If you are planning to use your website to generate leads and find motivated sellers, finding a real estate SEO expert can help you build a solid SEO strategy. You want to find an expert in real estate search engine optimization who understands your goals and exactly which keywords will be most profitable for your business.

SEO for Real Estate Investors

Does your business market to motivated sellers, cash buyers, rent to own tenants, or note buyers? Regardless of your niche, if your real estate investing involves an online presence your website will require SEO for real estate investors. Hiring a real estate SEO expert might be the best way to get it done.

Depending on your website, this might be as simple as updating your current content with well-researched keywords, or as complicated as revamping your entire website. It all depends on your goals and current site conditions.

In 1981, 22% of home buyers read newspaper ads to find a home, and 8% used friends as an information source. In 2016, 44% looked for properties online first.

– National Association of Realtors Research Department (2017)

Search engines account for most organic traffic to websites, according to Conductor Spotlight (see pie chart, below). As of 2014, it accounted for nearly half of all traffic leading to web pages.

If search engines cannot find your real estate investing website, you miss out on countless real estate investment opportunities. SEO makes your site visible to search engines.

9 Benefits of Working with a Real Estate SEO Expert

The cost of investing in SEO for real estate investors, including hiring an SEO expert, has many advantages can beat that of buying paid traffic. Take a look at the benefits that an SEO expert can bring to your investment business.

1. SEO: An Asset that Belongs to You and Your Business

You can get traffic to your website through paid advertising, like pay-per-click (PPC). It will get you results as long as you keep feeding it money. When you stop feeding it money, you will stop getting traffic.

On the other hand, when you invest in SEO, you invest permanently in an asset that belongs to you: your website. Would you rather sink $5,000 into your own asset? Or would you prefer to spend $5,000 on advertising that lasts for a short period and then vanishes?

If you skip a month of pay-per-click advertising, you get no traffic from it. If you skip a month of SEO management, you still get organic traffic. When you finish working with a real estate SEO expert, you still have a healthy, attractive website that brings in organic traffic.

2. SEO Gets You on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

Today’s largest audience for your real estate investment ventures browses the internet. Eighty-eight percent of people looking to buy a home, for example, listed websites as the most useful information source, according to the National Association of Realtors.

People use search engines, more than any other tool, to do this browsing. Search engines use search engine results pages (SERPs) to display their results. You have to get on the results of the first page of the SERP for internet users to find you (see the histogram, below). That’s how you rank number one on a SERP, and ranking number one on a SERP gets you organic traffic.

3. SEO for Real Estate Investors: Always Ready; Always Available

When you invest in SEO, it’s always ready and available on your website. You know how real estate investment opportunities suddenly pop up and need action immediately. SEO’s always ready.

Often willing property vendors appear when an unexpected circumstance requires them to liquidate an asset, and you need your marketing strategy ready to address their issues when that circumstance occurs. SEO works 24/7, all year, all the time (see image).

4. SEO Builds Your Brand While it Builds Your Traffic

Your long-term branding means as much as today’s transaction. SEO will get your brand in front of viewers constantly. Pay-per-click marketing campaigns only get you views while you’re paying, says 1stOnTheList.

5. SEO Research Teaches About Your Own Business

As your real estate SEO expert spends time on developing and implementing SEO for real estate investors on your website, you will learn about your market and your competition. Effective SEO strategies utilize analytics to continually improve SEO for individual web pages and websites.

That same information will provide you with invaluable insight not only about your website but about your business and your competition. That analytical information combines with A/B testing make a deadly tool for beating your competition.

6. SEO for Real Estate Investing: More Qualified Traffic and Conversions

With best practice SEO for real estate investing, you will find that your website attracts more qualified customers. Better SEO will attract visitors already interested in your niche, and those visitors will be more eager to do business.

Poor SEO might get you many visitors, but if they seek something that you don’t offer, you’ll end up with low conversion rates and high bounce rates. A page’s bounce rate, which measures how many visits resulted in people leaving without clicking on anything, can knock your page down on the SERP.

