Is your Instagram SEO strategy up to par? You can leverage the social media service to boost your rankings in search. Learn how here.

There’s no denying the value of Instagram for building a brand and connections. This little darling of a social media platform exploded in popularity. Instagram is now one of the preferred social media platforms of just about everyone.

There are more than a billion IG users worldwide.

Let that sink in.

You’ll want Instagram SEO to help your profile stand out.

This article shares some of the easiest ways to add SEO to your IG. So, follow along and prepare yourself to reach more people and build a stronger brand.

1. Optimise the Profile with a Keyword or Two

There are a couple of profile areas you could include organic keywords:

• Username
• Profile name
• About info

Your profile gets indexed on the Web (not photos). Like any site, Google and the other search engines rely on keywords to understand the page. So, try injecting a relevant keyword into these areas as you see fit.

2. Find and Use Great Hashtags

Hashtags are the informative and navigational elements of Instagram. These describe the photo or help it connect with a trend or topic. Hashtags are essentially meta tags which you control to boost SEO.

Try this:

1. Check competitors and note which hashtags they use
2. Post your media and include one or two relevant hashtags
3. Figure out which provide the biggest interaction
4. Make a new list of the best hashtags for your efforts

This little process cuts down on hashtag spam. And, boosts what works on the platform. The result is an active community that’ll build up your brand image.

All of this leads to…

3. Leverage Your Brand Image and Connection

A big part of SEO is building backlinks to improve your reach and authority. Instagram SEO is no different. The more your image spreads, the better chances you’ll appear in search results.

Extend your reach by trying these:

• Including your IG profile link in the byline when guest posting
• Using embedded IG images from your profile in blog posts
• Having webmasters link to your IG when they mention you

This gets your name out there while building backlinks to the profile!

4. Deliver Good, Quality Content to Followers

People follow your IG for its content and discussions. Deliver a great experience with remarkable images and you’ll have done half the work. 

Good content:

• Gets people talking, sharing, and linking
• Connecting and building up your brand
• Wanting to work with you outside of IG

You are, in essence, becoming an influencer within your space. This can lead to coverage and connections that help grow your organic reach. With this extended reach comes a greater impact on your SEO because you’re everywhere.

And to think… it all starts with taking high-quality photos.

5. Keep Doing What You’re Doing Well

Dig into your IG analytics from the settings and learn about your best posts. Then, create more of that content as you already know it’s a hit.

You can do extra things once you have the list of top posts, too, like:

• Adding them back into profile overview
• Advertising with the most eye-catching ones
• Reusing them on your site and in its content

Leverage what’s working. This creates a consistent experience for newcomers that translates into a broader reach!

Let’s Go Beyond Instagram SEO

A touch of Instagram SEO grows your reach through this popular platform. But it’s not the only important place you’ll want to get found online.

Visibility is everything, and you’ll want a strategy that works. Let’s work together and find an SEO strategy to grow your business. Then, amplify your impact through paid ads and incredible Web experiences.

Ready to explore what’s possible? Click here and let’s talk.

A beautiful and strong website design is a large factor why client’s trust your business. Discover the top 4 web design trends for 2019.

Nearly 75% of consumers say that a company’s website design is one of the most important factors when it comes to choosing whether or not they’ll do business with a brand. 

Does your website design measure up? 

If you’re not certain, you need to read this post. 

In it, we’ll cover some of the top web design trends that your site should feature if you want to get higher search engine rankings, increased conversions, and ensure that your company makes the right first impression. 

1. Homepage Video Content

Video content is perhaps the signature element of modern web design. 

Close to 60% of people say they’d much rather watch a video about a product, service, or brand than read something about it.

In addition to including clickable images that lead to video links on your homepage, also consider embedding a video into your homepage’s background.

This is an excellent way to engage your customers and keep them on your website for longer. This increases your site’s dwell time, which means you’ll rise in the search engine rankings.

2. Inclusive Design

One of the biggest 2019 website design trends is inclusive design. 

In short, it’s web design that includes representations of people from all cultural, religious, social, and even physically able backgrounds. It might sound unimportant, but consumers are much more likely to work with a brand that they feel represents them. 

Inclusive design is also about making your site accessible to as many people as possible. 

This means including image descriptions, ensuring your layout is clear and intuitive, and making sure buttons are large enough to be clicked on smaller devices. It also means incorporating things like keyboard navigation and customisable text size into your design.

