The Race to the Top of Search Rankings - Getting Ahead with SEO
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Did you know that the first page of Google search results gets 91.5% of all search traffic? The 2nd page drops down to 4.8%, and the traffic only continues to lessen as you go further and further past page one. Search Engine Optimization, SEO, is the process of increasing a site’s visibility in the search engines in order to drive targeting and relevant traffic to your site. Search Engine marketing has become much more complex and even knowing where to start can be difficult for SMB owners. Watch this webinar to hear renowned local SEO expert Mike Blumenthal, co-founder of Local U, and Byron Hardie, SEO Director from G/O Digital and 18 year search veteran provide industry tips for local businesses on how to navigate organic rankings. Walk away from this webinar with actionable intelligence, through a discussion on: · Optimizing for Google in the Modern Search Era · 5 SEO ‘Must Do’s’ and best practices · Generating customer feedback to boost your rankings and drive traffic · How Local SEO optimization has opened up the doors for small business
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The Race to the Top of Search Rankings - Getting Ahead with SEO
- 1. Race to The Top of the Search Rankings Getting ahead with SEO
- 2. Welcome Byron Hardie Director of SEO @ G/O Digital and 18-year digital strategist Mike Blumenthal Nationally Recognized Authority on Local Optimization and Co-Founder of Local U
- 3. Summary • Introduction • What is SEO • Evolution of Search • Optimizing for Google in the Modern Search Era • SEO Truth from Fiction • 5 SEO ‘Must Do’s’ and Best Practices • Using Customer Feedback to Boost Your Rankings • How Local SEO can open the door for small businesses
- 4. Common Questions • What is SEO? • How do I increase my ranking? • Why are my competitors ranked higher? • How long will it take to get my site ranked? • I am a small local business. How can SEO help me? • Do I need to submit to Directories? • What keywords do I choose?
- 5. What is SEO? “Search Engine Optimization” The process of affecting the visibility of a website in organic search results by helping search engines to find, index, and rank a site for relevant search terms.
- 6. What is SEO? “Search Engine Optimization” The process of affecting the visibility of a website in organic search results by helping search engines to find, index, and rank a site for relevant search terms. No, Seriously… What’s SEO?
- 7. What is SEO? • The tactics used to increase your search visibility • The optimizing of a site’s code around target keywords • Building value in a website through the creation of great content and the acquisition of inbound links • The techniques of manipulating Google’s ranking formula
- 8. What is SEO? SEO = Google Rankings
- 9. What is SEO?
- 10. What is SEO?
- 11. What is SEO?
- 12. What is SEO?
- 13. What is SEO?
- 15. What is SEO? Just find a Search Engine Genie Simple. Right?
- 16. What is SEO? SEO Secrets • Shortcut to internet riches • Find an unknown tactic • Find the right SEO hacker
- 17. Founded in Truth From 1995 – 2010 = Classical SEO Era • Take advantage of Loopholes in the formula • Strategy: Trick Google into thinking a site is more valuable than it actually is.
