SEO Tasks to Kick-Start Ranking Improvement In 2018

by on January 10, 2018

New Year has begun and you may be working with dedication to earn something more valuable in the rest of the year. Well, the start can be turned into an inspiration which can turn along to motivate you throughout the year. Same is the case with SEO. If you work on SEO and you really want to make things happen your favor, you can start doing right things to make sure that rest of the year brings your work in spotlight. There are a few SEO tasks which you can do to push your website towards higher ranks.

Improve page speed

While other ranking factors are still there to be taken care of, there is one big addition which specifically focuses mobile users. It’s the page speed. According to a study, page result has been one of the main factors in turning visitors into customers.

The main hurdle in this scenario is that people don’t actually realize that their websites have been performing poorly because of page speed. And then they ask reasons for the bad performance of their websites. In that case, it becomes essential to examine websites on speed testing platforms. There are several web and desktop tools available to check the website speed.

Having that said, it’s important that you invest in high quality web hosting. Furthermore, you can merge CSS and JavaScript files in order to reduce HTTP calls. Another reason for the poor speed of website has been found as slow loading of the images. Thus, you need to make sure that the images you are using are accurately scaled and compressed.

Create a personal brand

You may think about cold link outreach in order to get some valuable connection with the well-performing brands. Everyone does it in order to establish better business connection. However, this very method is quite challenging. This process can literally be regarded as a method to ask from someone who doesn’t know you at all. It’s the wrong and, sometimes, quite dangerous approach. You need to have good connection with a brand before you send a request for the placement of your link.

Here you can develop your own personal brand. With this brand, you will not have to ask someone for the placement of your links. Instead, people will come and ask for their links to be placed in your site. If you look at this process, it could actually be an opportunity for you to identify legitimate practitioners and look to form a valuable partnership based on mutual interest.

Incorporate video

If you want to market something, text, and images alone cannot drive the traffic you could consider beneficial. Therefore, incorporating video can be your best bet.  The video is a visual illustration which can deliver right message to the audience, asking them to take an action.

Making the Transition to Expanded Text Ads

by on July 30, 2017

Google’s transition towards larger text ads is something that anyone using their advertising platform has already known about for quite a while. Expanded text ads went live in a year ago. While advertisers could still run the standard text ads, changes made by the search engine giant in February 2017 make it impossible to create new ones or edit your “old style” ads in any way. You can’t even update the landing page URL anymore. Your only options are to pause your ads and unpause them.

If you want to make any changes, no matter how small, you will need to write completely new ads. Obviously, this has left some advertisers worried about how those newly-created ads will perform once they go live. According to information published by many search engine marketing experts, these worries aren’t completely unfounded. Some advertisers have reported better performance with expanded text ads when compared to the standard ones. On the other hand, there is no shortage of those who say their ads are now doing worse.

In any case, if you use Google AdWords, there will come a time when you need to update your existing ads or create new ones. The good news is that there are ways to navigate the transition to the expanded ads while minimizing potential problems.

Differences Between Standard and Expanded Ads

The previous ad format (25/35/35):

 

  • Headline – 25 characters
  • Description 1 – 35 characters
  • Description 2 – 35 characters

was replaced with a larger format (30/30/80) in the following layout:

 

  • Headline 1 – 30 characters
  • Headline 2 – 30 characters
  • Description – 80 characters

According to Google, the change was made to give mobile searchers more information. They reported an average rise of 20 percent in CTR during early tests conducted last year.

Why New Ads May Perform Worse for Some Advertisers

One reason for this is that the new ads are larger and thus require advertisers to completely rethink their message. For many advertisers, this means their ads aren’t merely rewritten, they’re completely new.

Bigger advertisers often have ads they consider “proven winners.” That is, ads they have tested and optimized over a period of years. It’s therefore normal that their new ads may not do as well as their previous ones right after they go live.