3. Incorporate Animation

Animation is another one of the year’s biggest web design trends. 

Viewers especially love custom animation and hand-drawn graphics, and they’re an excellent way to differentiate your brand from your competitors. 

CS33 animation brings buttons and drawings on your website to life. It’s a great way to draw attention to specific aspects and pages of your site, and you can even enhance still photographs with CS33 animated graphics. 

4. Include Chatbots

Customer service is the foundation of your relationships with your clients. But many companies aren’t aware that new website design trends can also help to strengthen your customer service. 

This is especially the case when chatbots are incorporated into website design.

Think of these chatbots as robotic digital customer service representatives. 

Their chat windows pop up whenever a new visitor arrives on the site. They can answer common questions, direct users towards specific pages or products, and much more. 

Of course, they also offer a serious boost to your conversion ratios. 

Need Help Bringing These Web Design Trends to Life?

We hope that the web design trends in this post have inspired you to rethink and update your current website design. 

Of course, we understand that you may not have the time or the digital expertise to do it on your own. 

That’s where we come in.

Reach out to us today to learn more about our website design services in addition to all the other ways we can help strengthen your company. 

What You Need to Know About How Google Adwords Works

Are you new to using Google Adwords? Discover everything you need to know about how Google Adwords works so you can get the most out of it.

So, you’re looking to draw some attention to your website. With almost 2 billion websites live at the moment you’re reading this, that isn’t as easy as creating a great-looking site or posting to social media. While those are effective marketing strategies, they don’t deliver fast results. Instead, you may want to consider using Google AdWords — now known as Google Ads — to deliver new leads. But if you’re new to the platform, the whole process can be quite confusing. Not to worry! From uses to bidding and best practices, we’re walking you through how Google AdWords works.

What to Know About AdWords

Before you can harness the power of this awesome platform, you’ll first need to understand what makes it such a great choice for your campaign. The biggest advantage an AdWords campaign has over an organic campaign is speed. It can take months for your organic SEO to have an effect! Comparatively, AdWords works almost in an almost instant fashion. Furthermore, using AdWords guarantees your business a spot on Google’s homepage. And it doesn’t stop there, either. You can use the Google Display Network to advertise on sites your customers are already on. Finally, AdWords is such a great platform because of how affordable it is. A business of any size with any budget can take advantage of AdWords — no matter how small your budget may be.

How AdWords Bidding Works

Ad placement and keyword strength are determined by a bidding process. While this may sound intimidating, it’s actually quite simple. First, you’ll set a budget for the month. Note that you can adjust your budget at any time throughout your campaign. Next, enter a keyword you’re interested in. Note that this can be a partial keyword or even a complete phrase. Then, Google will present a list of options of both exact and similar options. Each keyword will have a price based on how popular it is. Let’s say you’re advertising an Italian restaurant. ‘Italian restaurants’ could be of a lesser quality than ‘Italian restaurants Sunshine Coast’ and thus, would cost more. Positioning is also influenced by ranking, which Google determines by multiplying your maximum bid and the quality score. If that sounds complicated, don’t feel too bad. It can be tough to understand without trying it yourself. You’re encouraged to adjust around your budget and explore the bidding process to get a better feel for how the ranking process works.

Best Practices for Your AdWords Campaign

There are several things you can do to ensure your AdWords campaign goes well. One of the best things about AdWords is that you only pay for results, so targeting specific engagement actions can influence your cost. You can select pay-per-acquisition, pay-per-phone call, pay-per-conversion, and more. Once your campaign has started, be sure to check your analytics early and often. Since AdWords allows you to adjust your campaign on the fly, increasing or decreasing your spending can influence the outcome.

How Google AdWords Works: Final Thoughts

Whether you’re looking to get digital or foot traffic, AdWords is a great platform for businesses of any size. Knowing how Google AdWords works can help you spend less while getting more results. AdWords encourages experimentation, so don’t be afraid to test new strategies out. Are you looking to boost your business’ digital presence? We can help! Get in touch today and let us know what you’re looking for.

Meta tags refer to information that is inserted into the head area of a web page. Search engines use these to ensure your sites are listed in their index. Meta tags are used by web developers to identify HTML specifications, keywords, descriptions, refresh parameters, to name a few. Except for the Meta title tag, the information on a Meta tag will not be viewed by people viewing your page in browsers. Owners of web pages have some control over the way their pages are described by search engines by using Meta tags. They can even keep a page from being indexed.

