Category: SEO

  • 8 Reasons Your Business Needs to Invest in SEO

    8 Reasons Your Business Needs to Invest in SEO

    Search engine optimization (SEO) is valuable for the survival of any business. Every website owner should recognize what SEO is, how it works and the business opportunities it can offer for all businesses and organizations. Read on to learn why your business should adopt an SEO strategy in 2020.


    search engine optimization

    Source: Search Engine Land

    What Can SEO Do for Your Business in 2020?

    It Will Draw Quality Traffic

    Quality traffic is different than the usual traffic spoken of. Quality traffic refers to individuals who are actually looking for the products and content your website contains, meaning these visitors are more likely to spend time on your webpage and shop by sharing and engaging with it.
    This automatically results in higher conversion rates when these visitors return to your website versus visitors who bounce off your website because it is irrelevant to them.

    It Helps to Bring Higher Closing Rates

    The number of sales you’ve made depends on how much attention your website or brand is getting. According to recent research, it was evident that implementing SEO strategies helps to average a 14.6% in close rates.

    With SEO, your website is directed to users who are actively seeking information and products of that sort, which means they are more likely to purchase your services or products, adding to your closure rates.

    It Promotes Better Cost Management

    Thanks to SEO, businesses can decrease their advertising budget. When your website ranks well, it’s bound to show up with a higher ranking on search engines, lowering the need for eye catching adverts. If your website is already hitting the ranks, there’s no need to invest in unnecessary advertising.

    In addition, SEO strategies are far cheaper than advertisements, and managing social media, writing blogs and producing content with smart SEO strategies are low budget activities.

    It Helps To Create Brand Awareness

    Brand awareness is extremely important for businesses— it refers to how familiar your company is amongst consumers for the products and services you are provided. How does SEO help with that?

    SEO strategies ensure that your products and services are easily found on search engine results. By maintaining a certain ranking and authority, your website will continue to show up in large searches, improving your brand’s awareness.

    It Ensures That Your Webpage Is Optimized For Mobile Viewing

    SEO strategies are all about giving your website the leverage it needs to expand. Most users now view websites through their smartphones and tablets as opposed to computer screens, and because SEO is a long term marketing strategy, it helps to incorporate mobile friendliness.
    In other words, SEO strategies help you to customize your website for the most views – meaning, it provides you with useful insights on how to modify your website for viewing across different screens and keeps your website up to date.

    It Helps to Build Brand Trust and Credibility

    Because SEO is a metric from Google’s playbook, it helps to use SEO strategies when designing your website in order to rank well on search engines. By ranking well on popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc., you’re able to build trust and credibility.

    In fact, research shows that 37% of the clicks made on search engines are on the first organic listing – so if your webpage has trust and credibility, it will organically appear in the top tier.

    It Empowers Customers Which Builds Better Rapport between Brands and Consumers

    Customers are always using search engines to find information relevant to their needs, and recent trends dictate that consumers like feeling empowered. Using SEO tactics does just that – it provides your potential consumers with the information they need.
    A higher SEO ranked website will fare better with consumers when it comes to educating them. As a result, this builds rapport, trust and of course, results in higher conversion rates.

    It Gives Your Business an Edge Over Competitors

    Effective SEO strategies have shown to benefit small businesses by giving them an edge over their larger competitors. How is that possible?

    SEO strategies allow businesses to grow using various techniques from the digital world – it’s a step above traditional marketing. By integrating all of these together, your website has a better chance of being selected and ranking better than your competitors’. In other words, businesses still need SEO to mark their niche and establish their relevance. If you’re looking to top the market in 2020, it’s time to invest in a bullet proof SEO strategy to improve brand image, ranking and of course, revenue margin!

    DigitalParc delivers results-driven search engine optimization (SEO) services. Contact us to learn how we can guide you through digital landscape and ensure your business has a presence online.

  • Google’s Core and Diversity Update: Which Will Have a More Significant Impact on SEO?

    Google’s Core and Diversity Update: Which Will Have a More Significant Impact on SEO?

    The most recent Google Core update took five days to fully roll out, due to the sheer amount of servers and data centers that needed to receive the update, all of which Google has scattered around the globe.

    This might appear to be an extended timeframe for an algorithm update. However, five days isn’t all that long of a wait. After all, some earlier Google Core updates have taken weeks, if not even longer, to be completed in the past.  

