What is SEO?
Many now realize that a web site is not a “set it and forget it” affair. A web site that is found on search engines and thus generates quality traffic for a web site and a business takes a thoughtful structure and consistent maintenance, especially in regards to content creation. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is all the things, on and off site you do to make sure that the major search engines can find your site. The major categories of search engine optimization work are outlined below. Search engines like Google and Bing! Want to see that your site is easy to navigate and populated with helpful consumer information. Search engines have “bots” or active algorithmic code that scans sites for relevancy and present sites to consumers in the form of “search engine listings”. Being listed on the search engines, especially on the 1st page for the keywords relevant to your business, is fundamental to success in marketing your site online. It also contributes to the credibility of your business. You may be a thriving business with many customers, but the search engines don’t even know you exist. How do you fix that?
Onsite Search Engine Optimization
1. Conduct code audits for irregularities, search engines road blocks, efficiencies, meta tags
2. Tags Audit: Photos, title tags, H1 and others.
3. Content/quality Evaluation: This evaluation includes a review of site structure, page content volume and quality, site authenticity, topical relevancy, topics that are differentiators in the given market or represent opportunities to stand to the search engines. The presence of an active blog is fundamental to a successful web site that is findable on search engines.
4. Various design aspects of the site such as menu structure, present of reviews and testimonials and a blog.
5. Site Speed: Your site needs to load in a time efficient manner on desktop and mobile devices. Site speed is influenced by several factors, including image and files size, code quality and more.
6. Mobile Device Compatibility: Your site must be “responsive” to the environment it is viewed in. There are design factors and even Google requirements to a site being mobile appropriate.
Off-site Search Engine Optimization
1. Reviews
The presence of reviews on Google and other sites, the quality of the reviews and the level of response to the reviews.
2. Directory Listings – the sites Name Address Phone number listing being accurate, and the site must be listed in many online directories.
3. Google Business Manager
Your site must have an active, accurate GBM account and be updated on a regular basis. Images, reviews, must be kept current, location information accurate. The site must be verified by Google.
Questions, Next Step
Have more questions? Need help stepping through Search Engine Optimization or managing a complex site to keep it appearing on Search Engines? Contact Jennifer.Norene@gmail.com or visit her site at http://www.jennifernorene.com to learn more.
©Jennifer Norene 2018
Three Digital Campaigns That Work!
Hello Beyond Brand Collective Community,
Meet our office dog, Franklin. He keeps us sane, makes us stop working on occasion and more than often drools, takes us out for walks and crunches loudly on snacks.
Besides Franklin, there are other exciting things happening in our office. And as is my notorious style, I will get right to the point.
All right, there are three points. Three Digital Campaigns That Work! 😉
SEO compliant sites, email marketing drip campaigns and fantastically targeted social media campaigns is the magic combination. Get in on all three.
Listen Closely
We wanted to report on our tremendous success of several of our clients, in the last year. We have clients experiencing triple growth in their business due to the web site, social media and email marketing work we are doing for them. Both Business to Business and Business to Consumer clients are rebuilding their websites in an attractive and SEO-compliant manner, active on social media and in email marketing and succeeding. Here is what you need to know:
1 We are building SEO compliant web sites that are working to gain our clients top positions on search engines.
2 We manage social media campaigns that span Facebook, Instagram, and at times LinkedIn. These campaigns are consistently targeted, compelling and contain messaging that is relevant to their target audiences.
3 And, last but not least, we create quarterly email newsletters and weekly drip campaigns that target our client’s audience and focus on the goals they are trying to accomplish with their audience.
If you are not running an SEO compliant site, a drip-email campaign and a bang-up social media campaign, you are missing results. It has been proven to us over and over again that these things work together to court your prospects to contact you and become a customer. Offering information to prospects in one way only is much less effective then repeating your message and offer in a variety of methods. List it on your site, send and email and post on social media with similar language for better results!
Get in on it
We want you to get all the success that you can and we know that these components are necessary. If you would like to discuss upgrading to our full program, have questions about how these programs work, or the pricing and timing of these types of programs please reach out to us today. Try the Three Digital Campaigns That Work!
You can schedule a call with us by responding to this email or giving us a
call at 253-525-7905.
Until Next Time,
Jennifer Norene
Owner, Founder
Beyond Brand Collective
253-525-7905
Off Site SEO
Offsite SEO
Offsite SEO, or Search Engine Optimization includes several different factors. Most website owners and digital marketers know what SEO is so we won’t cover that today (but you can learn more here). We will be talking about link building; creating links and backlinks and how that can be accomplished through social networking, social bookmarking and inviting guest authors to create content for your website’s blog while creating links to and from their website. Why is this important? We will tell you!
What is a link and what is a backlink?
I’m sure you have seen text that stands out on a website either in bold or a different color. It tells you to “click me” for more and relevant information. It is very important to SEO to only have links that are relevant. This tells the crawlers on the search engines that you have authority on the relevant subject matter, which helps you rank better on search engines and improve traffic from organic searches. A backlink is when another source links to you! Sometimes this is pure luck, but it can also be that others have found your content relevant and want to share your information. This also helps your SEO and shows great authority and improves your standings.
Broken link building
Broken link building is another link-building strategy to increase traffic to your website. There are existing broken links, also called dead links or broken hyperlinks in the internet world where the link is no longer directing people to a valid location. You can find relevant broken links that pertain to your business and arrange to have them redirected to your relevant content. It’s another effective manner in which to increase organic traffic and referral traffic.