- 18. Founded in Truth Sergey Brin & Larry Page (founders of Google)
- 19. Founded in Truth Page Rank
- 20. Founded in Truth Page Rank
- 21. Founded in Truth Page Rank
- 22. Founded in Truth Page Rank
- 23. Founded in Truth Want More Keywords? No Problem! - Keyword Stuffing SEO Tactics
- 24. Founded in Truth Want More Keywords? - Keyword Stuffing Want More Pages? No Problem! - Scraped Content - Massive Directories - Public Domain Info - Quote Databases - Photo Galleries - Content Chopping - Content Templates - Google Scraping SEO Tactics
- 25. Founded in Truth Want More Keywords? - Keyword Stuffing Want More Pages? - Scraped Content - Massive Directories - Public Domain Info - Quote Databases - Photo Galleries - Content Chopping - Content Templates - Google Scraping Want More Links? No Problem! - Reciprocal Linking / Link Exchanges - Link Farms - Link Wheels - Link Networks - Pyramid Link Schemes SEO Tactics
- 26. Founded in Truth SEO Tactics Want More Keywords? - Keyword Stuffing Want More Pages? - Scraped Content - Massive Directories - Public Domain Info - Quote Databases - Photo Galleries - Content Chopping - Content Templates - Google Scraping Want More Links? No Problem! - Reciprocal Linking / Link Exchanges - Link Farms - Link Wheels - Link Networks - Pyramid Link Schemes
- 27. Modern Search Era From May 2010 – Present = Modern SEO era • Google began closing Loopholes through a series of search filters • MayDay, EMD, Panda, Penguin, TopHeavy • Their technology was finally catching up with their vision
- 28. Modern Search Era What matters now? • Quality, Trust, Authority • Content & User Experience • Number of Articles vs Content Value • Number of Links vs Quality of Links
- 29. Modern Search Era SEO now encompasses many other disciplines • Social Signals: Impact Trust & Popularity • Web Design: Site Speed, Conversion Rates: Good User Experience • Maps & Reviews: Affects Trust & Credibility • Content: Adds usefulness and Authority
- 30. The Audit Current Ranking Site Factors Domain Factors Content Factors Brand & Social Factors Linking Factors Page Factors
- 31. The Audit • Site Architecture • URL format • Keyword Distribution • Overall Site Relevancy • Site Authority • Compatibility • Accessibility • Usability Site Factors Current Ranking
- 32. The Audit • Page Authority • Social Engagement • Page Titles • Meta Description • Header Tags (H1, H2 etc) • Micro-formatting (Schema Markup) • Image & Video Optimization • Content to Code Ratios Page Factors Current Ranking
- 33. The Audit • Domain Age • Hosting Location • Shared or Unique IP • TLD (.com, .net, .biz) • SSL (secured site) • Privacy Policy & TOS • Site Speed • Response Errors (404, 301, etc) Domain Factors Current Ranking
- 34. The Audit • Overall word Length • Number of sentences per paragraph • Number of words per sentence • Readability Score • Uniqueness • Freshness • Relevance Content Factors Current Ranking
- 35. The Audit Brand & Social Factors Linking Factors Current Ranking
- 36. The Audit How do you measure up? • Immediate Fixes: Code issues, 404 issues, etc • Target Topics: What should be targeted? • Content Inventory: What content exists and what is needed? • Competition: Is the goal realistic?
- 37. SEO Truth From Fiction Common SEO Myths • Meta Keywords: They help you rank for target keywords. • Keyword Density: You need to use the keyword “x” number of times in the body content. • PPC: Improves organic rankings. • Ranking: You must be ranked first! • Keywords: The keywords must have search volume.
- 38. SEO Truth From Fiction Common SEO Myths • Meta Keywords: They help you rank for target keywords. FALSE • Keyword Density: You need to use the keyword “x” number of times in the body content. • PPC: Improves organic rankings. • Ranking: You must be ranked first! • Keywords: The keywords must have search volume.
- 39. SEO Truth From Fiction Common SEO Myths • Meta Keywords: They help you rank for target keywords. FALSE • Keyword Density: You need to use the keyword “x” number of times in the body content. FALSE • PPC: Improves organic rankings. • Ranking: You must be ranked first! • Keywords: The keywords must have search volume.
- 40. SEO Truth From Fiction Common SEO Myths • Meta Keywords: They help you rank for target keywords. FALSE • Keyword Density: You need to use the keyword “x” number of times in the body content. FALSE • PPC: Improves organic rankings. FALSE • Ranking: You must be ranked first! • Keywords: The keywords must have search volume.
- 41. SEO Truth From Fiction Common SEO Myths • Meta Keywords: They help you rank for target keywords. FALSE • Keyword Density: You need to use the keyword “x” number of times in the body content. FALSE • PPC: Improves organic rankings. FALSE • Ranking: You must be ranked first! FALSE • Keywords: The keywords must have search volume.
