Importance of Local SEO

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Dara Derion
images

Optimizing your website for improved search engine rankings – for a long time – was considered an effort that large businesses made to improve their national online standing. To be sure, SEO efforts do help websites create and maintain a national presence (in as much as SERP rankings are not location biased). However, local SEO has significantly grown in importance and it’s not difficult to see why; it was only a matter of time. The Internet – which has connected us to the world and given us access to all the information we could ever want or need – has grown substantially. This continued growth of information has taxed local websites with finding their way to the forefront so they can reach their intended audience.

As a result, local SEO has gotten increased attention as of late, as local – and even national companies – are called upon to up their efforts to gain more local traction. Don’t underestimate the power of strong local SEO. Here are some tips for staying locally viable amidst a deluge of online information:

*Check out Google’s new Data Highlighter for Local Businesses which allows you to enter your information. This is a new tool that promises to expand in the coming months so keep your eyes on it.

*Include local keyword phrases in your on-page content. This is crucial for effective local SEO as it allows visitors to find you most effectively and makes it clear to the search engines where you are and what you offer.

*Embed a map to your location on your site through the use of Google Maps.

*Don’t forget mobile – make sure your site is optimized for mobile devices. Statistics clearly show that most people now perform searches on the go – making mobile devices today’s leading component of effective SEO.

*Hire the professionals. The most effective way to gain national and local SERP ranking is by hiring professionals to manage your campaign – from keyword and content creation to design and on-page optimization, SEO specialists can offer you the most bang for your buck.

Posted in Google, Online Marketing, Organic SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Search Optimization, SEO, SEO Services | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Changes on the Horizon

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Dara Derion

SEO-tips1

We always tell our clients that SEO is a living organism. In other words, you shouldn’t expect to adopt one program – or piece of a program – for SEO purposes and let it ride. You know that things will change and adjustments will be made in keeping with the changing algorithms of the search engines. Of course, if you’ve hired a company to manage your SEO, then you’re afforded the luxury of letting these professionals keep abreast of changes in the search engines and steering the course of your SEO accordingly. That is, ultimately, one of the best reasons for hiring professional SEO services. Most of us wouldn’t manage (at least properly) our financial portfolios on our own; it makes no sense to try to manage our SEO portfolios on our own as well. It should be up to the professionals to stay in tune with recent changes and to help keep your business at the top of its online game.

And here are some such recent changes – recently announced by Google and sure to have a significant impact on SEO programs:

*Update of Penguin. This is big in SEO. Penguin, which was launched in the spring of last year, is an algorithm of Google that specifically targets those websites that violate the Webmaster Guidelines of Google – including keyword stuffing, duplicate content and more. Penguin 2.0 was launched at the end of last month and promises to be more efficient at weeding out those websites that have instituted less than above board SEO practices.

*Stricter advertorial guidelines. In Google’s ongoing quest to reduce spam, there are plans for more advanced advertorial guidelines – along with stricter penalties for violations. These “native” ads – which include sponsored stories or advertorial content – can often be confused for organic content by web users and are not in line with Google’s best practices.

These are just a few of the things currently taking place in the world of search engine optimization. And, of course, things change on a daily basis. Ultimately, the most important thing is to create a terrific website that people will want to visit and return to again and again. By remaining consistent on this, you give the SEO experts the tools they need to easily promote your site successfully.

Posted in Organic SEO, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, Search Optimization, SEO, SEO Services | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Website Design & Optimization: Straddling Form and Function

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Dara Derion

webdesign-agency

Website design. It’s the buzz phrase that we volley back and forth in the world of online marketing. But what does it really mean? Sure – if we’re launching a website – we want the design to be in keeping with our overall business model to promote brand continuity. And, of course, we want the website to look good; to appeal to our target audience. But when it comes to creating a fully optimized website, there is much more to consider than just whether or not the site has aesthetic value. Ultimately, in order to operate successfully – as we tell our clients – a website must straddle form and function; in other words, speak to its audience with regard to style and functionality while simultaneously considering the requirements of the search engines.

