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About admin

Weston Riesche is the Marketing Manager at SEO Solutions Inc. Weston is a Graduate of Roosevelt University and holds two Bachelors in Integrated Marketing Communications and Economics. He has been an integral part of the SEO Solutions management team, developing insights into the world of Search Engine Optimization. Social Media and Internet Marketing. Weston works closely with clients to engage their companies with unique, effective and exhaustive Internet Marketing campaigns that leads them to the top of the major search engines.

Local SEO Do’s & Dont’s

The Basics of What To Do & What Not To Do For Local Business Owners When Implementing Local SEO

Great, you have become an established local business! So what do you do next? You need to make it easy for people to find you and your local business. A business without SEO is like a car without Gas! Local SEO is typically much less expensive than national or regional SEO and the results are easier to achieve. Over 70% of people use a search platform (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) to find local businesses.

Without Local SEO, your business is not going to reach its full potential.

You can no longer advertise and get bunches of qualified leads through the local yellow pages; there are more leads generated through search engines these days than any other medium.

Mobile search and the use of social media on mobile devices is increasing at a dramatic rate.

If the local traffic you wanted to get from search engines has not been that impressive we have a solution for you. We have created an infographic that shows you what to do and what not to do in order to improve local SEO and conquer local search traffic.

In this infographic we cover on page elements, creating local content, optimizing images with local terms, getting reviews, ensuring citations are correct and getting local links. This is a complete guide to getting started with a winning local SEO strategy!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE LOCAL SEO DO’s & DONT’S INFOGRAPHIC

Local-SEO-Dos-Donts

Presented By SEO Solutions

mobile first

Google Loves Mobile Websites – “Mobile First”

Google is putting everything “Mobile First”. More than 50% of people use mobile devices to search for local businesses.

mobile-phones

Have you looked at your website traffic recently?  While there, you may want to look at visitors specifically coming from mobile devices. In May, Google released another update to their mobile algorithm that strengthens the ranking of mobile-friendly sites, which means any websites not optimized for mobile have the potential to lose organic search traffic. 

Google is built around great User Experience. Since most people are using search engines on mobile devices than desktop computers. They want to provide their customers (search engine users) with the best results which include providing results with mobile friendly designs when searched for on a mobile device.

How do you know if you’re affected? Here’s what to do:

  • Check your website traffic and mobile traffic and see if it has decreased.
  • Ensure your most important pages are optimized for mobile. If they’re not, update them as soon as possible and Google will update their results in near real-time.
 
Check your website here by typing your domain name into the search bar after clicking the link below.
 
mobile-phones

GOOGLE ROLLS OUT A BOOSTER UPDATE FOR MOBILE-FRIENDLY BUSINESSES

It’s very rare for Google to not deliver on what it promises. As expected, Google recently rolled out a booster update for businesses that already have a mobile-friendly presence. Many media reports claimed that since this is a mobile booster update it may not impact businesses as such. But contrary to the reports, there were quite a few businesses that were severely impacted because of the update. If you happened to miss out on the update completely then here’s a lowdown on the salient features of the mobile booster update.

  • The update was rolled out as page-by-page and not as a site-wide ranking signal.
  • The mobile booster update was rolled out globally, supporting all languages.
  • This was an algorithm update, so if you’ve made any on-site modifications, they will go live when the Google bot next crawls your web pages.

In the wake of the mobile booster update, this is what Google had advised businesses without a smartphone-friendly online presence –
“Remember, the intent of the search query is still a very strong signal — so even if a page with high-quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank well if it has great, relevant content.”

Businesses that recently lost out to their competitors in search rankings need to take Google’s mobile-friendly test to check the quality of their mobile-friendly web pages and see if they are following the industry standards. Businesses who wants to upgrade to a mobile-friendly online presence, can request our FREE SEO AUDIT.

As they say, it’s never too late for even the most stubborn businesses to take the call, especially with Google releasing stats that say nearly one-third of all mobile searches have local intent! If your business thrives in the local market then upgrading your site with a responsive web design and getting a mobile-friendly tag may just do the trick for you.