By using long-tailed keywords, you can focus on the traffic that’s best qualified for your real estate investing interests. Hubspot defines long-tailed keywords:

A long-tail keyword is a keyword phrase that contains at least three words (though some say two or more is considered long-tail)… Long-tail keywords are used to target niche demographics rather than mass audiences. In other words, they’re more specific and often less competitive than generic keyword terms. Because of that, they provide both short-term and long-term benefits.

For example, the entire U.S. population searches for the phrase, “vacant lot,” around 12,000 times a year. If you use it, though, you’ll be competing with every major licensed real estate agent and their budgets. However, if you use the long-tailed keyword, “vacant lot Bryn Mount Washington Pittsburgh,” you would expect much less volume and competition, but you would probably have the only website in the world ranking for that phrase on the search engines.

7. Keyword Research will Teach You About Your Market

Just as SEO analytics will teach you about your business’ online funnel, keyword research will tell you about your market. For example, if you have been using the keyword phrase, “vacant lot for sale” for your online real estate investment strategy within Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, you’ll see (bar chart, below) that it gets about 667 searches per month, on average.

Meanwhile, all of the following keyword phrases get more traffic from within Pittsburgh, varying from over 255 – 134,444 searches, on average, per month:

• land for sale
• acreage for sale
• lots for sale
• house and lot for sale
• cheap land for sale
• land for sale by owner
• vacant land for sale
• rural land for sale
• farmland for sale
• hunting land for sale
• property with land for sale
• government land for sale
• hunting property for sale
• vacant land
• mountain land for sale
• acreage for sale by owner
• lots for sale by owner
• empty lots for sale

This tells you that not many people in Pittsburgh are looking for a “vacant lot for sale,” but, rather, “acreage for sale,” “lots for sale,” a “house and lot for sale,” or “cheap land for sale.” Perhaps they really are interested in a “vacant lot for sale,” but that’s not what they express in their searches, and you need to know that to help you communicate with your market.

8. SEO for Real Estate Investing Can Target Specific Demographics

Does your investment strategy target specific property models? Locations? Neighborhoods? Or Property price ranges? If so, you can take advantage of your niche in your SEO strategy.

Just as using long-tailed keywords will effectively reduce your online competition, it can improve the qualification of your average visitors. A visitor searching for “buy an apartment building between Pittsburgh and Cleveland,” certainly has a buy vision that’s stronger than the average customer searching for “Pennsylvania apartments.

“Long-tail keywords are longer and more specific keyword phrases that visitors are more likely to use when they’re closer to a point-of-purchase,” says Wordstream.

9. A Real Estate SEO Expert Can Move Your Social Media Marketing

Creating and managing new social media accounts can also add an important dimension to your SEO strategy as a real estate investor. In 2016, according to Social Media Marketer, 81% of surveyed marketers integrated social media and traditional marketing to make websites more readily discovered. Using social media will also help your website get more backlinks (other sites linking to your website) from authoritative sources. This helps page rank.

Well, you’re not alone.

As search engine algorithm becomes more sophisticated, high-quality content that is relevant and engaging has surpassed quantity or keywords as the determining factor in SEO ranking.

In short, SEO and content marketing is converging – which is good news for content marketers.

However, in order to generate actionable insights to inform the creation of compelling content that speaks to your target audience and drive high-quality traffic, you need to consider many factors and analyze a large amount of data.

How do you make sense of them?

Thankfully, you don’t have to do it alone… wrangling spreadsheets and crunching numbers.

Google Artificial Intelligence is Changing Marketing

The use of AI-driven technologies, such as machine learning, predictive analytics, and natural language processing (NLP) has changed how marketers approach content optimization.

Ready to up your SEO game? Here’s how you can leverage machine learning and Google artificial intelligence to improve your ranking:

Analyze Headlines To Increase Click-through Rate

Most searchers decide whether to click on a link by reading the headline on the search results page.

