Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Feel the love, speed and SEO all swirled together.

November 7, 2017 Carolyn Griswold

Hocus pocus, give me focus, make my website fast, loved and popular. Feel the love, speed and SEO all swirled together. Are you looking for the magic SEO potion? Ta Da! Here you go.

First, find love.

Find out what people love about you, about your product and about your business. Find out how they’re looking for love. Where are they looking? Are they looking on Google, Linkedin, Facebook. Do they even know they’re looking? How do you find out?

Use Data. Find the key to love with Analytics. It can tell you what your clients or prospects are looking for and how they’re looking for it.
Anecdotal Evidence. Ask your clients. Something as simple as “How did you find me?” “What made you decide to call me?”
Be bold. Ask for some love. Ask for online reviews on Google, Yelp, LinkedIn, or for a testimonials on your website. Ask people to Like your page, subscribe to your YouTube Channel, sign-up for your email newsletter, or meet for drinks. There are so many ways to ask for love. Find the best ways for you and ask!
Respond. Listen to your clients. Answer their questions. People love that.

Then swirl some love on your website content. Make sure your website content loves your clients – make sure it answers their questions. Make sure it presents your product or service so beautifully it’s impossible not to love (buy) it! Make sure it presents material that your analytics indicate will bring results.

Spread the love. Social media makes it easy. Share on the social media outlets that work best for you. Share your blog posts, events, product news, business news, even jokes, inspirations, photos and anecdotes.

Second, find speed.

No one wants to wait. Waiting frustrates people. It’s not loving. Make your website fast. Google loves speed. Give Google some love. They’ll love you back. Your page speed is known to be one of the factors (among many) in your search engine rank. So make your website zippy.

To find out fast your website is check out the links in the post The Need for Speed. How to check your website to see if it needs a speed tune-up.

Here are some of the most common recommendations you’ll find when you run a speed test:

Optimize images. The first thing to do is make sure your images aren’t size larger than they appear on screen. That’s just wasting bandwidth. Please. Don’t upload a 4000 px x 4000 px image to your website, if the size is going to be viewed is 400 px x 400 px. But that’s just the start of image optimization. Check out this Image Optimization article to find out just how complicated it can get.Fortunately, there are plug-ins for WordPress users that will help you optimize the images on your website. Two of the most popular are:
1. WP Smush
2. Ewww Optimizer
Eliminate or reduce CSS and Javascript rendering above the fold.Fixing the above the fold recommendation can get complicated too, as sometimes, depending on the theme, relocating scripts can break the website. There is a plug-in for it that’s worth trying. (I hope to test it on soon and will review it for you then). The plug-in is Optimizing Above the Fold. Beware, the plug-in is intended for pros and is not something you can install and it will automagically fix things for you.
Minify Javascript and CSS – Optimizing Above the Fold can handle this for you too, but Autoptimize is a simpler plug-in that might be easier to use for most users. As always with plug-ins make sure you back up your database prior to installing and running, so if something doesn’t work right, (ie. it breaks your website) you can restore to a functioning version without too much trouble.
Enable caching. W3Total cache is one popular plug-in used in WordPress sites to configure caching. Be careful with it though, the wrong settings will break your website. (BACKUP prior to use). Some hosts offer their own caching systems and disallow W3 Total Cache. WPengine is one that we use that has their own object caching process.
You could also consider a CDN. Basically a Content Delivery System that helps serve and cache your site’s static, cacheable content from multiple worldwide server locations.
Server speed is slow. Check with your web hosting provider to see if they can help you with this. You might also check your DNS settings to ensure they aren’t slowing things down.

Sometimes it’s the WordPress theme itself that is slowing things down. If that’s the case, you might be able to speed it up using some of the tools above, but if given the chance it’s best to start with a fast theme. I found a list of 20 fast themes at https://colorlib.com/wp/fast-loading-wordpress-themes/. I haven’t had a chance to install and test their speed yet, but may test out a few for review in a later post.

Let the SEO Magic begin.

Swirl some love on your website by ensuring that it provides a good user experience with interesting, valuable content and make it load fast. That’s when you’ll begin to see some SEO magic happen.

Do-It-Yourself Updates for Your Local Internet Listings

October 31, 2016 Beth Devine

Your Google business listing doesn’t have a “forward to” address or a “301 redirect” to help you with changes. If you’re planning a move for your small business, or you’ve made some other change to your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number), it’s important to make the changes in not only Google, but all your local listings.