- 42. SEO Truth From Fiction Common SEO Myths • Meta Keywords: They help you rank for target keywords. FALSE • Keyword Density: You need to use the keyword “x” number of times in the body content. FALSE • PPC: Improves organic rankings. FALSE • Ranking: You must be ranked first! FALSE • Keywords: The keywords must have search volume. FALSE
- 43. Common Mistakes Small Businesses often make these mistakes: • I don’t need SEO! • I just redesign my site – what about SEO? • Multiple Header Tags • Auto-Generated or Copied Content • Keywords over Topics • Targeting Cities they are not located in
- 44. Local Optimization How does a Local Business succeed? • Listing Claiming • NAP Consistency • Top Directories & Internet Citations • Address Located in Target City • Number of Reviews
- 45. Mike Blumenthal Local Search Marketing Expert Co-Founder of Local U SMX Speaker & Conference Speaker www.blumenthals.com
- 46. Mike Blumenthal (likes to bike to work) www.blumenthals.com Local Search Marketing Expert Co-Founder of Local U SMX Speaker & Conference Speaker
- 47. Mike Blumenthal Q. How has Local SEO evolved in the last couple of years, particularly Google’s changes to Google Local and local search? www.blumenthals.com
- 48. Mike Blumenthal Q. How has the Pigeon update impacted local businesses? www.blumenthals.com
- 49. Mike Blumenthal Q. How can local businesses take advantage of the Knowledge Graph? www.blumenthals.com
- 50. Mike Blumenthal Q. How does customer feedback and reviews on Google and other sites affect Local Search? www.blumenthals.com
- 51. TAKE AWAY Don’t mess with Pandas & Penguins
- 52. Get Your Free Digital Audit Today! http://www.godigitalmarketing.com/loc al-businesses/local-marketing- playbook/
Editor's Notes
- So what is SEO? If you were to ask 100 experts you would get 100 slightly different answers. It stands for “Search Engine Optimization” and it is probably more formally the process of affecting the visibility of a website in organic search results by helping search engines find, index, and rank a site for a relevant search terms.
- No Seriously! What’s SEO?
- So some will say that SEO is the collection of tactics used to increase search visibility. We know there are many ways to increase search visibility including images, video, Google news, Google local and others but typically people refer to the natural web rankings. Some think of SEO as the optimization of a site’s code around target keywords. Maybe it is strategy of building value in a website by creating great content and acquiring links to the site (also known as link building). For many people it is the ability to manipulate or circumvent Google’s ranking algorithm. All of these either are partially true or have been true in the past.
- I guess for most it comes down to the simple concept of SEO = Google Rankings. Your website gets “optimized” you move up in the rankings for target keywords and potential prospects click on your listing and go to your site. Here is a typical scenario:
- Let’s say you’re an HVAC company in Phoenix Arizona. Someone goes to Google and searches for “Phoenix HVAC” and the results come up.
- You of course want to be ranked here.
- Hold on, what are those spots? Those are Google Adwords. Yes you can get there too but you have to pay for every person that clicks those ads which is why it is also referred to as Pay-Per-Click or PPC. That is definitely a way to drive immediate traffic to your website but it can get expensive especially since others are also bidding against you.
- Ok so these are paid listings and if I don’t want to pay for every visitor then …..
- Wait what’s that? I want to be there too! Those are Google Local listings. Sometimes referred to as the 7-pack or 3-Pack due to the number of local businesses that are displayed. We’ll cover that in a little more detail in a bit but these results are also related to SEO.
- Clearly, if you can get ranked well within the organic search results there is the potential for significant traffic increases to your website especially if it is for a keyword that is highly searched. But how does Google determine which site to rank 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on? Well that’s easy….
- You need a search engine genie. There is this perception that SEO is either mostly luck or some kind of digital magic.
