In this post, we’ll go over three more SEO techniques businesses should be applying in 2017:

Show You’re Secure

Something else that is quite visible on your site and that will help you secure a good ranking is the SSL encryption indicator, says chief operating officer of Road Warrior Creative Chris Hinds.
“Chrome users (about 55% of all traffic) will begin to see websites with SSL flagged with a nice green ‘secure’ tag,” Hinds says. “This positive distinction in search results is something that may have a substantial impact on click through rate. There is also discussion within Google of eventually flagging websites with no SSL as ‘not secure’ both in-browser and in search results.”

Obviously, the implication is that letting people know your site is a secure one right from the search results will make it more appealing to click on than a site marked as not secure.

Design for user experience

While the phrase “content is king” has been around for much longer than the internet has been a thing, content is getting some pretty stiff competition for its throne from user experience, according to Waypost Marketing president Doug Fowler, who says optimizing for users is becoming increasingly important.
“We’re moving towards a place where Google bots care more about how visitors behave on your site than they do about the actual content on your website,” Fowler says. “If your visitors are not clicking, it means that nothing on the page interests them. If your visitors leave right away, it means that their expectations didn’t match the reality.”

Google is now more interested in how your visitors interact with your pages rather than the actual content that is on the page, Fowler says. Therefore, if you have no text on your homepage, but visitors engage a lot with your site, you’re doing great SEO work and if your site has a ton of content, but no engagement, you’re failing at SEO.

“There is no more standard SEO or standard web design,” Fowler says. “Everything depends on your visitor. And as a marketer or SEO expert, it’s your job to create a website that meets the visitor’s expectations. That’s what effective SEO is today.”

Echoing this sentiment is digital content specialist at Brand Extract Chris Wilks.

“Traditional ranking factors, such as title tags and meta descriptions, are diminishing in value,” Wilkes says. “Instead, search engines are looking to analytics to determine the most valuable pages, and therefore the most worthy of high search engine rankings. Quick page load speeds, mobile-friendliness and intuitive information architecture are now what’s going to earn you precious real estate at the top of SERPs.”

Wilks suggests:

• Ensuring your site is mobile-friendly,
• Making technical enhancements to ensure your site loads quickly
• Thoroughly covering the topic that you are addressing on a particular page, and
• Providing clear, obvious calls to action that enhance the user experience.

These are all web design 101, but what we’re seeing is that UX is now actually a Google ranking factor.

Start Separating SEO From Other Strategies

Lastly, anyone who wants to rank well should stop compartmentalizing their search marketing efforts into “paid” and “organic,” says Sean Martin, marketing manager at Directive Consulting.
“People are still operating like SEO and PPC are distinct campaigns with no crossover, but today, the most successful campaigns are using the data from their paid tactics to inform their organic ranking optimization projects,” Martin says.

Martin suggests one way of doing this is to check out your paid click through rate to see if your ad copy is generating clicks. If it isn’t, test different copy in already ranked organic link titles to see what copy generates the most clicks. Once you’ve ascertained that, re-optimize your paid ad copy to increase your paid click through rate.

As SEO continues to evolve, it’s up to marketers to adapt to what is working by keeping up to date on the various factors that affect search on the internet. Giving your visitors the best possible experience on your site will always be a top priority, just as getting them to your site will always be a challenge.

The post Experts Weigh in on SEO Best Practices for 2017 Pt. 2 appeared first on Weberous | Los Angeles Web Design Agency.

But, as long as we search the internet for information, SEO will exist. The parts that die are simply misconceptions about “how” SEO works. With that in mind, we take a look at the changing face of SEO in 2017 to see what companies should be doing to keep their sites near the top of the search rankings according to a wide variety of SEO experts.

This is Part 1. We will look at Part 2 and three more in our next post.

Optimize for human queries

What appears on the front end of your site has also changed. Most people remember the days of stuffing the same keyword onto a site ad nauseum. It’s an archaic practice that deserves the scorn it gets. Now, you’re better off to have a range of keywords you want to target and do that strategically.

As senior director of marketing at Liaison Technologies Amanda Thomas says, using the same keywords over and over is akin to using the same hashtag 10 times for the same photo on Instagram. It doesn’t make the photo any more visible. Only a range of hashtags will do that. The same goes for keywords on a site.

One way to identify an effective range of keywords to target is to optimize your site for voice search and include long-tail keywords, according to Daniela Arango, community manager and public relations at Tonerbit.com.

“Most large tech industries are investing in bots and gadgets that function primarily on voice commands,” Arango said. “Take Siri and Alexa as examples. A person simply asks a question and then immediately receives a list of findings. As SEO experts, we now need to ‘write how the user speaks.’ It’s fundamental to change our mindsets and think about the phrases and questions a user might ask for on voice command.”

As an example, Arango says, people usually browse for “bakery in Miami” when they type in a Google search bar, but they ask Siri “What is the best bakery in Miami?” There’s a difference between those two types of searches and it’s necessary to make websites friendly to voice searches, she says.

