to search engines and users.
What Is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is a phrase used primarily by industry professionals to describe on-site elements that apply more to the server and to the coding of the page; what’s under the hood, if you will. But it can leave many small business owners wondering, “What is technical SEO? How should I implement it and why should I care?”
In the simplest of terms, technical SEO is the skilled preparation of a website that lends itself to increasing search visibility, specifically for crawling and indexing.
I see so many business owners that let themselves be intimidated by the phrase technical SEO. They shouldn’t be. It is primarily just a far more supped up version of SEO best practices that nicely complement what you are likely already using if you are reading this post. It is also one of the things web designers overlook and ultimately hamper how a website will rank.
Maybe think of it this way. SEO is a professional baseball team with talent and promise, but the statistical gurus who do the statistical number crunching that better position that same team to win- that is technical SEO. If you use both, well, you are more likely to hit a home run.
The three main components of technical SEO that deal almost entirely with websites are:
how they are structured
how they are understood by search engines
how user friendly they are
Let’s break them down one category at a time to get a better grasp of how they relate to technical SEO.
Supporting Learning Materials on Technical SEO
Internet Marketing Clinic on Technical SEO (May 2020)
Some business owners do not yet have a website set up for their company. While it is a must for digital success in the twenty-first century, creating a website from the ground up under the guidance of an SEO professional who is also skilled at web design is the ultimate way to build a website because aesthetically it looks great but underneath, the code, and structure is assembled properly.
Of course, you likely already know that every website needs a domain name. And, because SEO411 is a full-service company we offer those services directly to our clients. Once you’ve selected a domain name, it is usually easily recognizable by people, but not search engines without some work. Additionally, you need to make sure you choose a domain that is a blend of keyword-rich but also brandable. So SEO411, LEDspot.com for LED Lighting or Webechristmas.com for Christmas Trees. These branded keywords go a long way to helping this.
So you have a general understanding of how a website is up, let’s talk about the three terms a developer may reference in building your website:
HTML
CSS
JavaScript
If you are reading these terms and are thinking they sound too technical, don’t give up. They help explain what technical SEO is and with the right explanation, you can better understand these terms, their role in technical SEO, and why you should care.
Let’s look at HTML. Although the acronym is for the term hypertext markup language, maybe the best way to describe HTML is that it is the language that your website speaks. I am not talking about foreign languages. I am talking about formatting and coding that makes a website’s content and headings appear as they do on most web pages. Every heading, paragraph, and list on a web page is part of HTML. Now on to why you should care. HTML is something that search engines like Google use to determine your website’s relevance to a user’s search. Translation? When using proper HTML protocol in a web page, it will likely rank higher on a search engine’s results list.
For example, within HTML code there are certain elements that a search engine looks for to be executed properly such as the proper use of H1, H2 and H3 tags. Commonly web designers co-opt these markups and confuse the search engine as the intent of the page.
On to CSS. This acronym stands for cascading style sheets, but what it should mean to you is that it determines how a web page looks. If HTML is the language your website speaks, CSS is the tool that determines how that language appears such as font style, color usage, and layouts. While the reason you should care about using CSS may seem obvious, in addition to how it is used an affect a page’s load time which can affect the success of the SEO campaign.
Last is JavaScript. An explanation of JavaScript can be a bit complicated, so for the purposes of this post, the important thing to know is that it affects interactive features of a web page such as pop-up or an ad. JavaScript is important to technical SEO because it essentially allows search engines to crawl, render, and index a web page better.
What to Know About How Your Site’s Technical SEO Is Seen by A Search Engine
We already talked about how search engines don’t “read” your website as an internet user would, so let’s talk about how they do read it. One word, schema. Using schema enables a web page to tell a search engine about the kind of information that can be found on it.
Think of schema this way. If you are a person who has lots of stacks of papers piled high on your desk, you may or may not know where important documents are located but someone new to your office would not be able to decode your filing system. However, if the papers on your desk are sorted by categories into folders with corresponding names on them, chances are that an outsider would still be able to find the papers that they need upon entering your office. Schema can do for your website what file folders can do for the papers on your desk, organize it so that others can understand what kind of information you have where.
