Whether you’re focusing on SEO for dentists, real estate developers or other industries, relying on hearsay and guesswork is NOT an option. 

If you want your SEO strategy to work, follow two rules. Rule number one is staying on top of the most recent SEO developments. Rule number two is not believing in misconceptions. 

In terms of the second rule, here are the five things people commonly get wrong about SEO.

1. SEO is a Scheme or Gimmick

The way most people talk about search engine optimization, it’s natural to think that it’s some sort of trick. Some “newbies” in the field may have been presented with the idea that SEO is a sequence of tricks designed to get your website to rank high on the search engine results pages (SERPs). 

This, however, is only partially true. 

White-hat search optimizers and local SEO services are not actively trying to deceive Google’s search algorithms. Instead, they’re figuring out which website content and features are more valuable to users and search engines. Most of the time, the results are well-intentioned and organic website improvements — not hacks, short-term tricks or spam. 

2. It’s All About Rankings

Many people will automatically think that rising in the search engine ranks is a sign of SEO success. But this upward movement will be in vain if your visitors do not convert into leads and buyers. 

With SEO, it’s not always about the rankings; other metrics will help you gauge your success. For instance, if you want to rank for the most expensive Starbucks drink, refrain from focusing on what rank your website is; what are the metrics surrounding it?

Focus on the factors that deliver organic search traffic growth: which pages people engage with, which keywords bring people in and which pages need more work. But more importantly, track conversions and determine the most efficient keywords. 

3. Google Penalties Will be the Death of Your Campaign

The way some people write about Google’s penalties, you’d think they were handed speeding tickets. On the contrary, the most severe penalties are due to manual actions; that is, Google responds to serious SEO sins that all webmasters stay away from. Temporary ranking drops often happen, but they aren’t always severe.  

If you follow the best SEO practices, you need not worry about Google penalties. 

4. It’s All About Links and Keywords

Keywords do play an important role when it comes to SEO. Also, links are important search engine ranking factors. But the approach to keyword research, as well as how search engines use them, has evolved over the years. So if you hear anyone talking about keyword spamming or keyword density today, then chances are they are outdated with their techniques. 

Search algorithms have evolved to read keywords and website context. This means they can detect manipulation, even when it’s subtle. If you’re creating your strategy or working with an SEO company, keyword research should be part of your strategy or packages. 

Content strategy is also important. It should go beyond aiming for keywords. A good content strategy focuses on reader engagement, as well as how to stay within a theme that promotes organic keyword insertion. 

5. SEO is Too Complex or Too Easy

Some newcomers think that SEO is too technically complex. It’s true that SEO has many technical components. To a first-timer, things like canonical tags and robots.txt file are intimidating. But even without a coding experience, you can still learn the SEO basics within a few hours. SEO is highly learnable, as long as you’re patient enough to master it. 

On the other hand, SEO isn’t too easy. You can’t do SEO without experience. You can learn many SEO concepts in an afternoon, but there are so many strategic directions and variables to remember. It can take years of practice before you earn the SEO master rank. You’ll need to keep up with the latest industry changes if you want to remain relevant.

Other Common Misconceptions Concerning SEO

Since SEO is a broad topic, it’s common for people to get other aspects of the optimization wrong. Consider the following.

The Less You Spend on SEO, the Better

SEO is a cost-effective strategy that guarantees a high return on your investment. 

Many SEO newcomers think the best approach to optimization is to spend as little as possible to maximize long-term returns and avoid risks. Low budgets, however, come with minimal strategic execution and amateur work. In most cases, it’s better to spend on high-quality services. 

Link Building is Spamming

Link building can be a spammy activity — if you execute it without strategic planning. Capable link builders know the tactic doesn’t focus on stamping as many links as you can. It’s all about creating valuable and relevant content that people would want to read. The content should include natural and informative links within the content to boost your search relevance.

In addition to creating compelling content, understanding the landscape of digital marketing tactics is crucial. For instance, strategies like improving online visibility through innovative marketing techniques, when executed correctly, can elevate a website’s authority and relevance in a crowded digital space. This approach, when combined with ethical link-building, ensures a balanced and effective SEO strategy.

The Process is Always the Same

One of the biggest SEO misconceptions is people think that SEO uses the same process repeatedly. Some people expect their SEO agencies to use a standard procedure and get the same results for all clients, within the same timeframe. 

The truth is that is impossible. SEO is an art and a science. Different clients require different execution methods, targeting strategies and investment levels to get comparable results. 

It Takes a Long Time to Get Any Results

Depending on the competition and research, you can get results quickly. Some articles can rank keywords within minutes. If you want your website to maximize the perks of SEO, get indexed by Google first. This means different indexing programs, such as spiders or crawlers, follow all links that lead to your website. 