Striking this delicate balance means building a site with on-page SEO optimization that is inherent in the design. Here are some important things to keep in mind:

*Looking good may not necessarily do you good. Some design choices – while done with the best intentions – may actually work against your SEO efforts. Keep the design simple and clean – both to ease the user experience and also to allow search engines spider to easily crawl your site.

*Be mindful of images. An overall website design can benefit from the use of images but, if not placed correctly, their use can actually thwart the search engines. By using mouse-overs, you can include text with images that will be readable to the engines – without disrupting the user experience.

*Choose a font that can be read by the search engines. Graphical text looks attractive but it’s essentially invisible to the search engine spiders. Luckily there are many regular texts that will serve your purpose just as well without compromising your SEO advantage.

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Search Optimization, SEO, SEO Services, Web Design, Website Design | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Diversification in Your SEO Portfolio

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Dara Derion

The-Top-SEO-Tip-for-Local-Businesses-Diversify-139673_396x233

Ask any financial planner what best supports your investments and they are likely to say that you must diversify. Certainly a variety of avenues offer increased opportunities for success, while putting all your eggs in one basket is often just too big of a risk to take – a win it all or lose it all situation. Much the same argument can be made for SEO – and it’s an analogy I use often with ThinkBig’s clients. Diversifying your SEO tactics creates opportunities for success; and – make no mistake about it – each tactic is important to the overall campaign.

Link with gusto but link smartly. The quality of a solid linking campaign rests with its diversity. Look for new linking opportunities or look for a SEO marketing company that believes in strong linking in a variety of forums – not just one. Resting on your laurels can very quickly create stagnation in a SEO campaign and a drop in rank isn’t far behind. Expand your linking horizons; keeping it fresh maintains momentum.

Informative doesn’t have to be boring; interesting doesn’t have to be devoid of information. Speaking of keeping it fresh – think creatively when it comes to your content. If you have a passion for your business – and your industry – then it shouldn’t be too difficult to write with passion on a variety of topics. The goal is always to educate and engage readers; an investment in fostering long term brand loyalty.

Keywords can be the core of awkwardness. Pay close attention to that anchor text because stumbling phrasing can kill ranking – and completely annoy your audience. Awkward – or often repeated – phrasing disintegrates trust in the reader and looks like spam to the search engines.

Expand your thinking, expand your marketing. Remember that SEO is just a piece of an overall marketing campaign. Take some time and give some thought to who you want to reach this year and what you want to say. Is there a target audience you haven’t yet explored? How can you reach them? Is it time to consider – and perhaps re-craft – your overall message? When you’re effectively steering the ship of your marketing, sometimes it’s important to change direction…or justify your current course.

Posted in Organic SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Search Optimization, SEO, SEO Services | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Content Marketing Amidst a SEO Landscape

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Dara Derion

content-marketing1

Content marketing – the newest buzz phrase in the industry – has gotten quite a lot of attention lately. In theory, content marketing uses the art of communication – with existing and potential customers – to gain new business. In practice, businesses make the commitment to provide their target audience with another service – in this case, ongoing information – to establish a relationship and foster brand loyalty. Quality content material, how-to information, frequently asked questions/answers, video, and consistently updated news all fall under the umbrella of content marketing and it has been enormously successful for promotional purposes.

The use of content marketing obviously offers an advantage to businesses because it encourages an ongoing dialogue with consumers and allows a business to establish itself as a reputable source of information. Further, content marketing fits beautifully with a well-developed SEO program because now – in the spirit of its ever-changing algorithms – Google has put increased weight on quality content in all its forms.

At Thinkbigsites.com, we’ve always kept an eye on the bigger picture. We approach our clients’ online marketing as an entire campaign that encompasses everything from linking and pay-per-click to web design, organic SEO, and social media. One of the things that we pride ourselves on is our commitment to quality content. Through comprehensive online marketing, a business not only extends a bridge to Google but also reaches out to consumers; so it stands to reason that any successful marketing program serve both efforts equally.