The way a technical SEO professional utilizes schema may allow a search engine to augment your search result listing with a rich snippet (a description of your web page) that can increase the odds of directing traffic to your web page.
What Technical SEO On Your Page Does For A User
We’ve already tackled how a website can be created with technical SEO to enhance their visibility with a search engine, but the flip side of that is how it can work for the audience on the other side of the screen, the user.
Here are what technical SEO best practices can do for an internet user:
Ensure a consistent display across devices. There is nothing more frustrating than sending the link of a beautiful webpage link you accessed on your laptop to a friend who then tries to access the same link on their smartphone to find a less than an impressive page. The reason for this is that when the page was set up it did not utilize what is called responsive design. This type of design helps ensure that the appearance of a web page is consistent even across different technology devices. Using responsive design is technical SEO 101.
Achieve an acceptable load time has gained in importance in 2020. Web pages that may have too much code or content can take upwards of ten seconds to download properly. This is the bane of existence for most internet users that have become accustomed to a page loading almost instantly. A web page that does not have a fast load time typically equals an internet user that leaves that page for another.
Provide a valid connection. Technical SEO is designed to help web pages rank higher in search engine results. When a company’s web pages show up as relevant in a search engine’s results, it should connect the user with a company that matches their needs. A user’s click on that search result link may result in website traffic and a sales conversion that can be a win-win for the user and the company.
Finding the Right SEO Team to Assist with Technical SEO
Technical SEO can be overwhelming and complicated for a novice which is why most business owners decide to enlist the help of a reputable SEO team who is expertly trained in technical SEO and web design. There are very few SEO companies that are uniquely positioned to understand the full depth of technical SEO. So if you are considering an SEO company, inquire how they handle hosting and if their hosting company has experience in handling SEO this. Additionally, the same comments go for web designers. Just because they know how to add a title tag or can talk about keywords does not mean then can make a solid web site design that is technical sounds and the website rank. Just because it’s pretty doesn’t mean it will rank well or that it’s technically sound. There should be a balance between the two. It can’t be ugly and a link farm. It can’t be so beautiful that it’s a 20M homepage. Balance is key
Here are some things to consider before you sign with an SEO company:
Choose a provider that has years of experience specifically providing SEO. Some digital marketing companies can help business owners do a lot of things, but if they do not have specific expertise in technical SEO you probably need to keep looking.
Find an SEO team that is willing to incorporate your specific needs. This generally means being able to define what your SEO goals are for your company and then having the professionals help you create a campaign to reach those specific goals, not every SEO goal on the planet.
Do not sign long-term contracts. Go back and read that last sentence again because it’s that important. A reputable SEO company should already have enough clients and past examples of success that they need not be dependent on a client signing a long-term contract. If a company is requesting you to sign a long-term contract, walk away…or maybe run.
Congratulations! If you read all the way through to the end of this post then you passed technical SEO 101. No more wondering about what is technical SEO and why you should care, now it’s time to pursue it. Go get it and watch what happens next.
Todays’s podcast covers a bunch of different SEO topics as we work on our ultimate end of the year checklist for 2020. (I know it’s a few months away but it’s coming fast!)
Google Webmaster Tools
We talk about webmaster tools and why every site should have it set up. The easy way to do this is by using Sitekit from Google.
We reviewed how and why you should add a sitemap to your website
What are some of the more problematic errors you can see and how do you fix them
What are core web vitals
See detailed Webmaster Tools Class
Bing Webmaster Tools
Remember to add Bing to your arsenal now because it’s almost a 1/3 of all web searches. You can set this up here: Bing Webmaster Tools
Set up Google Analytics and StatCounter.com
It’s an important function and all websites need to have solid statistics. We recommend adding both because it’s sometimes good to see all the traffic not just what google is omitting.
Rank Math vs. Yoast
Yoast has been around many years but Rank Math is starting to turn heads. A lot of them. I like the rank math interface better than Yoast. It also does a better job of assembling the interlinking of pages and I think its much easier to understand for beginners but has the flexibility for experts. It also adds schema by default so if you forget it remembers. Overall I think Rank Math is the better route, but i fully expect Yoast to not concede and up its game.