In the last post we went over the top citation services, the companies that do this for you. Here we’ll cover how to manually update your business listings and check for inconsistencies in your NAP that could harm your search results.

Where To Get Listed

Doing it yourself means you need to know where to get your business listed. Here’s a handy link to a compilation of the top 100 local listings for your business. Doing it yourself takes some serious time investment, and it involves checking all the listings so they are accurate and compatible.

Why is it so important to get listed and keep your listings accurate? The more online directories your business appears in with consistent information, the more likely Google will display your business in search results. Incompatible and inaccurate data could result in your business not showing up in a Google search.

Doing it yourself means you not only need to know where to get your business listed, but you need to maintain accuracy. This includes minimizing any possible duplicate listings as well as any inconsistencies in the data from one listing to another.

First Thing On Your To-Do List

Get started with your local listings by making sure you update your Google business listing. Because most people are searching for local businesses online and Google is the most popular search engine, you want your Google business listing to be accurate. So where to begin?

Go to Google My Business and make sure all your information is correct. Verify your business location so results will appear in Google Maps. Learn how to make edits so your hours and holidays are up to date. You can do all this for free from this one site. Next, check to see how your business shows up on Google search by going to gybo.com.

Google won’t trust your Google My Business listing unless it can verify the information with other sources. Even if the information you’ve entered into Google My Business is accurate, Google might not show your business in its search results if there’s conflicting data from other online sources. Making sure Google has consistent data as it crawls the internet includes avoiding even small typos. For example, spelling, abbreviations, and apostrophe use must all be exactly the same

Top Four Local Search Aggregators

There’s a difference between local search aggregators and citation services. Local search aggregators are like an hourglass for collecting your business data. They accumulate and analyze all the information from many sources and then redistribute it to local directories and other places.

These aggregators get their data about businesses from many different sources, including registration records, chamber of commerce rosters, phone bills. Citation building services use the aggregators to create their directories, but not all citation services use all four aggregators.

The top four biggies to pay attention to are Express Update, Acxiom, Neustar/LocalEze, Factual. Two others data aggregators to consider are Infogroup and InfoUSA. They will funnel your business information to local business directories to give you better and more accurate coverage.

A do-it-yourself method to updating your business’s local internet listings should start with these top aggregators since they feed the information to what’s known as the local search ecosystem. Check that your official address matches the US Postal Service database and use this exact form in all your listings. Follow these steps outlined by Moz for claiming your business as you contact each listing.

Doing all this manually involves an initial investment of time, but once your information is up and running (and it can take time for listings to go live), the maintenance is simple until you have changes that require updates.

Update Your Local Internet Listings With Citation Services

October 12, 2016 Beth Devine

citation edits — “Save yourself an extra call (1962)” by Eric Fischer, used under CC BY / Modified from original

If you’ve moved your small business to a different address, changed your contact information in some way, or you have a new second location, how do you go about updating all of your local online listings? And do you even know what directories your listings are in?

It’s important to track down all your local internet listings with the correct updates instead of creating new ones because duplicates are a big problem. They can lead to Google penalties in search results. Leaving incorrect listings due to a move or other change causes confusion for both the user as well as the search engines.

While it might seem like a simple matter—you just log into the existing accounts and re-verify every listing—the claiming process isn’t always straightforward and the data clean up is time consuming and requires thorough attention to avoid duplicates.

Citation editing, marketing jargon for updating your business listings, involves a comprehensive process that requires much more than a quick edit on Google. Google is a good place to start, but there are hundreds of apps and directories that direct users to the right destination and Google is watching them all.

Google constantly crawls the internet looking for updated information to provide in its search results. This means two things:

The more listings for your business, the better. The more information available to Google, the better your business will do in search results.
Erroneous information on listings can cause Google to update using this incorrect data. The more listings for your business, the greater potential for Google to find incorrect information, which it pulls from many sources across the internet.

By completing an accurate and complete digital footprint or NAP, Name, Address, and Phone number, you’re removing as many barriers to online discovery as possible.

There are many methods to updating your business citations. In this post we’ll go over the popular business citation services, and in the next post we’ll cover the top business listings you need to be on.

Yext

Called the godfather of citation building services, Yext boasts a PowerListings capability to make sure your listings have correct information with automatic updates across over thirty local listing sites. By entering information into your Yext account, including details such as special announcements or specials, you can change it whenever you want.

Pros: Fastest service available; increased accuracy when you need to update regularly.