Types of meta tags

Among the different types of Meta tags, the most important in determining search engine ranking is now the description attribute. This attribute contains a description of the content of the website, which comes up during a search engine query. This description is helpful when a search engine can not use a site’s content to generate its own description. Other commonly used Meta tags are the language attribute, which tells a search engine the natural language of the website, and the robot attribute, which controls whether search engine spiders can index a site and follow the links within. There are a number of other, less commonly used Meta tags as well, but those listed here are the most commonly used.

How to make meta tag effective

To make your title tag effective, make it interesting and eye-catching. When creating it, think of your audience first and the search engines second. Don’t make it too long; probably 90 characters would be enough. Here’s the format using “What are Meta Tags” as the title of a page: Importance of using a metal tag -By using meta elements effectively it’s possible to get good engine ranking. It enables the webmaster to control the way my website will appear during search results. The website with a proper description is more likely to attract visitors. Success lies in proving brief and to the point description of the site. -The meta keywords tag is also of the important determining factors in page ranking. It contains the list of keywords which the Webmaster considers important to each page. Effective use of keywords helps to get a proper ranking on web engines. The best way is to go through each web page carefully and then select ten keywords that best represent the contents of the site. Too many unnecessary keywords lead to incompatible web research results and using words may lead to incomplete message -Meta tags help to classify a website so that it’s visible during search results. These tags provide the search engines with key information about the website which helps the user to find the concerned site quickly. Without the tags, search engines, that go by the information entered by the user, will give inappropriate results without proper ranking of digital businesses. -They determine the headers which are sent before sending out the details of the website and also rules out the name and content of each header. There are a number of different types of Meta tags that can be used on a website. They can specify headers to be sent before actual site content and can dictate the name and content of each header. Meta tags can also be used to indicate the keywords relevant to a site or document or the state or area that the advertised business serves. These tags are also used in SEO, though they are typically not visible to site visitors. These tags give a great deal of information about the website in order to help search engines organize and classify the site. The “keywords” Meta tag used to be one of the biggest factors in a page’s ranking, but this has become less popular after some site creators began using a large number of irrelevant keywords to drive traffic to spam or even virus-ridden websites. In conclusion, meta-tags are not a magical solution to the very complex problem of online marketing. They must be regarded as one tool in an inventory of other tools and should be used responsibly. Properly implemented, they will help complete an effective marketing strategy and this will facilitate the tremendous growth of your digital business by optimising your website.

How to Find the Best Organic Keywords

Everybody loves free advertising, right? Optimising your site for organic keywords is one of the best ways to harness the power of the Internet and gain new customer traffic.

Did you know that Google processes 3.5 billion searches per day? This is why search engine optimisation (SEO) is so important. One of the best things about search engine optimisation is that it doesn’t have to cost you anything. By researching and optimising organic keywords, you’re helping increase your company’s visibility when they run a search. When someone types a search query into Google, Google compares the keywords in their search to the keywords that it finds online. This is one of the major factors that impact the order that sites are displayed on a search engine results page. Read on to learn how to determine the best organic keywords for driving traffic to your website.

Brainstorming Organic Keywords

There are several techniques that you can use to brainstorm organic keywords that your website is already optimised for. Start by looking at your company website, specifically your landing pages and your blog posts. This will give you an idea of the topics that are covered and the keywords that are relevant to your company and product. Consider this list your seed keywords that you will use to grow your keywords plant. Brainstorm additional related terms that people may search for when finding your website. For example, imagine you run a boutique hotel on the Sunshine Coast. Along with “boutique hotel Sunshine Coast”, your other keywords should include “where to stay on the Sunshine Coast” and “price of hotels Sunshine Coast”.

Use Google AdWords to Find More Keywords

Finally, turn to Google Analytics to get confirmation for the items on your organic seed keywords and suggestions for a few more. In Google Analytics, even if you are not running paid campaigns, you can look at the search queries and other links that are driving traffic to your website. You should see some of your seed keywords on this list and add any that you haven’t already included. While it would be great to optimize your website for as many keywords as possible, that just isn’t practical. If you are using Google AdWords, you can use the platform to test how effective each keyword is specifically for your business. However, don’t worry if you’re not familiar with Google AdWords. There are other ways to research keywords and refine your seed keywords into a master keyword list.