This will not only better serve your purpose but also get you some mileage, especially with Google continuing to make the web world a more mobile-friendly one. A miss here may cost you in the long run. If you’re interested in getting a mobile-friendly version for your website, do contact us and we will get started ASAP.

Features of our Google Mobile-Friendly Website:

  • Responsive website recognized by Google as mobile friendly.
  • Click-to-Call, Click-to-Email and Click-to-Text features.
  • Advanced mobile lead tracking and analytics.
  • Premium User Experience
web-design-seo

Great SEO Starts With A Great Website!

Great SEO starts with a great website.  So what makes a website great for SEO?

First and foremost, yours and your website must be optimally designed for a great user experience.

In one of our previous posts, we have discussed Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines for their human evaluators.  Humans then rate search results which serve as feedback to improve their algorithm.

This is Google’s way of ensuring search results displayed by their algorithms are what they should be – answers to what users are looking for.

Google has been aligning their machine learning and algorithms with the user experience by coming up with website performance metrics.  Here are some of the metrics they’re using, and may be using, as ranking signals:

 

  • Site Speed
  • Low Bounce Rate
  • Mobile-friendliness

 

Site Speed

Users easily give up on slow websites. A study by Akamai revealed that:

  • 52% of smartphone users
  • 47% for desktop users 

…expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.

  

According to Aberdeen Group, a 1-second delay in page load time yields:

  • 11% fewer page views
  • 16% decrease in customer satisfaction
  • 7% loss in conversions

 

Here are some techniques we use for a fast-loading website.

  • Caching
  • GZIP Compression
  • CSS Optimization
  • Minification
  • WordPress Plug-ins Optimization
  • Image Optimization
  • …and more

 

Bounce Rate 

If you are performing great SEO your bounce rate should be low. Bounce rate shows a strong correlation with rankings.

So it is important to pay attention to decreasing your bounce rate — low bounce rate is an indication (but not in the strictest sense) that your website visitors are engaged by going to other pages on your site.

A high bounce rate can be caused by factors such as design and usability.

 

  • Design and Layout

    Aside from bad content, bad design and layout turns off website visitors.
     
  • Easy Navigation

    If your visitors couldn’t figure out where to go next or where they are in the context of your entire website, they’d probably just drop off.

 

Here is Google’s guide to improve bounce rate.

  

Mobile-Friendliness 

Although non-mobile-friendly websites obviously get high bounce rates from users who are on a mobile device – thereby making mobile-friendliness an element to decreasing bounce rates, it is a ranking factor in its own category.

 Google’s Mobile Friendly Update on April 21, 2015 was designed to give a ranking boost to mobile-friendly pages on Google’s search results on mobile devices. Here is a detailed post about the importance of a mobile-friendly website.

Our web designs have great navigation and themes for every niche. We are always up to date with the latest mobile-friendly guidelines and newest call to actions to create conversions!

Great SEO starts with a great website! Our Web Builds are lightweight, optimized for speed, have sound design and layout, and are mobile-friendly.

 

RELATED ARTICLES

Top 5 Checklist For Your Website

 

call-only-campaigns

Pay Per Click – Call Only Campaigns

1) Call-only campaigns are specially designed to only show on mobile devices that can make phone calls. This means every click you pay for can be a phone call to your business.

2) Benefits of call only campaign:-

– Adding phone numbers to our ads makes it easy for people to call you when you’re on the go.
– We can share these numbers across ads within an ad group or entire campaign.
– Clicks on call-only ads exclusively drive calls to our business.
– We can set numbers to appear only when your business can take calls.
– We can count calls as conversions.
– Call extensions can typically increase click-through rates by 6-8%.

3) For more information, visit https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2453991#callonly

checklist

Top 5 Checklist For Your Website

I’ve put together my Top 5 checklist below.

If your website is missing or fails any of the things listed below it is highly recommended you give us a call (847.359.6969) so we can either fix them for you, or guide you through the process of fixing them yourself.

1. Your Website HAS to be Mobile Friendly
This one we’ve been warning our customers about for almost 12 months now. I am amazed that nearly half of the small business websites I visit each day are still not mobile friendly. Google have a useful Mobile Checker you can run to check this. It takes about 10 seconds. Here is the link: Google Mobile-Friendly Test.