Cons: Most expensive; limited to somewhere around 50 directories.

Cost: Ranging from $200-$999 a year.

BrightLocal

BrightLocal claims and submits directly to 1,600 sites. You select which sites and the number sites, with 70% guaranteed to go live in four weeks.

Pros: High accuracy with manual submissions; prioritize NAP fixes; duplicate removal.

Cons: Don’t currently submit to top data aggregators Factual and Localeze; don’t provide custom citation research.

Cost: Single Business – $29/month
Multi Business – $49/month
SEO Pro – SEO Pro – $79/month

Whitespark

Whitespark has two separate citation services:

Citation audit and cleanup removes duplicates, fix inconsistencies, make corrections, and claim the important listings you’re missing.
Citation building looks for relevant key listings and manually submits them.

Pros: Greater accuracy with manual submissions and cross-checking systems.

Cons: Cleanup service doesn’t provide verification of listings (although there are step-by-step instructions available); building citation service doesn’t remove duplicates but doesn’t create them.

Cost: Citation cleanup and audit $900 one-time fee includes top 30 sites. Citation Building $4 each for national directory listings and $5 each for local city level directories or industry-specific listings.

Moz Local

Moz helps you claim all the important listings, including the ones that require manual verification with Google Local. You get access to all the local data aggregators for fast updates.

Pros: Make updates at any time via one dashboard; great Q&A service.

Cons: Listings are slow to go live – can take up to three months; doesn’t create listings on all directories.

Cost: $84 a year.

UBL/AdviceLocal

Universal Business Listing is now working under Advice Local. Easy updates from one dashboard. They provide ongoing checks for consistency. Submit to top fifty directories as well as popular review sites, and will even do social media profile optimization.

Pros: Merger provides expanded local listings with full access and ownership.

Cons: Need to subscribe to higher-priced packages to get full-service offerings. Reviews indicate complaints about duplicate listings.

Cost: Packages beginning at $100 a year up to $250 a year plus $20 monthly fee.

Synup

Synup is a relatively new service that covers forty-six of the top directories. You can manually add and manage an additional 150 sites. All changes made from one dashboard.

Pros: Duplicate listings suppression and monitoring of reviews included.

Cons: Not 100% effective in identifying duplicates; can get pricey with multiple locations.

Cost: $30 a month per location.

Directory Bug

Directory Bug manually lists your business on a minimum of sixty sites without creating duplicate listings. Over 100 of the top local business directories scanned. A premium members option is available with better optimization for local SEO.

Pros: Creates report with these sites and any other existing listings found.

Cons: Requires a custom quote for updating and cleanup based on number of sites needing it.

Cost: $140 for citation audit and $169 for power listing service.

It’s not an easy choice to select a business listing service. Each one has limitations, so the decision depends on your unique business needs. None of the citation building sites are completely hands-free. Many of the big search engines require manual verification of listings. The tendency for duplicate or inconsistent listings depends on various factors, including which data suppliers used and the relationship the service has with the directories. In addition, in some cases when you stop paying for the service all of your listings may be dropped.

As a small business owner, business listing services can save you time and money. In return, you get your business out there in the local search ecosystem without spending the many hours needed for accurate, thorough results.

Why A Small Business Blog Is Important For Growth

September 30, 2016 Beth Devine

business blogging — “Blog Machine” by digitalrob70, used under CC BY / Modified from original

Information is being shared across a landscape of digital information that’s growing faster and faster. The internet population has grown by more than 60% in the last five years, with mobile phones outnumbering people on the planet. No wonder our mobile use now makes up 65% of our time over desktop.

Everyone is on their mobiles or computers, engaged in digital exchange. They’re communicating, reading, and searching on the internet for all their needs. It’s more important now than ever to meet your audience where they’re spending time and adopt a blogging strategy for your small business.

Here’s how you reach new and existing customers with a small business blog.

Increase Traffic To Your Site

Every blog post published is one more opportunity for someone to find your business and drive traffic to your site. People read blogs to discover helpful industry information. Search engines like Google read blogs to learn what your website is about, and then send the right response to users performing internet searches.

For example, every time you write a blog post about a specific process or service you provide, you’re giving people who’re looking for more information on that subject another way to find you and get answers to their questions. The more blog posts you write, the more opportunities you’re creating for people to discover your business. Write 100 blog posts and you have 100 more avenues of discovery.