An effective headline needs to do more than driving traffic to your website. It has to attract the right audience since they’d spend more time interacting with your content, which will result in longer dwell time.

Google artificial intelligence interprets dwell time as a sign of relevancy, which will, in turn, boost your ranking.

Writing and testing a lot of headline options can be a challenging task even for the most seasoned SEO expert.

With tools driven by AI and machine learning, such as Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer, you can analyze and optimize headlines to increase click-through rate with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Improve Keyword Research For Relevant Content

As the Google artificial intelligence algorithm evolves, you need to do more than identifying a handful of keywords and working them into your content.

Increasingly, search engines are taking into account user intent, relevancy, and LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords when ranking websites.

As such, keyword research can turn into a complex and labor-intensive undertaking.

Twinword is an AI-powered keyword research tool that helps identify the most relevant keywords based on a variety of criteria so you can create SEO-friendly content.

It has features that filter keywords, identify trending topics, and mind map semantically related keywords to help you efficiently optimize your content.

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Augment Content Quality and Relevancy To Increase Engagement

Driving traffic is great but if visitors don’t stick around, the high bounce rate could negatively impact the SEO ranking of your website.

Posting relevant, high-quality, and well-written content helps increase engagement and improve dwell time.

Not to mention, it reflects a level of professionalism that’ll build trust and attract backlinks.

There are many tools you can use to help improve the quality of your content:

• Grammarly not only checks your spelling but also catches obscure mistakes that word processors won’t pick up.
• The Hemmingway App uses natural language processing (NLP) to help you polish your writing and improve its readability.
• Acrolinx uses AI to analyze content and generates a “scorecard” to show insights about your content quality.
• Clearscope analyzes top Google results based on selected keywords and give you ideas on how to create content to compete with them.
• Narrative Science uses Natural Language Generation (NLG) technology to deliver unique experiences by creating multiple versions of the same content based on audience segmentation to increase each piece’s relevancy.

Use Data Analytics To Identify Popular Topics

AI-powered technologies can process a large amount of data and recognize emerging patterns.

By analyzing customer information and data from all over the web, you can gain insights on trending topics amongst your target audience and leverage this information to create relevant content that they’d search for and engage with.

Such insights can help you stay ahead of your competition and be the first to produce the most relevant content so you can rank higher in search results.

You can also use analytic tools to spy on your competitors and figure out what works and what doesn’t before producing your own content.

There are many data analytics tools designed for content marketers with different features to meet a variety of needs:

Crimson Hexagon uses AI to build analytic studies around your target audience so you can better understand key trends in their affinities, conversations, and behaviors.

Crayon tracks your competitors’ websites in real-time, analyzes more than 100 different types of online data from seven million sources, and uses AI to extract actionable insights.

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Leverage Attribution Analysis To Match Customer Lifecycle

Content marketing often involves multiple interactions with prospects before a conversion event takes place.

As such, an effective strategy requires the development of content that speaks to the needs of your audience at the various stages of their customer journey.

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It’s therefore important to understand how your audience interacts with each piece of content at different phases so you can understand what works and what doesn’t through attribution analysis.

AI-driven attribution analytic tools provide insights on the role organic search plays, as both an assist and direct acquisition channel.

They’ll help you understand consumer behaviors at each stage of the customer lifecycle so you can create the most relevant content and optimize it for the right keywords and intent.

DemandJump has a prescriptive attribution function that uses AI to analyze user behaviors and offer insights on how to create the most effective content for each phase of the customer journey.

Create Dynamic Landing Pages For a Seamless User Experience

If you use specific keywords for different target audiences, you can send each segment to a dedicated landing page featuring content that’s coherent with the search terms to create a seamless user experience.

This will help you deliver the most relevant content to your website visitors, increasing dwell time and conversion rate – which also signal relevancy to search engines.

You can now use AI-driven technologies to enhance your segmentation strategy and create dynamic landing pages tailored to each visitor’s interest, context, browsing history, device, location, and traffic source etc.

