This year business owners will have more tools than ever before to make a name for themselves locally. Platforms such as Google My Business and Youtube are providing businesses of every size with new local SEO marketing opportunities, so it’s important to keep up with emerging trends. HiveMind Studios is one of the SEO experts in San Jose, CA, and they’ve decided to share some of their insight about local search below.
For those who want to hit the ground running and increase their client base in 2019, here are some of the ways to boost your local SEO marketing reach.
1. Get Mobilized
There’s a huge segment of people searching for services on mobile phones, so it’s important to have the tools to take advantage of mobile users. Make sure your website is compatible with mobile platforms and appears professional and concise no matter on what size screen it’s viewed. Making sure your content is optimized for voice search is also important.
2. Optimize with Geo-Location Terms
One of the best ways to increase local search rankings is by optimizing your content with geo-location terms and keywords. The more specific you can be with your local keywords the better. Don’t hesitate to optimize content for particular neighborhoods, cities or even street names. You might also consider designing and optimizing specific landing pages for specific areas you want to target.
3. Get Involved
Many local SEO marketing specialists will tell you that there’s no better way to solidify your reputation and attract local attention than by getting involved at the community level. But what exactly does this mean? Even something as simple as offering your space for an evening to a local community group or hosting a weekend event or fundraiser can do wonders for your local presence.
4. Utilize Local Directories
One way to make sure residents in your area are coming across your goods and services is by taking advantage of local directories like CitySearch, which enables users to sift through various businesses based on location. Many people still rely on local directories to find businesses and services in their area, so be sure to include them in your local SEO marketing strategy for 2019.
5. Take Advantage of Video
Video platforms like Youtube can be used to attract attention at the local level. One inventive way to do this is to encourage customers to shoot a video describing what they like about your particular product or service. For example, if you own a boutique ice cream shop, offer customers a free half pint of their favorite flavor if they will shoot a video review for you.
Let us help you hone your local marketing strategy
Have you been inspired to revisit your marketing strategy for the coming year? HiveMind Studios can help you create a digital marketing plan that incorporates all of today’s leading tools. Contact our team of strategists today or visit us online to learn more about our company.
In this post, our San Jose, CA pay per click experts highlight the value of PPC in your digital marketing mix. Your digital marketing strategy requires a broad focus to provide a long-term return on investment. Maintaining a clear understanding of the value each of the following elements delivers can help ensure that your company achieves its marketing and business objectives for the years to come.
Swift results
While other digital marketing techniques, such as SEO and social media marketing, require a long-term approach based on tangible data before returns are achieved, PPC is designed for swift results. Our pay per click experts can turn PPC campaigns on and off at a moment’s notice and ads will quickly reach the top of search results with the right targeting and investment. This gives growing companies an advantage when harnessing PPC during their initial digital marketing campaigns.
Simpler keyword use
Oftentimes growing companies find that they cannot rank for a high-value keyword within their organic SEO campaigns. This is either due to the cost to purchase the keyword or the wide-spread use of the keyword throughout the industry. Our pay per click experts give smaller businesses the opportunity to use these target keywords within PPC campaigns and to link their company with the keyword to enhance brand reputation over the short-term.
Access to actionable data
The data from your PPC campaigns can be used to enhance your other marketing processes. Savvy San Jose, CA pay per click marketers will continually monitor and update your PPC campaigns based on the real-time response. This data can then be used to update SEO campaigns, for example, to ensure that keyword targeting and site optimization appeal to your most valuable customer.
Our pay per click experts deliver higher click-through rates
PPC campaigns are providing growing companies with higher click rates than other forms of digital advertising. The research shows that, with Google now making pay per click advertisements a priority on the search engine results page, companies are generating a greater number of clicks. The trend in search engine design is to make PPC ads look more like traditional organic search results, keeping the focus on the company and generating further engagement through the search page. It’s why many small-to-medium sized organizations are now making PPC a central element of their digital marketing campaigns.
Each digital marketing consultant at HiveMind Studios in San Jose, CA has at least a decade of experience building responsive, high ROI PPC campaigns for clients across the country. We can custom-build strategies that help your business capitalize on the many benefits of PPC within your digital marketing mix. To contact our pay per click experts and learn more about this process, contact us today!
It’s hard to think of many businesses today that don’t have at least some Internet marketing component to what they do. For most, a big part of that effort to find new buyers over the web will involve search engine marketing, the process of trying to improve a business website’s ranking on Google, Yahoo, and Bing for the keywords and search terms that customers use most frequently.
