Blog - SEO

Search and social media technologies have evolved vastly in the last few years by modifying and building tools to make digital media landscape more accurate, useful and interactive. 

SEO isn’t a purely a technical concept. At its core, SEO revolves around marketing. As technology changed and evolved, SEO became more content centric. SEO gives brands with good content, especially smaller operations, the ability to put themselves in a winning position. SEO boils down to technology and human behavior. Content marketing and content management systems play a large part in this relationship. 

The Shift
In the past, content marketing and SEO departments generally have been separate disciplines. Originally, CMS systems weren’t designed with SEO as we know it in mind. SEO was a totally different game. Mastering SEO would help brands trick their way to the top of search engines. Uploading thin content just to have something on your website, forgetting about design and focusing on rankings are ways of the pasts. 

As Google has shifted to focus on quality, relevance and content, it's essential that brands bridge this gap and time lag between authoring and optimizing content. Published content that isn't search engine friendly with errors that can be easily penalized by Google. To make the most of this content marketing opportunity and it's important to optimize content as you write it.

Integrating your content and SEO process provides you with learning, scale, and efficiency across content and SEO teams. Users can create and optimize in sync without having to switch from SEO tools to CMS systems. 

The result is great content that is SEO friendly that allows you to maximize results from search (search rankings, traffic, conversions, and revenue).
As an organization you can coordinate content creation across SEO and editorial teams to ensure the content turns is optimized, of high quality and produced efficiently. Any content changes can also go live sooner and impact results faster.

The Relationship Between CMS and Content Creation
Having a content management system empowers people within your organization to actively contribute relevant content to your website. What type of content am I talking about? This content could be blogs, news, adding to your growing portfolio as you complete new projects or adapting your descriptive information to reflect your evolving business. Your business is alive and changing. Search engines reward websites that regularly contribute quality content because they expect for your site to be an extension of your living business. 

SEO as You Go
Before you start adding content to your site, make a strategy. What do you want to accomplish with your site? What does your target audience search for online? Those are the kinds of topics you want to address within your site. Here’s some SEO best practices to apply to your content as you write:

• Create a simple directory. Avoid having subdirectories and using directory names that have no relation to the content in them. 
• Improve your URL structure. URLs that are simple to understand and easy to remember will help people reach your content. Use real words in URLs. 
• Use brief, but descriptive titles. If it’s too long, search engines will only show a portion of it in the search result. 
• Accurately describe page content. Titles that don’t specifically describe what they’re about could get lost in search. Often, inferences won’t cut it, even if they’re cute or funny. Be as direct as possible. 
• Customize your post by being as unique as possible in content descriptions. Also, mention any sub-topics in the content. 
• Offer exclusive content. When you’re writing something, find your unique perspective and insight. Ask yourself, what can I offer that will set this apart from anything else online?
• Write content that’s easy to read. You’re not writing a scientific study. Make sure what you’re writing isn’t boring. Don’t fill sentences with unnecessary or difficult to understand words and ideas. 
• Organization is key. Don’t write a long block of content. Break things up with subheads and bullet points. 
• Create content directed at the user, not the search engine. Your content should be easily accessible to search engines, but should accommodate the visitor’s needs as well. 

Concluding Thoughts
Empowering content writers with SEO capabilities allows your business to scale the impact of your SEO team. Technology and CMS integration enables your content team to make optimizations that drive traffic and conversions. SEO professionals can also analyze error distribution, identify common SEO errors and the source of these errors, and take corrective action.

So, you’ve got the same product, similar pricing and offers as your competitors? Business is all about competition. With an effective call to action, your website should attract potential clients and encourage them to buy. You’re looking for any and every advantage over rival businesses. In this blog, I’ll give you a few ways to differentiate your website from your competition.

Google Analytics can provide you a lot insight into your website (traffic, conversions, etc.), but it will also compare your results to your industry average. This insightful tool will give you an idea of how well you’re doing digitally when compared to others in your industry.

If you’re in a highly competitive industry, you’ve got to have a website that sets you apart from your competitors. Give your customers a digital value they can’t resist.

SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is necessary for your website to compete. Several factors impact how your high your website appears in search results and if your competition appears first. Concentrate on content creation. Regularly posting fresh content makes your site more appealing to search engines and their automated indexing programs. Also, new content is an incentive for visitors to return to your site after the first visit. Pay attention to the keywords you’re using in your site’s content because it factors in. Focus on the search queries that yield the highest total traffic. To determine the most effective keywords, Google Analytics or Google's Webmaster Tools program provides traffic data for different search queries. Effective SEO strategies are constantly changing. It’s crucial to monitor the trends, SEO news and your site’s effectiveness. You may be due for an overall site update to stay competitive.

Design
Your website’s design should complement your content. A site’s design should be attractive without being distracting. A clean design, with lots of white space, no dense copy and clear offers will translate well to your unique visitors. Avoid huge blocks of content. A homepage isn’t the place to provide the essay about your company. The homepage is merely the gateway. The important information and deals should be differentiated and jump out to the visitor. The site design should facilitate the buying process in the best way possible.

Easy Communication
Don’t make your customer jump through a lot of hoops to know more about your company and to connect with you. Make communication as easy as possible. Some sites require a visitor’s email address before viewing key information about a product or service. The casual customer, who is shopping around, could be driven away by this action. Too much personal information too soon causes customers to be sensitive. Include a contact us page on your website with an in-browser contact form. Eliminate the need for your customer to go through another step by having to open their own email to connect with you.

Strong Central Message
Successful websites aren’t cluttered, employ a clear call to action and have a strong central message. Give a direct, concise summary of what you’re about, what you offer and why you’re the best choice over your competition. Assume they know nothing about you and what you do. Give them all the information necessary information to choose to do business with you. Also, clearly state the next step in the purchasing process. If they can buy, sign-up for services or get a quote through the site, make it very clear and obvious. You will want to direct customers to the next step at every possible avenue on the site.

Search engines are the biggest driver of web traffic to individual sites. Optimizing your websites and blogs to land higher in search results opens your brand up to more unique visitors. WebRevelation offers strategic SEO marketing services for small and medium businesses and here’s three reasons why local search engine optimization is crucial to digital marketing.

About one million Google Places pages are claimed per month.

Competition is stiff. Your business is a needle in a haystack. Google’s not just going to automatically list your site first in searches because your website exists. When you’re a small to medium business you’re not usually going to generate as much regular interest as a large corporation. Strategic SEO is basically anticipating where your customers are going to be on the internet and trying to pick them up.

Increasing web traffic generates leads and could boost sales.

SEO is like a good pick-up line. It positions your brand positively in front potential customers. Interesting web content has to exist to support that initial attraction when someone lands on your site from a search engine, but people can’t buy if they don’t know you exist. In the past, a business owner might pay for a billboard, newspaper or TV ad to expose a brand to new consumers. Investing in SEO is more affordable, targeted and can be deployed locally, nationally or even worldwide. Unlike a traditional ad, you’re not regularly paying for an ad and people are able to instantly interact with your company.

Using strategic SEO targets unique website visitors.

When people search for topics related to your brand, will your website appear? Every business owner must ask themselves this question when evaluating your website’s success... How effectively is your site is reaching potential customers? We specialize in making sure your website is organically optimized to land in front of the right new eyes when people search for topics related to your brand. Well-placed local rankings get more eyeballs.

In this ever-changing world of social media, it's important to keep up with what the "cool kids" are doing online. Or are the "cool kids" spelling that with a "k," now, as in "Kool Kids?"  I don't think we're supposed to call them "groovy" anymore, but I have noticed a resurgence in the term "hipsters," thanks to the occupy-everything movements. 

Well, whatever you want to call them, it's a good idea to keep up with the techniques that work.  Back in the good ol' days (circa 2009-2010), it was considered rude or in bad form online to simply use a social networking profile as another one-way broadcast medium.  Only huge corporations with established name recognition like Coca-Cola or people who were just impossibly cool like Hollywood stars could get away with having gazillions of followers or friends and not really following anyone back. 

However, as people tried to gain name recognition by "mutually following" everyone on the web, they found that their networks became full of people who were doing the exact same thing, and no one was really getting a lot of benefit out of it anymore.