- Many proclaim that there are some hidden SEO secrets that lead to internet riches! If you can just find the right tactic or some SEO hacker out there that can sprinkle some magic SEO dust on your site and you’ll pop up to the top of the search results as the search engine gods shine down upon you and customers come pouring in! Many of you have heard these pitches over the years. But where did this idea come from?
- Well a lot of this based on truth. The first 15 years from about 1995 until 2010 is often refer to as the Classical SEO era. For years the strategies were based on taking advantage of loopholes in the ranking algorithm. The idea was to TRICK Google into thinking that your site was more valuable than it actually was. To a large extent this all started with two guys from Stanford named Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
- The founders of Google. They believed there was a better way to gather information about web pages based on their interaction with other pages – namely links. If you could identify the nature of how pages link together you could then determine the relative importance of a page which is a key factor when ranking them. So they created a mathematic formula that could generate a value for every page on the Internet and parts of this value could be transferred to other pages through links. If another page on the internet linked to yours it would be treated as a vote. And the more votes you have the more important the page would be. Naturally, people would only link to other pages or websites that they deemed useful and authoritative right? That was the theory.
- And they would call this value PAGE RANK! Not because it ranks pages… that would make sense. But because his name is Larry Page!
- Page Rank was ground breaking! Revolutionary!
- Now this sounds fairly simple on the surface as you pass value from one page to another but it is actually pretty complex.
- At the time there were about 10 million pages on the Internet. But today when you think about the billions of pages and trillions of links on the Internet all pointing everywhere -- some pointing within a site -- some pointing to other sites. It can be pretty overwhelming. However, at the root of this was a mathematical equation and as with most formulas it could be manipulated. You see the original concept was based on the assumption that sites would play fair – that the Internet was a Democratic environment; that there wouldn’t be any collusion and links would be given based on merit. But what if you paid for a link to make your page seem more important? What if you had a relationship with another site and traded links? What if you owned hundreds, even thousands of sites and you just linked to yourself? As soon as people realized that there was money to be made by ranking in a search engine the SEO industry exploded and hundreds of tactics were invented to trick Google’s ranking formula. But it couldn’t just be based on this value. Google also need to make sure the page was relevant to the user’s search term. So they started looking at keywords within the content, the code of the site, and page elements. And of course this left the door open for even further manipulation.
- You want more keywords Google, no problem! You could stuff keywords into content, page titles, and even try to hide it in a variety of ways so that users couldn’t see what you were doing. For instance if the number of times a keyword showed up on a page determined how relevant a page was couldn’t you just repeat the keyword 1000 times on your site? Make the text the same color as the background and shove it to the bottom of the page. This was known as Keyword Stuffing.
- There was the thought that larger sites would be seen as more authoritative and therefore rank higher. Also, if every page on the Internet had an inherent value upon inception couldn’t you just create millions of pages then link them to your home page or another site you wanted to get ranked thereby increasing your Page Rank artificially? Additional SEO tactics emerged involving scraping content from other locations, building massive directories, photo galleries with millions of images that you take from all over the internet, databases of famous quotes, public domain information like old books, splitting up articles into dozens of pages with just a few sentences on each page, and even creating content out of thin air using templates. In some cases people would scrape all of Wikipedia or other large content sites, chop up the information mix up the paragraphs and sentences, switch out synonyms and spit out the pages onto a site. You could even go so far as to scrape Google themselves! You search for keywords, grab the top 50-100 results from Google, mix them up then create pages of “directories” that you call unique content. And all of this was automated using scripts that would do these tasks millions of times without having to lift a finger. Google couldn’t tell what was unique and valuable versus what was auto generated.
- Of course we know that links play a large role in Search Rankings so all kinds of additional tactics were devised to manipulate a site’s Page Rank. What started out as a simple link exchange of “Hey you link to me, I’ll link to you” grew into massively complex link schemes consisting of hundreds or thousands of websites.