Because the search engine marketing process tends to be long, tedious, and occasionally expensive, some business owners and managers try to avoid the issue by ignoring search engines altogether. We urge you to avoid making that mistake. Not only is search engine optimization and marketing not going away anytime soon, it’s likely to become even more important over the next few years.
The reason is simple: Customers like to find products and vendors online, and search engines are the overwhelmingly favorite first stop on the Internet. Consider that Google, which receives the lion’s share of search traffic, processes more than 2 billion search requests each day, and you can easily see why it’s imperative that buyers be able to find your company on the first couple of pages. Optimizing your site for search isn’t just a good online marketing strategy, it’s necessary just to stay competitive.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be the painstaking process that many people think it is. Here is a checklist for on-page SEO. And below that we’ve added a new search engine infographic that dissects Search Engines, their uses, and their effects.
Anatomy of a Search Engine – Infographic was created by First Site Guide Team.
Pay per click is more competitive than ever. The costs per keyword are directly affected by the number of competitors who are bidding on them, as well as the cost they are willing to pay. For this reason, you’ll see expensive prices for lucrative keywords such as mortgage loans, auto insurance, and real estate. With costs at $10+ per click, some industries are just difficult to infiltrate. Long tail keywords are the key to getting into these big industries, and any other, at a much lower cost per click while producing results for your pay per click campaign.
Pay Per Click Strategy: How to Identify The Best Long-Tail Keywords
There are several ways to choose keywords, but in this post we will discuss four that are best used for campaign goals.
Start Your Pay Per Click Strategy using Google Search Console
Using Adwords for your website gives you a Google account where you can access Google Search Console. This is now the only place to see all of the incoming keywords used by search visitors (outside of having a secure website). When you get visitors through search, you’ll see the keywords they searched with in this tool.
The benefit of using these keywords, is that you know your site is already ranked for them, and you should have a decent quality score, leading directly to a low cost per click.
A major downside to using Google Search Console to generate a list of long tail keywords is that the list is limited to keywords from which you are already getting visits. Ideally you’d like to reach others who aren’t already seeing you in search results. For this reason I make the following suggestions:
Use these keywords and phrases as starting points. Make changes to them, such as the order of words in a phrase, and come up with very similar keywords that mean the same thing.
Don’t use this as the only method for building your pay per click keyword list.
Long Tail Keywords Planner
Adwords offers another option to help you come up with your long tail keywords. Their pay per click keyword planner gives you lists of keywords you can research, and use in your campaigns. If you’ve never used it before, here are a few tips:
A good Pay Per Click strategy should start with 2 word keyphrases to begin your search. This gives you a nice root to play with, and will return several related terms. Make a list of those keyphrases, because you’ll want to search them as well. The further you drill down with each keyphrase, the more long tail keywords you’ll discover for the campaign.
Choose long tail keywords with at least 4 words. For instance: noise canceling stereo speakers for kids, dog training Labrador puppies, or plus size women’s tops. The more specific your keyword is, the more likely it is to give you results, at a low cost per click.
Use Your Website
Inside the Keyword Planner there is an option to insert the link to your website to see what keywords Google thinks your website is about. Going along with the thought process behind using Google Search Console, these keywords should give you the high quality score and low cost per click you need for a high ROI pay per click campaign.
Cheat!
The last suggestion I have is a quick cheat. Use a spy tool that lists the keywords your competitors are using for their own campaigns. Having these lists of keywords can save you time and money on testing, because if your competitor is going to continuously bid on them, they must be getting some return. Subscribing to tools like this can be invaluable to your campaign success.
Conclusion
While it is tedious work, identifying long tail keywords is the most effective and lowest cost way to syphon traffic from search engines. If the time investment for this kind of campaign is too massive for your business, perhaps we can do it for you. Contact HiveMind Studios to start improving results with a strong pay per click strategy today.
SEO strategy. You’ve heard of it. You know that your business needs it. But, you aren’t entirely sure what it is.
If you are a business owner, you probably aren’t an SEO expert. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not your job to know all of the in’s and out’s of SEO. It’s a complicated topic, and you have other responsibilities to manage and take care of.
But again, if you are a business owner, it is your job to either outsource or hire someone to manage your SEO.
SEO strategy must be a part of your business, and it’s your job to ensure that the task is executed and managed by a competent partner. To hire that partner, you must know at least a simplified SEO strategy, so that you can find the right fit for what you need.
To help you get the foundational information you need to hire and manage an SEO partner for your business, we’ve put together this SEO strategy simplified guide for business owners.
What Is SEO?
First thing first. What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and the best marketing for local businesses. It’s a series of digital marketing strategies that businesses use to help them show up on search engine results pages (SERPs). Sometimes referred to as search engine marketing, it helps a brand’s website appear as a top result when customers search for terms related to the business.
