Generating Traffic to a WordPress Site

Generating Traffic to a WordPress Site is not so difficult to do these days. WordPress is a fantastic CMS to generate SEO with. You have access to many SEO plugins, our favourite pick is Yoast. But there are many other things you can do to your WordPress site to help generate SEO.

Here are some tips to help you generate traffic to a WordPress site.

How to generate traffic to a new WordPress Web Site

1. Focus your content on your audience who are likely to share it

“Content is king“. The quality of the content you write can take you to the top in Google; and poorly written content can make you lose your audience. The key point here is to write unique and informative content. There must be no grammatical errors, and copying is a strict no-no.

When planning your content, think from the perspective of your customers.

For example what do they want to read from you? Audiences are of different types, there regular visitors, some active users, and less active users. Some people love to share what they ‘like’. Those people are highly active on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Your aim should be to identify those users who will share your content. What makes a person share certain posts? Use capturing images, infographics and videos in your blogs. Stats show that people feel more connected with visuals, and such posts are more likely to get shared. The more your blogs get shared, the higher the chances of getting more traffic on your site.

2. Make your content SEO friendly

Wordpress Settings

SEO, done right, will gain you traffic. Search engines such as Google are a great source of traffic and WordPress is a very SEO friendly platform. You just need to change its settings to make you website search engine friendly.

During developing your site, you need to check the privacy settings. Uncheck the box that says “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”.

There is a Permalink setting where you need to configure the URL that is search engine friendly. Never leave your blog uncategorized; always choose a suitable category for it. Similarly there are many small changes that can help you make your blogs SEO friendly which help you gain better traffic. The old age saying that “20% efforts done in right direction can bring 80% of desired results” is so true.

3. Make good use of Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great tool that every one must install to check the sources of their traffic. It gives all the information such as what are the sites which are sending maximum traffic, average time spent by the visitors, total visits, percentage of new visits, bounce rate and much more. And the best thing is it’s FREE!

All this data is very important in working out the marketing strategy for your site. You can find out the sources of high traffic as well as sources of high quality traffic. High quality traffic means visitors spending more time on your site which is exactly what you want. This can then help you create a strategy and concentrate on sites giving you high quality traffic.

4. Use Social Media as much as possible

Social media is becoming an extremely powerful means of gaining traffic. LinkedIn and Google+ have more than 300 million users. Facebook alone has more than 1 billion users and this count is increasing every day. People who are active on social media can be referred to as “content distributors” or influencers.

Here are some useful tips:

Create a business page for your site in all social media sites such as Facebook,Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ etc.
Make sure the profiles and the pages that you create for your business are 100% correctly completed. Fill in as much information as possible. Profiles that are complete are more likely to gain more trust and credibility from your audience.
Share all your posts on all these social media sites. Make them appealing so that more people want to share your posts.
Connect directly with the audience at your page.
Attaining success at social media sites requires patience and persistence. Make sure you follow all the above mentioned tips carefully.

5. Use effective images, graphics and illustrations

Pexels

It is always smart to use relatable images, graphics and illustration in your site. A image speaks more than content. You can either create your own images, or you can purchase them from sites such as Shutterstock or free from Pexels. These images are a great source of traffic through the means of image searching.

One tip is, always allow other people to share your images but on condition that they link that back to your site. That way you are making great use of your images. If anyone shares your images without giving you a back link, then find this out using the Image Search function. You then contact those owners and ask to give you back links and chances are they will.

6. Keyword research

Keyword Planner

The choice of right keywords can play a major role in the success of your website. There are many tools out there that can help in this regard such as Keywordtool.io, Adwords Keyword Planner. You can use these tools to find out the phrases that are commonly searched by people related to your business. These keywords should be used to make titles for your posts. Optimising blogs with target keywords can help you get better traffic. The target keyword should be used creatively in title and the content should be focused on the subject.

7. Guest bloggers

Guest blogging is also a great way of gaining traffic. For new blogs, it is difficult to get consent of established blog owners to post on their blog. It is recommended to use any personal connections in these instances. Contact people who already have an established audience. Guest blogging is an excellent way of building a brand and contacting new people.

8. Optimised site design

A well optimised website design is a ‘no-brainer’ for the success of any site, and a good template is the backbone. A professional design can help gain confidence. The usability also plays a major part. Make sure your site is easy to navigate. They should be able to easily find and do what they want to do. The design should be responsive on all platforms such as smart phones and tablets.