Make a Keyword Checklist
Keywords matter. Long-tail keywords matter. We talk about how to select them and some of the best practices for them
Create a question that people want the answer to
Talked about some online forums that help us as well as sites like Ask the Public
Create SEO Friendly URLs
Why does this matter and how should you go about doing that. Why it’s bad to make things too wordy. The shorter the better but keeps it keyword rich but don’t overdo it and stuff
How do you position your keywords in the Title tag?
So the position of the keyword is very important based on what your objective of the page is
Consider adding delimiters to the title tag like the year of the word best that help mirror more what searchers do. This will help you land better in the search results.
Use your keywords in H1, H2 or H3 tags
But don’t overdo it.
1 H1 at most
Optimize Images
We often rank #1 on our terms so I am often reluctant to do this, however, its a good practice and it does help land you in image search. If you have a product specifically that would be searched for by image, we talk about how to optimize images in both alt text file name and really size still does matter. The smaller the better.
Learn the art of Synonyms and LSI keyword
Google is big on signals and there are words it expects to see on a page and others it doesn’t learn what those words are and how to effectively use them. They are not in place of keywords but rather in support of them
External links
Although I’m not a huge believer in linking outward, I will say that at times there are reasons to do it. For example, I did one above. Or on our home page, I linked to our sponsor partners. It makes sense.
Part 2 will be posted at the end of August as we continue down our ultimate SEO Checklist
It is barely noon and with the more than half a dozen calls and emails I’ve already received this morning asking for advice on keeping businesses relevant and operational during coronavirus, the irony that long ago I scheduled a post for today on tips for how to turn a website into a new online storefront is not lost on me.
About four months ago, having an online storefront was just smart business. Now it is essential in keeping businesses open. A friend called the other day lamenting that their website wasn’t gaining much traffic during this difficult season. A red flag went up for me right away.
Online shopping and e-commerce is currently at an all-time high as people shop and do business from their homes during the quarantine. Simply said, if you aren’t getting website traffic for your business in this season then you’re doing something wrong. Yes, I just stepped on the elephant in the room, but it needed to be done. With that out of the way, let’s focus on what you can start doing right when it comes to making your website an online storefront.
Seven Tips for Adding E-commerce to your Website
There is no one golden ticket- think Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory– that is going to make your website an overnight success. But if I’m being honest, hiring a reputable web design and hosting company that also specializes in SEO (search engine optimization) is a close second. I’m not just saying that because it is what we do and do well, as our clients’ successes speak for themselves. I’m saying it because you’re reading this to learn how to make your website your online storefront, and I’m here to help.
Hiring a quality company that provides web design, hosting, and SEO services aside, I’ve put together a list of seven things that your business can begin working on right now to optimize your website as an online storefront:
Webpage hosts can make or break you. While there are dozens of popular webpage hosts out there, they are far from being created equal. Ideally, you want a full-service web hosting and domain registration company that can match you with a user-friendly platform. Our favorite CMS (content management systems) are WordPress. I find this platform typically allows our clients to easily customize their website to include a number of features in everything from blogs to e-commerce. A word of warning here, though. Be careful with other platforms such as Squarespace, Weebly, and Wix as some of their pages are not as easily indexed by Google without the expertise of an industry professional and this may ultimately make them less user friendly in the long run.
Know what makes a site rank on Google and why you should care. To put it in simple terms, Google assigns each page a keyword ranking which then dictates where they place that individual page in search engine results. Why does it matter where your business appears in the search results as long as it’s there? Web surfers don’t like to waste time scrolling, so they search the top search engine results first. If your business is in the top batch of results, you will likely see an increase in traffic on your webpage. If you do not know what constitutes a keyword and which words to use for that function, in the best interest of getting your site operational quickly I encourage you to enlist the help of a reputable SEO company like ours. One more important point about ranking is that keeping your website in the top batch of search engine results is not a one and done activity. New content must be well written and consistently created for Google to continuously rank it.
SEO is not a staff position, it is a culture. Speaking of SEO, the most important thing I can say about it is that SEO is not a dedicated staff position, it is a culture that should be woven into every single fiber of your website. Your website as a whole, as well as its individual pages, is what is being ranked by Google. If only one area of your website such as the web design is following SEO guidelines, then the content that bloggers, copywriters, and sales are creating may be totally ineffective in getting your website ranked by Google. This means that while one particular page of a website is ranked, for a potential customer to find the rest they would have to be willing to waste time clicking from the ranked page to the other pages on the site digging for the information they are looking for. Using SEO correctly is like putting out a welcome mat for online visitors and offering them a chair and cup of coffee. It just makes the experience more pleasant for everybody.