    So like any update, some websites are reporting positive and negative impacts. Large publication outlets have said that this update has badly hit them, however, since this update is still relatively recent, it can take time to see the entire scope of its impact, as these reports are just a mere sliver of insight.

    At this time, Google has not yet shared data on the depth of this update’s impact, which is similar to how they treat Penguin updates. However, Google is claiming that the data from this core update will be “noticeable.”

    The June 2019 Core update also overlapped with Google’s Diversity update, which is an attempt to limit the number of listings from the same domain on a single search page, as many have argued how unfair it is that a single high ranking domain can capitalize on so many search listings.

    The Google Diversity update started and completed briefly during the Core update (June 4th through June 6th). Google tends to unveil few significant updates throughout the year, so knowing the beginning and end of one is essential for understanding the changes in analytics, especially when there is a considerable increase or decrease in traffic.

    This is impactful, as it can help us determine whether or not a website was affected negatively or positively by an algorithm update. However, what’s interesting about the two new recent updates, is that we can’t quite yet tell which has had a more significant impact: the Core or the Diversity update. It’s hard to say whether one update will be more significant over the other for SEO, but knowing the timestamps of each update can help us interpret the analytics behind the change in traffic.

  • 11 Killer SEO Tools That Will Boost Your Productivity

    11 Killer SEO Tools That Will Boost Your Productivity

    For a new business, search engine optimization (SEO) is an absolute must. It can help you attract traffic to your website via improved search engine visibility. In addition, it can help improve your marketing campaigns build your brand.

    SEO is an important piece of any online marketing strategy. For small businesses that do not possess the resources of their larger competitors, the reality is they may struggle keeping up if they do not devote enough towards their SEO campaign. There are many tools available online that can help with this. Here is a list of SEO tools that are worth your attention.

    Raven Tools

    Raven Tools was created by SEO experts to help other SEO experts, so you can be sure that it will give you all the information you need. It collects data from many sources, such as Google Analytics, Adwords, and other tools we will mention further down on our list. Then it gives a report on your overall SEO performance. This includes content management, backlink reporting and social media monitoring. This tool will provide a report on your competition, just by entering in the URL of their website. You can use this information to track where you are strong, and where you could use some improvement.

    SEMrush

    SEMrush will help you keep track of your competitors, and see where you rank among them. It collects information from multiple sources, not the least of which are Google and Bing, and provides a report on where your competitors rank. It will allow you to see how effective certain keywords are for any website. The database is constantly being updated, so you can track all of this information in real time, allowing your SEO strategy to adapt with new information. It can track the performance of any ads you’ve paid for, so you know what’s working and what isn’t at all times.

    WordTracker

    Keywords, and using the right ones, is incredibly important to your SEO strategy. WordTracker tracks over 160 million of them, along with another 95 million from SEMrush. You can enter a seed word, such as the product you sell, and WordTracker will then give you up to 1000 potential keywords for you to use. Along with this, it will tell you how many others are using each keyword, and what the value has been for it so far. Along with those suggestions, it can suggest other keywords from similar topics that might be useful. WordTracker will provide you with options for finding backlinks, and ranks those options based on several factors to give you the strongest links possible. One of the neatest features is that it will search the web for everywhere that is linking to you, and will delete links that aren’t helping your SEO. Bad links can affect your ranking, and they can be nearly impossible to sift through, so WordTracker can save you a ton of time.

    SEO PowerSuite

    SEO PowerSuite contains four tools that you can buy as a package or a la carte. Rank Tracker will analyze all of your keywords and tell you where your website ranks for each of them. It’s automatic, so once you’ve entered your keywords, you can let it do its job. It will give you suggestions of the most effective keywords to optimize for, so you can be efficient with your efforts. Website Auditor does just what its name implies. It audits your website for errors and issues and gives you a report giving you suggestions for how to fix them. LinkAssistant scours the web to find you partners to create the strongest backlinks possible. Finally, SEO Spyglass will allow you to “spy” on the competition by analyzing their backlinks and how they are performing. You can’t put a price on knowing what the enemy is doing, and adjusting your strategy accordingly.

    Investing in software when you have a small business, especially if you have a limited budget, can be a hard decision. Using these tools to help you get the most bang for your buck.

    Google’s SEO Tools

    Google is the grand-daddy of all search engines, so why not use the tools it provides to help you get the most out of your SEO efforts? For instance, Adwords can help you select the most effective keywords based on current searches. There is Google Analytics, which will tell you if those keywords are being successful at producing traffic for your site. Google Trends provides you with information on current search trends and history. Search Console generates reports and data that will help you see where your SEO efforts could use improving.