Your website, pages and content are indexed and analyzed based on different criteria and algorithms set by different search engines, giving your website its ranking. Top SEO experts have techniques and tools that simplify the process and guarantee immediate results. 

SEO is Too Expensive

If you optimize your website, there will be a significant change in the number of visits to your website. If you can increase the amount of web traffic from people that are searching for your service or product — how would that benefit you? How many visitors can you convert into customers? What is their lifetime value? 

Keep in mind that making your website easier to find makes a huge difference in your company’s success. Organic traffic reduces your overall marketing costs. So scrimping on your SEO budget isn’t always the wisest decision. 

Level Up Your SEO Game

Instead of listening to misconceptions, it’s best to practice SEO according to recent trends with users and search engines. Also, a proper mindset of SEO protects you from getting SEO wrong. Remember, search engine optimization is optimizing for people in all the places your content and brand could possibly appear. 

SEO goes beyond nuts and bolts; it requires marketers and businesses to create brand experiences, using the search results to establish relevance. 

Contemporary SEO strategies require creativity to gain visibility:

• Consider news and social content. Google News and social content are areas where you can improve your content’s visibility. In order to rank in these areas, gain a good understanding of your space, as well as how Google responds to a query. Not every query will show social content or news, so understand how keywords react in different ways. 
• Consider what “People Also Ask.” The People Also Ask For is a search feature that involves content directly pulled with the search results. These are queries people use to search. Content from websites are also pulled into these results. Use this search feature to identify content optimization opportunities to target the audience you want to reach. 
• Apply SEO to different platforms. Apart from optimizing for different parts of search results, apply different SEO methodologies to any platform that people use to search on. Some optimization opportunities could be:
  • Social media optimization
  • App store optimization
  • YouTube video and channel optimization
  • Vertical search engines and third-party sites 

In SEO, you have to be visible as much as you can. Use each part of the results to create better search experiences for users. Finally, assume that SEO swims in a much larger pool. Don’t just focus on search engine optimization; go for search experience optimization. 

It’s OK to make mistakes during your SEO journey. The key is to identify and learn from those mistakes. Then determine the best SEO practices to solidify your success in optimization.

The post 5 Things Most People Get Wrong About SEO appeared first on SiteProNews.

And the site getting most visits is Google. The search engine gets a whopping 16,140,000,000 traffic every month in America alone. It’s also the site people use mostly when researching local products and services. 

When you want your company to be seen and heard online, it has to be listed on Google’s first page, too, as the first few results often get the most clicks. 

However, reaching the top isn’t as easy as building a website from a template and calling it a day. You need to employ a local search engine optimization (SEO) tactic called “link building” to get results. 

Here’s what you need to know and how your SEO service provider uses it for your digital marketing campaign. 

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is a lot like organic SEO. You research keywords people are likely going to use when looking for your brand, product, or services; and insert them in your copy and content. But local SEO adds location-specific keywords, like your business’s location and your service areas. 

For example, if you’re running an Italian restaurant in one of the neighborhoods in NYC, your keywords could be “Italian restaurant in New York City” or “best Italian resto in East Village.”

Your local SEO service provider may also register your business on online listing sites, like Google My  Business, Yelp, Yellowpages, and TripAdvisor. This makes it easier for customers to find you using “nearby” or “near me” searches. More than 80 percent of smartphone shoppers conduct these searches. 

This strategy won’t just get your organic results to the top; your business may also end up in Google’s “local pack.” 

Local packs are Google My Business listings suggested to visitors when they search for a local business. This pack often appears at the very top of the results, even above organic ones. So it’s a pretty valuable spot to get.

What is Link Building?

Another important part of SEO is link building. This process involves acquiring hyperlinks from other websites leading to your own site. Hyperlinks are what users click on to navigate from one webpage to another. Search engine bots, like Google’s, constantly scan pages for hyperlinks between sites. 

Apart from the quality of your website copy and content, Google also considers the number and relevance of the hyperlinks you get when determining your rank on its results. The more links you get from trusted and authoritative websites, like news outlets and popular blogs, the more likely you are to make it to the top of the results. 

Search engines see a hyperlink as a way for other sites to vouch for yours. Owners of websites are likely leading their visitors to your site because they trust and like it.

Penguin “The Punisher” 

Like every practice in digital marketing, there’s a right way to do link building. Some have tried to game the system by excessively linking their website on a farm of sites they or other people have created. This prompted Google to create the Penguin Update, an algorithm that looks for these link schemes and removes the sites that benefitted from them from the search results. 

How to Properly Build Links

Any link building campaign will come with different components. What those are will depend on your goals, the type of links you want to get, and your assets (e.g., content, services, or products).