Refining Your List of Potential Keywords

In order to refine your list of keywords, you need to turn to some keyword research tools. While this process can be a little time-consuming, using these tools will benefit you in the long run when your website is seeing more traffic from organic searches and more conversions. There are a few different keyword research tools you need to take advantage of when planning your SEO strategy.

Optimise for Voice Search

Firstly, you need a tool that will help you with voice search. With voice search set to be the next big trend in digital marketing, you’ll save yourself time later on if you start thinking about it now. Voice search is changing SEO because we search in a different way when we’re speaking versus typing. While typed queries are usually point-form sentences such as “boutique hotel Sunshine Coast”, voice searches are posed as questions, “What is the best boutique hotel on the Sunshine Coast?”. Look for an app that generates a list of questions based on the keywords you enter.

How Popular Are Your Keyword Phrases?

Next, you’ll want to use a tool that shows you the cost-per-click (CPC) for your keywords. Even though you’re targeting organic keywords, it is still important to research the CPC data for your list. Google assigns costs to keywords based on their search volume, popularity and the number of competitors. The most expensive keyword phrase in the US is “best mesothelioma lawyer” (it’s a type of cancer from exposure to asbestos) at $935 per click. In fact, nearly 80% of the top 100 most expensive keyword phrases in the US are legal terms. This is because it is a highly competitive industry. The cost of a keyword phrase is an indicator of how often people are searching for it and how competitive the industry it’s in is.

Determine the Difficulty of Ranking for Each Phrase

The final step in researching organic keywords is determining how difficult it will be to rank for each keyphrase. Keyword research tools can determine this in a few different ways. One is to compare the number of searches versus the number of competitors. If there is a high search volume, and few competitors then it will be easier to rank for compared to a keyword with many competitors. Keep in mind that it’s easier to rank for long-tail keywords so focus on something like “boutique hotels on the Sunshine Coast for families” or “boutique hotels on the Sunshine Coast with a rooftop pool” as opposed to just “hotels on Sunshine Coast”. Once you’ve thoroughly researched your keyword list for these three metrics, you’re in a good position to start working on your on-page SEO.

How to Optimise Your Site for Organic Keywords

There are two important things to remember when optimising your website for organic search. The first is that there are no shortcuts and the second is that you need to be patient. If you’re looking for immediate results, then you should be focusing on paid search engine marketing, not increasing your organic reach. In the past, marketers were able to trick Google with tactics like keyword stuffing, but the Google algorithm has become too smart for these tricks. Now, the only way to bring in organic traffic is to show Google that your website provides content that consumers will find useful. This is one of the reasons that every website has a blog now. Google sees these articles as resources pieces related to their keywords. In our example, the hotel should think about writing travel guides about Sunshine Coast. They don’t need to be long, but even 500-1000 words about the best things to do as a family or the best places to eat will give them an SEO advantage over a competitor that doesn’t have these articles. Besides creating great content, be sure to include your organic keywords in the following areas:

• blog post URLs
• first paragraph
• image files
• meta description
• subheadings

Is Your Website Optimised for Organic Search?

There are even online tools to help you assess your website’s SEO score. Don’t worry if you haven’t been following SEO practices. There’s nothing wrong with getting started even if your website has already been up and running for a few years. Not sure how to get started optimising your website for organic keywords? Contact us to chat about how you can start improving your organic reach.

Direct Vs. Organic Search: What’s the Difference?

When it comes to direct and organic search, what makes them different from each other? Learn about which one you should be focusing on and how they differ.

In the past, differentiating direct and organic search was simple. According to many, direct traffic was when a person arrived on a website by typing the URL into their web browser. Organic traffic was when they arrive on a website via a search engine. While the above is correct, to understand all the insights from web traffic, it’s important to delve a little deeper into the topic. Before looking at the difference between the two, let’s learn a bit more about traffic sources.

Understanding Traffic Sources

There are various traffic sources and all these have different classifications. Web analytics platforms use an algorithm to determine the source of the traffic. Here are the different sources:

Social

Social traffic is when a visitor arrives on a page through a social network. For example, they may click on a link from their Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter feed.

Referral

Referral traffic happens when a person arrives on your website without going through a major search engine. They could arrive on a page by clicking on a link within a blog, for example.

Paid Search

A paid search is when a person arrives on a website by clicking on one of the paid ads on search engines. Google Adwords is one of the most popular paid search platforms.