    Übersuggest

    Sometimes, the hardest part of the SEO process is finding the right keywords. Übersuggest, can give you thousands of potential keyword options. All you have to do is enter in a search term, and it will provide you with different keywords and phrases that might work for you. For instance, if you sell widgets, you can enter “widgets” into the Übersuggest, and it will provide suggestions such as “widgets art”, or “widgets and doohickeys” or any other combination that might be relevant.

    Quick Sprout

    Not everyone can hire SEO consultants. Quick Sprout is designed to be that consultant for your small business. All you have to do is input your URL, and the program will analyze your site and provide suggestions for improving your SEO. There are many factors that it will consider, and it will provide advice on any or all of them. It will give you an SEO score, so you’ll have a baseline to work from going forward.

    RankSense

    SEO can be a lot of work, and a lot of monitoring and keeping on top of things. RankSense aims to help ease those burdens. It monitors your site 24/7,will catch issues right away, and will provide recommendations immediately to help improve your SEO. It can optimize all of your pages, which means it will save you massive amounts of time if you are currently manually optimizing every page of your website.

    Scoop.it

    Content marketing can be a big part of not just SEO, but of your business’s branding strategy. Scoop.it will help curate effective SEO content for you to post on your site, social media accounts, or blogs. This is perfect for those small businesses that do not have the manpower to be able to produce enough of their own content.

    Moz Pro

    When it comes to SEO, everything about your online presence is covered. That includes your social media, your website, and everything else. Moz Pro allows you to monitor everything by logging into a single service. It will track everything about you online, including links to your page, social media campaigns, brand awareness, SEO, and content marketing. It can provide data to show how you are comparing to the competition. It can save you a lot of time and energy from having to log in and use several different accounts.

    Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool

    This tool can audit all of your webpages to check for any errors or problems that can be fixed. Correcting errors can be a tremendous boost to your SEO. Things that might hurt your SEO that may be difficult to detect include server errors, blocked URLs, content that’s duplicated, and broken links. Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider Tool will recommend any changes to page titles and descriptions if they are not a good length. It will integrate with Google Analytics and produce reports on errors so you have a quick reference guide to what you need to work on.

    If you are not familiar with it, SEO can be an intimidating concept. There is so much to consider, and so much to track and monitor. Luckily, there are tools available to help you get the most out of your SEO efforts. Use the ones that are right for you, and reap the benefits.

  • What is SEOquake & How Will it Enhance My SEO Strategy?

    What is SEOquake & How Will it Enhance My SEO Strategy?

    As a website design professional, search engine optimization (SEO) is an element that you regularly have in running through your mind as you construct websites, publish content and develop brands for yourself or your clients. There is no shortage of analytical tools in existence that accumulate data and analyze metrics for your website. Keeping track of so much information from numerous sources can be overwhelming to say the least.

    If you manage multiple websites or you simply wish to check your own site’s metrics, SEOquake has built an extension to assist you. Compatible with Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera, the extension will give you a detailed look at a sites’ latest analytics from several of the industry’s most recognized ranking and metric resources. You can view information sourced from SEMrush, Bing, Alexa rank, and Google. You can acquire information relating to your social media presence as well.

    SEOquake can generate a detailed website SEO audit, giving you the information needed to diagnose problems that will threaten your search engine presence. A comparison tool is also available. This will give you a very useful side-by-side snapshot of how well your site is optimized vs. its competition. This information can then be exported via a .csv file.

  • Website Field of Dreams: I Built it. Will They Come?

    Website Field of Dreams: I Built it. Will They Come?

    “If you build it, he will come.”

    This line from the movie Field Of Dreams was meant as an inspirational promise to motivate the main character to build a baseball diamond in the middle of a corn field. Of course, it being a movie, the field was built and lo and behold, people arrived in droves, saving the family farm and leaving everyone in smiles.

    The world of technology boasts the same whispers from across the web, calling out to business owners to create a website; many times with ads that imply that building a website is simple and anyone can do it.

    While it’s true that there are a host of programs and organizations out there that can assist you in making a website, the truth is that actually getting sales and traffic to your website is more difficult.

    The help of professionals in the digital industry can be one of the best investments that you can make as a small business owner, given the digitally driven world that we live and consume in.