Start with these building strategies to help you get more customers to your site and your door. 

Be Part of Your Local Business Community – If your business is based in a major city, chances are your location has a chamber of commerce. A chamber of commerce is an association that aims to promote and protect local businesses. If they have a website, Google likely regards it as an authoritative source. You’ll want them to link to you. 

One way to do this is to register your business with them. After this, they’ll likely list your company on theirs with a link to your homepage. This makes it easier for customers to find your website because it’s listed on both Google and the chamber of commerce site. 

Insert Your Details on Online Directories – The more details you have of your business, the better. But they need to be featured on sites your customers will likely visit. When researching local businesses, they often visit directories and review sites. Over 82 percent of customers read online reviews before they visit a local business. This is why getting linked to such sites is also important in increasing your search ranking. 

Fill out and verify your Google My Business page. Get listed on general directories and review sites, like Yelp and Yellowpages. Find ones for your niche and upload your details in them as well. The more relevant directories you’re listed in, the more links you get, and the easier it is for customers to find you. 

Work with Local Influencers and Sponsor Event Planners – Influencer marketing works because of the trust certain personalities have built with their followers. So their recommendations (or negative remarks) carry weight. Work with the right influencer, making sure they have the kind of followers you want to target. Some of the more well-known ones will have contact information and details about brand partnerships in their profile.

Local events often have websites and social media pages to help visitors learn all about them before they visit. Get publicity from them by being a sponsor. They’ll likely have a page dedicated to linking sponsors. Plus, you’ll have your logo and business name on their event banners, so it’s a win for both your physical and digital marketing campaigns.

Making it to the top of Google requires a lot of time and effort. Besides creating engaging content your customers will love, you also need to reach out and get linked on relevant websites. Use these suggestions to get legitimate backlinks that bring in results. 

The post Building Links for Local Businesses: A Quick Local SEO Guide appeared first on SiteProNews.

Consequently, businesses, both small and large, have seen foot traffic and sales drop dramatically. From manufacturing and automobiles to retail and real estate, economic activity is grinding to a halt. Economists and observers have warned leaders to brace for a potential US$2.7 trillion loss from the global economy.

Are businesses prepared to navigate the currently unstable economic climate? Is there an endgame where those that are struggling come out of the crisis intact or better yet, stronger than before? With the technology and tools available now, do businesses stand a chance of weathering the economic fallout?

To help answer these questions, it’s useful to look to the past for similar experiences and examine the strategies in response to the crises at the time.

Learning from the past

The 1918 Spanish Flu (influenza) pandemic infected about 500 million people worldwide and took the lives of at least 50 million. The high mortality rate forced people and businesses to severely limit movements and cut back operations. Studies on the economic effects of the 1918 pandemic showed a major decline in employment, manufacturing output, bank assets, and consumption of goods.

Despite all that and it being the aftermath of World War I, businesses soldiered on. It was an act of necessity. Businesses had a choice, either to fold or adapt to the extraordinary circumstances. Indeed, many had to close shop, but there were others that persisted. Reports from the Financial Times during that time, showed a glimpse of this resiliency.

Bovril, which sold meat extract paste, advertised that its products were essential to fight the influenza pandemic. Theatres at the time were still operating, albeit with certain upgrades to their facilities. Ozone ventilating systems and germ killer sprays were used to disinfect viewing areas.

Since then, other more recent recessions have ravaged the global economy. From the 1920s to the 2000s. All of them have come and gone. While many of these recessions were not caused by a mass viral outbreak, their economic effects are similar to what we’re experiencing now.

For instance, triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis in the US, the 2007-2008 recession buried many homeowners in debt and crippled the ability of banks to provide funding to businesses. Spending was severely low and there was little capital going around to fuel growth.

Harvard Business Review published a study which sought to find out what helped businesses survive past recessions. The researchers observed that there were four types of companies during a recession:

• Prevention-focused —  companies that heavily rely on defensive strategies like cost-cutting and avoiding losses
• Promotion-focused companies — companies that heavily rely on offensive strategies and aggressively continue marketing and advertising
• Pragmatic companies — companies that combine both defense and offense
• Progressive companies — companies that achieve the optimal balance between defense and offense

Finding the best strategy during a slowdown

About 17 percent of the businesses the researchers looked at did not survive, 80 percent did survive but sales and profits didn’t recover right away, while 9 percent came out of the recession in better shape than before. Many of the companies examined swung too hard to an overly defensive or offensive strategy in an effort to adapt to economic slowdown.

When businesses overly emphasize cost-cutting measures, innovation initiatives take a backseat. This isn’t bad in the short-term while a crisis is underway. However, it’s highly likely that this will come back to haunt businesses in the future and negatively impact competitiveness against rivals. In addition, the sole focus on survival can allow a sense of pessimism to pervade the organization. This negativity can severely impact morale among the few employees that may be left, potentially leading to low quality output which then feeds into subpar customer experience.