9. Interact with your visitors

When visitors read your blogs and if they like it or not, they are likely to hopefully leave comments. Reply to all the comments. If there is a doubt, delete it right away. If it is an appreciation, then thank the visitor. Feel free to remove negative comments and make sure you don’t allow blog spamming. Visitors like when they find that the blogger is giving them attention and their chances of them revisiting your blog increases.

The success of a website depends upon on traffic, so follow these tips for success!

DesignLab can also help you with SEO optimisation for your WordPress site. Call Spiros on 0431 926 575.

March 10, 2016 admin SEO, Web design, WordPress Comments Off

Five SEO strategies to think about in 2016

Five SEO Strategies to think about in 2016

We are nearly at the end of 2015 and SEO marketers have likely been deep into links, keywords, content, and conversions. As you keep working hard, you would do well to adopt the following strategies to keep your momentum going into 2016.

1. Send social signs

There are lot of digital marketers who complain about low volume of incoming traffic from social platforms in relation to the efforts spent on those platform, but a silver lining has finally been added to the social big picture.

Just as backlinks act as votes for your site, raising your domain authority and rankings, so too does the popularity of content you share on social media.

Late in 2014, Google loosened its grip and took the first steps toward allowing non-Google social media platforms to be featured on its search engine results pages (SERPs). Social media platforms other than Google+ made their entry into Google’s Knowledge Graph.

With the removal of Google authorship, as well, from search result snippets, you can expect social signals from popular platforms to gain in importance in the years ahead.

2. Love the mobile

We all know the coming of age of the mobile Web, it’s been creeping upon us. With the share of smartphones at 80% of the US market, predictions are coming true. Further, mobile Internet activity now stands at over 40% of all Internet traffic and only half that are desktop computers.

Recognising the changes in browsing patterns, Google took the step of tagging sites on its SERPs as “mobile-friendly” as a tip off to searchers. The click rates and engagement for sites tagged specifically as mobile friendly are higher than others.

So hurry up and switch to responsive design (if you haven’t already). Search the site markers that Google uses to confer a tag on sites and implement these changes on your site ASAP, which include the following:

Make sure you have buttons that are big enough to be clicked easily on a small mobile device
Lots of whitespace to prevent the “fat finger syndrome”
Your copy should be large enough to read without zooming in
Links that are placed fairly apart to avoid wrong navigation

Take Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and make sure your site passes.

3. Don’t abuse guest blogging

As content gains acceptance as a road to earning you links and growing authority, there was a mad rush between 2012 and 2013 toward guest-blogging simply for the sake of links, no matter how irrelevant or unimportant the referring site. Thousands of low-quality websites and blogs exploded, soliciting guest posts and offering backlinks in return.

Not surprisingly, that extent of guest posting sites did not go unnoticed, and in early 2014 Google specifically highlighted guest-blogging as a strongly undesirable method of earning SEO brownies.

In the words of Google: “If you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop.”

But that does not mean you need to close the doors on guest blogging in 2016; it just means that resorting to spammy guest posts on spammy sites is a bad idea.

To avoid Google’s wrath, resolve to put quality over quantity. Aim to acquire high-quality links from respected and well-read websites rather than anyone who agrees to publish your content for the sakes of backlinks.

Doing so is easier said than done. A guest post on a high-quality site comes with two requisites:

Creating undeniably great content
Building a lasting relationship with high quality sites in your niche as opposed to simply looking for one-off links from them

4. Move to HTTPS

HTTPS (HTTP Secure) is technology for transferring data between your site and the Web servers with an additional layer of encryption called SSL (Secure Socket Layer) to make your data transfer very secure.

With the recent hacking of large-scale data breaches, including the famous Sony hack, security has been a priority of most digital marketers. Gone are days just e-commerce retailers, financial websites and the likes having to spend time and building airtight websites with SSL encryption.

In a move for safer browsing experience for all users, in August 2014 Google announced it would be using HTTPS as a definite ranking signal.

Keeping the ever-worsening Web security situation in mind, combined with Google’s announcement regarding HTTPS as a ranking signal, it is definitely worth your while to invest in an SSL certificate for your site. It’s even more important if your site needs login authentication or handles sensitive user data.