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Unbounce is a landing page creator that has a dynamic text replacement function that helps you increase the relevancy of your landing page by dynamically showing content that matches search terms used by visitors.

Keep Content Fresh And Relevant With Automation

AI-driven technologies can help automate part of your content creation tasks so you can populate your website with relevant and up-to-date information that signals relevancy to search engines and helps improve the site’s SEO ranking.

Even though AI won’t be writing all your content (yet) – especially pieces with unique insights that aims to position your brand as the thought leader or subject matter expert – you can use content automation technologies to facilitate the production of template-based content, such as product information.

Automated Insights uses Natural Language Generation (NLG) to convert data into meaningful narratives. All you need to do is to create a template and input the data, then the application will turn the information into user-friendly content.

Selecting the Right Technologies For Your Content Marketing

With the help of AI-driven technologies, it’s now easier than ever to gain insights for creating high-quality, relevant content and deliver it to the right people in the right place at the right time.

Often times, the challenge is to figure out which applications to use.

Before you get too excited and start piling new tools onto your marketing stack, see if the platforms that you’re already using have plans to incorporate AI into their product roadmaps.

This will help you consolidate as many functions into as few platforms as possible to avoid inefficiencies caused by errors and confusion.

Of course, effective SEO starts with a sound marketing strategy. See how you can drive more high-quality traffic with our SEO consulting service.

Local SEO service pros know your market. They know the right keyword phrases, including local and regional names, slang, sayings, events, traditions, and news happenings that your potential customers use in their online searches.

What are Local Search Engine Optimization Services?

You have probably heard the acronym, “SEO.” It refers to search engine optimization. Local search engine optimization services, or local SEO services, focus on optimizing your website with on-site and off-site SEO strategies. These strategies target qualified customers for your local business: customers who could walk in the door today before your business closes.

Title Tags and Meta Description Tags Guide to Search Engines

Your content management system (CMS) probably prompts you for title tags and meta description tags for every page or post that you add to your website. These tags tell web crawlers what to expect on your page.

They make up part of the HTML that the crawler reads, and, if you want Google or another search engine to give your page a good pagerank, you better make sure that these tags accurately reflect your page’s content.

Your title tag and meta description should include your keywords. For example, take a look at the title of this document: “How Local SEO Services Can Get Your Neighbors in the Door.” It contains one of the page’s long-tailed keyword phrases: “local SEO services”

Your title can occupy up to 600 pixels across, on the Google snippet that appears on the SERP, so, you can fit about 50 or 60 characters in the title tag. Meta description tags allow for about 160-200 characters: one long sentence or two short ones, plus a little wiggle room.

Take a look at a snippet from the Google search, “find a latte near downtown Pittsburgh PA,” below. Google’s late 2017 algorithm updates have influenced snippet length (making them longer) and reduced the number of organic results (non-paid search results) that appear above the fold on the first page of the SERP, according to Moz.

Indeed, if you look at the results below, the local pack, Constellation Coffee, Crazy Mocha Coffee Co, and Espresso A Mano, were the only results above the fold. Based on page viewer habits, the snippets below them, “28 Coffee Shops in Pittsburgh to Grab a …” and “The 15 Best Places for Lattes in Pittsburgh – Foursquare” might not get many views.

The title tags have blue font, and the meta description appears in dark grey, beneath the green URL. The three items … the title meta tag, the meta description, and the URL make up the snippet.

That’s why you want a local SEO service expert to work with you to make those tags perfect. They should all

1. fit within the character limits
2. contain at least one of your keywords (preferably your primary keyword)
3. interesting and well-written to attract a click from the SERP viewer.

If you’re doing your own tags, SEOmofo and Yoast provide emulators that allow you to see what your snippet will look like. Here’s an example, using some text from a snippet in the search that we did above.

Writing good tags and snippets requires skill, concentration, and experience. An expert in local search engine optimization services will focus on writing tags that get your web page well-positioned on the SERP and attract people with crisp, inviting text. Someone craving a hot latte in Pittsburgh will surely notice those snippets.