Here is a great article on the importance of a Mobile-Friendly website: The Importance of a Mobile-Friendly Website


3. Have a Clear Call To Action & Click To Call Button
2. Get Listed on Google Maps and Get Some Google Reviews
Did you know that you only need 5 reviews to get 5 stars next to your business name on your Google Map listings? Get your best customers to review you right away. If you need help with this call us and ask about our Google Digital Marketing Packages.

All websites need a clear and concise “Call To Action”. Do you want your customers to request a quote, maybe fill out a form, or at the very least give you a call. This needs to be clearly communicated on your website. We want you to call us after reading this email. Check out our “Click To Call” button at the bottom of this email.

4. Ensure an Acceptable Page Speed
The speed of your website is one of the many factors Google looks at when ranking your website. You need to ensure you’re at the very least in the “Orange” range when you run this test: Google Page Speed Test.


Online Shops – Extra Tips
5. A Modern 2016 Look
Your site from 2012 just won’t cut it anymore. If you haven’t freshened up the look of your website in the past couple of years now is the time to consider it.

If you’re running an Online Shop the five points above all apply. In addition, you should absolutely ensure you have:

1. A One Page Checkout
Make sure your customers can pay with as few clicks as possible. If you don’t have a one-page checkout give us a call, we can get one installed for you for a minimal cost.

2. An SSL – Security Certificate
Apart from giving your customers more confidence during the checkout process (they’ll see the little padlock) an SSL also gives Google confidence and can contribute to your site’s ranking.

content-strategy-for-seo-logo

How to Build a Killer Content Strategy for SEO Results

In order to come up with a killer content strategy for SEO, you should have a Chief Content Officer who can champion your content using a mission statement.

Create a Mission Statement

Your mission statement will provide you with the guidance you need to keep your content focused. Your mission statement should provide the answers to these three questions:

  1. Who is my audience?
  2. What can I teach them?
  3. What are my learning objectives?

Create a Content Calendar

 Use the same premise for your content as the best publications out there. Lay out a years’ worth of articles or blogs and have a deadline for their approval and the date they will be posted on your site. Allow the seasons to act as a base. Most businesses have a sales cycle you can use to choose the most persuasive and informative content to publish at the best time of the year. You can then fill the holes with relevant information that will engage your audience and help you create a following.

 

Tap Your Resources  

Your own team is your best resource for content. They should be experts in their field and should be able to provide ideas and insights into the business. Remember you are trying to create information that will provide a forum for your keywords to help the search engines understand what you represent. Using your own people will add credibility and also offer some authentic personality to your content. It will also help you create unique and authoritative content, SEO strategy’s best friend.

 

Find a Voice to Represent your Brand

 You need to create a consistent voice that will represent your brand. Are you witty and clever, funny and insightful or solid and trustworthy? If you are the owner of the business consider who you are and if you like your own persona. Also if you are going to feature articles from your team it is not necessarily a bad thing if they use their own personalities as it helps create a sense of diversity with each person coming together offering their own area of expertise. It makes you look well-rounded as long as you don’t come across too disparate.

 

To Outsource or Not?

 Outsourcing content to a third party can be a great way to get quality content for your company. You just need to find the right person or people that will write your content. Preferably, they will have experience and knowledge in your industry. Once they write a few articles, edit the articles to make minor changes that ensures your brand identity is consistent.

Consult an expert at www.seosolutions.us to learn more about content strategies that yield results.

Stand Out From Other Search Results By Using Structured Data

We have all witnessed search results with auxiliary features like prices, reviews, recipes & events incorporated with the search listings. These eye-catching listings are called Rich Snippets by Google.

product-review-with-rich-snippets

The striking Rich Snippets entice visitors and boost traffic to your website. And this high traffic sends a signal to Google that the listing is relevant to the users.

It is very likely that you already know what Google Knowledge Graph looks like. But in case you don’t, just search for any alpha company & you will see every single detail about the company listed on the right side of the search result.

walmart-knowledge-graph-listing

All the features that make a search listing look “Good”, such as Rich Snippets & Knowledge Graph can be scored by adding the Schema formatted Structured Data of your website content.

