By Jon Trobaugh, SEO Consultant

“How do I optimize my website for search engines?”

The above is by far the most common question I am asked as an SEO consultant. To those outside the industry, it appears to be a question with a straight forward answer. But in reality, SEO optimization is a never-ending process with a list of complications from here to Mars. Today, I am going to scratch the Martian surface so to speak by giving you five steps you can take to increase your site’s search performance.

Step 1: Research keywords and user Intent.

Understanding what users search for and their intent in doing so is essential to SEO optimization. If you don’t know what potential customers are typing into Google’s search box to find products and services like your own, your SEO efforts will miss the mark.

The most popular tool for keyword research is Google’s Keyword Planner. The Keyword Planner lets you research monthly keyword search volumes based on your industry, location, and product type. You want to build a list of keywords with high search volume and low competition. Depending on site size and product diversity, this list may be hundreds of keywords long.

The keywords on your list should now be added to the site’s textual content in order to help the site rank for related queries. Your site only has so much content, so optimize for business critical terms first. Do not try to optimize for more than one or two keywords on any given page.

As with most aspects of SEO, keyword research is not a “set it and forget it” task. Keyword selection should be reevaluated quarterly.

Step 2: Create wonderful content.

The quality of your site’s content goes a long way in determining its search performance. Engaging, deep content is the expectation here. Optimizing content for search engines should always come second to creating a wonderful user experience. Instead of thinking in terms of landing pages, build “resource” pages, pages that are worthwhile to users even if they do not convert on their first visit.

For SEO, you want to make sure those mission-critical keywords appear in a page’s URL, title, and headings. Image alt-tags should also include keywords where applicable. Keyword use in a site’s meta description (the slug that appears under a URL on Google’s search results pages) does not affect rank, but a strong call to action in this description will increase click-through-rate.

Step 3: Think mobile.

Google recently announced that its mobile index would become the primary index for search. This means that Google will use what it judges as the site’s mobile quality to determine ranking decisions on all devices. It behooves webmasters to make sure their site is mobile friendly. No more excuses.

Step 4: Get social.

Facebook likes, Google +1s, and retweets no longer directly affect search engine rankings, but social media offers a perfect publishing platform to drive traffic to your newly created resource pages and promote your brand.

Step 5: Monitor and adapt.

After completing steps 1 through 4, use Google Analytics or a similar tool to monitor your site’s organic performance. Key metrics here are keyword rankings, organic visits/visitors, and organic conversions. By charting changes here, you can better shape your SEO strategy and always stay one step ahead of your competition.

Want to take your SEO to the next level? Get creative with the experts at Blue Zoo today!

Gated content, sometimes referred to as premium content or paywall content, is any collateral that requires a user to give personal information (email address, phone number, etc.) and/or pay a fee to access.

Many website owners, especially those in business-to-business industries, gate far more content than they should. Here at Blue Zoo Creative, we know that having the right mix of gated and free, viral content is essential to a successful campaign. And to help make the “to gate or not to gate” decision easier for you, here are three content types we believe you should never gate.

1. Blog posts

Blog posts are a common content type, and they are meant to be read and shared through social platforms and linked to by other bloggers. Putting a single blog post behind a gate serves only to stifle that post’s usefulness and turn off potential readers. If a piece of content’s effectiveness is tied to its ability to be shared, it should never be put behind a web form.

2. Product information

Top level content, content that introduces your brand and services in a concise way, should never be gated. You want potential consumers to learn about your brand and products as easily as possible. Consumers shouldn’t have to give an email address in exchange for basic product specs or prices. And they won’t. They will move on, and you will lose the sale.

Two-step marketing is a viable strategy in some niche markets, but for 99% of businesses, asking consumers to spend valuable shopping time completing a long form is a non-starter.

3. Content designed for link acquisition

We know what you’re thinking. Content marketers are not supposed to build content simply to acquire links! True, but in reality that is exactly why many brands push out so many e-books, infographics, and videos each month. As in our discussion of blog posts above, content meant to be linked to needs to be available to everyone.

Studies show that gating a piece of content, no matter how popular or valuable that content is thought to be, dramatically decreases the number of downloads and shares, sometimes by as much as 95%.

Conclusion:

The decision to gate or not to gate should depend heavily on the content itself, your business’s niche, and the degree to which you rely on your house file for recurring sales. Content meant to create buzz, go viral, or to deliver essential product and service information should never be placed behind a wall. In our experience, a ratio of 70% free content to 30% gated works well for most brands.

Do you still have questions about how best to leverage your content? We can help with that; learn more about our content marketing and social media services for businesses in Northwest Arkansas and beyond.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often the most intimidating and confusing marketing activity for small business owners. But it doesn’t have to be. With a basic understanding of how search engines work and how they fit into the buying process, you can create a successful SEO campaign regardless of your budget.

What follows is a list of concepts that we feel every small business owner should understand regarding SEO, its strengths, and its pitfalls.

1) SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.