Local SEO Services Experts Know Your Location

It seems obvious, but your local keyword strategy needs to include the name of your business and the city and area it serves. For example,

• The Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh
• Allison Park/Gibsonia/Pittsburgh
• Downtown Pittsburgh
• Point Breeze Pittsburgh
• Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar

If you look at the Local Pack at the top of the Google SERP, shown above, you can bet that Constellation Coffee used city and area keywords on its website. It occupies all four of the Local Pack spots on the SERP.

An expert will know how to front-load your keyword phrases to get your snippets into the right places on the SERP. Front-loading places the most important words of the keyword at the beginning of the phrase to tell the web spider that they’re more important than the trailing words.

Local SEO Services Experts Take Advantage of Online Directories

By working with a local SEO services expert, you know that you’ll get your page listed in the right online directories. Correctly listing your business name, address, phone number, web page, email, and other data can get you noticed.

While an SEO expert from outside your region will know Yelp, Merchant Circle, and Citysearch, only a local SEO services professional will know about authoritative local directories. He or she will also know the ropes to get your business listed on local news websites, the Chamber of Commerce’s business directory, and other directories that can list or cite your business.

Local Search Engine Optimization Services Claim and Optimize Google My Business

The Google My Business (GMB) directory businesses show up on Google searches and maps. Why not? They’re providing the directory, why wouldn’t they put the businesses in their own directory at the top of the SERP page. That’s how business gets done.

Your local search engine optimization services expert will make sure that your business claims its GMB, and he or she will know how to optimize it. It’s the only way to get into the Google local pack on the SERP.

Local SEO Services Focus on Good Reviews

Reviews make a difference in your web page’s PageRank. Pagerank determines where your snippet falls on the SERP. Your business needs reviews to factor them into the PageRank.

The Local Consumer Review Survey, by BrightLocal, found that,

“97% of consumers looked online for local businesses in 2017, with 12% looking for a local business online every day; … [and] 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.”

Local SEO service experts use reputation marketing software and tools to obtain, track and manage reviews. Once you start getting reviews, your business, or the SEO consultant representing it, needs to make sure that reviewing customers get feedback. According to Google, “High-quality, positive reviews from your customers will improve your business’s visibility and increase the likelihood that a potential customer will visit your location.”

Schema Markup Provided by Local SEO Services

Web spiders that find organized sites with consistent data give the search engine data that produce good PageRank. The use of schema markup, or structured data markup, on your website’s code can provide the spider with the information and organization that the crawlers need. Search Engine Watch wrote,

Schema.org’s website claims that “over 10 million websites” use Schema.org markup, which translates into less than one percent of all websites; an investigation by ACM Queue put the figure at 31.3%, while a study by Bing and Catalyst found that just 17% of marketers use Schema.org markup… Either way, even the highest estimate of Schema.org adoption still comes in at less than a third of websites.

Using schema markup can help your local business stand out from the competition in searches. You can make your local business stand out (and possibly rank higher than your competitors) if you add structured data markup to your site where appropriate. Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool can tell an expert if your schema markup has been properly implemented and gives tips on how to fix it when it has not.

Local search engine optimization services can certainly get your neighbors visiting your business. Local SEO services can most likely give you the best results because he or she will be familiar with the local market and lingo.

If you have a Shopify website that looks great but has had little traffic and fewer conversions, a Shopify SEO Expert can help you get traffic flowing to your website. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, makes your website rank better on search engines like Google and Bing. It focuses on ranking factors that search engines use to evaluate your website. If your SEO Shopify web pages are optimized correctly, they will rank higher on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), like this one:

You, more than anyone, know how competitive the eCommerce market has become. According to Shopify Partners, citing statistics from Statista,

“The growth of global e-commerce is mind-boggling. In 2017 it reached around $2.3 trillion and is expected to hit $4.5 trillion in 2021. In the US alone, e-commerce represents almost 10 percent of retail sales — a figure that is growing by nearly 15 percent each year.”

