Tag Archives: seo

SEO: Why You Need A Content Strategy

Posted on by
2

Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing need for any business that is serious about establishing and maintaining good positions on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Many businesses depend on Google alone for more than 50% of their overall traffic.

Achieving that sort of success with SEO takes more than the basics (on-page, backlinks). It requires that your website take another step to plan out a site that is:

  1. Easy to navigate
  2. Structured with broad keywords at the higher levels, and more specific keywords deeper in the nav
  3. Generating quality new content on a regular and ongoing basis

While it is rather easy to dive in and start tweaking the on-page elements that are used by search engines (page title, meta description, H1 / H2 / H3, etc.), the opportunistic online marketing mind will ask the question, “Is this the right content in the first place?”.

Content Strategy Before On-Page

Before diving into the tactics, it makes the most sense to do a self-review of your business, cause, nonprofit, or whatever entity it is that drives you to generate quality content. Map out the categories (e.g. product lines or different audiences served) at the highest level and decide what keywords best match with those categories.

Then line up the most important topic areas in the next level beneath. These will also be keywords. Feel free to even build out more specific topics at the third level (we recommend only three levels for most types of site). Continue until you have a solid plan for what keyword-rich, highly relevant content you need.

From there, you can begin generating or reworking content to fit. As you generate the new material, take a couple of extra minutes to label the right keywords…highest level category, keyword for that level, any long-tail words that make sense….and insert those into the appropriate on-page locations. And be sure to pepper in some conversion pages to collect leads if it makes sense for your business.

Planning Ahead Works

There are multiple benefits to optimizing your website with this approach.

First, it gives you a chance to take a fresh look at your site from a macro perspective. It is so easy to get caught up in the daily minutiae, that we sometimes need to take a step back to evaluate where we are, how we got there, and where we want to be.

Second, the output will be very helpful at beginning your ascent up the rankings. By structuring your website in a way that the search engine crawlers will find logical, they will better be able to connect your website to the keywords you are targeting. The bonus is that, when you relaunch your website or launch a new website, Google will typically do a full crawl of the site quickly, assuming you have an XML sitemap file logged with them.

We Can Help

You can most likely manage the build out of a content strategy yourself. If not, SEO and Content Strategy are specialties of ours. If you need help, drop me a line at tommy (at) returnonnow (dot) com.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Read more posts from Return On Now about Search Engine Optimization.

____________________

Local Services Businesses: Why You MUST Have a Web Presence

Posted on by
4

Much of the material I’ve covered on here to date has focused on higher level concepts such as social media, marketing, public relations, entrepreneurship, etc. However, in recent discussions with local services businesses (electricians, auto mechanics, etc.), I learned than many of them do not truly understand the power of the internet over old contact methods such as the Yellow Pages.

Now, for those of us who are comfortable with and well versed in the online world, this may seem like a surprise. If you work in a high tech hardware or software company, a Fortune 2000 enterprise, or any profession that relies on the exchange of data or information, your business simply cannot operate without an online presence. But for local services businesses, the most common sources of leads mentioned to me were the phone book, word of mouth, and local advertising.

So, if these businesses are seeing success with the old school, tried and true methods, why am I insisting they go online?

Forget the Past; This is About Tomorrow

Sometimes, a change happens and we simply need to be on top of it. That’s what is happening now.

20 years ago, you could do everything in print. Word of mouth was offline, typically in the form of verbal referrals from one customer to another prospect. There was no simple way to scale this process, and most certainly no way to push yourself to the forefront of the yellow pages, except for buying premium space in the print publication. In the end, everything was based on purchasing ad space, and then hoping you did good enough work for your customers to pass along the word.

Now, there is a wellspring of opportunity before us. Your website can be set up and left to gather leads on your behalf. Potential customers are out there searching for the services that you do…when they are already ready to buy and interested. And those searches are moving online at an alarming rate, as evidenced by the financial difficulties we are seeing with many of the providers of business phone books / yellow pages.

You have the opportunity to help them fix whatever problem they have that suits your skill set. All you need to do is find a way to get in front of them at this important time.

What Does a Web Presence Give You?

The vast majority of these types of searches have already moved online. But Google is getting smart and starting to parse out search results based on where you are or where you want to find a service provider. There are a variety of ways to get your business listed in the local search results, and there are proven methods to move yourself to the first page of the rankings. That is where nearly all of the leads go – to the vendors who show up on page one.

The trick is not just to launch a website blindly and hope it works. If you go about that incorrectly, very few people will find the site without you providing them the URL. Considering this is a way to generate new business, that’s clearly not how you want it to work.

What you need is a properly structured and built website, with everything optimized for the search engines to place you among the top results in your locale. You need to be included in the right online services and directories. Other websites must link to you, but only the right websites with relevant content to your topic area or profession. And you need a supporting marketing strategy to harvest the leads from the website, nurture them along until ready to hire you, and close the deal.