Schema markup allows you to:
– Bring forth search results Rich Snippets, Breadcrumbs, live blogs & search boxes.
– Drive data into Google’s Knowledge Graph, Maps & even results.
– Make your content easier to understated for the search engine.

Structured Data Markup allows search engines to interpret content more efficiently & generate Rich Snippets.

Since the very beginning, programmers have been trying to understand human language using computers; but it is way too hard. For instance, we use so many different formats for date & time that it can be difficult to interpret.
– February 1st, 2016
– 1st February, 2016
– Feb 1, 2016
– 02-1-2016
– 1/2/16

Confusing, isn’t it? Search engines also face the same problem.

Despite the fact that search engineers have done a tremendous job in this regard, they still need help & structured data does exactly that.

History

Google started to use Structured Data Markup in 2009. They continually developed their support to multiple formats as technology advanced. In 2011, all the major search engines, including Bing, Google & Yahoo agreed to support one standard vocabulary named Schema, which consists of different standard options such as Microdata, RDFa & JSON-LD.

***You may want to bookmark the website “Schema.org”, as it has all the supported Structured Data codes.

Coming back to the date & time instance, Schema requires them to be in a single format, specifically ISO 8601. (2016-02-10T22:00:00.)

In daily use of Structured Data Markup, the Schema Markup that uses ISO 8601 time/date format for machines will look like this& for humans it will be Wednesday Night, February 10th.

google-ranking-factor

How Can Your Website Rank Better on Search Engines

Searchmetrics defined specific ranking factors in categories making it easier to understand and implement strategies to improve your search engine rankings.

  • Technical: It’s still and will be the most important factor in determining the website ranking along with some
    great content.
  • User Experience: If the website content is well structured and engaging, it will most likely receive a positive
    reaction from a user and also search engine bots, leading the website to achieve better rankings.
  • Content: The study conducted on the content of top 30 pages last year shows that the average text limit
    exceeded by 25%. Also, the quality and relevancy of the content on websites has escalated significantly.
  • Social Signals: Barring high correlations, there is an upward surge in average signal per URL and position.
  • Backlinks: Backlinks remains a requisite to achieve higher ranks. But in near future, the influence of backlinks in improving website rankings may fade away and will be replaced by other relevant factors.

How can your website rank better on search engines? Take advantage of free SEO tools such as the SEO Audit tool provided by SEO Solutions. You can request an audit of your website that will analyze the above factors here.

Here are some valuable tips to improve your website ranking from Searchmetrics.

  • User-friendly and Relevant content will work wonders. Don’t think about keywords; create useful content with impeccable quality. The content presented with solid facts and crafted around technical specifications will engage most of the audience. The copy and the design should complement each other and the whole structure should be well organized in order to provide the user a better experience. Assemble the topics as per their relevancy and decide whether you will list them on an individual page or on a landing page.

Understanding and Implementing the above tips and tactics can give your website and your business a much needed boost. But if you are not versed with the technical terms and like to invest your time and energy on something else, then we are here to help you. Contact us with your requirement and let our professionals do the work for you!

 

Google Updates Business Hours for Business Search Results

GOOGLE WILL NOW SHOW BUSIEST HOURS OF YOUR NEARBY POPULAR PLACE

If you happen to visit your nearby happening place or store for some shopping or just hanging out with your friends or relatives on a non-weekender but still found yourself waiting in queue for long hours then perhaps you haven’t used the latest search feature by Google. Google has recently introduced a new search feature, which will show when the local stores are at their busiest at any time during the entire week. According to a Google FAQ received by Mike Blumenthal, the search giant gets its data on a store’s foot traffic data from users who have opted-in to location sharing. Don’t worry Google isn’t randomly following you or tracking anything that the user haven’t opted into to begin with. The information provided is completely anonymous and the stats are based on the data provided by the users, who have opted in for the location sharing of the apps on their android phones. Because of this, only Android Mobile Phones will be enable with this latest feature. Here is how it looks:

 

Google-Search-Results-Example