Improve Your Search Engine Results

Your search engine results will reflect the amount of information you’re publishing on the internet. Your blog isn’t meant to be a static page like your About Us or Home page. It’s a brand new search result for search engines and people searching the internet for what you offer.

Blogging helps your business website get more traffic because every blog post you publish is a new URL. There are only so many product and service pages you can create, but the number of new URLs you can create with blog posts is endless. And every one of your posts will be read by both Google and people – people that didn’t realize your business sold the very product they’re looking for.

“Am I the only one who realizes you could hide a dead body or drugs on the second page of a google search and it would never be found?” This insightful bit of humor was first found on Twitter in 2011 and still holds true today, because who goes directly to Google’s second page search results?

Search engines are smart grading robots who take your written content and put it through algorithms. The more frequently you post and the better quality the content, the better grade your blog gets and the higher it will rank in search engine results.

Build Trust With Your Audience

When you’re shopping for a new household appliance, you’re more likely to buy from someone who’s spent time with you answering your questions and giving you unbiased advice. Someone with whom you’ve grown comfortable with, not someone whom you’ve never laid eyes on before.

Not only are people more likely to buy from someone they’ve spent time with, they’re also going to remember who gave away helpful information. Blogging is a way to communicate to your audience so they grow to know and trust you as a source of information.

Once you’ve established yourself as a credible resource, people will choose to buy from you over your competition, or they’ll consider working with you as a business partner rather than a business who isn’t making the effort to communicate and share valuable content.

Develop New Leads

Being a strong source of information is a conduit to being a source of value. You provide value up front for free when offer a continual source of educational, entertaining, and informative content.

The new opportunities created by blogging about valuable content are also opportunities to develop leads. For every blog post you publish, you’re creating a new call-to-action within the post. Again, 100 blog posts become 100 potential call-to-actions.

A call-to-action can be anything that asks your audience to do something else. It could be to click on a link for more help, your contact us page, a free ebook, a free quote, or another page, such as your product page, for more information.

Blogging brings you new leads because you’re writing about things you want to sell. You’re tailoring your audience to individuals who’re interested in your topics and who would feasibly purchase your product or service.

Thanks to your increased traffic due to the new ways (a.k.a. blog posts) to find you, and your improved search engine results from all the new URLs (a.k.a. blog posts), your opportunities for new leads grow.

Blogs continue to be a source of leads for years. Have you ever Googled something and got a response dating back to the 1990s? Those earliest articles or blogs are still chugging along, sending out digital data into the cybersphere, bringing in a new audience of potential customers.

It’s never too late to begin blogging for your small business. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the French novelist best known for writing The Little Prince, said, “The time for action is now. It’s never too late to do something.”

How to Get Found on the Internet: Nobody Cares What I had for Breakfast

February 24, 2016 Beth Devine

Whenever we approach the subject of blogging with our manufacturing clients we get the same push back…

Nobody cares what we had for breakfast, or
Our customers already know that

We’d like to address these two misconceptions.

First, a company blog has nothing to do with what one consumes for the first meal of the day. The concept of blogging is often confused with a teenager tweeting or posting their mundane life updates on Facebook. When in reality, blogging is simply a way to add content to your website. Blogs can be presented in various formats from a written piece to a video blog. All formats can be useful as long as the information presented is educational and written with the audiences needs in mind.

Second, as far as “our customer already knows this”, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they know you do it. We can say with almost 100% certainty that every manufacturing client we’ve worked with for the past 20+ years has told us at one time or another, “I can’t believe my customer didn’t know I did this”. The reason they didn’t know was that the one time they shared with the customer all their capabilities, the customer only had the one need, so they didn’t retain information about the other services/products. Blogging helps to keep all your capabilities in front of them at all times.

Blogging is essential for several reasons…

Your search engine optimization depends on frequent updates to your site. The most recent content gets ranked higher and therefore, sites that publish more frequently get better ranking.
Adding content to your site helps to ensure you can be found on a search. If you don’t have the right keyword terms on your site, how are people to find you when searching those terms?
A good blog helps to establish you/your company as experts in the field. People are more interested in having a conversation with someone who obviously knows what they’re doing.
Blogs can be used to help you to stay in front of your customers and prospects on a consistent basis (can be used to as content for an e-newsletter).

Many of our manufacturing clients are concerned with SEO (search engine optimization) as they want to be found on searches that apply to their business. These days SEO is all about content. Therefore, content creation is critical and blogging is the way to go.

