Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your website to appear more prominently on Google and other search engines. Without doing proper SEO, the chances of appearing on the first page of Google search results is slim. If you are in a competitive industry, it would be hard to crack the top 75 results.
In my experience many business owners don’t trust SEO specialists because they have not received the promised results. The SEO industry is filled with shady characters who make big promises and use black hat techniques that may work for awhile. In the long run, these shady techniques produce the opposite effect and hurt the website’s rankings.
The SEO industry is constantly changing because it is driven by the changes Google implements. Google, the industry search leader, is constantly making changes to their algorithm. SEO professionals have to keep up with these changes and trends to alter their SEO efforts. All search engines have continued to improve their abilities to give users the most relevant results for a given search.
Why is this important? A strong SEO showing can have a remarkable impact on your business.
Basic SEO
This is what it takes to have a website rank in the top 50 in a competitive niche business.
- On-page content optimized. Your site should be full of content that is relevant and interesting to current and potential customers.
- Mobile-friendly. Most searches are now done on mobile devices such as tablets and phones, rather than laptops or desktops. Google gives a slight performance boost for mobile-responsive websites.
- Page structure. A website’s architecture is important for the user and the search engines. It should be easy to navigate and find the information the user is looking for.
- Title tags. These are the page titles and headings that tells the user and search engines what the page or section is about. You should use the exact name you are trying to rank for in the title tags.
- Meta tags. These are the descriptions that appear under the title in the search engine results page (SERP). They should be written to describe the page’s content and to entice clicks on the page.
- Alt tags. Alternate tags are information about any images on your website. They were originally designed to show a short description of what the image was about if it didn’t appear on the page. The Google bot can read this information so it should have accurate information and if possible the keywords you are trying to rank for.
- URL structure – keywords in permalinks. Example: /expert-plumbers-in-el-paso/.
- Website speed. How long it takes for a page to load has an important impact on users. People are impatient. If a page takes too long to load, people are going to go elsewhere. Page speed is also a ranking factor for Google.
- Embed a Google Map into your website. For local search, a Google map of your business location should be embedded on a page of your website.
- Structured data. Commonly known as Schema Markup, this markup language, that users don’t actually see, can help search engines know what a webpage is about. It also helps with adding rich snippets and rich cards to the search engine results for your webpage, which gives you a better chance of ranking.
Beyond Basic SEO
Many people believe social media outlets, such as Facebook, are more important for driving business leads than a website.
According to a study done by Backlinko, Google is responsible for 57.8% of all referral traffic in 2019. Here’s how the rest of the percentages break down:
Facebook: 6.5%
YouTube: 4.8%
Reddit: 3.4%
Now, social media has its place, but the numbers show that SEO for your website is far more important than social media outlets. This is why a website for your business is imperative.
Ranking in a Competitive Niche
If your business is in a competitive niche and you are trying to rank for terms such as, “lawyers in New York”, “plumbers in Detroit”, or Mexican restaurants in El Paso”, you will need to go all out in your SEO efforts.
After all the basic SEO has been done, here are some the steps needed to rank in a competitive niche. If done right, this will get your website into the top 25 of the Google search results.
1. Improve Your Bounce Rate
If some of your pages have a high bounce rate, it sends a clear message to Google that people don’t find this page interesting. Google will then down-rank it. How much? Nobody really knows.
So, how do you prevent people from leaving your page? A recent study found that pages with an interesting video had an 11.2% better bounce rate than pages with video. Make sure it is super related to your page and is not too long. More about videos later.
2. Blog Posts
Blog posts are great for creating fresh content for your website, but it can also be used for difficult to rank keywords. Let’s say you want to rank for the term “mexican food.” According to SEMrush this keyword has a difficulty of 80.93, so it’s very hard to rank for.
Most of these ranking tools are based on the number and quality of backlinks. The ranking tool may say you need x number of backlinks to rank for this term. Now, backlinks are important but it’s not the only ranking factor. Plus, good backlinks are hard to obtain.
If your want to rank for this term, I would suggest creating a blog post all about Mexican food, then promote it on social media. You may rank for long-tail keywords for this term, such as “cooking Mexican food”, which is somewhat easier to rank for.