Make the webpage title tag work for you. A title tag is essentially the title of a webpage. The title tag should be a focal point of your page and a similar version should appear on every page of your website but it must not be exactly duplicated. Unless you’re an industry expert, then you probably wouldn’t know that title tags should be between thirty and seventy characters wide for maximum effectiveness. You also might not realize that the title tag should not feature the company name or the word “homepage.” Instead, crafting a title tag that is keyword focused is the better way to go.
Enable e-commerce solutions. Doing business in a coronavirus or even a post coronavirus world, has us all appreciating the functionality of online shopping more than ever. In a crisis such as this, it is vitally important that businesses understand how to do what I like to call a pandemic pivot. This usually involves taking a giant step back to see if your business model needs a little tweak to keep revenue streaming in. Adding e-commerce capabilities to your site may be one of the easiest ways to do this. A client of ours who is a Houston renowned commercial bakery was recently struggling to keep their doors open with hundreds of the businesses they served closing down during the pandemic. To help the bakery survive, we encouraged them to pivot their commercial business to include providing homemade loaves of bread and baked goodies for public consumption at a time when those items were hard to find in grocery stores. By adding an e-commerce solution to their website, the client plans to further increase that revenue stream with online sales. Their pandemic pivot and addition of e-commerce solutions to their website have proven to be instrumental in their business’ survival.
Be the expert somebody needs. Whether you realize it or not, you are an expert in what you do. Use your expertise to help others in areas where they may be lacking. Some of the avenues that often receive the highest participation levels are blogs, podcasts, and even webinars. Create content that is helpful to others by showing them a few tips toward doing what you already do so well. I have twenty plus years of experience in web hosting, design, and SEO and I am using that knowledge to help you transform an informational brochure based website to a living, breathing content machine designed to work for you and be a participant in your success. The next time you need advice regarding web design, hosting, or SEO, I’m hoping you will remember us and return to expand your digital marketing education. Your website visitors will likely remember your expertise too making you a go-to resource for the future which is a great way to stay relevant and cultivate consumer relationships.
Be social. It’s not enough to be the expert if nobody knows it, so make sure they do. Do you have an Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter account? Have you posted to any of them in the last week? Social media platforms are a key way to share your industry expertise as well as company announcements and promotions. The icing on top is that it is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website. Use pictures and hashtags and be creative. The more character a post has, the more attractive it will be to the eye. The goal is to make your posts stand out from the rest of the noise in a manner that will actually stop a user mid-scroll and encourage them to take a closer look. Have fun with it, post on it often, and don’t forget to engage with individuals who comment or have questions.
Now that you’ve had a chance to read through these, rate your current website and see how it fares. Need to make some changes? While a professional company that offers web design, hosting, and SEO can take you even further, these seven tips are a great place to start when it comes to making your website your online storefront.
Some business owners mistakenly think that putting a website together will automatically cause a business to boom. It’s true that a website can put you on the map, but if you’re the only one with the map, it won’t amount to much. Using SEO to boost your website’s google search ranking is like giving someone the map and telling them how to get to the “X” that marks the spot…including those that were looking for the map to start with and those that never knew they needed it until just now when they saw your name in Google’s ranked search results.
SEO strategy exists to solve a problem…specifically your Google search ranking problem. It is more than just adding in a few tags, choosing a few random keywords, and creating blog posts. The devil is in the details. It is the overall effect of an effectively run SEO campaign that can make Google sit up and take notice of your website and all of the pages on it.
Before we go any further, let’s see where you stand. Google the name of your business or the type of service you provide and what city you are located (ie. Tax attorney, Houston). Now, look at the first page of results that Google provided. Is your business’s name the first entry? No, well does it appear anywhere on the page? Chances are you might be a little harder to find than you thought.
Now Google SEO411 and tell me what you see. Every one of Google’s search results directs you to our website. Every single one.
With this illustration of what a well-run SEO campaign can do, let’s get to work.