- Link Wheels, Link Networks and other sophisticated types of Link Schemes where the next level of SEO. Google continued to try to catch this manipulation and SEO experts would continue to find new ways to getting around them. But why go through this history lesson of SEO? Because THIS was the Magic Dust that SEO’s would use to get clients ranked very quickly. And with each new Google update they would scramble to find the next new trick. This cat and mouse game continued for over a decade and for the most part the SEO experts were winning.
- Then starting in about mid 2010 Google began launching a series of updates. As you may know Google often gives codenames to their major updates similar to naming hurricanes – which is fitting because they have been known to cause about the same amount of destruction. But these updates were different. They weren’t just built to index pages faster or improve the user interface of the search results. These were more like filters that were specifically designed to catch and penalize attempts to manipulate the search formula. Some of these include MayDay, EMD, Panda, Penguin, and TopHeavy – you may have heard of many of these. And many of these have had multiple iterations as Google continually tweaks their formula. MayDay and Panda targeted low quality pages, duplicate content, and over optimization. EMD, which stands for Exact Match Domains, dampened the ranking benefit of many sites that had exact-match keywords in their domain name. Many of these were found to be spam sites and lower quality. The Penguin update targeted low quality links and unnatural link profiles in which certain types of links made up a large percentage of the total back links. So if most of your links come from low-quality guest posts, press releases, forum spam, directories, or Web 2.0 sites it could trigger a Penguin penalty. This does not mean that all of these types of links are bad. Penguin is built to detect excessive use and an attempt to manipulate Page Rank. After over a decade Google’s technology was finally catching up with their vision.
- So what matters today? Quality, Trust, Authority. Most have heard of the phrase “Content is King” but what does that mean? Well, it used to mean that the mass production of information of almost any kind or quality would generate search success. Today it requires much more. Is your site valuable and informative? Is it not just technically unique but conceptually unique? It isn’t the number of articles you have but the value of that information. It isn’t the number of links you have but the type of links and the quality of the sites that link to you. To put it another way, if you were Google and saw 20 companies with similar services in the same area – how would you rank one above another? If you are an ecommerce store selling the same products from the same manufacturers with the same product descriptions as 50-100 other sites including large sites like Amazon, why should you be ranked higher? What value does your site provide to the user that they don’t get elsewhere? Typically “price” and “customer service” isn’t enough to sway Google. At the core of SEO and Content Marketing is the development of a unique value proposition that convinces users and Google that your page should be ranked higher than others.
- As we look at the various factors that now come into play with SEO there are many disciplines that are taken into account. Social signals are indicators of Trust and Popularity. A well designed website can influence site speed, conversion rates, and a good user experience. A consistent local presence in major directories and business databases as well as positive reviews can impact Trust and Credibility. And good content adds usefulness and Authority. We’ll talk more about this in a bit.
- When you look at how to increase your rankings or why your competitors might be ranked higher it typically starts with a comprehensive SEO Audit. Think of an audit as taking an inventory of all elements that make up the value of your site. There are factors relating to on-site, page-level factors, the domain, content, linking, brand, and social signals. And these are just a few of the high-level groups. Now imagine that each of these have dozens of sub-factors and all of them are weighted differently as they impact the site’s Authority, Trust, Quality, and Popularity. It is generally believed that there are approximately 200 search signals that Google looks at to determine the ranking of a webpage.
- For instance, if we just look at Site factors. It may include the website’s architecture which is how the navigation and flow of the site is structured. There is the formatting of the URL, target keywords found in main page elements, and the site authority and relevancy. Is the site as a whole about more generalized information or specific to a niche? Is the HTML of the site optimized for compatibility in various browsers? Is it accessible on multiple devices? Is it usable? This can be determined by the type of navigation that can be detected, internal linking, number of ads on the page, among other factors.
