Blogging and Local SEO: A Match Made in Heaven

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Many local businesses want a quick and easy way to boost their local rankings. The bad news is, there isn’t really a shortcut anyone can take to better local SEO. There isn’t any way to just make a one time change and suddenly be rocking the rankings.

The good news is, there is a simple method to improving rankings, it just requires consistent output of quality content or promotional activities. This usually equates to blogging, which takes consistent effort, but is highly rewarding.

Chris Silver Smith lists all of the reasons why starting to blog can seriously help local businesses at Search Engine Land.

 

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Does Color Affect Your SEO?

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Do you understand how color affects your website content? Do you know color can affect how your site is interpreted by commercial search engines?

Most people don’t. Normally, for designers, color selection comes down to aesthetic preference or corporate color palatte. What they don’t realize is color selection can have a negative effect on your conversions if it isn’t well planned.

Shari Thurow examines the link between SEO and color selection in her article at Search Engine Land. Beyond impacting the usability of your site, color selection can cause different cultural understandings of your site. More frightening for the developers out there, improper color usage can even be considered search engine spam. Make sure you think before you paint your site the wrong colors.

 

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Mobile Applications v. Mobile Websites

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I’ve heard this question asked a few times, and it is a pretty fair question. Should I invest my limited resources to a mobile website or an app? The debate is a complicated one.

Mobile optimized websites offer different looks, functionality, and content based on what device is viewing them. Many companies seem to treat mobile websites as “lite” versions of their desktop pages. They have less links, but are still hopefully filled with content.

Mobile applications on the other hand can allow more integrated experiences, offering compatibility with smartphone cameras and information on the phone. They are platform specific, but not necessarily device specific.

The answer to which you should invest in relies on what your needs are. If you aim to deliver steady content to your users, a mobile website is the obvious choice for its ability to be steadily updated. Entertainment businesses on the other hand will likely find applications advantageous because you can control the interface more fully.

Rohit Singhal from Designer Fix has a list of positives and negatives, but a quick look at the trend in your specific market will likely help guide you toward the best choice.

 

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Get To Know The Latest Trends in Mobile Search

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With every new bit of analysis that comes out, it becomes more and more clear how quickly mobile browsing is becoming a huge source of search traffic. One study shows that up to 25-30% of all paid search traffic now comes from mobile devices. Here we will explore the latest trends in mobile browsing that search marketers should know.

Tablets Have a Much Higher ROI Than Desktops

The cost per click (CPC) of any ad is supposed to be proportional to the return on the investment (ROI). That seems like common marketing logic. However, it seems the web market is not so logical.

Smart phones have a lower cost per click because they do not convert as well as desktops. Because of this, the ROI from smartphones or desktops are about equal. According to Siddharth Shah from Search Engine Land however, the CPC for tablets is currently 30% lower, even though they have a 20% higher conversion rate than desktops. That means the ROI from tablets is actualy 70% more than desktops. This is a huge opening for search marketers.

ROIs Vary Significantly By Mobile Device

Because of different demographics, user experiences, and varying contexts different devices offer, the ROI for different mobile devices vary significantly. For example, the most current data suggests the ROI from iOS users is roughly double that of Android users. When creating marketing campaigns, be specific to what devices you are marketing to, especially designating between tablet and smartphone. Being specific with who you are marketing will allow you to get the highest ROI possible for your market.

Mobile browsing has no sign of stopping as new and cheaper devices are being offered every day for consumers. Nearly everyone now has a smartphone, and tablets are becoming more and more common. The market will only be more important in the future.

 

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The New Strategies of On-Page Optimization

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On-page optimization goes back to the very beginning of SEO. It has also changed a lot since then. In the old days, on-page SEO was mostly about keyword usage. While you can still use this aspect to create some optimization, it won’t do as much as you would like. This is because on-page SEO has been expanding.

Instead of focusing on keywords, focus on what your users want. You don’t need to repeat keywords your users may be searching for, you just need to have the answers to their questions. The keywords you do use, should be more circled around a theme than they should be trying to exactly match what your users are looking for.

Basically what I’m saying is, if you are still trying to exactly match what your users are looking for, you are as likely to be penalized as you are rewarded. However, if you have content talking about every facit of a topic, users looking for that topic will find you.

It is also important that every bit of information offered on the results page reflect your business and your brand. If the title says the article is about guitars, but the description is about amplifiers – or worse, completely off topic, like kittens – people will be confused and move on.

If you want to see how on-page optimization has gotten here, Almog Ramrajkar has an article on the evolution of the topic. What is important to note is, the old ways are not dead. They still work, but they are no longer all you can do. The few tips I offered here are just the tip of the iceberg to what on-page optimzation offers now.

 

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The iPad Creates 98 Percent of Mobile Web Traffic

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The tablet market looks like it is getting crowded from a distance, but the data from a new study from mobile publishing platform Onswipe suggests there really is no contest as to what tablet is driving meaningful amounts of web traffic.

According to Onswipe’s study, the iPad is the source of a whopping 98 percent of all tablet based traffic. Now, before the Android lovers begin sharpening their pitchforks, this data is supported by other recent studies as well.

The data also shows that iPad owners spend more time online per session compared to their iPhones, and are more active. Also interesting is the iPad creates more traffic than iPhone and Android devices combined, despite there being hugely more iPhones and Androids out in consumers’ hands.