3. Sitelinks
Sitelinks are links to a website’s sub-pages that will appear in certain Google results in order to help the user navigate the site. See example below.
Many websites have sitelinks in the Google results, especially if the result is the home page. It will have links to your inner pages. You can also get sitelinks from other pages on your website, such as blog posts or eCommerce category pages. The trick to getting these extra sitelinks is creating a table of contents for articles, such as blog posts, with hyperlinks to each section.
You may not see Google sitelinks every time, but if it’s a good post with interesting original content, there’s a good chance they will appear, and your click-through-rate will increase.
4. Get More Links
If you have been publishing great content but are not getting many links back to it, it may be because the subject is not that interesting to link to.
Let’s say you own a lumber yard and you write an article on the process of drying wood, cutting it and planing it so it can be sold to customers. That kind of article may have limited appeal and is not link-worthy.
On the other hand, if your article is about “choosing the right wood for outdoor projects”, this may draw more interest and hence links.
5. Keywords with Large Commercial Intent
When searching for keywords to target most people, even SEO professionals, rely on search volume. If more people are searching for this term, then that’s what I want to rank for.
Most keyword search tools also give you the CPC (Cost Per Click) for paid advertising with search engines, such as Google. If people are paying a high price for a certain term, then you know it is a valuable keyword.
6. Get Better Search Results with YouTube Videos
Google loves to rank YouTube videos, probably because they own it. So, if you have a nice keyword you are ranking for and want to give it a boost, make a YouTube video targeting that keyword.
Here are some tips for making that YouTube video stand out and rank.
- Title. Put your keywords towards the beginning of the title and make it interesting. For instance, if you made a video on water heaters a terrible title is “Water Heaters”. A better one is “Water Heaters: Five Tips to Make it Last Longer.” Your main keywords are at the beginning, but you also make it more interesting and clickable.
- Comments. Google loves to see comments. So, how do you get more comments? Just saying at the end of your video, “leave a comment”, is not going to cut it. It has to be more actionable. For the water heater video, you may want to say, “which tips did you use, and which ones were easier or harder to do.”
- Video Tags. YouTube allows you to put in tags, which are the important words which people may search for to find your video. Google uses this to rank your video. But, if you put in too many tags or tags that aren’t relevant to your video, Google will get confused and rankings will suffer. Use fewer targeted tags that helps Google understand what your video is about.
- Thumbnail Image. The thumbnail image is important because it draws attention to your video and increases the CTR. One tip I have seen, but not tested, is to use non-YouTube colors in the thumbnail. YouTube colors are red, white and black. Bold colors usually attract visitors, such as green, blue, and yellow. Also, thumbnails with text usually get more clicks that those without text.
- Video Description. Make use of the video description and put some thought into it. It should be at least 100 words. You want to outline the video without giving away the key points.
- Video Length. Your video length makes a difference. According to studies, longer videos out rank shorter videos. The best video length is about 15 minutes long, but don’t try to drag your video out longer than it should just to reach that magic time.
7. User Intent. Google now considers user intent more important than keywords. If your content isn’t what searchers want, then Google won’t rank it. Here’s a tip. If you type in some keywords into a search engine, scroll down to the bottom of the results page. You will see related searches. Google is telling you that these words are the important ones that searchers are using. For instance, if I type in “SEO tools” in the Google search, the searches related to “seo tools” are:
- best free seo tools
- how to use seo tools
- seo tools meaning
- seo checker
- best seo tools
- open source seo tools
These are the things people are looking for. If your site is giving the searcher what they are looking for, you have a very good chance of ranking for those terms.
8. Reviews. Reviews are super important to any business and it may surprise you that reviews are a ranking factor for Google, especially Google reviews. I have been trying to sell my clients a reputation management service, but it has been a tough sell. Business owners are just not interested.
My business is in El Paso and when I search for Mexican restaurants, there are a ton of results. I noticed the top results, especially the Google 3-pack (the top 3 results from Google My Business or Maps), all have many Google reviews. The top result had over 4,000 reviews!
Now, restaurants do get a fair share of reviews compared to other businesses. But, any business can get reviews and it’s actually very easy. All you have to do is ask the customer or client for a review. If you provide them with a link to your GMB page, most of the time they will leave a review. Under Google’s terms of use you can’t ask for a positive review, just a “review.”