Summary

This is the first in a series of posts I will be authoring, all focused on the opportunity available today for local services businesses. In this series, I will dig into many of the topics that need to be addressed in detail to get this right. Bookmark Return On Now today (or sign up for the RSS or email list), and come back to follow along with the series as it plays out.

I am also available to help you implement the strategies I’m about to lay out for you. If you want to investigate working together, please contact me directly via email: tommy (at) returnonnow (dot) com.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

SEO: Don't Overlook the Competition!

Posted on by
2

Surely you have all seen the news this past week about Google Instant, where search term recommendations are automatically populated in a pulldown menu that adjusts as you type out the key terms you want to search for. This is actually a very cool new feature, but don’t believe any of the FUD about how this means that SEO is dead. This feature is more likely to change the way people search, rather than make the whole practice obsolete altogether. And improving the way people search should be seen as an opportunity rather than a deal-killer!

Not that we’ve established that SEO will in fact remain relevant moving forward, let’s take a step back to consider the most commonly ignored piece of the SEO puzzle…

SEO Competition

You can find thousands of blog posts that coach you about how to get the on-page components of your website optimized. You can also find hundreds of posts about backlinks – why you need them, how to get them, and which types of backlinks are the most beneficial to your rankings.

However, the one topic that is most overlooked or “glossed over” in this whole set of content is the most important of all – the SEO competition. Let’s define what I mean by the term, just to be sure we’re all speaking the same language.

SEO Competition characterizes how many web pages and sites are already competing for a keyword or term. It also characterizes the strength of that competition against Google’s ranking formula.

Notice something different in that definition as compared to the typical use of the word “competitor”? It says nothing about the businesses that you would typically consider competition!

SEO Competition: Don't Overlook It

SEO Competition: Don't Overlook It (Courtesy of Vishraval via Wikimedia Commons)

That’s right, for SEO purposes, your competition is not the list of companies who offer similar products, services, etc. to you or your business. In this case, competition is comprised of all companies who are trying to rank for the specific keyword/term of interest. Obviously, this means that more common keywords have higher volumes, but are also much more difficult for you to rank highly for, since a lot of strong competitors are likely already optimized for them. As you dig deeper for more specific keywords, competition can be completely different due to variables such as longtail vs. broad keyword terms, singular vs. plural tense, and even misspellings.

How to Gauge SEO Competition

Since SEO competition is so different from what we typically think about as competitors, let’s review the specific criteria by which you can judge a strong from a weak SEO competitor.

  1. Domain Age: Different SEO experts have conflicting opinions about how important this variable is in the Google formula, but rest assured of one thing…it does matter. Once your site has been around a year or two, it matters a lot less, but domain age is very important when trying to rank a new site in an established niche. Be sure to do a search for the key term you want to rank for, document who shows up on the first page, and do a whois search to learn more about how long the site has been online.
  2. Size of Site: Although this is a minor piece of the overall equation, Google does consider quantity of content in its estimation of “authority”. You may never have as many pages online as Wikipedia or other large established sites, but you CAN have more focused pages on a specific topic area. Which brings us to…
  3. Volume of Relevant Pages: Following on the size of site idea, you need to consider how much of that content is optimized for your desired keywords. If you find 3-4 SEO competitors who are also “real world” competitors, and they also have a large number of pages on their website focused on the words you want to optimize for, you might need to dig deeper for a better term to go after.
  4. Number of Backlinks: This is where the competitive analysis becomes a little more tricky. There are three types of backlinks to consider: Total backlinks to the domain, total backlinks to the specific page that ranks for your desired keyword, and how many of the backlinks to that page are from EDU and GOV domains (which Google deems to be high authority backlinks). If a site has a ton of backlinks to the domain, that will help them more easily rank for new keyterms. BUT, you also want to see how many backlinks they have to the specific page which is on-topic. If there are few or none, or the links that they have are low authority, you have an opportunity to put up a good fight. This topic is so complex that I will have to save a deeper dive for its own post, lest this one become a novelette.
  5. On-Page Optimizations: Once you determine who the top SEO competitors are, go to their site and review whether they’ve aligned all the appropriate elements of the page properly. Does the keyword show up in the URL, page title, meta description, keyword list, and H1/H2 tags? If not, you can make inroads by focusing on getting the on-page elements right.
  6. Cache Age: This may not seem intuitive, but you should absolutely take time to investigate how recently Google has cached the page (you can do this on site analytics tools such as Alexa or a premium SEO software package). You see, Google likes sites that are updated frequently. They will crawl your site to find what has changed every time you change your content, particularly if you automate your Sitemap submission. If you determine that a competitive site has not been cached in 14+ days, their site is not being updated, and you have an opportunity to get a foot in the door.
  7. Page Load Speed: Simple thinking here…Google won’t put you atop the rankings if your site loads too slowly. Web surfers simply will not stick around to wait 20-30 seconds for your home page to load. If Google sees this, you WILL be sandboxed to some degree. The same holds true for your SEO competition. If you find that most of the top sites in the SERP are slow or take too much time to load, get a good hosting account, remove any widgets or code that injects overhead into your website, and add some CSS compression code to hasten load time.  Whatever you do, get this right, because it can hurt your ranking more than you would expect.