- Page Factors can include Page-Level authority including social engagement which would include shares, likes, or retweets. On-page elements include the optimization of the Page Title, Meta Description, and Header tags. Structured data in the form of Schema Markup will tag pieces of content to help tell Google what a page is about. This could be as simple as the company’s address and phone number or may include elements about a product, reviews, pricing, events, places, and people. Additionally, image and video tagging can influence on-page factors. Even the amount of Content on the page relative to the amount of Code is thought to be a factor as well. Of course the Content on the page is a major factor but that can be broken out into a category by itself.
- For domain factors there it has long been theorized that the age of the domain, the country it is hosted in, and even whether it is on a unique or shared IP address can impact the Trust value. Part of this is likely due to statistical analysis. Low-quality, spammy sites, rarely last long and people setting up those kinds of sites typically do not dedicate the time and money to setting up a site on a unique IP address. Some still believe that .COM domains may still have a higher trust value than other types of domain extensions. There is also a general consensus that hyphenated domains have less value as well. While some of this could simply be correlation and having a hyphenated .BIZ domain doesn’t mean you can never be successful online, it could be a potential red flag if a site has other suspicious search signals. A site having an updated copyright, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Service could also be seen as good Trust factors. Does it mean that by putting a Privacy Policy on your site you’ll immediately jump 5 – 10 spots? No. But with hundreds of factors we look at anything that can give you an edge. A good SEO audit will also look at site speed and response errors such as 404 errors or redirects.
- Content factors have significantly increased in complexity over the years. The overall word length of the content has been identified as correlative to quality. While this isn’t a rule it has been discovered that many pages that rank well for moderately difficult keywords have between 2000-2500 words on the page. Google has been developing fairly sophisticated linguistic engines to dissect information to determine how authoritative and relevant it is. For instance, the number of sentences per paragraph, number of words per sentence, and even the average syllables per word are all factors that can contribute to content quality and readability scores. Is the content unique on the Internet both technically and conceptually? How often is content on the site updated? And maybe most importantly, how relevant is it to the target keyword and the intent of the query being searched? An example of this might be an article about a HG TVs. The article may be one of the most comprehensive historical references on the history of HG TVs, their technology and how they have changed over the years. However, if Google determines that the query is transactional – meaning someone looking to purchase an HG TV – it is possible that your page may not rank well. Even if Google detects that the intent of the user is to find information they may deem that your article is too generic when the user wants specific information on recent HG TVs – maybe in the form of an expert review. During the audit process all of these things can be evaluated.
- I won’t go into Linking and Social factors too much because we’ve talked about them to some extent already but certainly the overall engagement of the site and the makeup of the link profile are factors that contribute to your Authority, Trust, and Popularity – which in-turn impacts your ranking.
- This has just been a small sampling of some of the factors that can impact your rankings and that are reviewed in a comprehensive audit. At the end of the Audit there should be a list of things to do. Any site architecture issues need to be fixed right away because if there are indexing or structural problems it may not matter how much content you have or how many links you attract. Target topics should be identified based on the site’s goals and content. Notice that I didn’t say Target Keywords. Building content around specific keywords has long been an SEO strategy but today it is more important to chose the topics that you can create useful information around. This is because a single page can, and should be optimized for MANY different keywords if the content is comprehensive and useful. If you are a lawyer in phoenix the focus shouldn’t be creating a page for “Phoenix lawyers” and another for “Phoenix Attorneys” and yet another page for “Best Law Firm in Phoenix”. Rather, tell your story. What is the real service that you provide? Why should someone choose your firm over a competitor? Create page around the areas of law you cover such as family law, DUI, personal injury, or criminal defense. On those pages you don’t want to provide generic information that isn’t useful. Create content that is valuable and informative. Maybe it is a checklist of things to consider when you have been injured in a car accident. Maybe it is a list of common questions and answers when it comes to cross-state child custody cases. Once we define what the site is about and the topics we can cover, we can assess the existing content on the site and what additional content is still needed. Finally we can compare all of this to the competition. Are the SEO goals realistic? Taking the previous example, if you were a new law practice and your competition has been producing content and building authority for years it may not be realistic to expect top results in a short amount of time. And certainly not on a shoestring budget. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t generate qualified organic traffic to your site. You may just need to work towards the more difficult keywords. Remember, even if you target more niche topics, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t ALSO optimizing and building authority towards the more difficult ones.