Please contact us at 860-432-8756 for help with your content creation (aka blog).

Also from our Blog: 5 Reasons to Blog for Your Business: Blogging Resistance Beware

Latest Email SEO Scam On Mobile-Friendly Updates

April 21, 2015 Beth Devine

Why is it we’re more likely to question the credibility of unsolicited phone calls than we are to suspect emails? Unsolicited emails selling SEO services continue to run rampant, and now there is a new twist.

Google’s Mobile Friendly Update has brought with it a new spate of false email claims. The latest email SEO scam claims that your website isn’t mobile-friendly and will lose its ranking in search engines. The scam email might also include claims that your site isn’t “search engine friendly,” has an outdated design and layout, and a huge bounce back rate.

Of course, without their professional SEO services, your site is going to suffer numerous harmful search engine calamities, including losing potential clients. These self-proclaimed SEO experts say they have the instant fix to your SEO woes, and too many businesses fall prey to crooked or ignorant SEO marketing swindlers every day.

Stay informed and avoid getting taken advantage of with these tips.

Don’t Respond To Unsolicited Emails

If an email is unsolicited, there’s a 99.99% chance it’s not trustworthy, particularly if it is trying to sell you something and is using inaccurate information.

Google warns site owners to “be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.”

Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for “burn fat at night” diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

Read that again. If you’re worried about your website not being mobile friendly, this is definitely not your answer.

Look for Red Flags

If an unsolicited email claims that you are in need of their services due to something you are lacking, your first reaction should be to question their information. Where’s their reports to back up their claims? Do they have proof of what they say they’ve analyzed, such as your site’s low rankings, high bounce rate, and absent mobile-friendly design?

You can check with Google Webmaster Tools to see how your SEO is doing. Begin with their Mobile Usability Report. Raise any concerns you have with your web hosting company before making any decisions.

Check Their Reputation

Don’t rely on a few good reviews and satisfied clients. This doesn’t mean that they’re not scamming you or haven’t scammed anyone else in the recent past. Take the extra few steps of checking with sites like the Better Business Bureau, Rip Off Report, and your state’s attorney general.

You can also search using the title of the company followed by “review,” “complaints,” “spam,” or “scam.” Beware of search results that include pissedoffconsumer.com, rippoffreport.com, or complaintsboard.com.

Any publicly posted complaints are obviously a bad sign. Even if some reviews are from disgruntled consumers who are overzealous, consider that there are potentially a dozen unhappy customers for every one who took the time to write and complain.

Do Your Own Investigating

Before you decide to respond to an email – preferably one that isn’t unsolicited – do your homework and check out their references. You can dig even deeper by investigating their website, their social media sites, and the websites in their portfolio.

All the pieces of the puzzle should fit together to point to a reputable, trustworthy SEO service. They know what they’re doing, and it doesn’t take much for them to build a facade with all these different tools. They are counting on the fact that they know more than you, and that most interested parties won’t take the trouble to investigate beneath the surface layer.

As “Mobilegeddon” spreads its pervasive new algorithm across the world wide web, website owners and publishers will want to make sure their sites are mobile friendly. Don’t let the mobile-friendly scare tactic fool you. It’s just the latest in a series of fast-talking pitches that promise to fix your website of things that might not even need fixing.

Check to see if your site is mobile friendly by reading our latest post, Is Your Site Mobile Ready? Then check with your web hosting company to see what needs to be done to make sure your site is responsive to all screen sizes.

Is your site mobile ready? Do you care? Google does.

April 16, 2015 Beth Devine

Google’s view on what makes your site mobile-friendly is about to affect your search engine results. Bad search results can cause your site’s traffic to diminish. This “significant impact in our search results” begins April 21, when Google changes the ranking signal for mobile searches worldwide and in all languages.

In other words, if your site isn’t designed for “mobile-friendliness,” you’re going to see a drop in your rankings. If you don’t know what a mobile-friendly website should look like, or if you even have one, read on.

How to Know if Your Website Is Mobile Friendly

If you’re unsure whether or not your website has Responsive Web Design (RWD), there’s a simple way to check. RWD is a web design that allows for easy reading and navigation across a wide range of devices, including mobile phones.

To find out if your site gives viewers optimal viewing on phones, Google has released a handy Mobile Friendly Test. Just type in your site’s URL and Google will analyze it to ensure you’re ready for the upcoming algorithm change.

