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.
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 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.
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.
