SEO Consultant: SEO techniques

Showing posts with label SEO techniques. Show all posts

Local Search engine optimization and SEO check list for business

The term local SEO is unknown to many business owners but for some businesses this is all they need to succeed online. Our local SEO checklist will help optimize your website for local search.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is the process of optimizing your website so that it appears in the first positions of major search engines for searches that are related to your area / city / country.

Say:

Example 1: dentist in Mosman

When a user types in the location in the search query then the intent is clear and Google will try to satisfy the user by returning in the top results businesses (in this case dentist) that are registered to operate in Mosman.

The general idea about local SEO is that the user wants to find an address or a telephone number so as to take a visit or call to satisfy a requirement.

Who needs local SEO?

From the example above it is clear that every business that has an address and operates in a certain area needs local SEO. Are you a doctor, mechanic or a retailer? You need to have a website that is optimized for local SEO.

People use the Internet to search for a business’s before they actually visit and if they don’t find you it’s obvious that you are losing customers and opportunities and someone else will take advantage of them.

What are the benefits of local SEO for business?

Increase your chances of appearing high in the Search engine result page.

More conversions – There is a high rate of conversion since visitors coming to the website from local search are highly targeted.

Brand Visibility and awareness – More people searching for businesses in your area will know about your existence and this will make your brand more recognizable and also raise awareness’s about your business.

High return on investment – An optimized website for local search can generate more value to a business since all they want is to get customers searching the web for businesses in their area. This generates a high return on the investment made and potential higher growth than companies who don’t take advantage of this.

How is local SEO different than general SEO?

Local SEO is for searches in a specific geo location while SEO practices are applicable for global wide searches. It should be noted that all SEO advice either about on page or off page SEO are applicable for local as well. The difference is that for local you also need to make sure that you provide more signals to Google.

Also, if you are searching from mobile or if you allowed Google to track your location when searching from Desktop, you don’t have to type a location in your search string because Google already knows where you are located.

Local SEO Process

1. Optimize your logo – One of the first things that search engines encounter when crawling your website is the logo image and this is also a good place to start your local SEO optimization.

Make sure that your image filename is descriptive. Instead of using logo.png better use a more meaningful description like a combination of ‘keyword-location-logo.png’
ALT text is important for all images but more important for the logo. You can use the ALT text to give more details about the image and in this case the location of your business.
Add the location in the title tag of the link. For example keyword-location” href=”….

Try to use the same logo across all channels (Website, FB, Google+ business page, etc)

2. Work on your titles and descriptions – Titles and Descriptions are very important for local SEO, the title should help both users and search engines understand as many things possible about the website before visiting. The title is only 70 characters but if you are targeting local customers then the location (and if possible phone number) should be part of your title and description. Examples:

3. Full address details and contact information on the home page – On the home page make sure that your full address details (street number, post code, state, country, telephone number, fax number, email) are visible as text (not image) in a prominent position on the home page. You can add this info in the sidebar

4. Full address details and contact information for the rest of the pages – For the rest of the pages you can have the contact information in the footer (if you don’t want to keep it on the sidebar).

5. Add a map in the contact information page – It’s very easy to add a Google map of your business in the contact us page and another indication of your location for search engines.

6. Create a Google+ Business page – Make sure that you also fill in your contact details and these are the same as the contact info you have on your website, on FB and anywhere else. Ensure that you provide enough info in the ‘About’ fields (including your location).

7. Register with Google Places for Business – Google will verify your address and ownership of the business and then you get to reply to customer reviews and provide more information about your business.

8. Register with Yahoo – Yahoo has a service for local listings and while it is not free. Once you do it, make sure that you link to your Yahoo profile from your Google+ Business page. In fact make the Google+ Business page the hub to link for all your other profiles.

9. Implement Google Authorship – This may not have a direct impact on local SEO but it can help you get more visits once you show up in the search results. Various studies have shown that users are more likely to click on a link when the author picture is shown together with the title and description of the page.

10. Use the structured data markup helper to give more information about your local business to Google – When you login to your webmaster tools, under ‘Additional tools’ you can find the ‘Structured Data Markup helper’ tool. You can use the option local businesses to tell Google about your business name, location etc. Once you are done the result is a file that matches the requirements definition of local business at schema.org. You can then download the file and add it to you website.

11. Register with Bing for places

12. Register to Local directories

13. Create a business page on Facebook – Besides providing other information you also need to ensure that the address and telephone number are filled correctly. Once you are done go and edit your Google+ Business page and link to your FB business page.

14. Register your business with Yelp for Business

15. Register with Foursquare for Business

16. Encourage and reply to every single review on every platform

You can also ask your customers to leave a review on their favorite platform either by giving those incentives i.e. 5% on their next purchase or by sending them reminders by SMS or email.

17. Mentions from local press – If you can get a mention from a trusted local online newspaper for example this also send a signal about your location.

19. Mobile optimization – Do not forget about mobile especially when it comes to finding customers locally. Many people use their mobile while on the go and having a non-mobile friendly website will keep them away. You can ensure that your mobile application has a map feature to show your location and maybe a GPS function to help users come into your store or office by following directions.