Expanded Ad Testing Strategy

If you’re unsure of how your new ads will perform, some prominent SEM experts reccommend creating an ad group with four ads written by using this strategy:

Ad 1 – Write a small ad using wording as close as possible to one of your standard ads with the highest CTR.

Ad 2 – Create a longer second ad with completely new messaging.

Ad 3 – Use the same description as ad 1, but swap headline 1 with headline 2.

Ad 4 – Use the same description as ad 2, but swap headline 1 with headline 2.

Should swapping headline positions not make sense for your ads, you can instead swap them for a portion of the phrase you use in your description.

With this approach, you get four ads instead of just one, increasing the chances that at least one of them will be successful. You’re also keeping some of the elements of your highest performing standard ad, which makes it more likely that your new one will get a high CTR as well. Run the ads as a test and you’ll get to see how each of them does. You can then use what you’ve learned when you create more expanded text ads.

Why you Should Adopt Agile Marketing in Your Marketing Strategy

by on April 11, 2017

Adopting impactful marketing approach which is within the budget is what every business owner wants. However, companies tend to confine themselves to conventional marketing strategies that hardly work, and scarcely bring value for money. Currently, there are countless marketing approaches, but none of them stands out like agile marketing. Have you heard of agile marketing? Well, this is the new marketing sheriff in town and is conquering where unadventurous marketing techniques fell short. What is agile marketing? Why should you espouse agile marketing in your marketing strategy?

Agile marketing is a strategy derived from agile software development. Undeniably, agile software development process is intricate and indeed requires cutting-edge know-how. Conversely, the agile process has useful values and benefits that could be applied in marketing. Noting how impactful and useful these values could be on the businesses marketing strategies, experts are now using its basics in what they call agile marketing process. Steadily, this marketing strategy is gaining popularity, and more companies are embracing it.

Clearly, agile marketing is different from traditional a marketing strategies in that it anticipates challenges and responds to change. Normally, conventional approaches focus on the establishment of detailed plans that can be time-consuming and involved. What’s more, these plans do not anticipate challenges and are typically overwhelmed during a crisis. Unlike traditional approaches, agile marketing accentuates the need for a simple short term plan; mostly because short term plans are easy to adjust and easy to adapt to change.

Agile marketing concentrates on rapid iterations rather than long-term based campaigns. Agile marketing experts describe conventional approaches as swindling. Those who use old-style methods declare victory without evidence if the approach worked or not. However, agile marketing first tests what works before its implementation. Learning what works and what does not work is the most important thing in agile marketing. By doing so, marketers’ use more money on campaigns that work and improve what will work in the future.

Conventional approaches highly relied on opinions and conventions. Bureaucracy determined which approach would be adopted. Market decisions were designed to complement the views of the highest-paid in a company. But, agile marketing emphasises on testing, and consideration of the right metrics to ensure improvement in business. What’s more, the approach prefers making many small bets over few big bets. By doing this, you invest on what is likely bring improvement and spend less on what you are not sure will work.

In Agile marketing, collaboration is imperative and individual interactions are highly encouraged. When using agile marketing, all opinions matters; it insists everyone must be on the same page before they implement a strategy. What are the benefits of agile marketing? Companies that have adopted this approach get more done and chiefly focus on right priorities and relevant things. Additionally, the company comes up with short and precise plans that proactive, adjustable and easily adapt to change. Also, agile marketing leads to improved communication and collaboration within the marketing team and even other departments within the company.

Local SEO: How to Beat the Competition in 2016

by on June 25, 2016

As SEO gets more competitive, ranking well in local search results has also become increasingly difficult. With numerous changes being made to local SEO search results, such as the switch to three listings in the local pack, it is now more important than ever to have a solid SEO plan for your business. Our experts at Indianapolis SEO have complied a short list of strategies your company can use to ensure SEO success well into the future.