(However, bear in mind that SEO-related things can go wrong when migrating your HTTP site to HTTPS, so seek an expert agency to help you out.)

5. Focus on contextual search

Semantic search shot into focus with Hummingbird in 2013. SEOs of all kinds rushed to optimise their content to not just keywords but also their synonyms, product- and brand-related phrases, different content formats, and so on.

In 2014 processing capabilities of Google bots became more refined. A smart SEO strategy would approach keyword research from the perspective of search intent. So now, you must think like your user and come up with as many combinations as possible for queries related to your brand.

Instead of using single keywords to build authority, consider conversational queries that use natural language structures. If you do have to focus on keywords, use universal transactional words like sale, buy, cheap, discount, etc. to build probable search queries for your products or brands.

“Content that links back to your site does not have to be in your face with exact or partial match, or even branded keywords as your anchor text,” says Vaibhav Kakkar, co-founder of RankWatch, which offers backlink and on-site SEO analysis in addition to monitoring rankings.

Vaibhav concludes from analysis on its links to rankings interaction data that even a mere reference with no link back to your site adds to your ranking potential, just as long as your brand is mentioned in relevant context.

Even if your products are alluded to along with those of your competitors, search engines pick up on the fact that your brand belongs to the same product category as the others. If any of the brands that share space with yours happen to have high online authority, some of that authority rubs off on you via association.

Google always continues to keep SEO experts on their toes. The good news is that SEO is now more about how useful your site is to the end user than how smart you are at outflanking Google’s ranking systems.

The challenge is that it’s an uphill battle to be truly useful to today’s informed and savvy web searcher.

After years of umming and arring about social media’s relative importance to search rankings, Google finally acknowledged its place as a valuable visibility factor, albeit in a subtle way.

September 21, 2015 admin Google, SEO, Web design Comments Off

One Page Scrolling Websites SEO

One page scrolling websites SEO

One page scrolling websites are all the rage right now; we see more and more each week on sites. They do look quite cool when filled with great fonts, graphics and transitions, but can you SEO a one-page site and rank?

It’s going to depend on what your particular area is, what the topic is, and what kind of layout you come out with. But if it works for you and for users to have that all on one page, for the most part, it should work for Google as well.

We took a look at what other web developers have to say about SEO optimising one-page sites. The same old advice I keep hearing again is to include adding sub-pages or blogs because of the content value. The only problem with this is it skirts the issue by turning your one page site into a multi-page site. Does this mean you should not use a one-page?

1. Authority

At first glance, authority might seem like an argument in favour of one page sites. Every off-site and inbound link will point to the same URL right. But the counter argument is that it’s more difficult to earn links for the same content again and again than it is to get them for fresh content.

And while one page sites can work for Google, most SEO experts believe having multiple pages with off-site links improves the overall credibility of a website and SEO.

Page Authority/PageRank: It’s possible to benefit by having all links point to the same URL.
Domain Authority: Questionable/unknown: having a 1:1 ratio of links to pages, and having only one page may inhibit domain-wide authority benefits.
Link Building: It may be difficult to earn a continuous flow of new links over time.

2. Content

Search engine algorithms like to seek relevancy; they match queries with content. While a one page site could improve relevancy for your primary keywords, it’s more likely you will alter relevancy for sub-topics and ranking terms that might rank easier if they had their own pages.

Let’s consider Google’s Hummingbird new update. How it works is it strives to better match the meaning of a query to relevant documents, not just matching the words in a search with words on pages. If you have only one page describing everything about your product or service, and all the other stuff found within a normal business website — how relevant can one page be for any one section?

3. Crawlability

Can a search engine crawl your one-page site? If you have any transitions that load new content as a user scroll down the page, you must make certain that search engines can crawl and cache your page from top to bottom. Google’s search spiders have a limited support for executing javascript.

If you’re not sure, copy a line of text from the bottom of your page and search for it in Google Search within quotes. Does it appear in the search results? Another test is to turn off CSS and javascript before loading your page. I use the Web Developer Toolbar for this.

I’ve seen some web designers advise serving a static version of a page to search engines still while displaying the dynamic version to online users. We advise to be cautious about doing something like this. Google defines cloaking, a penalty and banning offense, as serving different content to people and search engines. If you serve a static version to search engines you better be sure the page content is exactly the same.