There are some who may reason that content marketing is separate from search engine optimization. We say no. Rather, it has been our experience that, strong content is a significant part of a successful integrated SEO campaign. And it’s this integrated campaign that we will continue to recommend to our clients to raise their online visibility and grow their businesses.

 

Posted in Online Marketing, SEO | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Put Some Polish on Your Site

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Dara Derion

Just like many of us take to spring cleaning our homes this time of year, it’s also a great time to pay some attention to our websites. We always tell our clients that stagnation is the kiss of death for a website. Things have to keep moving in order to stay on the radar of the search engines; and a website needs to retain a bit of a buzz to keep visitors interested and returning. It’s part of our job to put solid SEO systems in place, but our job doesn’t end there. We continue to work those systems on a daily basis and make adjustments that are in line with current Google algorithms in order to maintain a successful website that fosters solid web traffic.

So in the name of spring cleaning, here are some things you can do to keep the shine on your website and do right by your SEO:

*Pay attention to social media – it matters. Last year’s Facebook is this year’s Pinterest. In other words, stay connected to what’s happening in the world of social connectivity. If you’re using it your personal life, you should be using it in your professional life. Manage your presence on Twitter, create and manage a Facebook page if you’re not already doing so, create a Pinterest profile, and link to your pages from your website. It keeps you interesting, it keeps you on the map, and it allows you to keep a conversation going with your customers.

*Clean up broken links. Just like you perform maintenance on your vehicles, so should you perform maintenance on your website. Make sure all pages are linking appropriately; 404 errors can do damage to a website’s traffic and search engine ranking.

*Refresh content. For a website to stay fresh and relevant, it must include fresh content. Updating content on a regular basis goes a long way towards keeping your website in the forefront of your customers’ minds and it’s a big part of elevating your overall web design.

This is far from a comprehensive list but it’s certainly a start in spring cleaning your website. Most important is remembering that your site is a living breathing entity that must be managed accordingly so it can thrive successfully.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Google, Increase Website Traffic, More Website Traffic, Search Engine Optimization, Search Optimization, SEO, SEO Services, Social Media, Twitter, Web Design, Web Traffic, Website Design, Website Traffic | Leave a comment

It’s All About the Neighborhood

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Dara Derion

You can find the home of your dreams – complete with everything you have ever wanted and envisioned. It can, by some miracle, be in your price range. But if it doesn’t have the right community surrounding it, typically all bets are off. The same can be said for a website. It can look great – it can have everything you ever wanted in terms of promoting your business. But if the community that surrounds it – in this case, your visitors – is weak, then you’re in danger of collapse no matter how stellar your SEO efforts.

SEO is meant to increase the visibility of a website. A higher visibility attracts a larger audience. However, keeping that audience interested and participating is the most important follow-up step to SEO. How do companies achieve this successfully? By managing a user-friendly, visually engaging website where solid content (i.e. information) drives the bus.

We already know that more website traffic means an increased online presence with respect to the search engines; but what else does solid community support provide to a business in the process of their growth?

*Credibility. It’s a challenge to discern between all the messages bandied about online. Successfully gathering information means finding the most credible websites. Those sites with a strong following certainly stand out from the crowd as a solid resource.

*Perseverance. Successful SEO rides the wave of the ever-changing Google algorithms. As a result, there is a fair amount of change that websites must embrace as a rule. Strong community support – return visitors who are loyal to the site – can see a business through transitions and offer stability in an ever-changing environment.

*Definition. When you have your mind on your customers – in this case, visitors to your site – you must stand strong in your message. What does your business stand for? What are your priorities? What are your quality standards? When you have a community that depends on you, there is a reputation to uphold. This keeps websites honest in serving both their SEO efforts and the needs of their customers.

Posted in Increase Web Traffic, Increase Website Traffic, More Website Traffic, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Services | Leave a comment

Google’s Douglas Adams Doodle

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Marc Arner

I love it!  I am not just writing that because I am a geek who loves the Douglas Adams books, self admittedly I am exactly that person. What I love about the doodle is the ingenuity that went in to it, and the inside jokes that only someone who is a fan would understand. Here we have Google, one of the largest and best-known companies in history, and they choose to honor an author who wrote how human beings are only the third most intelligent species on the planet. The dolphins have us beat in that regard.

