8 SEO Best Practices for Small Businesses in 2015

You’ve probably already been told that search engine optimization is constantly evolving. For a small business owner, this can make SEO sound big and scary and something that you have to pour hours into every week, just to stay ahead of the curve. While SEO does take a little bit of time, staying on top of your optimization doesn’t have to consume your life, especially if you’re working with an SEO expert. Looking forward to the rest of 2015, here are some of the best practices and SEO tips all small business owners should keep in mind.

1. Content continues to reign. It was Bill Gates who coined the phrase, “Content is king,” in an article written nearly ten years ago. Despite being almost a decade old (which is nearing old age, in internet-years), the statement is still true and will continue to be true, especially for small businesses. When consumers do business with small companies, they want that personal touch, they want something meaningful and valuable—that’s the whole point of working with a small business, instead of a mindless corporation. Valuable content will be your biggest asset.

2. Mobile is more important than ever. Every year in the last three years has been touted as the Year of the Mobile Device. If any year is that year, it’s 2015. Mobile traffic has already outstripped desktop and laptop traffic, which means that if your website isn’t mobile friendly, you are probably missing out on at least half of your traffic. If you don’t yet have a responsive design or a website made specifically for mobile users, get one up as soon as possible.

3. Backlinking is changing. So, it’s not really changing, but what aspects of the backlink Google favors is changing. Search engines now care far more about the content around the link, meaning that if your backlink isn’t surrounded by content that actually mentions or is even about your brand, Google’s not going to like it. In some instances, you might not even need a link. If a website talks about your brand and mentions you by name, that’s often going to be enough to count as a backlink.

4. Keyword are going to matter less and less. This is going to be hard for most long-time SEO-ers to hear, but keywords have not been a primary ranking factor for a while now. Gone are the days where you can just stick as many keywords as possible into your content and get a great page ranking. Of course, keyword ranking still matters, but search engines like Google are going to be paying much more attention to how well your website delivers what it promises. It’s mostly going to be doing this by measuring your website’s return on investment. A low ROI means that you aren’t being effective, and therefore, likely don’t deliver what you offer. A high ROI means your website is high value and works to convert page visitors into customers, clients, or patients.

5. Don’t discount social signals. Just as content is only becoming more and more important, your small business’s social footprint is becoming more and more important. This can be discouraging for owners who know that they can never compete with powerhouses like Nike or Coca-Cola, who has massive social media followings. Luckily, you don’t have to compete with those two brands, as you’re likely trying to attract customers from your local area, not all over the world. Content is closely linked to social signals, as what is likely getting the most social activity will be your content.

6. Keep your website safe. Cybercrime is on the rise, and while few people are still wary of online shopping, the danger of having your identity or personal information stolen is actually growing. Search engines are going to favor websites that have the appropriate security measures in place. Why? Because search engines want to protect their users. They don’t want to send them to websites where there information is going to get stolen—they only want to serve up websites that are safe to visit. Make sure you have all of the necessary protections in place to guard the information provided by patients, clients, or customers to your website.

7. Conversations mean more than keywords. Any freelance or on-staff content writer will tell you how often he gets requests to insert keywords like “best dentist New Jersey” twelve times into content. There are still SEO articles advising a high concentration of “exact match” keywords like this—despite the fact that they haven’t really been necessary since 2013. As scary as the prospect might be, Google isn’t just looking for keyword phrases, it’s looking at the whole of the content and evaluating its relevancy to not just the search phrase used, but the intent of the search phrase. Plus, searchers are now using more conversational phrases—mostly because they are no longer being taught in school to omit the articles and extraneous words.

8. Visuals are just as important as words. Google also isn’t going to just be looking at the words that you use on your webpage. It is also going to be looking for relevant videos, graphics, and images. The more visual your webpage is, the more likely it is to get a high ranking. Of course, that doesn’t mean you want to cut back on valuable content, it just means that you should definitely include visual elements, as well as content on your webpage. Don’t neglect one or the other.

Use these eight best practices to make sure your small business’s website has all of the elements it needs for search engine success!

Courtesy of: business2community.com

Local Search Strategies for Mobile Marketing

Mobile phones are increasingly being used to search online, and businesses simply cannot afford to ignore this trend. Now is the time to start targeting mobile users in the search engines if you have not yet done so. Mobile search is only going to get bigger, so here are some local mobile search strategies to maximize your performance and win more mobile customers over the coming year.

Focus on Improving Your Mobile Website

One of the best things you can do is make improvements to your mobile website. Even if you already have an app, your website should still be your priority. Just as with standard SEO, you are going to be hurting yourself if you don’t develop a strong mobile site. Google recommends a responsive design to enjoy the best results, as reported in Search Engine Land.

Even if you are focusing specifically on local mobile SEO, you still need to ensure you follow standard SEO best practices, which means high-quality content optimized for mobile users.