Email

Email traffic is when a person arrives on your website because of successful email marketing.

Direct Traffic

Direct traffic is when the source is unknown. This could include a visitor typing in your specific URL into their web browser. It could also be by clicking on a bookmarked link.

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is when a visitor arrives on your website via a search engine. This does not include the paid ads seen at the top of search engine results.

Tracking

The key difference between direct and organic search is tracking. According to Google, direct visits don’t have tracking information. They don’t have a referring source. In short, analytics platforms can’t track them through a search engine or any other source. Organic traffic comes from a search engine or other entity. These are non-paid visits.

Security

Tracking is a key differentiator between a direct and an organic search. But, security also affects how web traffic is categorized. Last year, Google started prioritizing security to rank websites. Today, websites not prefaced by HTTPS can’t be tracked. And, if analytics can’t track the website, the traffic towards these sites is classified as direct regardless. As you can imagine, companies of all kinds are now fighting to have an HTTPS preface to improve traffic.

Privacy Settings

Aside from tracking and security, privacy also helps define traffic. But, this factor is in the hands of the user. This is because a user can change the privacy settings on their browser. With just one click, your browser can stop reporting where traffic comes from. Now, Google has encrypted keyword data as an extra privacy measure. If one of your website visitors is logged into their Google account, you won’t be able to see which keywords they used to arrive on your website. Unfortunately, these new privacy settings have led to many organic searches being marked as direct traffic. This also applies to Apple iOS 6 users because the operating system changed its privacy settings as well. This means any Google searches undertaken on the Safari browser will classify as direct traffic. This is regardless of whether it is an organic search or not.

Direct Traffic

To summarize, direct searches are visits with no referring website. These are searches that do not link to other websites. For example, direct traffic doesn’t come from search engines, social media pages, email marketing, and so on. The most common type of direct traffic is when a visitor types in a URL into their web browser. Also, it could be when a person clicks on a bookmarked link on their browser. Today, direct traffic is on the rise. Here are some common reasons for this.

Employee Traffic

Your employees visit your website for work purposes. But, more likely than not, they don’t have their IP address filtered from web analytics. This increases your direct traffic. But, the traffic is less valuable as it is not a reflection of the number of customers visiting your website.

Customer Portal Traffic

If you have a customer portal or intranet, you may experience high levels of direct traffic. While you shouldn’t filter out this traffic altogether, you can change your viewing options on Google Analytics. This will enable you to view your analytics without this source of traffic.

Email Traffic

While email traffic is organic, your analytics may confuse it with direct traffic. Often, clicks from Thunderbird and Outlook pass through the radar as direct traffic. The only way to identify this problem is to look at spikes in direct traffic when you undertake an email marketing campaign.

Real Direct Traffic

This is when people enter your URL into their web browser. This is real direct traffic. It shows that your customers already know your company.

Organic Traffic

Inbound marketing works towards increasing organic traffic. This type of traffic occurs when a visitor arrives on your website through a search engine such as Google. Organic traffic does not include paid ads. These types of ads are often seen at the top of a Google search page. They have the word “Ad” in front of the URL on Google. An organic search derives from Search Engine Optimization (SEO). With this in mind, you have to rank for competitive and long tail keywords relevant to your industry. With the right content and SEO, you will see a steady growth in organic traffic. Google also uses 200 other ranking factors to determine the highest value websites. Some of these include but are not limited to:

• Domain age and history
• The quality of your content
• The length of your content
• The keyword density in your content
• How easy it is to read your content
• The loading speed
• Image optimization

Direct and Organic Search Wrap Up

Understanding direct and organic search volumes is key to determining your future marketing initiatives. By tracking results you can translate these into new campaigns and efforts to increase your return on investment. The key to using these results is to track your searches over a long period of time. This will allow you to identify trends and areas for improvement. To find out more marketing tips that will help your business grow, visit our blog today!

6 Local SEO Strategies for Traffic and Lead Generation

Using local SEO strategies can help to grow your traffic and boost lead generation. Keep on reading to learn effective SEO techniques that work.

Did you know that if somebody looks for you on their phone, and finds your business, they will most likely visit or call you within the next 24 hours? This is why your local SEO strategies need to be airtight. It’s very easy to do your own SEO optimization these days. But it’s incredibly difficult to do it correctly. First of all, you need local SEO strategies that work in 2018, not 2011. So let’s take a look at how to win the local SEO war, and turn the traffic into leads.