There are two types of SEO strategy
Organic SEO helps a website appear naturally on SERPs. The strategies optimize a website so search engines prioritize its pages and show them as top search results.
Paid Search is when a website pays to appear on SERPs. Instead of sending signals that encourage a search engine to show a webpage as a top result, a business pays to appear at the top of a SERP.
In search results, you can see the difference between organic SEO and paid search. The paid promotions are displayed as ‘ads.’
Organic and paid strategies are different and provide different results, but neither is necessarily better or worse than the other. Both have unique benefits, and businesses should choose which, or both, to use based on their goals.
What Are the Main Components of Organic SEO Strategy?
SEO is a loaded term. It includes dozens of strategies and concepts. You don’t need to learn all of the individual tactics that go into creating an SEO plan. But, you should be well versed in understanding the main components of SEO Strategy Simplified.
These are the four areas that are most important to building a strong, organic SEO strategy.
Content & On-site Optimization
It should be no surprise that the actual content on your site is a major factor for your SEO strategy. Every page on your site potentially sends signals to search engines that help them understand and rank your site.
Copy, images, and links all send signals to search engines that either boost or decrease your ability to rank. The content provides context to search engines so they know what your page is about and can associate it with search terms and phrases. The more fresh, relevant, high-quality, and optimized content you have, the better your chances at showing on SERPs.
A partner should create a plan with a content strategy for regularly publishing posts on your site as well as a system for optimizing each page with targeted SEO keywords so search engines can recognize and rank your site.
Linkbuilding
Along with content, links are one of the biggest factors of SEO strategy. While links that exist on your site are important, the most important links are the ones that exist on other sites and point to your website.
Websites that have the highest rankings often have numerous high-quality sites that link to them. Search engines see each link as a recommendation for a site. If another site links to your site, it looks like a good resource so it gets higher rankings.
A strong SEO strategy must include a plan for getting other sites to link back to yours. There are many ways to do this, so talk to your potential partner about what type of plans they have for executing this tactic. Some of the SEO tactics they should suggest include:
Joining industry directories
Guest blogging
Launching digital PR campaigns
To learn more about Backlinks, check out this post from t-ranks.com:
Search engines understand that when people search, they want to see results for businesses that are located near them. For example, if a person searches for “burger restaurant,” they don’t want to see the best burger restaurant websites in the country, they want to see the burger restaurants near them. So, search engines prioritize pages based on proximity to searchers.
For your website to show to nearby searchers, you must have a local SEO strategy. When talking to potential partners, as them if they have a plan for submitting your site to directories and optimizing for local SEO so you can tap into this valuable search strategy.
Technical SEO
The most complicated elements of SEO are the strategies that relate to technical SEO. Technical SEO tactics are the behind-the-scenes strategies that speak the language of the search robots. These tactics send search engines signals telling them that a site is properly programmed, optimized, and structured.
Search engines reward sites for having sound technical details because it makes the sites easier to find, read, and index. It also shows that the site is high-quality and will benefit users. Look for a partner who plans on optimizing your technical SEO by doing things like:
Creating site maps
Submitting to search indexes
Using responsive design
Speeding up site load speeds
Adding an HTTPS certificate
Fixing broken links and setting up 301 redirects
What Else Do I Need to Know About SEO Strategy?
As you talk to potential SEO partners, there are a few more things you should know.
SEO is always changing. While many of the main components of SEO will remain the same, SEO strategies are always changing. As search engines continue to update and revise their algorithms, search marketers must adjust too. So don’t expect your strategy to stay exactly the same over the years.
There are no guarantees. Search marketers have done a great job figuring out what works in SEO. But, there are no guides that say exactly what works and will always produce results. Search engines offer best practices for ranking, but they offer no guarantees for what will work — so don’t expect a marketer to offer a guaranty either.
Developing organic SEO takes time. There are millions of websites competing for top spots in SERPs, so don’t expect your page to skyrocket to the top as soon as you launch. Boosting your search rankings takes time. It may even take years for your site to become an authority in your space, so be patient and consider using paid search as you grow your organic SEO.
SEO is not a one-time marketing strategy. SEO is not a strategy that you embrace when you start your business and then later forget about it. For your plan to create real, lasting results, it must be an ongoing strategy that is a permanent part of your marketing plans.
How Do I Get Started?
This post offers a broad introduction to SEO strategy so you can feel more confident and educated as you go into a meeting with a potential partner. If you want to get even more information about SEO basics, download our free SEO checklist for more details. Or, contact us today to see how we can help you boost both your organic SEO and paid search performance.
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