In a business culture predicated on immediate results, SEO is a misfit. It is rare to see any SEO technique affect the bottom line quickly. In fact, optimization efforts can take weeks or months to make a difference in search performance. Because of this, it is not recommended to rely on SEO marketing alone for new site or product launches.

SEO also requires continuous adjustment. Automated processes like those found in paid search marketing or social media are not always viable.

2) Paid search budgets do not affect organic search visibility.

Paid search, also known as Pay-Per-Click, PPC, or search advertising, has little to do with SEO, even though PPC and organic search results often appear together as seen in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: A Google search results page for the query “2017 honda accord.” Paid search ads appear in the red box while organic results are below. Notice how paid ads are clearly indicated with a green “ad” button.

The position of paid search ads is determined in Google by a metric known as “Ad Rank,” a combination of bid amount, the relevancy of the ad’s landing page to the query, and some other factors. Ad rank works independently from the 200-plus factors that determine organic rankings. Your search advertising budget will not affect your SEO performance, and you cannot pay to rank well organically.

Does it make sense to buy search ads if your SEO is performing well?

Yes, search is not a linear event. Before users convert, they may conduct multiple searches over a long period of time. They may click on organic results, paid search ads, and visit your brand’s social media pages in the course of a few hours. In other words, the combination of paid and organic search can keep you in front of the user throughout the buying process.

3) Compelling content is essential.

You’ve probably heard content is king, and this is never more true than today. Compelling content engages the reader/viewer; helps increase search engine traffic; improves the chances that other sites will link to you (links are an important ranking factor); and increases the number of quality leads.

4) There are no shortcuts to SEO success.

Like all industries, SEO has its share of snake oil salesmen. We call these SEOs “black hat” because their strategies rely on aggressive tactics meant to con search engines into unfairly ranking a site above its competitors. These tactics are often in violation of search engines’ quality guidelines. Companies that guarantee dramatic rank improvement or attempt to sell your business links or social followers should be avoided. Remember, if it is too good to be true, it probably is.

If you always strive to deliver a quality online experience for your users, you should have no problems outranking your competition. Google and other search engines never punish good, honest work.

Discover more about Blue Zoo Creative’s SEO services by contacting a zookeeper today.

Google created a search algorithm update called Hummingbird.

“Google has said content is king for years, and with long tail phrases and conversational searching, authoritative content will continue to win.” ~ Eric Ward, Search Engine Land

Hummingbird is the most significant update since Caffeine in 2010. The name references their goal for Google search to be fast and precise, continuing in their quest to dominate online search. Hummingbird allows Google to more quickly parse full questions (as opposed to single words), and to give back answers to those questions from the content they’ve indexed.

According to Search Engine Land and Tech Cocktail, here are the top impacts from Hummingbird:

• Google is placing additional emphasis on content that addresses customer needs and questions.
• Include search query results data in your ad content. This will help you rank better in voice search. Make sure your website content matches the search queries. If not, then it’s time to update your website.
• Google Analytics will no longer provide keyword data. Keyword information must be gleaned from other sources like Google Ads, your customers and social media.
• Quality, organic links are important. Content alone may not be enough. You must have trust and authority as evidenced by quality backlinks from trusted sources.
• Relational (think social media) information is more important. Google is connecting more information about people, places and things. This means social sharing, Open Graph Tags, and especially Google owned properties like YouTube and G+ are more important.
• Mobile is becoming more important to Google and search users. Make sure your site is optimized for mobile.

Google Conversational search is also live. Using the microphone in the search box, you can use your voice to have Google search be more conversational, understanding and feeding back information much like regular human conversation.

Image by Search Engine Land

Search Engine Optimization is still important, but the way you do it is changing. Dynamic and targeted content is becoming more important as Google works to improve search’s ability to help people find answers to their questions.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover the needs and questions of your customers.
• Answer them with quality content on your website. Blogs and FAQs are great ways to do this.
• Make your content easily sharable

This makes it an ideal time to update your website content.

If you want help, we have 3 great Content Packages designed to help you keep your information useful, relevant and engaging. Blogging, testimonials, FAQs and other social sharing content are more important than ever.

Quit Monkeying Around! Join the Zoo.™

You’ve probably heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and wondered, is that something I need to be doing for my website? Well, we’re here to tell you all the reasons why you should not feed the SEO!

First, what if you did have your site optimized, and your website ranking shot up on Google? You’d suddenly start getting a lot more traffic to your site, which would probably increase the number of real clients contacting you about your service or product, and then where would you be? Who has time to handle all that extra work?!

And second, good SEO only puts an internet spotlight on your website, which is your best marketing instrument and already works for you 24/7. Surely you don’t want to make it work even harder for you, do you?

On top of that, good SEO will increase your sales without proportionately increasing your marketing costs, and then your budget will be all messed up! You might have to find some use for those extra marketing funds elsewhere in the company, which would just be annoying, wouldn’t it?

Paying for SEO analysis and improvement also might make you reach your financial goals and growth targets more quickly than planned, and then you’ll have to start all over setting new goals and working towards them!

By ignoring SEO, and not feeding the monster, you can avoid having a website that might be viewed by thousands of your best prospects and ideal clients. Don’t you want a website that you can leave to the whim and fancy of Google to rank at its will?