How to Instantly Beat 50% of the Businesses Out There

You’re not going to believe this, but there is a free, 15-minute task that can put you above half of the businesses out there today. Make sure Google My Business has your most recent business information. This is so incredibly simple and completely free to update. And yet, 50% of surveyed businesses admit that their Google My Information business is either inaccurate or incomplete. This is basically gift wrapping valuable local SEO traffic to competition that is more on the ball. So take the five minutes to ensure that Google has your most up-to-date and accurate business address, hours of operation, products or services, customer reviews, and photos.

Don’t Mistake PPC for SEO

A lot of business owners will buy paper click PPC ads to try to help their local SCO strategy and optimization. These are actually two completely different things. It seems counterintuitive, you are buying these ads from Google, so you would think they would help your organic ranking with Google. There is no data to prove this. Try to think of it this way: PPC is paid traffic that you buy through bidding on keywords. SEO is earning organic traffic by optimizing keywords. PPC ads are a great way to show up in local searches and send traffic to your website, to hopefully convert into a qualified sales lead. Which is great. Just don’t assume it’s going to help your organic rankings.

How to Convert Paid Clicks Into Leads

Contrary to popular believe, you don’t half to spend the most money to have the most success from your PPC ads. You can see better results by being a bit smarter and more strategic. Let’s say your competition is outspending you, so they have the number one position when people Google your business. That number one spot is not guaranteed to get the click from the searcher. More people will click your ad if it’s better written, and speaks directly to their pain point. Your ad copy needs to strike in emotional cord with them in the headline, then inspire them to click with a compelling offer in the second line. And if you do that better than the other guys, people will choose your ad over theirs. Bonus Tip: One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make in their local SEO strategies is sending their traffic to a generic landing page. Make sure you set up a dedicated landing page for each PPC campaign, so you can:

• Measure the true performance of this ad, and make adjustments
• Match the messaging and offer to exactly what the actual ad said

If the ad promised a 14-day free trial, but the landing page makes no mention of it, you will lose the click because the reader will assume they’re in the wrong place. or that they’re the victim of a bait and switch offer.

How to Turn Your Blog into a SEO and Lead Goldmine

A blog should be the most important part of everybody’s local SEO strategies, but it is one of the most miss used tools in the world of digital marketing. The SEO value of your blog has never been higher. Google wants organic content like this. In fact, websites that have a blog have 434% more indexed pages than non-blog sites.

Write About the Right Things

Clearly, the first thing you need to do is write about things that will generate the most traffic. Most businesses today right about themselves, and promote their various events, products, services, or promotions. People don’t care. They want to click on and read something that has actual value to them. So you need to find out the questions they need answered and the problems that are keeping them up at night. That’s what you should blog about. Go on social media and sites like Quora and Reddit to find the questions that people are asking about your industry. Now take those exact questions, word-for-word, and turn them into block titles. These are actually what you call longtail keywords. Because they are the long questions that people are asking Siri, Alexa, and Google. You want your business’ blog to be the answer to these questions.

Is Your Blog Set Up to Generate Leads?

A lot of businesses struggle with a blog that generates pretty good traffic, but produces no leads. That’s probably because they are not giving their reader a clear next step. Your reader had a question, came to your blog, read the whole thing, and got an answer. Now you have their trust in their attention so you need a call-to-action (CTA) to turn them into a lead. That CTA could be to:

• Fill out the lead form on the right
• Click to read more blogs
• Join our mailing list
• Leave a comment

You can’t waste this click. You’ve captured their attention, now you need to capture their contact information so you can get them to buy today, or nurture this lead with re-marketing efforts. If you ask them to do nothing at the end of a blog, that’s exactly what they’ll do. And then they’re gone forever.

Ready to Talk About Your Local SEO Strategies

Felicity Jane utilises her background skills in psychology, marketing, IT, graphic design and urban and regional planning, to bring real world solutions to clients. How can she help you? Click here to find out.

The Ultimate Local SEO Checklist for Small Businesses

Is your local SEO strategy all over the place? Our ultimate local SEO checklist will help you to get organized, set goals, and start taking action.

Search engine optimization strategies for local businesses are similar to those of national companies. You need to make sure that your pages rank higher than those of your competitors. Still, there are some major differences when you’re advertising to a local market. For instance, you’ll need to focus on regional keywords in your content. According to a Google study, half of the customers who searched for a local business on their phone visited that business the same day. To help you out, we’ve compiled a local SEO checklist. If someone is searching for a product or service in your area, you need to rank higher than other businesses. With these tips, you’ll get that opportunity.