A Shopify SEO expert can show you how to beat the competition by bringing in more traffic and more qualified visitors. In addition, you’ll see your website convert more site visitors to leads and leads to customers. A professional can tailor a plan to optimize your SEO Shopify pages to meet your business’ specific needs.

When you look for someone to optimize your SEO Shopify pages on your eCommerce site, you want to make sure that you find a Shopify SEO expert that has a reputation for coming through on a results-oriented approach that will raise your Google rankings. Look for an SEO pro with a proven record of boosting site traffic and increasing the number of engaged customers. You’ll want an expert in converting online users into engaged visitors on your website so that they soon become purchasing customers.

An Expert Will SEO Shopify on Your Website

Shopify has its own brand of results-focused SEO strategies. Logically, a Shopify SEO expert will know how to SEO Shopify on your website to help your eCommerce store rank locally or nationally. Your website can benefit from the application of demographic data to target the specific region, socio-economic group, or interest niche suited to your business specialties.

Once your SEO targets a specific niche group, proper Shopify SEO techniques can further increase the conversion rate of leads to new customers. For example, an SEO consultant will know how to set up Enhanced E-commerce on Google Analytics to understand how visitors interact with your products or services throughout their visit to your website. The resulting increase in traffic and conversion of leads clicking through your conversion funnel can increase your page rankings and, hence, their position on the SERP.

Tools a Shopify SEO Expert Uses to Boost Your Traffic and Conversions

Experienced Shopify SEO experts arm their clients with SEO tools to increase their organic traffic. By focusing on organic SEO, a consultant specializing in Shopify SEO can help your business build an online presence. Depending on your business needs, a Shopify SEO consultant may use one or more of the following SEO types:

White-Hat Organic SEO

Wordstream said that White-Hat SEO,

“refers to SEO tactics that are in line with the terms and conditions of the major search engines, including Google… White hat SEO is the opposite of Black Hat SEO. Generally, white hat SEO refers to any practice that improves your search rankings on a search engine results page (SERP) while maintaining the integrity of your website and staying within the search engines’ terms of service.”

That’s exactly what a trustworthy SEO expert will hand over to you, and those white-hat organic SEO techniques may concentrate on …

• earning links
• content creation
• keyword research
• title tag optimization
• meta description creation
• website structure strategies

Local SEO

If you’re a vendor on the Market Square Farmers Market in Downtown Pittsburgh, you don’t want to spend your time, money, and effort trying to sell fruit and vegetables to consumers across the state in Philadelphia. Your mainstay comes from Pittsburghers, and that’s where a Shopify SEO expert will target your local market.

If you rely on a local customer base, you need to get all your important data online. That includes things like

• your physical address
• business telephone number
• business hours
• client reviews
• Images
• website address

An expert’s knowledge of local SEO will get your business on Google Maps so that people searching on desktops can find you from their homes and offices. Also, Tuesday shoppers at the Pittsburgh Farmers Market will see your business on their mobile phones.

WordPress SEO

If your business manages its online content with WordPress, you know how powerful it is for developing blogs, e-commerce sites, and company websites. Your consultant can help you develop search engine optimization strategies, using WordPress, to help you maximize traffic and increase conversions. You can easily monitor much of this activity on WordPress itself.

Negative SEO

If the competition has made a campaign to damage your reputation, or if someone has attacked your eCommerce site with low-quality links, a Shopify SEO expert will know how to salvage your reputation.

An SEO Expert May Work with Your Team in Several Ways

How do you think that your business would best benefit from working with an SEO expert? You know that you need to attract targeted, organic, converting traffic to give your business the competitive edge. You might hire an SEO expert to do all the Shopify SEO work for you, giving you the freedom to continue focusing on your work, while your consultant works on properly optimizing the site with …

• on-page optimization
• link building
• competitor analysis
• keyword research

SEO Training

If you would rather have your own staff take care of the Shopify SEO for your business website, you may prefer to work have an SEO consultant work with your team to train them. An experienced SEO trainer can work across departments within your business. Your content team can learn content optimization techniques, while your developers learn how to work on the back end.