And finally, if you’re absolutely determined to ignore our best advice, and have decided that you must feed the SEO or have your website effectively die on the vine, please contact us for a quote, and we will do our best to make the process as painless as possible.

“Engagement” is a nebulous term referring to everything from social indicators to brand recognition to customer loyalty. In this post, when we say engagement, we mean the degree to which the design and content of your website are able to draw in and hook your visitors. In Google Analytics terms, this means page views, visit duration, bounce rate and returning visitors. In a nutshell, we’re talking about the amount of time visitors spend on your site and their tendency to return.

While more time spent on your site doesn’t necessarily translate directly to a higher conversion rate, it probably does mean that your visitor found value, has a positive impression of your brand and is more likely to return. Which, over time, increases the odds that casual visitors will convert to customers or subscribers.

There’s speculation that Google considers engagement, specifically bounce rate, in search engine result page (SERP) rankings. Matt Cutts, who heads the webspam team at Google, has said that Google does not consider bounce rate. Bounce rate data, he says, is too “noisy” to be a reliable indicator of engagement. But high-quality sites are engaging and engaging sites tend to be of higher quality, so it’s seems likely that Google is trying to crack this problem. Until they do, most of the things that engage your visitors also help with your SEO.

Things you can do to promote user engagement and make Google like you.

Open Strong

A 2012 eye-tracking study by the Missouri University of Science and Technology suggests that a website gets less than two-tenths of a second to make a first impression. When a visitor comes to your site for the first time, you have to let her know immediately that she’s in the right place.

• A clean, professional design establishes credibility, and helps your visitor quickly process your message.
• A compelling image or graphic leaps out and grabs user attention in those first crucial moments and communicates on a different level than text alone. Images evoke strong, immediate emotional responses.
• A succinct, clever headline communicates almost as quickly as an image, but with more precision. It’s your opportunity to let your visitor know he’s found what he was looking for and compel him to explore your content further.

With regard to SEO, the page layout algorithm improvement signaled that Google rewards sites that show content immediately, without ads and clutter at the top of the page. It’s also worth mentioning that while keyword density has lost much of its clout with Google (and can even hurt your SEO efforts if overplayed), keyword usage in headlines is still a characteristic of high-ranking sites. This according to two independent 2013 studies of search engine ranking factors: Moz’s 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors and Searchmetrics’ SEO Ranking Factors 2013.

Socialize

SEO professionals have speculated for a while that search engines would begin to factor social signals as an indicator of content quality and authority. Both the Moz and Searchmetrics studies suggest this is happening. A high number of mentions on social media (particularly Google +1s) is a characteristic strongly correlated with high search rankings. Both studies are careful to point out that correlation does not equal causation. In other words, although content with strong social signals tends to rank highly in search, that doesn’t mean its rank is the result of social media.

With regard to engagement, we’re more likely to try something if it’s recommended by a trusted friend or colleague. Because of the value we expect based on our friend’s recommendation, we’re more likely to both click the link and give that content or product a chance, even if it doesn’t immediately appeal to us,

Be Verbose

Writing for the web has been guided by an intuitive wisdom to “Be Succinct.” The premise being that readers found on-screen text cumbersome and reading it unpleasant. Short and sweet still holds true on a certain level (Exhibit A: Twitter). However, technological advances, along with nearly two decades of acclimation to the medium, mean it’s no longer a given that your online audience prefers short content.

Over the last couple years, products like Pocket, Instapaper and Readability and sites like Longreads and The Atavist have found success catering to the demand for long-form online writing. And the principle extends to marketing copy. Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg, tested lead generation with 488 words vs. 1,292 words on the homepage of his blog. The long-form version converted 7.6% better. A split test by UX gurus 37signals found that, compared to a condensed version, a long-form sales page increased signups 37.5%!

Google, too, seems to like longer content. Both the Searchmetrics study and a study by serpIQ found a positive correlation between higher word count and higher SERP ranking. Of course, this effect has limits. Your 10,000-word blog post isn’t guaranteed first position in search results. The sweet spot appears to be 500 to 1,500 words.

But…

Break it Down

Especially important with longer texts, scannable content helps your visitors find what they came for and reduces the likelihood they’ll bounce to search elsewhere. Pages with plenty of subheadings and a sprinkling of lists are easier to digest, more visually appealing and are disproportionately represented at the top of search results.

• Use lots of headings and subheadings
• Write short paragraphs
• Highlight key phrases with bold or italic text
• Make lists

See how easy that was?

The things that improve your site’s search ranking are the same things that keep visitors coming back.

Some SEO techniques are faddish and may even be damaging in the long run (we’re looking at you, keyword density). We don’t have to guess at what Google will reward or devalue with the next update. Each tweak and refinement of the search algorithm is aimed at improving the ratio of high-value sites at the top of the results. We know what Google wants. It’s the same thing consumers of online media want.

Quality content on an appealing and functional website is a future-proof SEO strategy.

Quit Monkeying Around! Join the Zoo.™

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