4. SEO For One Page Sites

If you’re not discourage at this point, you may be wondering: how do you SEO optimise a one page site then?

a. Content Sections More Defined

Design each section of content as if it were a separate webpage. Select the keywords you desire to rank for and draft the appropriate headline, copy and image alt tags.

b. Separate Content Sections in DIV containers

An idea is to place each section of your content inside a DIV tag. For example:

<div id="design">...content...</div>

<div id="web-design">...content...</div>

<div id="illustration">...content...</div>

CSS id names are not considered signals of SEO keywords, but it can be a good way to keep things highly organised. You can also use them for anchor links, which are also SEO signals.

c. Anchored Links

We know Google looks at anchored links. Don’t be confused with anchor text, anchor links take you to a specific place within a website.

Try to optimise each DIV id for both a usability and keyword SEO standpoint. You want them to make sense for people using your website and have a relevant keyword for the section.

To create an anchor link for each section,

Name the DIV id.

<div id="web-design">

Link to it.

<a href="#web-design">Web + Design</a>

d. Content Section with a H1 Tag

This is probably the one time we will suggest multiple H1 tags on the same page. A H1 signal that follows is distinct and separate from the rest of the page. Just make sure to only use one H1 per section.

In Conclusion

One page websites can look great for new sites and perhaps special projects. We don’t recommend them as a long-term solution. If you have a multi-page website then I recommend leaving it.

July 1, 2015 admin Google, SEO Comments Off

Hints to help you get to the top page of Google

How to get on the Top Page of Google!

There has been many statistics which prove people don’t click beyond the first page of Google search results, so if you want to be seen, you need to be in the top listings on first page. To do that, you need to learn a bit about how search engines work and how to optimise your site, more commonly known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Once the search engine knows your site exists, they scan your site and index the information, then analyse the content to determine how and where your website should display on the results page. If your site isn’t optimised, then it won’t rank well at all, and could end up well below your competitors.

Some Key Elements to Help Increase Your Rankings:

Each search engine has its own set of rankings and listing criteria, but they all work the same way, let’s look at the same basic elements.

Keywords – These are select words and phrases that someone would use when searching for your product/business. You want to choose 5 to 10 words or phrases that best represent your product/business, then use those words and phrases frequently on your site (but only where it makes sense — whatever you do, don’t cram them in because Google will know).

Title Tag – The title tag is a short summary of what potential customers can expect from your page. It displays in a few important places, including the browser’s title bar, and as the title for your listing in search engine results. If you target a specific audience, possibly consider including that in the title, like “motorcycle accident in Arizona.” It helps if each page on your site contains a unique title, but keep it concise — around 65 characters.

Description Tag – The description tag displays below your website’s link in search results and should entice people to visit your website. Every page in your site should include a unique description using the keywords for that page. Keep your descriptions less than 250 characters and avoid non-alphanumeric characters.

Header Tag (H1 Tag) – Every page in your website should include only one header tag. It doesn’t display in the search results, but it’s the largest or most prominent text on your page. The header tells a visitor what they’re reading. Keep it brief – no longer than a short sentence.

Page Content – Your content, the text that your visitors will read, is really important for search engines. Use between 350 and 650 words, including those keywords we mentioned above, one good thing is to bold each of the keywords once on the page. And always make sure everything on your site is original material, do not copy and paste from other competitor websites. Google will know.

Interesting Fact: Google can tell (and will probably penalise you) if your content has an excessive number of keywords.

Link Building – Links can be a big factor in how search engines rank your site. There are two: interlinks and back links. Interlinking is creating a link from a keyword or sentence on one page to another area of your website. For example, the sentence “Find an lawyer near you” would be linked to the list of office locations on your site. A Back link are other websites that link to your site. Google weighs this more heavily when determining your site’s rank, and unfortunately these are more difficult to achieve. An easy ways to create back links are listing your business with online directories (such as Yelp, TrueLocal and social media). You could also contact other business owners online in your area of business and offer them a link exchange.

Menu Navigation – Navigation refers to all the links on your website. Visitors and Google both rely on good navigation to get around your site. Broken links are like hitting a wall, so be sure to check your links regularly and make sure they are all working.

Sitemap – A sitemap is essentially the map of all the pages in your website. Sitemaps will guide a search engine throughout your website with the names and locations of pages. They can speed up indexing and, in some cases, increase site traffic by indexing previously buried pages.