Another way to check your site for mobile-friendly design is to do a quick search on your phone to see how it displays in the results. If your site is optimized for mobile, you will see “Mobile-friendly” before the meta description in search results.

What You Can Expect from Google’s New Mobile Changes

Google will reward website’s that are designed for viewing on mobile devices without the need of resizing, zooming, and scrolling. Another criteria to avoid is the fat-finger syndrome. This is the prognosis given to sites with links that are too crowded and buttons that are too small, causing the wrong links to be tapped.

Because the numbers of mobile device users is accelerating at high speed, Google wants to make sure websites engage their viewers with easy-to-navigate content. As a website owner, you want to give your customers and readers the best first impression, which is now often on a mobile device. Mobile-friendly sites won’t drive customers to competitor’s sites, and you will get better traffic and better revenue.

Which Is Better: RWD or Mobile-Dedicated?

There is a difference between Responsive web design and a dedicated mobile website. RWD is designed to respond to the size of the screen. The particular theme within your content management system (CMS) that controls the website’s content often has mobile website styles configured.

A dedicated mobile website is also known as a mobile web app. It has a separate website version from the desktop version that is designed to fit on small screens. It detects when a viewer is using a mobile device and redirects them to the mobile website version.

There are several disadvantages to a dedicated mobile website. Separate and duplicate web content for the desktop and mobile versions can be necessary. Sometimes a viewer’s device is not recognized with the site detection function, and the best version won’t display. Finally, the duplicate content can negatively impact Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

RWD doesn’t have the additional burden of creating and maintaining duplicate content. It is designed to give viewers the best experience for all devices, including phones, tablets, e-readers, and even new devices as they enter the marketplace.

As the world wide web continues to grow, it’s important to keep your audience in mind as you build and maintain your website. In many cases, your website is already mobile-friendly, thanks to its Content Management System. Ask your web hosting company to help you determine what the best option is for you and your audience.

How to Optimize Your Website for 2015

April 15, 2015 Beth Devine

website optimization — “death and taxes” by lucyfrench123, used under CC BY / Modified from original

As the saying goes, there are three things you can count on: death, taxes, and changing SEO. Okay, so I added number three because optimizing your website is also unavoidable. Thanks to perpetually changing SEO, you can count on having to keep your website up to date.

Best practices must not only be reviewed, they need to be revised. Adjusting to continually changing SEO or search engine optimization strategies is easier than meeting the tax deadline. So don’t get frustrated with the inevitable.

Read on and see how you can optimize your website for 2015.

Make your website mobile friendly.

Boost your rankings with Google and other search engines by making your website mobile friendly. It’s no surprise based on the numbers of mobile users that mobile-friendly sites rank better with Google.

By giving your visitors a better user experience, you are working with Google’s common mobile mistakes to avoid. Faulty redirects, blocked media, mobile-only 404s, and slow mobile pages are a few to check into.

Look for our next post for more about search engine rankings and Google’s new algorithm for mobile-responsive websites.

Maximize for Local Search Update, a.k.a. Pigeon

Google’s latest search algorithm update was coined Pigeon by Search Engine Land, because it’s a “local search update and pigeons tend to fly back home.”

Anyone who wishes for their business to be found locally on Google should maximize their site for local search results. If you serve clients at a physical business location and have a physical address, you may be affected by Google’s Pigeon update.

Continue with these tried and true best SEO practices for your local search strategy:

Get listed on Google My Business and create a Google+ page.
Create a content strategy with local focus.
Stay engaged on social media.
Keep your listings up to date. Check out Local Visibility System for a definitive list of local search citations. All your listings should include accurate data, including your business name, address and phone number. Include when possible such things as product descriptions, services provided, hours of operation, any coupons, photos, and payments accepted.

Maximize Your Website’s Speed

Fast load times becomes more and more important as users refuse to wait. Google made site speed a signal in their search ranking way back in 2010.

Here’s what you need to know to speed up your website:

You can test your site speed using Google’s PageSpeed tools. This will analyze a web page’s content for both a desktop and mobile device and give suggestions on how to increase the speed.
Reduce your image sizes and optimize them for the right file format. PNGs are good for graphics fewer than 16 colors, and JPEGs are good for photos.
Use a quality web hosting company whom you can trust and who can handle your site load.
Too many plugins can slow a site down.
Embedded video can also slow down a website.

Use Proper Page Titles

Search engines identify your page titles and headings by their tags. When you use a Content Management System like WordPress, you won’t see the code that brackets the titles. <H1>, <H2>, and <H3> tags tell a search engines the level of importance of the content. You can see this by viewing your content in the Text or HTML mode.