- Now that we’ve gone over the evolution of SEO and many of the current factors, let’s cover the some of the common questions and misconceptions about SEO. The first revolves around Meta Keywords. The more variations you place into your meta keywords, the better.
- Actually, search engines rarely look at the meta keywords tag anymore. Not only is it often used to spam search engines but search algorithms are now sophisticated enough to discover the proper relevancy of the content to a search query with a fairly high degree of accuracy. The next topic involves keyword density. This is the percentage of times a keywords shows up within the content of the page.
- While keyword density was once used to determine how relevant a page was to a keyword new filters can actually penalize you for over-optimization if your keyword density is too high. While the general rule of thumb would be to use a keyword at least once on the page, it is the overall page information that is more important. Use SEO and the audit to determine what topics to write about, then write your content as if SEO didn’t exist. There is a good chance that you will produce information that is much more useful and generate a much higher return on that investment. This next one is one of my favorites. Does buying PPC ads help your organic rankings? The idea here is that Google wants to produce revenue so they give a little boost to organic rankings if you invest in Google Adwords as an incentive.
- Ironically, the reverse is also said. If you buy PPC your organic rankings could suffer thereby making you more reliant on paid advertising. This is really just tin-foil hat conspiracy thinking. Whether you invest in PPC or not it has no direct impact on your organic rankings. However, INDIRECTLY running both together can generate higher conversions. This is more due to brand visibility. If you have a top SEO and Paid advertising spot you are controlling two major positions on the page. Branding and perceived credibility is often increased thereby increasing the likelihood of someone clicking one of your listings. Now we’ll move on to Rankings. This is a good one. You must be ranked first to generate any meaningful return on SEO.
- Clearly, everyone wants to be ranked first. However, many sites have done very well never ranking first. In fact in some cases you may get more clicks being the first position on the second page than the last couple of positions on the first page. There are many ways to increase the click-through rate on your search listings. Sometimes structured markup can provide additional information on the search listing itself. Connecting the page to Google Authorship may increase clicks as well since it is often accompanied by a photo of the author. Even the optimization of the page title and meta descriptions to something catchy can help increase conversion in lower positions. The next involves Keyword Research. Typical keyword research includes typing in a few terms into the Google Keyword planner, finding those variations that have the most searches and using those as your target keywords. The question is whether keywords must have search volume to be successful.
- The Google Keyword Planner is a great tool for generating potential Topics. Additionally you can look at Google Autocomplete that automatically lists a few keywords when you start typing in a search. And Google Suggest can give you additional ideas. These are normally located at the bottom of the search results and it is Google’s way of saying “hey you might also be interested in these other related searches”. But all of these methods only help create a topic list. The search volume total isn’t an exact number. It is a guide. Throughout my career I’ve been lucky enough to work on digital strategies for major brands. Some of these received tens of millions of organic searches every month. Naturally executives in the company would want to target the most difficult and highly searched keywords. And we would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars targeting these top keywords. Thousands of hours of work went into achieving these top results. And one day we did it! We got #1 on one of the most difficult keywords in our industry. There were high-fives and happy hour drinks as we congratulated ourselves for being SEO masters. And we sat back just waiting for the traffic to come pouring in! That keyword ended up being less than one half of 1% of our total traffic. And for the millions of other keywords that were generating traffic -- that came with almost no effort because they were just countless keyword variations relevant to our content – if you were to type them into the Google Keyword tool most of them would come back with ZERO searches. Moral of the story – do good keyword research to create a list of the top Topics to target then focus on building useful content and you’ll don’t get focused so heavily on individual rankings of keywords. You’ll end up chasing an SEO leprechaun not realizing that your pot of gold was within reach the entire time if resources were properly allocated.