Image Tag – Images are good to break up the text and add a visual appeal to your website. Be sure to include an image on every page, and format it with an “alt” attribute using those keywords we mentioned. Because search engines can’t see images the way we do, they depend on alt attributes to appropriately catalog and index the image.

Tip: Optimising your images, so the file size is smaller and the image loads faster, can also help your search rankings.

May 20, 2015 admin Google, SEO Comments Off

Mobilegeddon Google is here!

Mobilegeddon Google is upon us! Run for the hills.

Google next big update is going to target non-mobile friendly sites and is expected to roll out April 21, 2015, and roll out for a few days to a week.

This is a big one, and could affect a large portion of your web traffic and seo results.

In the last few years, mobile traffic has increased dramatically. It’s speculated that more than 50% of Google searches are performed on mobile.

Even Google is saying this update is going to have a bigger effect on search rankings than Panda or Penguin, the biggest updates Google has ever launched, as quoted by a member of Google’s Webmaster Trends team, Zineb Ait Bahajji at SMX Munich.

The problem is many sites are not responsive, meaning that they were only built for desktop computers and are hard to navigate on mobile devices.

Google doesn’t want to serve up results that are not mobile user friendly, so they are implementing a new algorithm change to demote sites that aren’t usable on phones and tablets.

Google has officially announced the update and it’s coming on April 21, 2015 so you still have time to prepare your site.

Google has said there is no degree of mobileness, it’s either yes or no.

Test it for yourself by clicking on www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly and if you’re concerned we’ve got a fantastic ‘mobile friendly’ website package available.

If your website isn’t responsive, call Spiros on 0431 926 575 or email us info@designlab.net.au .

If your website is responsive, relax and pour yourself a cup of coffee and grin:-)

April 24, 2015 admin Google, SEO Comments Off

Content is King #5: How to Use Google+ for SEO Boost

Compared to other social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, Google+ often is mislooked when it comes to creating online marketing strategies. This is because Google+ does not have as many users as the other larger social platforms.

But, while Google does not command as large a slice of the social media pie, it does have a lot more elements that provide your business more value than say Twitter or Facebook, especially when it comes to increasing a website’s organic SEO traffic.

Here are a bunch of ways you can use Google+ for an SEO boost for your business.

#1: Personalised Searches

One of the most individual ways that Google+ helps businesses with their organic rankings is through a personalised search. Simply put, personalised search takes place when a user is logged into their Google account and as a result they see different results compared to what people would see when they are not signed in. This is because Google logs a user’s preferences when they sign into a Google account and tries to rework search results based on these preferences.

There was a study researched by Eric Enge in 2013 who found that some webpage results can be lifted higher for individuals that follow a user or business on Google+. This is because Google recognises a user’s preference for that particular business, or author and wants to display those subsistence higher when a query is typed into Google that already was answered or discussed by that business or individual.

#2: Google+ Local

Google+ local is Google’s social integration of a businesses into it’s social media platform. It can be very useful to set up a Google+ local profile page so you can get added exposure. When a user types in the name of the business or the services that the company offers, it triggers a knowledge graph that pulls data from the Google+ local page and adds it to the search results.

Service/Product Results
When a user types in the name of a service that is viewed to be geographically important to the user, Google will implement knowledge graph listings below search advertisements in the results page. If you hover over a particular business, it will set off an additional knowledge graph that overlays in the right trail of the search result page.

Brand Search Results
When a user types in the specific name of a company it triggers another knowledge graph. The information that is shown in a brand knowledge graph is more detailed than a service/product knowledge graph.

With brand knowledge graphs, the user will be able to see a Google+ profile picture of the company, or, if Google already has a picture of your picture in its database, it will show a map of where the business is, reviews from users, and business details like address and a phone number. All of this is all pulled from information on the Google+ business page.

#3: Indexing

Unlike other social networks like Twitter and Facebook, Google+ has their search bots crawl through each article / post in Google+. This keeps for content that has been posted on here to be discovered very quickly. In the same study by Eric mentions how he has witnessed his content being indexed faster by Google when he posts it into Google+.

Sometimes Google will index content 1-3 days more quickly if it is posted in Google+ right after launching the article on my client’s websites, but other times it doesn’t work.