    Here are some things to know about the truth of building a website:

    It is not a fast process.

    Anyone that promises you a website that will yield immediate results is not being truthful with you. Building a website that is targeted to the needs of your potential customers and that boasts an interactive and intuitive platform requires ongoing studying of the habits of your website visitors.

    A successful website cannot be built overnight.

    Design Matters

    You have about eight seconds to keep a visitor on your website if they are visiting for the first time. If your site does not appeal to them, or the navigation does not make sense, they will simply leave and head to a different website.

    Website designers and professionals can assist you in getting your message across with compelling design, as well as taking care of the backend work that assures smooth navigation.

    Time: The Most Precious Commodity

    If you’re a small business owner or an entrepreneur, you’re likely wearing many different hats. Building a website can be extremely time consuming, even for professionals in the field. If you’re trying to build your own website and maintain it, you need to dedicate many hours to the process.

    Once your website is built, you still need to maintain it and assure that you are getting the traffic that you desire. Keep your website up to date by publishing fresh content. SEO is critical to the process, as is having good copy and clean design.

    A professional website design company will employ staff members who are dedicated to keeping atop the most current and ever-changing trends in technology. It will supply you with content that will keep your website ranked high in search engines.

    Building a website does not guarantee that you will build customers and traffic. Website design professionals can help you draw the crowds that you need to your technological field of dreams.

  • What Business Owners Might Not Know About SEO & Web Design

    What Business Owners Might Not Know About SEO & Web Design

    SEO is an important part of building your business. Understanding search engine optimization is critical for business owners.

    If you are a small business owner, you’re likely wearing many different hats as you work to build your company. You’ve probably researched “web design” in an effort to get online and advertise your services or products.

    Many small business owners are lured in by ads and companies promising that you can build your own website for free or nearly free, only to find that indeed, you get what you pay for.

    The reality is that while creating a website may seem simple, actually getting people to visit your site and ranking in search engines is much more complicated. Even if you have a great looking site, if potential customers aren’t using it, it’s not doing you any good.

    You’ve probably heard of search engine optimization (SEO) and the importance of understanding it and incorporating it into your website design.

    Here are some key points that every small business owner should know about SEO and web design:

    You Must Choose Your Words Carefully

    While images and fonts are important to overall website design, the words (copy) that you use on your site play a critical role in SEO. You must plan for each page to have clear, concise and compelling copy on every page of your website.

    In addition to great copy on your pages, you also need to make sure that you are adding relevant keywords to each post that is added to your page. SEO titles and meta descriptions should always include the appropriate key-word phrases in order to attain great search results.

    URLs matter in the world of SEO. Make sure yours contains your domain name as well as keywords in each URL. This will maximize your search engine results.

    Having a skilled content or copy writer is often the most effective way to boost your SEO results.

    Good Things Take Time

    Be wary of SEO services that offer you immediate results. The truth is that building your SEO takes time and effort and cannot be done overnight. Having a realistic expectation of how long it takes SEO to work is crucial to your business planning.

    By creating a dedicated content calendar and updating your website regularly with blog posts, you will be consistently submitting to search engines and your SEO results will grow over time.

    A good rule of thumb is that you need eight to twelve months of a dedicated SEO plan and content creation to get you increased SEO traffic and more importantly, results. Remember, if you are getting website visitors, but not converting customers, your SEO isn’t working for you.

    SEO can be confusing to understand and time consuming. Many design firms and social media professionals offer SEO optimization services that drill down into the details of what your particular business needs in order to get good SEO results and can study the results to assure you are getting the SEO that you need to grow your business.

  • How Google’s Newest Search Algorithm Could Affect Your Business

    How Google’s Newest Search Algorithm Could Affect Your Business

    Google’s appropriately named “Hawk” is the latest SEO algorithm that is bound to crawl websites soon and rank it based on the expected standards of the algorithm. While Google doesn’t get too specific with what to expect when they change algorithms, a major component is to ensure that two similar small businesses within a small area are visible in a given search.

    Google is also looking to eliminate listings that use the same address to get in an attempt to climb up the rankings. This can still be problematic if two similar businesses are in the same building or office park, but is still considered better for small businesses. In the end, these changes mean that businesses close to another won’t be able to bump one another out of the rankings so that one is completely missed when conducting a local search.

    Google has also provided updates that give the user more accurate searches that meet their criteria when looking for local listings. This may prove as a better use for longtail keywords, as they could prove to bring in good leads for a reasonable price.