Also related to artificial intelligence and its impact on SEO is Google’s implementation of RankBrain, which uses machine learning to figure out how to combine hundreds of algorithms, which enables Google to decipher search queries.

Brady Keller, digital marketing strategist for Atlantic.net, says Google is learning what its searchers are looking for faster than ever, and people need to stop trying to make predictions based on these algorithms.

“Instead, they should be focusing on creating content that satisfies user intent,” Keller says. “There’s really no shortcuts here. Implement a creative content strategy that helps users find the information they need, and you’ll reap the benefits of higher rankings.”

Microdata counts

SEO has always been a combination of the words you can see on a site and the unseen words that are placed in the back end of a site.

Founder and digital marketing strategist at AnksImage.com Ankitaa Gohain Dalmia says structured data markup in the website code itself helps search engines understand what the content is about and therefore helps your SEO.

“The microdata embedded in the website further enhances the content on-page, be it Schema.org, Microformats, or Google Structured Data Helper in Google Search Console,” Dalmia says, “hence increasing the chances of better organic growth.”

Organize and categorize

Another trick to climb the SERP ladder is to organize and categorize your site so you have topic clusters.

“Topic clusters are groups of semantically related content that individually deal with single topics that fit into a larger theme,” explains Alex Bar, owner of Third Temple Digital.

Bar uses the example of “healthy dieting” as a general theme for your site. Within this theme, you could have multiple articles focused on healthy dieting with articles like:

• 4 Easy to Make Healthy Breakfasts
• How to Pack a Healthy Lunch for Work
• Why Cutting Carbs Is a Good Idea

When you have groups of content that are all within the same field of interest, this can give your website better positioning for keywords that you are trying to rank for, Bar says. In the case of the example above, that would be keywords like “healthy,” “dieting,” “food” and “lunch.” This also allows you to build more quality internal links on your website.

That’s it for this post. In our next post, we’ll look at the importance of showing people you have a secure site, why you should blend your paid-for and organic strategies and why user experience matters more now than ever on websites and how that helps you with SEO.

The post Experts Weigh in on SEO Best Practices for 2017 Pt. 1 appeared first on Weberous | Los Angeles Web Design Agency.

The term “guerilla marketing” was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson over 30 years ago. While it’s a terrific tactic for small businesses that have financial constraints, you’ll come across guerilla marketing campaigns by big brands as well. Although no one can really teach you guerilla marketing, you can teach yourself by getting ideas from others’ past campaigns and exercising your creativity. Here are a few tips to get you started.

Work Social Media

Million-dollar budgets aside, the most successful social media campaigns are launched by passionate business owners who have nothing but time to spend. So what if you can’t afford TV and magazine ads? Social media can be just as big, especially for small business marketers with big brains.

Start by cultivating a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and move on to others later. Don’t try to do too much too soon. Find and share value-rich media that creates the experience you want your customers to have. Share as much as you can. Take great photos and make your own videos. Unleash your wit and compose witty tweets. When people see something worth sharing, you won’t have to encourage them to do so!

Toot Your Own Horn

You should know your product or service better than anyone. So talk about it. Write about it. Blog about it. When people see that you know what you’re saying, then they’ll also buy from you. If you have to establish your expertise through blogging, talk about one subject at a time. Cover it in detail and share as much quality info as you can – people will eventually notice and reward you for it (with their business)!

Claim Your Free Marketing Spots

Google My Business, Yellow Pages, Yelp, Foursquare, and Hotfrog are great free marketing avenues waiting to be claimed. Take advantage of all of them, and make sure your information is accurate. Be as detailed as possible and make your profile look great. These resources create a strong foundation for your marketing.

Join Forums or Meetups

Can you imagine purposefully avoiding a group of people who get together regularly to discuss an aspect of your field? You’re probably doing that every day. Forums and meetups are all over the web, but a lot of small business marketers ignore them. Find communities related to your product or service, join in, and speak up. Make your presence known. Any chance you get to speak or write about your offerings is an opportunity to get new customers.

Fall Back on Offline Marketing

When your eyes are dry as bones and your wrists are tingling, it’s time to step away from your computer and go offline. You don’t have to stop marketing your business, though. Just turn your attention to the offline world for a while. We’re so digitized that people have forgotten about good old-fashioned flyers and mailers. You can totally market your online website offline. In fact, it can actually be cheaper, since a lot of traditional approaches are losing out to digital marketing and have lowered their prices. Paper initiatives can actually bring you a great ROI!

Go Beyond Social Networking: Actually Socialize and Network

Here’s another chance to go offline. Industry-specific networking events can be extremely powerful, since a good partnership could mean a world of difference. Find other businesses that target the same audience as you. Put your brains together and see how you can benefit from a group effort. Joint ventures are increasingly popular. Market to each other’s connections and watch the magic happen.

Guerilla marketing’s potential is limited by your creativity only. There’s no secret formula; in fact, it’s the opposite of a formula. It’s about doing something brash that nobody else has thought of. If you know your customers, and you can think creatively, a few clever campaigns will get your product or service selling itself.

The post Gorilla Marketing Tips for Your Website appeared first on Weberous | Los Angeles Web Design Agency.