Local-SEO-Ranking-your-business-in-2016-and-Beyond

First, in order guarantee high rankings, you need to understand what the ranking factors are. Ranking factors are basically what Google looks at when deciding where your page should rank in the search results. These ranking factors are divided up into five different categories. These categories are:

  1. Overall ranking factors
  2. Local pack ranking factors
  3. Localized organic ranking factors
  4. Negative ranking factors
  5. Competitive ranking factors

overallrankingsignals

These categories all play a vital role in your SEO plan, and it is important to carefully consider each one when outlining your SEO strategies. We’ll take a quick look at some of the top factors in each category to help you secure a top ranking in your local search results.

  1. Overall Ranking Factors:

On-page signals is the most influential factor in this category. Basically, you want each page of your website to clearly communicate what products or services you are offering and in what location. If your site does not do this well, then the rest of your digital marketing efforts will be for nothing. You need to perfect the most basic concepts of good SEO before you can move on to more complex tactics.  Thus, you will have to focus on marketiNG TIps for small busineSS to make on-page of your website more appealing for search engines.

seo-birmingham

  1. Local Pack Ranking Factors:

Local pack ranking factors determine if your business is listed in the local pack map. Since these results appear at the top of the page right under the paid ads, these factors are some of the most important in this list. Here are a few things to consider in order to ensure your company is listed in the local pack map:

  • Address in the city of search
  • Consistency in Citation
  • Correct Google Category
  1. Localized Organic Ranking Factors:

These factors include some of the more common aspects of SEO because you are dealing with organic rankings. For example, these factors include the domain authority of your website and the click-through rate from search results.

  1. Negative Ranking Factors:

Negative ranking factors can severely hurt your business’ local SEO if you are not careful to avoid them. Some common negative ranking factors are the presence of malware on your site or the incorrect business category.

  1. Competitive Ranking Factors:

The most important aspect of these factors is linked. Having solid links connected to your site will help you get ahead of your competitors.

I hope the information provided above helps you as you plan your local SEO. And, as always, you can contact the seo expert houston, should you need any further assistance.

How Will the New Google SERP Affect Your Chiropractic SEO?

by on March 18, 2016

SERPs, or Search Engine Results Pages are what come up whenever you use a search engine and type specific keywords in the search box. SERPs are made up of two things: organic results and paid results. Organic results are pages that appear because of a website’s specific algorithm. SEO companies, such as the one you use for your chiropractic SEO, specialize in optimizing web content to promote specific things to appear more often in the organic results. Paid results, in contrast to organic results, have been paid for by companies in order to be advertised. These are the ones that typically appear at the top of the SERP list, and have the ‘ad’ symbol next to it. And additionally, up until recently, were also displayed on side bars to the right of the SERP results.

SEO-slide

The new Google SERP has completely eliminated sidebar ads, and have increased the number of paid results (up to four) that will be listed at the beginning of every SERP list. You may be wondering how this will affect your chiropractic SEO, now that the organic results are going to have less room in the initial part of the screen that is viewed. Well, all that you will need to focus on is your marketing strategy. As long as this is on point, your chiropractic SEO should remain perfectly in tact.

scaling-content

First things first, you must realize that the new layout actually appears a lot more natural looking without the side bar ads. Now that the only way to advertise is through the coveted paid results, this will likely drive up prices. More and more companies will be forced to pull out due to the price point, and shift gears to focus on their organic results. This will only make organic results more competitive, and increase the importance even more on your focus in this arena.

In order to compete in this new crazy Google SERP world, your SEO should focus on several things. Use data to identify what content is desirable, and provide more of it. People want to get the information they need when searching, not a bunch of excess material. In addition to this, make sure your contact is marked up with meta data and schema in order to draw in the most attention possible. Make your content as visually appealing as possible. Lastly, measure your results and make adjustments as necessary. Your chiropractic SEO can still be just as, if not more powerful than ever before with the new Google SERP by following this advice.

Top SEO Predictions for 2016

by on January 12, 2016

Now that the year has begun, it’s time to look at predictions for the year coming about. You’ll see what will happen in 2016 based off what happens in 2015, and what it means for you in the world of SEO web marketing.