Excessive reliance on promotion and long-term investments on innovation while in a crisis can create problems as well. An overly optimistic approach puts businesses at risk of being in a state of denial or ignorance about the realities on the ground. It can be tough to reign in this false optimism when everybody in the company buys into it — even when there are signals that are pointing towards a disastrous financial performance.

Then there were the ones that struck the right balance by being cautious while making calculated risks. It’s no surprise that the researchers found these were the companies that thrived post-recession. 

These progressive companies were exceptional when it came to making the right moves at any given moment. They recognized the need for both defense and offense to complement each other. Cost-cutting measures, investments in R&D and promotion were prioritized accordingly to achieve ideal outcomes.

Fast forward to 2020 and times are tough yet again. Knowing what we know now and with the technologies at our disposal, businesses might be better positioned than the ones before.

Forging ahead and unlocking opportunities through the digital realm

Businesses today need to once again execute the optimal balance between defensive and offensive strategies. To pull that off, one needs to have a good understanding of a key difference between today’s recession and past ones: customers are now digitally empowered.

As people all over the world are now spending more time at home, online shopping and product searches will go up. In 2018, most shoppers were already doing their searches online through various digital channels. If anything, the social distancing and home quarantine measures will only keep boosting this trend.

Similar to what businesses were doing to adapt and remain resilient in past recessions, you can do the same by leveraging the power of digital technology.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is at the core of this effort. SEO can help you get the most out of the online content and engagement that your business is doing. While you may already have started on defensive strategies like implementing remote work to cut office space costs and minimize travel, SEO is a long-term investment that you can add to your arsenal of offensive strategies.

As more people resort to online platforms to purchase their needs, appearing on the first page of search engine results is key to staying on top of the competition. However, for SEO services to get your business towards that ultimate outcome, there are four key stepping stones, namely:

1. Assure customers in a time of uncertainty

Generally speaking, people are more fearful and uncertain about where current events will lead to. Hence, it’s crucial for your business to set a reassuring tone when engaging with existing and potential customers.

Needless to say, it will do you no good to take advantage of these negative feelings. Customers are likely to abandon your brand if they feel that promotional offers and other content are not helpful and only serve to make a quick buck.

Ask yourself, how can my business or brand alleviate the negative atmosphere customers find themselves in? What kind of content would serve them well during these times? Depending on the industry you’re in and the types of products and services you offer, you can create helpful and educational content customers can use to make home quarantine more bearable.

2. Establish a solid and reliable online presence

With the many changes wrought by COVID-19, you could find yourself adjusting your business hours or certain high-demand products might be running out faster than usual. Regardless of what these may be, consumers will greatly appreciate up-to-date information to better guide their purchasing considerations and decisions.

If you’re a small business in a local community, local SEO will be particularly essential for you in ensuring your Google My Business Page info is updated.

It will also help if you can monitor search demand and COVID-19 related topics that have relevance to your business. By knowing what people are searching online these days, you can improve your ability to publish helpful information and relevant content. The more you do that, the more likely you can build consumer trust and confidence.

3. Scrap outdated marketing campaigns

In connection to the previous points about being reassuring and reliable, your business should assess your campaigns that are already scheduled before COVID-19 struck.

Were any of them to publish today, would they sound a bit void of empathy or just downright inconsiderate? If so, abandon or overhaul the overall messaging.

4. Guard against hackers and crisis opportunists

While you may be doing your best to show understanding and compassion to consumers, others may not do the same. There have been reports of hackers using malware to circulate false promotional offers around COVID-19.

Your business could potentially be a casualty of this strategy as many of these cybercriminals utilize the brands of established and trustworthy organizations (e.g. World Health Organization) to extract private consumer information. 

In summary

Going back to the pressing questions posted earlier above, can businesses navigate this economic fallout successfully? Do businesses have the essential tools and strategies?

First, history has shown us that businesses can withstand seemingly insurmountable crises, whether brought about by a pandemic or otherwise. An adaptive and resilient mindset is key.

Second, while overcoming these obstacles, businesses must execute a combination of defensive and offensive maneuvers, based on the objective facts at any given moment and depending on where the trends could lead to.

Then third, digital technologies in the form of SEO and other tools can take advantage of today’s interconnected and data-driven world.

In a newly forming economic landscape, no one can really predict what the outcomes will be, however history suggests that those who adapt quickest, have a better chance to come out intact.

The post Rising to the Challenge of COVID-19: Businesses in the Digital Age Can Navigate These Uncertain Times appeared first on SiteProNews.