20. Start a blog – How can a blog help local SEO?

You can post high quality content on a regular basis and do location aware internal linking. For example from a blog post you can link to your services pages using the anchor ‘financial services in Texas’. This alone will not do much but it is another small step in your overall optimization process.

Also you can use the blog to target ‘local keywords’ in the title and content of the blog posts

21. Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and more

Local SEO Checklist

Optimize your logo
Work on your titles and descriptions
Add your full address details and contact information on the home page
Add your full address details and contact information on the rest of the pages
Add a map in the contact information page
Create a Google+ Business page
Register with Google Places for Business
Register with Yahoo!Localworks
Implement Google Authorship
Use the structured data markup helper to give more information about your local business to Google
Register with Bing for places
Register to Local directories
Create a business page on Facebook
Register your business with Yelp for Business
Register with Foursquare for Business
Encourage and reply to every single review on every platform
Try to get mentions from local press
SEO Audit your website
Optimize for mobile
Start a blog
Register with Twitter, Pinterest, YoutTube etc

301 Redirection

301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. It's not that hard to implement and it preserves your search engine rankings for that particular page. The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently".

In the simplest of "technical definitions", a 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to the other.

301 redirects help in preserving your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you are thinking of rebranding, revitalizing your image, getting a website facelift or perhaps, you're also considering changing your website domain, change file names or move pages around, it’s the safest option to redirect pages without impacting your page ranking.

301 helps in maintaining the quality, relevant and appropriate links generated from other websites linking back to your website in order for it to be trusted and ranked well. These links are very hard to get, and easily lost if you don’t implement 301 properly.

So if you are moving from an old website to a newly built website you need to be sure these old pages are mapped to the new pages correctly using 301 redirects.

When 301 redirection is needed?

You’ve bought a new domain name for your business or company and you want to switch your site to the new name.
You’ve just commissioned a brand new website and want to ensure people who are clicking on links to old pages are taken to pages on the new website.
You’ve renamed a page of your website and want to point people in the direction of the new page.
You’ve deleted a page from your website and you want to point people to another page that might interest them instead of turning them away at the door.
To ensure links from other websites pointing at a particular page of your website continue to point at a page that is reachable by both human visitors and Google’s web crawlers.

Latest SEO Off-page techniques

Search engine optimization has become an important part of any business; if you have a business then you need to know these techniques that can help you in developing a good online presence and visibility in the international market.

Many people say that I have a site for my business, I would like to ask them what next, Is it visible, are you earning from it or it’s just a liability to you. Just spending money on its web maintenance nothing else

Now here, I would like to tell you certain techniques that can help you getting you business visible in local as well as international market, keeping in mind the latest Panda, Penguin 2.1 and Humming bird update.

Now everyone knew these techniques but the only problem is they don’t know what percentage they must opt for specific activity so that they will be out from every kind of Manual and Automated penalties by major search engines. As access of anything can ruin your online presence and reputation of your business

Percentage Mix for Backlinks:

· Direct keyword anchor Links: 30% (Articles and Blogs)

· URL anchor links: 25% (PPT, Doc, and PDF)

· Brand recognition URL: 30% {SMO (Facebook, Twitter), Classifieds, Business Listings and Forums}

· Keyword mix: 15 (Social Bookmarking, Directory Submission)

Though, percentage mix can differ from business to business, as every business has a different need and a purpose which it is serving to the society.

Social Networking: Social networking one of the strongest techniques that can help you in improving the search results for keyword and brand for your product or services, as major search engines give heavy importance for social signals. Like facebook like, g plus and many others.

Business and Local Listing: This is something which can help you in improving your online presence in your local market, so provide information about your business on all local business listing site about your service or product with full contact details, the more you contact details indexed by search engines on different local listing site the more authenticated it will be. And more are the chances of your business to appear for local search terms on major search engines.

Press Release: Though press release was never an option to create back links for your web site, but it is the best medium if you want to create brand awareness for your product or services in your particular niche.

Blog Posting: The best way ever to showcase fresh content and get quality back links forms them. And there are a lot of quality blogging platforms that can help you do so like:

· http://www.livejournal.com/

· www.tumblr.com/

· http://journals.fotki.com/

· wordpress.com/#!/re

· http://fc2.com/

· http://weebly.com/

· https://wiki.zoho.com

· https://www.goodreads.com/

· http://storify.com/

· http://www.budokin.com

Guest Blogging: Guest Blogging is new, but nothing is better than this one, the best chance to show that you really know about your niche, basically guest blogging is posting your originally written content on some other website related to your niche, this help you in generating best backlinks ever and traffic from such domains have a very less bounce rate because people who read your post want to know more about you if the content sound informative to them. The only thing is you need to find Bloggers or website administrators who allow you to post you on their site.

Article Submission: People are very oftenly confused between blog and articles, so let me make it clear for you:

Differences between articles and blogs:

Articles are generally approximately 1500 words and contain explanations, analysis and/or visuals. Articles are evaluated on the value of the content to the community as well as on accuracy.