Utilize PPC Advertising

Targeting users in mobile search does not just involve SEO—you could also make use of PPC. PPC has come a long way in recent years, and strategies now exist that are designed specifically for searches made using mobile devices.

One tactic you could employ is Click to Call in AdWords. This is where you can display your phone number to mobile searchers, which they can then click on directly to call you.

You can also target your ads to only show up for users based in certain locations, as explained by Google. Choosing for your ads to show based on the searcher’s physical location could be an ideal way to target local customers.

You can also use location extensions, which display your address, number, and a map along with your ads. On mobiles, they also contain a link with directions to your business, which could encourage more people to visit your premises.

Sign Up to ‘Google My Business’

Many companies choose to hire help from specialists like the Singapore SEO company for their local mobile SEO strategies, but one thing that any business can do is sign up with ‘Google My Business.’ This can be an important influencer for SEO rankings both for desktop and mobile searches.

The key to getting the most from this is to publish content regularly, build up positive reviews, and manage your account on a regular basis. It’s a great way for local businesses to target mobile users who are out and about.

Include Your Location Info

People who search using their mobile phones are often looking for local products and services. According to Google, 56% of searches on smartphones on-the-go have local intent, so make it easy for them to find you.

Include your location info in your mobile marketing so that searchers can quickly find where you are. Use maps and provide directions. By making this clear you could improve your mobile campaign performance. Also, ensure that your contact details are the same across all online directories.

What About Multi-Location Businesses?

How to optimize for local when you have various locations? This can be a challenge. The most important thing is to sort out who will be responsible for optimization. If every location goes about their mobile optimization completely independently of the others, this could lead to problems.

It may be better to have just one domain for the company and to then use sub-domains for the different locations. This saves you having to manage multiple websites, and it can help to improve your SEO. In addition, you can set up a Google My Business account for each location to help them get more visibility in the search engines.

You may want to give each location control over its content and social activity, or you may want everything managed from one central location. It depends on your business, but either can work.

Maximize Your Local SEO For Mobile

Mobile search is one of the key areas to target if you want to improve your local SEO. Now is the time to start thinking seriously about your local mobile strategies to take advantage of the growth in mobile search that is already occurring and will continue to increase in the coming years. Don’t get left behind, and make sure you are ready to take full advantage of the local business that you could generate through mobile search.

Courtesy of: business2community.com

TWO DAYS AFTER “MOBILEGEDDON” WE EXAMINE THE FALLOUT

On April 21st Google introduced its much anticipated mobile update.  The mobile update was designed to reshape Google’s results page; favouring websites that had converted to a mobile-friendly format.  Google informed us of their intentions back in February – to give us all time to prepare ourselves and our sites for this game changing update.   The countdown had begun and we scrambled to make our preparations in time for this final reckoning.

So, what does our reshaped SERP environment look like?

Two days on and the ash cloud is beginning to clear – as we step out from our shelters; dazed and confused, to survey the new, queer landscape that Google’s results page has become.  Strangely enough, however, after all the hysteria, this new world does not seem as alien as one might have expected.

On the face of it, it doesn’t seem like the mobile-friendliness of a site is as significant a ranking factor as was first anticipated.  No sites are reporting any major falls and there hasn’t been any huge difference in sites’ rankings on desktop searches when compared to mobile SERPs.  All-in-all the first two days of this apocalyptic event have been relatively quiet.

Does this mean it was all a lot of hype over nothing?

Whilst this may be starting to look like December 22 2012, as we all breathed a heavy sigh of relief when we awoke to realise that the Mayans’ predictions hadn’t come true, it is unlikely that we have yet seen the full repercussions that this update will have.

One thing that we can say for certain is that Google have made their intentions clear.  Whilst their stance on the mobile-friendliness of websites has been known for some time, this is by far the biggest step they have made towards making it a significant ranking factor.

Things are certainly moving in one direction and it is unlikely that this will change anytime soon.

Are Google the biggest winners here?

Google has certainly achieved one thing with this update, they convinced a lot of us to change our websites so that they were mobile-friendly.  This could well have been their plan all along.

Since Google originally announced that this update was going to happen around 4.7% of webmasters have switched their sites to a mobile-friendly design – according to their own figures.  This certainly represents a victory for Google’s mobile-friendly philosophy if nothing else.

This would also explain why Google chose to inform us all of this change so far in advance.

Google seldom give us a forewarning of such large changes to their algorithm, so why this time?

Should we choose to believe that they honestly wanted to give us all time to adapt, to make sure we weren’t all caught on our heels? – How nice of them.

Or should we believe that, as with many threatened Doomsday’s, the action caused by the fear of extinction was the largest effect of the whole process?

One thing is for sure, Google won’t be unhappy that we all scrambled to dance to their tune.

Courtesy of: jseo.com