Conclusion

Be sure to think in terms of not only “real world” competition, but also virtual SEO competition. There are many tools and techniques you can employ to determine the competitive landscape as outlined above. Find one you like and put it to good use.

Getting this right will be the difference between wasting time chasing keywords you cannot own and getting yourself established correctly from the start. If you’ve  already spent a great deal of time on keyword research and on-page optimization, yet you continue to see minimal progress in your rankings, take a step back to analyze whether you are simply trying to compete in a no-win situation. Adjust accordingly, and you’ll be off to the races!

Entrepreneurs: Top 5 Sites to Market Yourself

Posted on by
10

With marketing having fundamentally changed over the past several years, it is becoming increasingly important to have an online presence. And this is a great thing for those of us who aspire to operate as solo entrepreneurs or very small companies. Now, your voice can be heard loudly and clearly by more people than ever before. It has become so much easier and cheaper to get in front of new customers and prospects that a physical store is now an option, rather than a must.

As a result, if you are not taking part in the following communities, it’s officially time to start thinking about it. Your upside depends on it.

NOTE: to get a better view of  the below screenshots, you can click them to see a full-screen version of each image.

Twitter

Twitter

1. Twitter - I must admit it; I’ve become a verified Twitter addict (as if you couldn’t tell by my weekly Twitter digest on here). After having been part of various social media services over the past 10+ years, I really didn’t get the power of Twitter on first glance. But boy do I now. If you can’t afford or won’t pay for PR, then you absolutely need to get on Twitter and start engaging with folks. All it takes is your time and effort.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn

2. LinkedIn – This is the premier business-to-business networking site, and it’s not just an online resume like some have accused it of being. Don’t just set up a profile on there and forget it. Connect with other professionals in your field and your locale. Join some groups and contribute to the overall discussion of the groups. [This is also a great place to promote your own blog or news.] Spend a little time answering questions when you can. You can even connect your LinkedIn account to several applications and social media sites/profiles now.  I have personally made important business and personal contacts on LinkedIn, so consider me a believer in their model.

Yelp

Yelp

3. Yelp – Holding true to the idea of word-of-mouth, this site lists local businesses and allows patrons to submit ratings and reviews of the businesses. This is particularly useful for retail, restaurant, or other similar standalone operations. Yelp is a great way to reach tourists who are visiting your city, but just be sure you are good enough to garner positive ratings on the site. The risk is that poor ratings are available to everyone as well. Go test it out as a user first to see how your competitors show up [ and to see if you've made it in there in spite of yourself]. Look for your favorite restaurant as another example. If you see it will offer value for what you do, get on it stat.

PitchEngine

PitchEngine

4. PitchEngine – A trusted colleague of mine turned me on to PitchEngine over a year ago, and I’m a bonafide fan of their model. The offer a “social media press release” service for free, which is syndicated to Google via an RSS feed after the releases go live. You can also embed images and multimedia files in the releases. I’ve used the service multiple times for various employers and clients, and have gotten better coverage than with paid releases!! But of course there is one catch: PitchEngine will only archive releases for 30 days on the free plan. You can pay a monthly fee to have them store indefinitely. Just do what you can afford and what is right for your business, and you can save hundreds of dollars vs. using a PR service. [Update as of December 2011 - Pitchengine has removed the expiration on free releases per their founder, Jason Kintzlervia Twitter: "Was just sharing your post that included PitchEngine (from January) Wanted to let you know, we've updated and pitches no longer expire! ;) "]

YouTube

YouTube

5. YouTube – Video isn’t just for media and television companies any more; everyone is doing it now. There are so many benefits to using multimedia like video to market yourself, from SEO to backlinks from YouTube to engaging a more visually-cognitive audience. Be sure you tag all videos with keywords you want to rank high in when posting to YouTube. I also recommend you post another copy of the same video on your web server, embedded into the home page or another location on your website. That way, you get the SEO benefit from backlinking from YouTube and you also get a shot at ranking highly on your own right. Video is most certainly on my to-do list for new features to add on Return On Now, and it really should be for your business as well.

What other social media services do you see as must-haves for small businesses and entrepreneurs? Catch me up on any great ones that I’m missing here!