- After working with thousands of companies big and small over the years the top mistake that small businesses make is the belief that they don’t need SEO because they want leads. It is akin to building a house directly on a plot of dirt rather laying a foundation. Even basic level SEO sets up a small business to build an annuity that can pay dividends for years to come. On-page SEO will fix architectural issues and outlining a content strategy doesn’t just help with rankings but with overall brand perception and user engagement. Content Marketing – and by extension SEO – is a methodology of how you plan to reach, engage, and influence your target market, forever. Other common mistakes small businesses make include not consulting an SEO specialist BEFORE they build or redesign a website. They often design and build a site without getting the SEO consulting required to set the site up for success. This is also true when doing a site migration to a new domain or combining websites. The SEO impact must be taken into consideration to minimize risk and maximize any potentially combined value. We often see multiple H1 tags – in some cases dozens – which would have been outlined in an SEO audit and requirements document prior to building a website. Content issues can vary significantly but the top issues tend to be auto-generated pages that create duplicate or low-quality pages. If it is an ecommerce site the issues typically revolve around the creation of unique content on product and category pages. We’ve discussed the Keywords vs Topics issue but it is worth repeating. Focusing on 5 or 10 target keywords rather than the overall topical relevance of the site could distract a small business from widening the potential net to generate traffic from hundreds or thousands of keyword variations. And finally there is a growing need for businesses to target cities they are not physically located in. While authoritative factors can widen your reach into surrounding cities the expectation is usually that it is easy to just target surrounding cities or even cities in other states similar to targeting a PPC campaign around other metro areas. It isn’t that easy for organic search because Google naturally wants to return relevant results to the user. If there is another company that is actually located in the city your are trying to target, it can take quite a bit of effort to overcome that physical advantage and in some cases when it comes to Local Listings it could be impossible.
- I’ll try not to go too far into Local Optimization simply because we are fortunate to have one of the industry leaders, Mike Blumenthal with us today. But in terms of a few high-level bullet points that come into play with local optimization it almost always starts with Listing Claiming. Whether it is Google Places claiming which is now Google My Business or making sure your NAP information – which is Name, Address, and Phone number -- is consistent across the major business databases. While there are thousands of internet directories there are a few dozen authoritative directories that can give your local business additional credibility and expanded visibility. It also increases the number of mentions or citations of a local business which is taken into account in local rankings. Having a physical address in the desired city is an important element and the number of reviews you have has also been a major contributor to local search success.
- With that brief context I’d like to introduce you to our guest speaker Mike Blumenthal. Mike is a luminary in the field of Local Optimization and widely considered to be the most influential Local Search experts in North America. He is the co-founder of Local U which is a sought-after marketing seminar that focuses on Local Search. He’s been involved with web technologies and marketing since 1995 and has been a frequent speaker on the SMX conference circuit. I’d say that metaphorically Mike has “written the book” on Local Search marketing but he quite literally written the about virtually every major breakthrough in local search and you can find a lot of his great content at: www.blumenthals.com
- Oh and he likes to bike to work which I think is really cool. I probably need to move a little closer to work to do the same. Welcome Mike!
- Mike, you’ve been around from the beginning and have been tracking the moves that Google has been making. What is the state of Local SEO today? And how has Local SEO evolved in the last couple of years?
- As you know there has been a lot of changes just in the last couple of months. Can you talk about the Pigeon update and how it has impacted local businesses either positively or negatively.
- Mike, I know you’ve been studying the Google Knowledge graph for awhile. Can you briefly explain what it is, what kind of impact it has in an overall local marketing strategy, and how it can benefit local businesses.
- Over the years there has been a lot of talk about how reviews affect Local Rankings. We’d love to get your insight into how the quantity and quality of those reviews impact SEO and Local Search.