Slowly, we are beginning to see a trend in mobile browsing, and what is resulting is a very complex picture, despite these seemingly clear-cut findings. Onswipe also found that Kindle Fire users spend more time with their devices than iPad users, however they do not spend as much time online for obvious reasons.

Marketing Land has some graphs to help you visualize the Onswipe’s findings.

 

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Opera Users Have the Highest CTR Rates According to Data

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New data from ad network Chitika compares click through rates (CTRs) and query lengths on the different desktop and mobile browsers among the millions of impressions on their network. The results show Opera browser users as the highest demographic of click-through’s compared to other browser users.

Generally, Opera users are considered to be more tech savvy, so it is interesting that they would have the highest CTR rate. The second highest demographic are mobile Safari users.

Greg Sterling from Marketing Land has all the data from the report for more information.

 

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The Basics of Good Local SEO

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Every topic I cover can be as complicated as you let them be. With the focus on minute data and snippets of code, SEO could easily be intimidating for anyone trying to get started learning.

This is a problem for local SEO because most business owners aren’t experts. If they think of local SEO as a daunting field, rather than seeing the opportunities it could open up for them, they are likely to shy away.

With this in mind, I’d like to take us back to the basics. We haven’t covered local SEO here in depth, so this will serve as a great place to begin exploring the topic. But, the tips offered here are valuable for broader SEO as well.

For good local SEO, there are really three major rules.

  • Get your website up to standards
  • Spread your business details everywhere
  • Use social media to get your customers to do promotion for you

Getting your website up to standard

Google is beginning to combine regular and local search results, and your website quality helps decide where you will land in the local search results, as well as more broad searches. Making a quality site relies on you doing a few specific things. For one, your site should have a clear and functional structure with a set heirarchy of pages. This will help Google’s crawlers go where you want them too, and know what is most important.

Another, more basic step in making a good page is just filling your site to the brim with quality content. Your content makes your first impression to customers as well as search engines. Putting out continuous good content keeps bringing search crawlers back to your page, and generate backlinks to your site from other pages.

Spread your business details

This one is quick and easy, so I’m going to let Myles Anderson from Search Engine Land sum it up. “Having your correct business details widely available is positive for local SEO and sets you up nicely to take advantage of the mobile-boom. Many of the same data sources which feed the desktop internet also feed mobile sites and applications so even if your website isn’t mobile enabled your business will appear on popular mobile applications.”

This is especially true for local SEO because people are searching to be able to contact YOU. Make it easy for them. Google will reward you for it. But don’t get lazy once your information is out there. Remember where you have put it by keeping a record. If you ever move, or change phone numbers, you will need to go change it everywhere the old information is.

Be social!

Just like everywhere else online, Google is becoming more and more intertwined with social media. If you don’t have a social media account for your business, it is time to get one. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ are all very influential in your SEO status. From there, make it easy to share your content from your site with social media buttons prominently connected with content. Once you have a following, you will notice they share content for you. You still have to be proactive by sharing your content with them on social media in the first place, but if you connect with your followers, you will be shocked to see what they do for you.

Conclusion

Of course, there are a ton more things you can do to help give yourself a boost. It is high time you have a mobile optimized page for your site, and it is important to make sure you are listed on Google and Apple Maps. But, these first three rules will help you easily expand, and see what investing in local SEO can do for you.

 

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Don’t Be Afraid of the EMD Update

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Another week, another Google update. This time around it is an EMD, or “Exact Match Domain” update.

So how does it effect you? What did the update do? What does it all mean?

Mainly, this update means bad news for spam. Many in the SEO community were frightened the EMD update would go through and destroy every exact match search result on the web, but that is far from the truth.

This update doesn’t ruin exact matches, but looks for signs of spammy abuse of the system. Alex Becker over at Search Engine Journal has a full explanation of the update and how it effects all of those spammers out there, but the important message is clear. No, the EMD update should not hurt you, if you are following all of the suggested guidelines.

 

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What Is So Important About Tags?

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Most bloggers know how important tagging is. Tags allow you to retain a similar structure across almost all blogging platforms, unlike categories. What may be surprising however, is the amount of freedom tags give bloggers also leads to them being badly used.

With that in mind, let’s start at the top and explore what tags really are and what benefits they offer. Then we can cover how to use them properly.

What are Tags?

As one blogger describes them, “tags are your index words.” That is to say, tags allow users to easily find articles based on keywords. If a reader finds a post on your website about content marketing, they can easily find more about the topic on your site. This helps readers become more informed and spend more time on your site.

How to Use Tags Effectively

The most common issue with tags are over or under usage. You want to use enough tags to cover the relevant points people may be looking for, but you don’t want to overdo it. Sufyan bin Uzayr uses the example of tagging an article about the recent conflict in Syria to illustrate this idea. If you just tag the article “Syria” and “Middle East” you are missing out on a few important opportunities. However, if you use redundant tags such as “War in Middle East”, “Arab Revolt” and “Arab Spring” all on the same article, you are overdoing it. The key is to try not to repeat yourself.

SEO and Tags

Lately some bloggers have been suggesting that using tags in certain ways will increase your ranking somehow. This is clearly too good to be true, but that doesn’t mean you should write tags off immediately. If you index your tags efficiently, they hold their merit, but they aren’t ever going to be the magic potion some are suggesting.

Most importantly, tags are for your visitors to help with navigation, but using them improperly isn’t going to help anyone. Trying to keep navigation organized reflects in your SEO performance.

 

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