Content and Backlinks

Top-notch content is the backbone of every SEO strategy. It’s also one of the most important elements in this local SEO checklist. When it comes to local businesses, online content is one of the primary ways new customers will find your company. The search engines prioritize fresh, original content. Creating engaging blog posts is the best way to climb the ranks of search engines. Focus on readability in your blog posts. User experience is paramount. You can’t jam a bunch of keywords into a post, so it climbs the ranks. This is called “keyword stuffing,” and search engines are wise about it. Eventually, those less-engaging posts will affect your website traffic in the long run.

Provide Interesting, Necessary Information

No local SEO checklist would be complete without mentioning backlinks. Backlinks are links to your website that users find during their online searches. You can develop a log of backlinks in several ways, especially by creating engaging content. Give local bloggers and journalists a reason to link to your website by providing informative information. You should also reach out to them with a link to your site. Request that they include a link if they find an appropriate place in their posts. Write a comment on a blog or contact creators via email or social media. If they like your content, they won’t have a problem throwing you a bone in a future article.

Know Your Demographic

Knowing your audience is an essential element of any SEO strategy. It’s especially important for local businesses. Besides prioritizing local keywords, you need to develop content that will engage your target audience. Write blog posts and informative content that appeal to the type of people who are most likely to visit your company. Write some posts that capitalize on search results from your area.

Be Aware of Trends

Search engines are aware of what’s trending on the Internet and can give you an idea of what you should include on your company website. Take a look at Google trends to see what people are searching for. Additionally, capitalizing on seasonal trends is always a good strategy. Google will help you here as well. With this information, you can create a content calendar for your website. Once you know what local people are looking, tailor your niche content accordingly.

Customer Reviews

Optimizing customer reviews is one of the best ways to attract customers to your local business. Use Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, and social platforms to get your name out there. This will also make it easier for your customers to leave feedback. Try to find out what social media sites your audience visits the most, and prioritize these first. If you can, hire someone to manage your social media profiles to increase engagement. Respond to reviews – both good and bad – to make sure customers feel as though their opinions are valued.

No Fake Reviews

Unfortunately, many websites buy fake reviews from various sources to boost their ratings on certain sites. This is effective for some, but it’s unethical and can lead to an SEO penalty down the road. If you’ve paid for positive reviews, those reviews probably don’t sound natural. Google will eventually catch on, and after that, your page ranking will drop. Additionally, fake reviews are relatively easy to spot. If a customer perceives a review as fake, he won’t trust you anymore. In the long term, it’s not worth paying for fake reviews.

The Real World: Fantastic Service

Of course, transparent customer reviews means your service will have to be exceptional. About 97 percent of customers look for online user reviews before visiting a local business. This means that a few bad reviews could tarnish your reputation. As long as your customer service is up to the task, customer reviews will do nothing but help your business grow.

Get the Most from Your Website

Optimizing your website is the most important tip on this local SEO checklist. Without a fully optimized website, your marketing efforts will be in vain. Ahead are some quick tips to make sure you’re getting the most from your online presence

Make It Easy to Find You

Add a Google Maps feature to your website. Include your contact information on every page. Get customers to think about contacting or coming in with every blog post they visit.

Create an “About Us” Page

The “About Us” section is critical for local businesses. Customers want to know your story, and this is the best place to give it to them.

Including Customer Reviews

Make your reviews easy to see, so that future customers know what fantastic service you provide.

Make It Mobile Friendly

You’ll get a large percentage of your traffic from mobile devices. Thus, it’s essential to make your website easily viewable on phones and tablets. If it isn’t, chances are customers will look elsewhere.

Use This Local SEO Checklist to Gain More Customers

Providing great service isn’t enough to get new customers. Nowadays, you have to prioritize your online presence as much as helping your customers find what they need. With this local SEO checklist, you should be on your way to shooting up the local SEO rankings. If you need any help, take a look at how we can get the most from your website’s SEO!

5 Reasons To Hire A Backlink Building Service

Link building can be very important to improving SEO. Why not hire professionals to help? Keep reading for 5 reasons to hire a backlink building service.