#4: Google+ Ranks Your Social Media Posts

Not only is every post on Google+ crawled by it’s bots, but it is also indexed and then ranked into the search results pages. This helps in extending the value of each of your posts, and then makes it more important to get right. Google has ranked other social networking pages previously in the past but these are mainly just community and profile pages, not actual posts.

One advantage is there is no character limit on Google+ posts, so you can easily re-post your current website content, then post it on your Google+ profile page under a related keyword, and have the ability to rank twice on the same topic. How great is that!

#5: Gets Your Web Content Viral Quickly

Google+ may not be the biggest social media platform yet, but it’s network has some of the best engagement on the world wide web. This is true for webmasters and content writers that use Google+ communities to heighten their work and network with professionals.

Connecting with people and using Google’s advanced capabilities to share posts to certain audiences could be your best shot at using social media to market content to contributors, bloggers, and webmasters who then pick up and share the content on their websites.

#6: Keeping Up with SEO Best Practices

The world of SEO is always changing and it’s real important to keep up-to-date as best as you can on the latest news, trends and tools. Although Google+ may not have as many users as other social networks, it does have one of the most active communities on the web for SEO professionals, so do we need to say more.

From social communities like Technical SEO that has SEO pros and webmasters actively helping each other through optimisation issues, to Google’s own John Mueller, who is in charge of webmaster relations at Google, doing regular Google+ Hangouts to answer webmaster questions is one of the best ways to keep track of SEO best practices.

#7: Google+ Hangouts

Online videos have become very valuable to SEO these days. With Google+ Hangouts, recording and uploading an online video has never been so easier. Google+ Hangouts is a live video streaming utility and recording service where you and other Google+ users can get together to talk about topics, or have meetings. Best of all, it’s a completely free tool! Although the actual videos do not show up in the search results, you can still rank the actual post containing the video and automatically transfer your Hangout video to YouTube to get it ranked that way.

#8: Author Rank

Last year Matt Cutts, head of Google’s search spam team, mentioned of an intention for Google to start recognising authorities on certain subjects. In a video Matt recapped that intent and even added that Google will begin to rank pages based on that authority. Though it is unlikely that Google+ will be the only way that Google determines authority based on a user’s popularity within the social network, it is very likely Google+ will be tied into the algorithm somehow based on its current features and capabilities.

#9: Rich snippets

Another way to get recognised by Google+ is impacting search results via Authorship and Publisher rich snippet markups. By entering code to your website then linking to a website on your Google+ page, webmasters and writers have the capacity to integrate Google+ information like author name, Google+ follower count, and profile picture into the search engine results page.

Summary

As you can see that it is really important all businesses make the time and effort to register a Google+ page, it adds value to your online marketing and helps boost SEO. At DesignLab we now offer creating Google+ pages for all our customers, because we feel it is an important step to getting more hits.

April 15, 2015 admin Google, SEO Comments Off

Content is King #4: Can Online Reviews Impact Your SEO

I guess that you’d would stand up and either pat yourself on the back if your business has a strategy already in place for getting reviews and managing your online reputation.

Online reviews are important for a number of reasons, and have significance through their ability to affect:

Your rankings in search engines
Which search results actually gets clicked on
Consumers purchasing decisions

This means reviews online as critical to your SEO as building reference and on-site optimisation.

How Do Consumers Use Online Reviews?

Before I get started about data surrounding and how online reviews are used by consumers and how it impacts their decision, it’s vital to consider where it all fits into the purchasing cycle for services and products.

Usually, by the time someone has started looking at a review, they’ve already know their needs/wants, how a business might fulfill that need/want and are now are ready to select a business.

The important thing to now is that the mental gap between reading a review and making a decision to purchase from a business is very small, and results in a yes/no decision almost straight away. So as a small business, your reputation online can directly influence your business.

But, how many people actually read reviews? According to a survey conducted by BrightLocal, roughly 83% of consumers reported reading online reviews.

But, how many reviews do potential customers they read before making up their minds? The survey also has an answer to that. About 65% of consumers will read 6 reviews or less before they form an opinion about a given business.

Meanwhile, another survey conducted by Dimensional Research found that 90% of their respondents claimed that positive online reviews influenced their buying decisions, while 86% had responded saying that negative reviews impacted their decisions.

Hopefully this helps you understand at least from a customer’s perspective how important online reviews are in helping push their purchasing decisions.