9. Internal Linking. An internal link connects one page through a link to another page, usually through anchor text. Internal linking is important because it aids in navigation, defines the architecture and hierarchy of a website, and it distributes page authority and ranking power throughout the website. And, of course Google loves seeing this so it is a big ranking factor.
10. Backlinks. Of all the SEO strategies, this is the toughest to obtain. A backlink is simply another website or social media outlet that has a link back to your website. If you can get a large quantity of valuable links to your website, you will rank highly in Google. Over the years people have come up all kinks of strategies to obtain backlinks from highly valuable and trusted websites, such as the Wall Street Journal or any .gov website. Google has figured out all the tricks and has disavowed them. Google really wants your website to obtain backlinks naturally. Your create content so engaging and valuable, that people will want to link to it. The only real link building we do here at Blue Lacy SEO are citations. These are mainly Internet directories, such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, and FourSquare.
Local SEO
When you want to find a restaurant or a nearby car repair shop, what do you do? You search for it online! When you have a medical concern and you need the phone number for the closest clinic, what’s your plan of action? To Google it, of course. Since approximately 46% of searches on Google are of a local nature, businesses everywhere are investing in local search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.
What is Local SEO?
Although local SEO does not have an official definition, several brands and agencies have attempted to explain the marketing tactic.
Moz defines local SEO as “a process for increasing search visibility for businesses that serve their communities face-to-face. These can be brick-and-mortar businesses with a physical location or service-area businesses that operate throughout a certain geographic area.”
Local search engine optimization utilizes various techniques and tactics to improve your business’ position on local search rankings. Local search rankings occur when a user includes local keyword phrases in their search or the search engine infers a location from the user’s device, such as “plumbers near me.”
Why Should I Care About Local SEO for My Business?
64% of local customers use search engines and directories as their main way to find a local business.
Take a look at more local search statistics.
- 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles. (WordStream)
- 46% of all Google searches are looking for local information. (GoGulf)
- 88% of consumers who do a local search on their smartphone visit or call a store within a day (Hubspot, 2019)
- 78% of local-mobile searches result in offline purchases. (SEO Tribunal)
That should make the point clear, SEO is essential for any business.
Local SEO Tactics
To utilize a local SEO strategy for your business, start with these steps.
Setup and Claim Your Google My Business Listing
Google holds about 75% of the search engine market share, making it the most popular search engine used worldwide. With this in mind, it is imperative that you claim and optimize your free Google My Business listing. This listing is what appears when a user searches for your company name, location, information, or relevant local keywords on Google. These listings also appear in Google Maps. You might even appear in the top three maps results, also known as the 3-pack for a given keyword. These results appear above the organic, or natural results (as opposed to paid results).
To make the most of this free map listing and Google account, include as many details about your business as possible. At the least, users need to know your name, address, and phone number. This is referred to as your “NAP” information. Google My Business also allows you to include vital business details such as:
- Company Website
- Hours of Operation
- Product/Service
- Categories and Labels
- Customer Reviews
- Store/Location
- Information
- Photos
- Company Logo
Citations and Directories
The Internet has hundreds of listing sites and business directories from the Better Business Bureau, Yelp, and niche business directories.
Just as you did with your Google My Business listing, be sure to complete these listing and directory profiles as much as possible. Again, always include your name, address, and phone number.
At Blue Lacy SEO we have a citation service that includes 50 or 90 hand-picked citiation sites where we will submit your business information to.
Localized Website Content
Lastly, one of the main local search engine optimization tactics is to create localized website content on your website. There are several ways to go about this.
First, make sure your name, phone number, and address are easily found on your website. Most businesses include this information in the header and/or footer of a website, as well as on the Contact page.
Second, create your website and blog content focused on local keywords. For instance, if you were a lawyer and wanted to rank for the term “Santa Barbara lawyer,” you could work this phrase into your page content or even in one of your headings.
SEO can seem overwhelming and if you want to go to the expert level it can get complex and time-consuming.
At Blue Lacy SEO we have the knowledge and expertise to increase your visibility on the World Wide Web.