Looking for a way to maximise the power of your backlinks? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the future of online marketing. You can leverage your global and local SEO capabilities with link building, which involves having links to your website appear on pages external to yours. The better your backlinks, the higher your SEO ranking. The higher your SEO ranking, the more effective your marketing. And you know where effective marketing eventually leads! Backlink building can be a tricky and even artful task, so it’s important to hire professionals to help you do it. Read on to learn more about why you should hire a backlink building service in order to take your business to the ultimate next level.

1. Link Building Takes Time and Expertise

This is the most important reason why you should hire a backlink building service. While back linking sounds like a straightforward and simple concept, it actually requires many hours and diligence to accomplish effectively. Link building involves a solid knowledge of the ins and outs of SEO as well as website and domain authority and the value of external links themselves. Sure, a lot of this knowledge you can get from a Q and A session with your marketing team, but even that is not enough. Professional link builders will bring essential experience to the table so that you can have amazingly effective backlinks in a short amount of time. They’ll be well versed in the field and also will have a finger on the pulse of the industry — which happens to change all the time. When it comes to backlinking, builders have to walk a very fine line in order to stay within Google’s rules about rankings and SEO. It can be easy for an amateur to backlink in such a way that actually sends a site to the bottom of a ranking, or even violates Google’s stipulations. Choosing a backlink building service saves you the time and effort of understanding how external linking works and how to implement it.

2. A Backlink Building Service Has the Right Tools

Link building isn’t something that just anyone can pick up on any tablet or computer. It doesn’t necessarily involve super special software but it does rely on certain analytical tools that can assess external link strength and effect on rankings. Your professional link builder will be able to assess local and global competition by relying on backlink checker tools. While some of these exist for free online to anybody, a backlink building service will have tools that are exclusive to certain companies. It’s also possible to generate a low-quality external link. Your link builder will implement the right digital tools to prevent this and assess your website’s position in the online SEO market. Lastly, hiring a backlink building service isn’t just for the links — the right service will monitor created links to ensure they are powerful, and modify to maximise your SEO.

3. The Pros Understand SEO

The relationship between SEO and backlinks is a very intimate one. On a basic level, strategic and plentiful backlinks will ensure that more visitors have more opportunities to access your website through a variety of ways. This means that properly placed backlinks will help you rise to the top in SEO towards those coveted high rankings. But it also is more than just that. When you hire a backlink building service, you are essentially hiring an SEO service! The professionals who take on the task of link building for your site will do so with a solid background in the language of SEO. They’ll know all about how to increase page authority and use keywords appropriately for SEO. This means that you are getting bang for your buck in more than one way. You will be maximizing your SEO and backlink power by relying on fluent experts in the digital field.

4. A Link Building Service Offers a Partnership

There’s a lot that goes into effective link building, beyond mere expertise in the field. It’s important for your backlink building service to know the ins and outs of many different kinds of businesses and their marketing operations. It’s also critical for the professional you hire to understand how your business works. The right service will essentially come to you in the form of a partner who is willing to learn about your needs and how your business specifically operates. This partner will be a constant player on your team. As a result, this partnership will lead to the greatest optimisation of your marketing tools and campaigns — particularly those external links and your SEO.

5. Hiring a Professional Lets You Prioritise Other Marketing

Wrapping your head around SEO in the first place is likely to chew up time and take a large portion of your marketing team’s focus. Why add to the mix with link building? Whether you are a business owner of a small or large company, you’ve got other priorities that go beyond managing SEO and backlinks. Hiring a link building service will enable you to prioritise other essential components of marketing, such as fostering customer relations, developing your team, and expanding profit margins.

Why You Should Hire a Backlink Building Service

Once you’ve implemented SEO — if you haven’t you really should — it’s important to cover all your bases to ensure that it actually pays off. One way to do this is to implement effective backlinking, so that users have the opportunity to get to your site in more than one way. Hiring a professional is critical when it comes to link building. Not only does outsourcing give you the expertise required for quality external links, but it also enables you to put time into other valuable priorities as a business owner. With a pro taking care of your external links, you’ll be certain of maximised SEO and quality links. At Felicity Jane Digital, we are your go-to for everything SEO — including link building and web design. We can help your business earn higher rankings on a daily basis and ensure that you have the backlinks that are optimising everything you’re putting out there on the digital platform. The professional services we offer are rooted in our deep belief in the economic value of small businesses. Reach out to us to let us know what we can do to leverage your SEO or web design today!