My point is, Google deserves credit for regularly turning www.google.com into a tribute to historical and artistic personalities.  It would be very easy for the search leader to use that prime ad space to promote their own agenda and products (which they do on occasion, but that is kept to a minimum), but they instead choose to have some fun with it, providing a source of amusement time and time again.

This is a great move on Google’s part. It garners so much good faith and respect from so many people, and shows that even a gigantic corporation can still have some fun with social media. Oh, and if you are confused by today’s doodle, in Jeopardy fashion, to the answer “42” I will provide the important question, “What is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything?”

Posted in Google, Online Marketing, Social Media | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Site Speed Is Important

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Marc Arner

Every time I have a review call with my SEO clients, we of course talk about the SERPs and the strategy behind achieving the ranking results that we get. We talk about the off-page work we do, the on-page optimization, and the other elements that comprise the campaign. But one thing we probably do not talk about often enough is site speed.

We all know as far as web traffic goes, Yahoo and Bing are certainly factors, but the game is being played in Google. The big traffic numbers are in Google, so that is where most SEO companies focus their work. But Google doesn’t like SEO much, or rather maybe it’s not a matter of liking or disliking SEO, they just don’t make it easy for us to do what we do. Google does not give us any real tools to work with, so much of the time we end up having to use third-party API tools that Google frowns upon. The good news in regards to site speed is Google has a great set of tools that are publicly available to us. These tools, called PageSpeed, are designed to provide us with not only a measurement of how fast or slow a site is, but also what are the areas this can be improved.

PageSpeed: Make your web site faster

When you go to PageSpeed, you enter a website URL, and you are provided with a score, from 1-100. The thing to know is this score is not necessarily a measure of how fast a website is, it is a measurement of how much room for improvement there is. In addition to the score, PageSpeed provides metrics and valuable information on ways a site owner can improve how fast the site loads.  PageSpeed even categorizes the importance of the recommendations by High Priority, Medium Priority, Low Priority, etc. PageSpeed also provides you with some experimental tweaks that may help, and it also shows you the areas that are already optimized.  For each prioritized result, PageSpeed also gives detail on why this is important and how it can be improved.

PageSpeed Insights

We all know how fast a site loads directly affects a website’s rankings. How do we know this? Because Google tells us. If two websites are selling hammers, and all things being equal, but one page loads faster than the other, the faster loading page will most likely rank higher.  And don’t you want to be the site that ranks higher?

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Services, Website Optimization | Leave a comment

Facebook Graph Search: Should You Even Care?

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Marc Arner
Facebook Graph Search

Facebook Graph Search

You all know that we here at ThinkBIGsites.com are organic SEO and pay-per-click experts, but we are also wizards with social media marketing.

Recently, Facebook announced the release of their long-planned Graph Search feature.  In many ways, this is a groundbreaking new service, but in other ways, it’s nothing we couldn’t already do.  So should you even care about it? The answer is “Yes” for several reasons.

One of the very first things you need to know: Lock down your Facebook profile!  You will be amazed what can come up, things you thought were set to private may not actually be so. This is a great time to go through and make sure you are only publicly showing what you want.

So what else do you need to know about Graph Search?  It is a great way to explore publicly available information on Facebook.  You can do a search on people with the same music tastes, or other interests, you can see what cities your friends have been to, or find photos taken in a specific time period.  Those of course are just a few of the things you can do, and as Graph Search moves out of beta and into a full release there are bound to be so many more ways it can be used.

Of course as social media experts looking for ways to increase web traffic, we are always thinking of ways to find the next big thing.  Could this be it?  Maybe. As I mentioned before, it does provide a lot of truly fun and innovative ways to explore what we make available online, so we all need to just make sure those keg party photos are deleted or locked down!

Posted in Online Marketing, Organic SEO, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, Search Optimization, SEO, SEO Services, Social Media, Uncategorized | Leave a comment