Why Reviews Matter For SEO

All search engines love online reviews for one reason, customers love online reviews. They are in business of providing consumers on the go or at home with the most accurate information to help them make decisions around their purchases. The faster you do that, the more customers will turn to them time and time again. Have a look at the below screenshot of results from Yelp for the keywords “boutique fashion Toronto.”

According to MOZ’s Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, reviews make up 10% of how Google decide to rank search results. Here’s chart they provide to break down the different parables:

Preparing a Review Strategy

Before you start on creating a review strategy that works for your business, it’s a good idea to have some thoughts on which review platforms would work best for you’re business.

To figure out that, start by going to Google and doing the following search, “[Industry] + reviews” and see which sites pop-up on the first page. For example, have a look at what shows up for “shoe store reviews”:

Something else you can do is click over the leading search results and you will see two arrows pop-up that help you to open up what Google refers to as the “Knowledge Panel” for that business and look at the sites listed under “more reviews.”

Something else to keep in mind before we show how you can obtain more reviews is understanding the different review policies all platforms have that you should stand by. For e.g. Yelp forbids any small businesses from approaching online reviews and will act quickly if it detects something off. Meanwhile, other platforms don’t really have any issues with businesses making the ask.

Here are some review guidelines for some of the most critical review platforms:

Once you’ve had a look through, here are some hints and tips to help you start:

Use this “Review Handout Generator” by Whitespark and Phil Rozek that helps you create handouts for clients to give clear instructions on how they could leave you a review on Google.
Link to your review profiles from your website.
Create a Google+ page and invite customers to leave a short positive review.
Create print or digital materials that list all the different sites customers can review you’re business.
Request a “Find Us on Yelp,” if you haven’t gotten their “People Love Us On Yelp” sticker.

We hope this has helped a little in understanding the importance of online reviews.

April 8, 2015 admin Google, SEO Comments Off

Content is King #3: Yoast is the SEO King

Yoast is one of the most famous WordPress SEO plugins. Most of the technical aspects of SEO you need to do actually are covered by Yoast.

Everyone these days are trying to rank their website’s content higher in Google. There are marketing firms earning a great deal of money in relation to the most notorious digital term these days, “SEO optimisation”, but if you do some heavy research you can do this yourself with one of the best SEO applications Yoast.

We believe that Yoast is the most complete SEO solution for your WordPress site. With a bunch of features and options this plugin provides an alternate to the users of another famous SEO plugin named All in One SEO Pack.

Some of Yoast’s awesome features are:

Post title and meta description meta box to change these on a per post basis.
Google search result snippet previews.
Focus keyword testing.
Meta Robots configuration.
Permalink clean ups, while still allowing for Google Custom Search.
Breadcrumbs support, with configurable breadcrumbs titles.
XML Sitemaps
.htaccess and robots.txt editor.
Ability to verify Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, and Bing Webmaster Tools

But as good as Yoast is, you still need to start from the ground up.

The first step in optimising any website for a search engine is to start thinking about the searching strategies of your audience.

What search strategies do they have?

Which search terms will they use?

These questions are the beginning of your keyword research. Keyword research is actually the basis of all search marketing. You have to know which search terms people use when looking for your website or product.

What makes your website unique?

What idea or product do you ‘sell’ ?

And why should people buy this from you?

Make sure your mission is clear in your mind as well as on your website. You want to be found on the terms that fit your site. You want to be found by your potential customers. Ranking on terms that don’t fit your site, will result in a high bounce rate (visitors immediately leave your site, because your site is not what they expect it to be).

A high bounce rate indeed indicates that your website does not fit the search needs of customers and Google could well adjust the ranking after high bounce rates. A high bounce rate could eventually lead to a lower ranking in Google.

Next week we will discuss in detail more about SEO planning and marketing for your site.

March 27, 2015 admin SEO, WordPress Comments Off

Content is King #2: Is SEO Dead?

SEO isn’t dead; it has evolved and now requires descriptive keywords, as well as engaging content to help your online marketing succeed.

Quality content is very important when it comes to today’s marketing online. But it hasn’t replaced search engine optimisation (SEO). What has happened is that SEO doesn’t work without good, quality content. Your website and its content still needs to include rich keywords that your target market uses to search for your services or products, but stuffing your pages with keywords will see your page penalised by Google, which means it will rank low.