The first is we will see a change that allows nonprofit universities to offer a degree in internet marketing, including SEO classes. Several universities have offered this, and the only little technicality is what is considered major. They have announced courses in 2015, so we can see the trend occurring in 2016 as well.

2016_SEO_Predictions_-_Facebook

Then there will be Google continuing the trend of giving off instant answers to search results. However, the number of new interactive tools was a bit limited in 2015. They tried out new interfaces, but they are still working out the kinks in it.

Then there is the prediction that Google will have organic results with less than 70% CTR. For many years, it had been about 80-95% for organic ads, but now that google is becoming aggressive with the non-organic results, it might start to change it and inevitably silence the subject through its system. It’s not gloomy however, because it’s still growing and will continue to grow despite it all.

2016
Then there is the factor that the growth rates in mobile start to taper. It doesn’t mean that we’ve reached the peak, but the numbers will start to fall. Most of the time however, the use of a desktop will not change, especially since many still use them.
Then there is my prediction that twitter will start to grow again. It’s been hard for twitter recently, but I think this year will allow the company to grow. Since the new CEOs have begun, I think that they will impact the growth and we’ll see once again their stock prices improving as well
Then there is the factor that social engines will start to become popular.

For example, Nuzzle which is a great app and website that is a great replacement for many content search engines. It allows you to have all of your links shared on twitter and Facebook put together, and you can see the content. There is also ProductHunt, which is a startup in the tech world that’s like Reddit for software and apps. You can look at the different site suggestions and see what will work based on daily emails. It’s a new way to have all of your social networks together to see the popularity of it, referral traffic, and even the active users which makes it even better to use.

Amazon  market place would expand more and here there will be a trend to rank products in Amazon search results. You can expect more and more looking into Amazon SEO as well.

Finally, there is the death of normal distributions will hit the publishing and search engines, and it will do so hard. I think we’re moving away from normal distributions and it creates demand curves as well. The long-tail theory has been proven false, and it will create a significant impact in the world in the future.
These are the major predictions, all we have to see is what will come about with them in the future.

Things You Should Know About Google Penguin 4.0

by on December 17, 2015

According to the resources and intelligent intuitions by the analysts, Google is more likely to release its Penguin 4.0 update any time soon. While this news can bring happiness for the SEO people who like to stick with the legitimate SEO practices, it is also like a time bomb for the SEO people who like to get quick traffic through black-hat techniques.

We all know that every Penguin update comes with an aim to support high quality link-building and to combat the spam tactics. For instance, last Google Penguin update was released in 2014 and it immediately cased huge disturbance in the digital world. Sites that didn’t abide legitimate SEO rules lost their ranks in no time and were lost from SERPs. Some of the websites even received notifications for manual actions.

This trend of countering spam and removing websites, which followed bad SEO practices, was started a few years back. Due to that, the way search results are shown was changed to great extent. It brought a lot of positives in perspectives of quality and credibility. This was due to the fact that good SEO practices were appreciated and black-hat SEO was disparaged in the Penguin Algorithms.

Google Update

Penguin 4.0 update is a great enhancement of Google’s spam combating abilities. This update is being analytically assumed as real time update of Google’s algorithms. Real time update means that Penguin’s algorithm will consistently keep on updating, minimizing the remaining chances for spammers to go ahead with their link bombardments. This update is being welcomed by the online community because there is still a major spamming activity going on the web and 4.0 update is expected to show the necessary force to stop this activity. Here, it is worth mentioning that Google claims with every update that it is going to stop bad SEO practices but facts remain otherwise. Nevertheless, this update will make the chances of success for black-hat techniques pretty thin.

Hopefully the new update will help Google to track down spam link profiles and block them once and for all. This is not only bad for the bad practitioners but it will automatically rank up the websites that follow good quality SEO strategies.