Each page or post should have only one H1 tag at the top of your content. All other tags should follow below and be H2, H3, and so on. The H1 tag should include the most important keywords when possible. Most importantly, it should tell your reader what the content is about.

Heading tags should tell your readers and search engines about the page’s or post’s topic. Avoid using generic terms, such as “home,” “introduction,” “overview,” or “products.” Others are adjectives that can indicate something appealing, such as “help,” “best,” and “top.”

Don’t use generic keywords that attract visitors who aren’t interested in what you are offering. Keyword phrases that specify an otherwise generic term, like “toy,” are preferable, especially in high-competition categories.

Finally, if your H1 tag is an image, use the image alt tag to include the important keywords.

Why You Should Worry About HTTP vs. HTTPS

Google is pushing for heightened security on the internet. The importance of using HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) over HTTP means that your website is encrypted and can’t be hacked.

Google is currently using the HTTPS as a ranking signal in less than 1% of their global queries, but they may decide to strengthen it because they’d “like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.” Having an action plan is a wise idea should Google move to rank secure sites higher.

How to Rid Your Blog of Dust Bunnies

March 27, 2015 Beth Devine

repurpose your blog post — “Dust Bunny Large Enough to Have a Name” by Kim Carpenter, used under CC BY / Modified from original

Are your blog posts collecting dust bunnies? Or in extreme cases, is your blog attracting mammoth-sized versions of dinosaur bunnies?

Getting rid of your blog’s dust bunnies is a simple matter. All you need to do is a little spring cleaning, get out your duster ––er, your creative cap, and repurpose your blog content. Take those dust balls and brush them off when you extend the reach of your blog, and create new and relevant content that will add life to your hard work.

Repurposing your blog content can turn it into new media formats. This saves you time, money, and prolongs the life of your online marketing investments. By taking your old content and making it new again, you can offer a new audience an updated format, sending the digital dust bunnies off to distant oblivion.

If you’ve been blogging for awhile, or you have empty warehouse syndrome (aka, you’re out of ideas), and the dust bunnies have moved in for the kill, you’re not alone. Here’s the scoop on how to do some spring cleaning and repurpose your blog content.

Brainstorm: Which blog posts are best for repurposing?

Which posts received the most traffic? Which posts are evergreen (content that continues to be relevant long past its publication)? Which posts could use updating?

Once you’ve determined which content in your stockpile is best for repurposing, you’ll need to decide how you want to reuse it. Different formats appeal to different people and their learning styles.

Hit the Refresh Button

Some of your blog content will have a lot of value, but it just needs a little tweaking to be current. Depending on how things have changed, you will need to modify your content to be relevant with the new information that’s available. This could mean writing a new article, in which case you could add a note at the end with a link to the post’s original content.

If the changes are minor, plugging in a few alterations for a makeover allows you to salvage your original post. When you repurpose in this manner, keep the post’s URL the same so it retains its SEO value, but change the date to a new publishing date if possible.

Make Quote Pictures

Adapt the one-liners that stand out in your blog posts to create images with text. Name the new image with the post’s title, or write a totally new headline and include this as your image text. If you used a clever-sounding title the first time, change it to something more SEO-friendly and searchable.

Think about how you will repost your content with this image, and adapt it for that social media platform. Finding new images to repurpose content is easy with so many different free and legal online photo sources. My most recently discovered resource is Unsplash. Sign up and you’ll get ten free new photos every ten days.

Choosing which online photo editing site can often mean going back to your tried and true favorite, but try something new and see how you like it. Canva is great for social media because it has all the templates prepared for you. Or try an app like Wordswag for on-the-go creating.

This is the best time-saver in repurposing content. You created a new quote picture to share on social media, and you didn’t have to change any content in your blog post. Sweet.

Adapt Your Content for Tweets, Twitter Cards, and Other Social Media

Share your evergreen content by reposting it as part of a social media management strategy. This is a great way to make contact with people by hitting different time zones, using different headlines, and reaching new followers.

Your high-value blog posts will gain new value from their initial publishing date through re-promotion on different social media platforms that highlight different types of content. This Twitter research shows how reposts in the form of retweets can gain 75% of its previous number of retweets.

Twitter is an easy place to post repurposed content by turning snippets of content into tweets, and then linking back to your original post. Just be sure to use less than the 140-character limit to allow for retweets by your followers.