What we really should title this blog is: “Keyword Stuffing is Dead, Long Live King Content!”

Search engines i.e. Google, look for content based on the words the online user enters and then returns what it thinks deems most relevant in the search results. These results are still based on programming and algorithms.

So to optimise your website’s, you still need the proper keywords as well as engaging, well-written, well-researched and informative content. But, you can’t just write great and informative content, with a few keywords and hope for the best.

What you need to do is create content that converts your readers into actors, readers that do something, react to your content. Some ways are to make them to sign up for your newsletter or download your free e-book, in exchange for giving you their e-mail address so you can send them newsletters, and possible marketing e-mails. They could share your video from their social media sites, so that you can hopefully reach more people and possibly get more followers. They may even – buy from you.

Here are some ideas to get your customers to act:

Have you ever though of going back through some of your old posts and see if you can re-link them to newer posts. (This is best to do this with your most popular older posts). Doing this can help your readers of older posts read newer posts, plus Google really loves it when inside links do this.
Look carefully at your calls to action headlines. Check to see if any links are getting clicked on. Then possibly tweak the calls to action of those pages where the few people act.
Your page load should be no more than three – four seconds. These days people have exceptionally short attention spans. If you want people to click a link on a page or give you their e-mail, they have to stay on your page. “Long” loading time means people could leave your site.
Use your old content in new ways. Take your posts and maybe turn them into an e-book, or any case studies. If you have a long post on an interesting topic, think of re-writing it into two or three posts.

SEO isn’t dead. It’s just changed. For the better we think. Google has forced marketers and SEO companies to do what they should have been doing from the start: provide engaging, informative, and trustworthy content.

March 18, 2015 admin Google, SEO Comments Off

Content is King #1: Video – The future of content marketing

There is no doubt Content is King! Are you stuck for ideas and content for your online platforms?

Whether it be updating your blog, creating new Facebook posts, tweets, Instagram posts or LinkedIn updates, just to name a few, we have learned in conversations with our clients we have learned that coming up with content is one of the toughest (and most time consuming) aspects of online marketing.

For the next couple of weeks we are going to write a different blog to help you, and our clients in learning about writing quality content for their website. This week we are going to look at how video can really boost your SEO performance.

Let’s begin…..

Not only did video kill the radio star, it’s now aiming for online marketing. Already a key entertainment and information medium, studies predicts video will account for 75 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2018. Video IS the future of content marketing, and the future is now. This now means it’s no longer a luxury, but more of a necessity for all businesses to include it in their marketing strategies i.e websites, Facebook, Twitter, etc .

Here are some more reasons why your business needs videos:

Effective information tool

Constantly writing content is unavoidable these days. This means you have to hit the nail of the delivery if you want your message to stick. Video makes that much easier. 85 percent of Internet users remember watching a video in the past month.

Perfect for decision making

Potential customers don’t have time to look through heaps of text. They want to know what is important so they can make their decision and move on to the next. According to Forbes, 75 percent of executives will watch work-related videos at least once a week. And 65 percent visit the marketer’s website after viewing the video.

Powerful reach

Content marketing’s purpose is getting a message in front of your potential audience. And video is the quickest way to get your message in front of as many people as possible. Video content gets shared like no other, with audiences larger than any other. YouTube alone receives more than 1 billion unique visitors every month. You won’t reach everyone, but with the right content, you can reach the right audience for your business. The goal is to create something that your viewers will want to share with their friends or customers. Engage viewers and they will engage others, fueling organic and meaningful brand interaction.

Quickly establishes personality

Your website should display personality and culture, but it probably takes reading through a few articles and a handful of posts before your customer gets a good sense of what you are about. Most people don’t have the time these days. But with video, it’s immediately laid out in front of their eyes. The script you use, the way it’s shot, the aesthetic you promote — it all reflects your company’s personality and culture in a matter of seconds. And if folks like what they’re seeing they’re that much more likely to invest elsewhere in your website.

Made for mobile platform

Worldwide, more users access the Internet via their smart phone than any other kind of device, and that gap is likely to grow. So, clearly, the content you produce should be made for mobile. Today’s consumer is an impatient bunch. With video, all you have to do is hit play. You can consume on the move, pause if you need to, rewind if you want. Exactly the freedom you want on your mobile device.

March 11, 2015 admin Google, SEO, Video Production Comments Off