    With a new algorithm, there are always changes and adjustments that have to be made in order to keep a good SERP ranking, or attain a better one. Here are some tips for your business to rise among the local rankings now that Hawk has been implemented.

    List with Google My Business

    In order to learn more about your business, Google’s search algorithms always crawl your listing in order to attain the information about your business. You need to make sure your address and contact information is completely up to date on Google My Business so you don’t get penalized or miss out on customers for having the wrong information.

    Search relevant keywords for your business

    Looking at all of the search terms relevant to your business show up, and gives you an idea of potential filters that could be harming your results. This is another way to make sure that your information is up to date. Also, it gives you a chance to find opportunities both hidden and not. Where could you be doing better?

    Be extra thorough

    SEO in itself is continual website maintenance, with tasks both big and small that need to completed in order to drive traffic to your site. You need to make sure all of the mundane details of standard SEO work are taken care of.  Make sure that your article titles and content are properly optimized for the keywords that you’d like to rank for, and that the meta tags and meta descriptions are optimized as well. The smallest discrepancy in your SEO could impact your rankings, and you must continually be on top of these things in order to stay relevant.

    As you may have surmised by now, SEO is a continual effort that needs constant attention in order to yield the best results. If you don’t have the resources to maintain an SEO effort in house, you can hire an experienced company to help you climb the rankings and to get customers in front of you.

  • Sharing Publishers’ Direct URLs Is Now Easier With Updated AMP Display

    Sharing Publishers’ Direct URLs Is Now Easier With Updated AMP Display

    Google announced this week that mobile users will now have an easier time sharing URLs that lead to the original publishers’ sites. Presently, AMP content keeps users connected to Google instead of directing them towards publishers URLs. Regular content, however, links users to the original publication URL. As a result, mobile users try to share AMP content using a Google URL instead of the actual original source. Google now promises, however, that sharing publishers’ direct URLs is now easier with updated AMP display coming in early 2017. But what will the changes bring? (more…)

  • Moz Local Is Now Utilizing Yelp Listing Management For Data and Content

    Moz Local Is Now Utilizing Yelp Listing Management For Data and Content

    Moz just announced a new partnership with Yelp. Several new features have come from the deal, but the main one is that Moz Local is now utilizing Yelp Listing Management for data and content. Basically, businesses can claim and manage Yelp listings entirely from within Moz Local, which also provides verification. No more call-back phone calls for verification with Yelp! The new partnership makes all of that obsolete. So what other benefits have come with the new deal, and how can you benefit? (more…)

  • How Google’s New Possum Affects Local Search Results

    How Google’s New Possum Affects Local Search Results

    A recent Google algorithm update called “Possum” is having a big affect on local search engine results. Google has always awarded higher SERP listings to businesses within close proximity to a searcher’s location. Possum is now awarding ranking points to businesses, based not only on location, but on content as well. In other words, businesses can no longer dominate SERP listings based just on domain strength. Possum now places a greater impact on optimized data and relevant content. Let’s find out more about how Possum affects local search results and how you can stay ahead of the competition.

    How Possum Affects Local Search Results

    Old Search Results

    Before Possum, a resident searching for local hair salons was still likely to find brands like Aveda dominating the results. Although proximity was still a ranking factor, these businesses also ranked higher because of brand recognition and domain strength. Now, however, Google is taking steps to make it harder for brand names to dominate local search results. Unless a brand (like Great Clips in this case) has data and content so perfectly optimized that it outranks all other listings by a wide margin, Google now delegates more listings to other local sites based on location and the usual ranking parameters.

    Impact on Competition

    Possum also affects search results for businesses in similar industries that are clustered together in one area. For example, someone searching for ‘Chinese restaurants’ will have plenty of results show up in Chinatown. But what if you’re not located anywhere near Chinatown? Possum now filters results based on business locations and also on your own location. In other words, your (the searcher’s) physical location is now more important than it ever has been before when filtering local results.

    Getting Ahead

    Possum has made data and content optimization even more crucial than ever for local businesses. These are key assets you can use to make your brand awareness more prominent in local “near-me” searches. Make sure the information on your site, including your business information, is accurate. In addition, check that your business information is also correct on directory and other websites that list your company. You should also optimize text copy and images on your website for the best local results.

    ➤ Click here to learn about the search engine optimization services offered by DigitalParc