Social Networking
So how do we get people to link to us? That’s where social networking and social bookmarking come in. While Facebook is one of the most well-known social networks there are many other popular and up-and-coming platforms where you can improve your social networking. Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, & TikTok to name just a few. Basically, it’s using social networks to connect to others. While many use it for social purposes it also is a successful way for businesses to get their brand noticed.
Like! Comment! Share!
By joining groups, using hashtags, likes, comments, shares and tagging you can increase your presence and let people find out more about you and your business.
In addition, having a guest writer on your website’s blog which links to their business and in turn they link back to yours is a great way to create link building which in turn will improve your SEO and theirs as well!
At Beyond Brand Collective, link building, social networking and overall improving SEO is our bread and butter! Let us do the work while you spend the time doing what you love to do in building your business. Contact us here.
12 Social Media Tips
Facebook continues to be at the top of the social media platforms with its 2.9 billion active users. Instagram has almost 1.4 billion and LinkedIn with 690 million.
How will you utilize this fact with your digital marketing strategies?
Here are 12 social media tips you should be using.
1. Spell Check & 2. Grammar Check
If you aren’t already using a spellchecker or Grammarly, you may be making lots of errors in your social media posts. Be sure to add the extensions to your browsers which will help you avoid mistakes. It also doesn’t hurt to have another set of eyes review your posts before hitting that button.
3. Use the right hashtags
Surely everyone knows what hashtags are these days, and some people have a lot of fun with them. But it’s also important to use relevant hashtags. They should reflect what the content is trying to convey in one-to-two-word snippets. Your potential new customers may be looking for you and a hashtag may help them get to you. #usethosehashtags
4. Make it sparkle or go home
We’re not talking Bella or Edward sparkle; we mean making your content shine. Make it catch your customer’s eye. They’ll be scrolling through their feed and need that extra little sparkle to make them stop in their tracks. The use of color, images, moving emojis will be sure to catch their attention.
5. Be unique
What’s unique about your brand? What do you offer that your competitors don’t? Do you offer a bedazzled or monogrammed bandana with that puppy shampoo? Let your customers know!
6. Provide useful content
When your customer comes to your website, they are looking to fulfill a need. They are asking a question. They are looking for something to solve their problem. Provide them with useful information that lets them know, “Hey! We have your answer!” Make them want to seek out more information from your website and be sure to link to it.
7. Be interesting
Semrush has some great tips for engaging content. And suggests that constant innovation is necessary to create ideas that bring in new customers. Provide FAQs, Use Surveys, have a contest.
8. Be relevant
Things move quickly. What was popular last week is already old news this week, especially with millennials and Gen Zs. See what’s trending on TikTok or Twitter. Keep up with the latest information in whatever technology or type of business you are in. Subscribe to eNewletters, feeds, or blogs that are relevant to your industry. Share that information with your followers.
9. Imitate excellence
We all have favorites, and they’re favorites for a reason. They’ve mastered their talents and know-how to attract the right audience for their particular niche. You can too. If it works, imitate it!
10. Don’t yell
YOU PROBABLY KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS. All caps in the online world is yelling. Don’t all capitalize unless it’s relevant to the or part of a brand identity.
11. Be Opinionated
Everyone has an opinion- yours may be highly informed and interesting. Opinions can be interesting, though. Especially if it’s different or contains new ideas. Feel free to share an opinion about the topic you are fully educated in especially as it relates to your business and shows that you have expertise.
12. HAVE FUN!
(Yes, I’m loudly telling you to have some fun!)
Seem like too much to manage? Need an expert team driving this all for you? That is what we do. Contact us for a consultation.
Google’s New Core Vitals Web Site Requirements
With Google’s announcement to greatly increase speed requirements in May of 2021, there was a rumble of concern amongst digital agencies, developers and advertisers. Meeting the aggressive requirements of Google’s Core Vitals program is no laughing matter, or easy to accomplish. We have addressed this requirement with a couple of key strategies, first a reminder about Google’s history of announcing major shifts and how they come around to enforcing them:
Google’s History
Google tends to talk big and deliver slowly on enforcing new requirements of web sites hoping to rank highly on their famous and giant search engine. The requirements are aggressive (your home page needs to load in less than 2 seconds, for example), but it’s a journey of technology and revamping to get there. They announce and gradually enforce the new requirements – so don’t panic if you need six more months to comply with the speed and other Core Vitals requirements.
Strategy 1
Upgrade your WordPress theme to a lighter, tighter theme. We chose Elementor. Being a WordPress shop, it was an easy choice. We avoid plugins by building some of the new sites manually. It’s tedious but worth it for SEO benefits.
Strategy 2
Educate yourself or your client as to what it will take to transition and properly inform them that it will not maintain the exact look and feel of their previous site. Reality is you can’t have a more limber, lighter site without some content lay out and design compromises. (Don’t shoot the messenger aka your agency rep or consultant, it’s not our requirement!) Promise about an 80% likeness and give your client choices on the changes. Communication and setting expectations is key here.
The good news is that under 10% of the sites out there comply with the new Core Vitals standards, so if you are still rewriting, reducing image size and coding your lighter site, no worries. It’s September and it may be winter before Google enforces the requirements. Look to your agency or consultant to stay up to date on the enforcements and how it will affect your organic and paid rankings on Google.
Have questions or need to talk about a new site? Send a message, let’s chat. Happy to help. #seo #strategy #google #digital #design #building #marketing