Mashable started a good discussion on this over the weekend, specific to Twitter, but the concept also applies to Facebook or Google Plus or Pinterest, or whatever industry-specific social network you might be using.  It's important to remember what the PURPOSE of your social network is.

So what is the purpose of your social network?  Is it to drive traffic and links back to your blog? Is it to target your prospective customers, and give them a convenient way to communicate with you?  Is it to actually develop a meaningful relationship with old friends from school? Is it to build your online reputation so a Google search for your name returns positive results in your current job search?

As you can imagine, the people you will want to include in your network will be different depending on your primary reason for social networking.  If your only goal is blog traffic and links, then probably the old method of gaining as many followers as possible will work for you.  If you are trying to build direct communication with your potential customer or client base, you might want to limit your "mutual" following to people in that demographic.  If you're social network exists for personal reasons, you might want to increase your privacy settings, and network only with people you know personally.  If you're wanting your online profile to look great in a job search, you'll need to maintain a public profile, and be very careful about what photos and comments you let those old friends from high school tag you in  ;-) 

I've been exploring a service this week called Scoop.it, which is an online magazine curator - with both free and premium versions (see pricing and features HERE).  For an individual or very small business, the free version is fine to start with.

Above is a sample of what a magazine by Kathleen Poulous, called "Content Blogging" looks like. 

This service is wonderful for those who like to share large volumes of links with their followers or friends on a daily basis.  Instead of a dozen separate links to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc., this service allows users to "curate" links from anywhere on the web or within the Scoop.it community into a very neat, professional-looking magazine.

To begin using the service, you simply join the community and follow the easy instructions to start a topic (with a unique title).  There is an optional widget download, or you can simply add links manually.  The system will pull photos from the link and allow you to choose one - similar to the way links are shared on Facebook.  If you want to include a post (microblog) directly in your magazine without a URL, you can do that, too, and even include your own photos on any of your posts if you like. 

Once your topic has some posts, you can share those individually on your blog or social networks, or share the whole magazine.  Your followers can subscribe to your feed and receive your updates in their news readers or by e-mail.  You can also be sent summaries of the items in your magazine that you can use to forward to an e-mail list if you like. 

This is one of the things on the web that really and truly is "easy and fun," so go ahead and give it a try.  You know you want to. 

After reading 10 Things All Entrepeneurs Fail At by TechCrunch's James Alutcher (and resisting the English teacher inside of me wanting to correct the grammar mistakes in the title), I thought of a couple of mistakes I've made and seen others make when putting their new business venture on the web in the form of a website and/or a social networking profile.

The first is underestimating the importance of an online presence.  I went through my local coffee shop's drive-thru earlier this week, and while I was waiting in line, I decided to look them up online.  I was stunned to see that they really have no online presence.  They're in a few directories developed by other people, but they don't have a website or any sort or any social networking profiles that I could find.  Needless to say, I'm working on a proposal (I wonder if they would let me do the job for free mocha frapps...hmm).  But I digress.

One of the first things people do now when they discover a new business, or when they're checking out a new business, is LOOK THEM UP ONLINE.  If they're a local business, people expect to be able to see the hours of operation and a map to nearby locations.  People are also hoping to look at a menu of the products, and maybe even a discount.  In many cases they'll be using their mobile devices to do this.  Any business that hasn't taken charge of its own online reputation by having at least their basic contact information listed online in an easy-to-find and use format is missing the boat. 

The other mistake we all tend to make when we're starting a new business, and caught up in the excitement of seeing our first website (and showing all of our friends), is that we might overestimate how much business we're going to get from that website.  Somehow we tend to imagine that there are millions of people just sitting out there with a void in the shape of whatever we're selling that are going to be so happy that we finally opened for business and put up a web page or a Facebook profile.  Maybe that will happen, but just in case it doesn't (ahem), it's important to remain realistic about the purpose of our website and the goal of our online efforts. 

Sure, if you really study and implement good search engine optimization and you have a business that is geared toward online commerce, you may see a lot of profit just from the online traffic you generate.  For most local businesses, however, the website and/or social networking profile is the new yellow pages ad: You must have one so that people will know you're legit, but the traffic you're going to get solely from there will be a small percentage of your overall profits. 

Have a great weekend, everyone!