Blogs are tips, general information, or otherwise brief information regarding the use and implementation of Symantec products. Blogs are generally between 100 and 500 words and are submitted to the site via the blogs area in the Symantec Connect community. Tips must relate to Symantec products. Blogs entries must be of interest to the Symantec Connect community.

Three Characteristics of Blog Posts

The characteristics of a blog post are related to the purpose of a blog that I find most helpful–a blog is a part of a conversation.

Keeping in mind a blog as a conversation here are some characteristics of blogs:

Conversational language. Conversational language is rapidly becoming the language of business, and it’s about time too. It’s much more user-friendly than the more formal “legalese” that is replacing. However, the language used in a blog can be the most casual of all. Blog posts are frequently addressed directly to “you,” the reader and invite reader participation, which brings me to the next point.
Comments. Yes, I know that there are some so-called “blogs” where comments have been turned off, but given the conversational nature of a blog I see little point in that. Most blogs do allow for and even encourage reader comments. The most successful blog posts that I’ve seen are ones where the comments contain nearly as much information as the post itself.
Opinionated. Finally, blog posts often contain the author’s opinion. In fact, many readers have told me that it’s the opinion part of the post, my own synthesis and response to the information that I present, that they find to be the most interesting and useful.

Of course, these characteristics are generalizations. While you may be able to point to one or more specific blogs that defy these conventions, they do fit most blogs.

Three Characteristics of Articles

Articles stand in contrast to blog posts because their main function is to convey information. Although an article may sometimes seek to sway the reader’s opinion or move them to action–most often the purpose of an article is simply to report news of facts.

Here are some common characteristics of articles:

Factual. While a blog post may contain facts, an article seeks to present information in a more objective fashion. An article may also refer to source information or even directly quote sources. The article writer’s opinion of the topic at hand is often not immediately evident.
Less familiar language. Articles are not necessarily addressed directly to the reader. Rather, articles are more likely to be written in the third person. (Think of a newspaper or magazine article. When was the last time you read a news article addressed directly to you?)
No comments. Although some online articles do allow for comments in order to build community, most true articles do not include comments from the readers. That’s because there’s really no reason for anyone to comment on what is essentially a factual piece. Comments are usually reserved for blog posts, which often follow articles as a form of commentary. (Or in a newspaper, for the editorial page.)

Forum Discussions: Another way to tell people in your market that you are the boss by answering them what they are questioning, this will not only generate a brand name for your business but will also generate one way backlinks on forum which have high Page rank, Page authority and domain authority.

Social Bookmarking: If you just entered the online market then Social bookmarking Is the best thing to do, it will help you in getting your site indexed within no time. And will create back links too.

Directory Submission: People say that Directory Submission has become an Old School thing, when we talk about SEO and they don’t fetch any value for a site, but what I think if it is done smartly, then nothing is better than Directory submission, as it will generate quality link for you, the only thing you need to keep in mind is before going for s submission just check it the directory work properly and has no down times, the Page Rank, niche, regional and a few more things which will help you out of all trouble that Directory submission can give you.

Video Submission: Videos are purely exceptional to get higher attention of viewers and visitors. We can easily get traffic and higher attention with the help of quality video submission. “A picture Says thousand words” so, the videos are the best way to express ourselves in marketing. We can easily disclose the incredibility of products and services with the help of video submission.

PPT Submission and PDF Submission: The best way to reuse your old content and create quality back links for your web site.

Photo Sharing: well this is not possible for every business because a software company don’t have a lot of things to show case, but there are other niches where this technique can be use to create brand, quality back link and brand for your business like. Photography, modeling firm, Firms that are into product developments like garments and other related things and many others.

SEO techniques

SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:

Techniques that search engines recommend as White Hat SEO,
Techniques that search engines do not approve and attempt to minimize the effect of referred to as Black Hat or spamdexing.

White Hat SEO refers to the usage of SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine rules and policies. For example, a Web site that is SEO optimized, yet focuses on relevancy and organic ranking is considered to be optimized using White Hat SEO practices. Some examples of White Hat SEO techniques include using keywords and keyword analysis, backlinking, link building to improve link popularity, and writing content for human readers White Hat SEO is more frequently used by those who intend to make a long-term investment on their Web site. Also called Ethical SEO.

Contrast with Black Hat SEO.

Black Hat SEO.

An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it follows the followings
- Try to improve rankings that are disapproved of by the search engines and/or involve deception.
- Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly.
- Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the search engine ranked.
- Serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors. This is called Cloaking SEO tactic.
- Using Hidden or invisible text or with the page background color, using a tiny font size or hiding them within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.
- Repeating keywords in the Meta tags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the site's content. This is called Meta tag stuffing.
- Calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page. This is called Keyword stuffing .
- Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar key words and phrases. These pages are called Doorway or Gateway Pages
- Mirror web sites by hosting multiple web sites all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs.
- Creating a rogue copy of a popular web site which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious web sites. This is called Page hijacking.
Always be away to adopt any of the above Black Hat tactic to improve the rank of your site. Search engines are smart enough to identify all the above proprieties of your site and ultimately you are not going to get anything.