Try adapting content into Twitter cards and add a call to action to your blog post content. Twitter cards come in seven formats, including the Summary Card With Large Image. This is more likely to attract attention in twitter feeds, and a click on your image brings your followers to your blog post.

As a content creator, save yourself time and reap SEO benefits when you repurpose content. Remember to think about adding value to your original piece, and you’re repurposing efforts will grow your audience and extend your content’s life.

Say goodbye to dust bunnies and hello to a fresh start.

5 Easy SEO Tips for 2015 (That Don’t Require Cats)

February 5, 2015 Beth Devine

What do cats and SEO have in common? They both rule the internet. And, like it or not, they are both here to stay.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, was asked on Reddit on the 25th birthday of the web, “What was one of the things you never thought the internet would be used for, but has actually become one of the main reasons people use the internet?”

“Kittens,” Berners-Lee replied.

The best practices to consider for SEO in 2015 include more than cats, despite their overwhelming cuteness. SEO continues to evolve, with changes in how searchers use queries and engines crawl, index, and rank site pages. What hasn’t changed is SEO still figures big in improving your brand’s visibility and traffic.

Here are 5 easy SEO tips to follow in 2015. Cats are an excellent SEO plus, but aren’t strictly required.

1. Link building vs. content creation

The way to create links is through building great content and sharing it. This same content can be used for your blog posts, web pages, guest posts, and social media pots. This will generate relevant and varied sources that link to specific information.

Content creation and the resulting link building takes time, but Google will never penalize you for making unnatural links (the dirty word for 2015 is this sort of link building: trying to rank by using link building schemes).

Ethical SEO involves upfront attempts to get other websites to link to your website and improve your rank. This is where content creation comes in.

2. Secure your site with HTTPS

Most website’s URLs start with “HTTP,” or HyperText Transfer Protocol, which is the underlying protocol for how messages are sent over the web. HTTPS is the HTTP Secure version that gives users an added layer of security.

Google has announced that it has begun using HTTPS as a signal in their ranking factors, albeit a small one for now. However, although Google states that high quality content is more important for ranking, they also said that eventually they might want to make secure protocol a bigger deal in ranking.

2015 is the time to make the switch by following Google’s instructions for moving your site by changing its URL.

3. Google doesn’t need help finding you, but your visitors do

While you don’t need to submit your website to Google in order to rank in search results, you do need to get on board with Google My Business (which has morphed from Google Places, Google Places for Business, to Google Plus Local, to this current version). This gives you a storefront on Google Maps for free, helps your site get found in Google Search, and lets people engage with and review your business online.

For 2015 this online business directory is indispensable. Get your business directly connected with your customers and get registered with Google My Business.

4. Keywords are only as good as their location

No longer is keyword stuffing the way to optimize your website, but having a central keyword idea and placing keywords strategically is more important than keyword frequency. Google breaks your site down into a hierarchy, starting with meta tags and headers, followed by copy, then footers and sidebars last.

Keywords that focus on this one idea should be in your titles, headings, and image alt text, rather than cramming it a bunch of times into copy.

WordPress sites make this easy with plugins like WordPress SEO by Yoast. Keywords can even be variations of the central idea, making it possible for even a searcher’s misspellings to lead to the keyword variation used for your site.

5. Don’t forget meta descriptions, titles, and headings

As Google gets smarter in determining what’s on your web pages, it looks beyond the keywords to interpret the data to form a decision. Google looks for meaning, not just specific keywords and keyword phrases.

It’s important to include meta descriptions to help search engines and searchers to understand what the site content is, and if it’s relevant to the search. Indirectly this is a giant SEO bonus that doesn’t impact rankings, but affects the navigation results.

Along with your meta tags, there are titles and heading tags to consider. Search engines use title tags to display in search results, and they tell search engines as well as searchers what is contained in the web page. They should be no longer than 50-60 characters, since that’s all that Google will display in its SERPs.

Heading tags are identified in your CMS (Content Management System, such as WordPress) through the built-in code, and they also help search engines understand what is on the page, as well as indicating the level of importance of the content with Heading 2 and Heading 3 tags.

By covering these SEO signals, you will help Google distinguish your site as a credible site and business. The days of Google Authorship, which handed out bylines and author photos like internet prizes for anyone who wanted to build authority and trust, are over. You can still build strong branding and authority by practicing basic SEO principles, even if you insist on leaving out the ubiquitous cat.