A Shopify SEO expert will help your business get in front of the right people, using tools like website audits and keyword research. You’ll benefit by having an industry-specific SEO Shopify campaign designed specifically for you eCommerce niche. With that campaign, you’ll have the edge you need to get ahead of the competition.

With all the changes Google is making to account for the number of mobile users making up the majority of website traffic, you need to keep up with the trends to ensure your website is not taking a hit.

Here are a few SEO Trends 2018 that you should consider to keep your website on top of it’s game.

1.     Speed

Since so many website visitors are using mobile devices, Google search now prefers pages that load under three seconds. Mobile devices have made us impatient and when relying on cell phone service to connect to the internet, page speed is the major ranking signal in Google’s ranking algorithm. User experience can now have a huge impact on your rankings.

To check the speed of your content, you can just visit Google’s PageSpeed Insights, enter your URL, and click “Analyze”. Not only does it tell you your website’s page speed on both Desktop and Mobile, it also provides you with details on fixes that need to be improved.

If you find that your website is loading below Google standards, making small improvements can have dramatic results in your Google rankings.

2.     Content Relevance

As much as your content is relevant and excellent to you, it might not be as relevant for the keywords Google chooses to rank your page for. Google uses latent semantic indexing to categorize content after assessing billions of pages. This basically means that Google is not always looking for exact search phrases in your content anymore.

Google creates an optimized list of websites that have relevant content according to the terms of Google. When users search a specific phrase, Google now creates a list of relevant related terms their algorithm deems valuable to the users’ search query.

When writing your content, try searching the topic of your article, product, or service into Google and examine the top 10 results to see which related keyword phrases are included (and bolded) in the top results. Use these as a way to tailor your content for the new latent semantic indexing algorithm to improve your rankings.

3.     Voice Search

Google’s ranking algorithms are evolving with the use and recognition of technologies such as Siri and Alexa. The digital growth has utilized the option of voice searching and made it easier for the user. To keep your page in the rankings, it is better to start working on conversational speech recognition, longer phrases, and naturally spoken words. To make sure that your page pops up in the results, you need to build an SEO strategy that works with how people naturally speak.

Try to think of the ways your target audience will be searching for your content naturally. If a potential customer is using voice commands to search for your product or service, think of the ways they will be speaking when searching and adjust your content accordingly.

4.     Visuals

Pinterest, Bing and even Google have introduced a large variety of visual searches and are aligning their options accordingly. It is observed to be the next big thing in search engine optimization, which means that words will no longer need to be optimized but rather customized visuals, will dominate the online world of marketing.

Be sure that your images are optimized with image-alt tags related to the relevant target keywords in your content.

5.     Year of Quality

Quantity has its appeal, but quality almost always takes the cake. The high use of keywords that took over the internet in 2016-2017 will shift to a much natural and organic flow of content. Based on the enhancement of voice search, quality will be regarded more rather than a flow of irrelevant words and phrases that compel the user to shift to another window with compact and concise valuable information.

Use these ranking factors to help optimize your website to stay relevant with the coming changes in 2019.

If you want a more thorough evaluation of your website, feel free to get your free SEO audit using the quick form below.

Today’s SEO strategies have more robust criteria than that of yesteryear. It behooves business owners and their marketing teams to stay on top of trends to gain better search engine visibility —and trends change from year to year.

7 SEO Strategies For Better Search Engine Results

Here are 7 important pieces for SEO strategies to focus on for 2018.

Improve your content relevance with comprehensive, in-depth information that is well presented.

Content that engages your audience keeps people on your site longer, improving your site’s dwell time.

Dwell time is the duration of time from the first time a user clicks on your website to when he/she leaves. Dwell time is measured with a tool like Google Analytics and is a significant metric used in google rankings.

If your content doesn’t deliver what your headline promised, the user will leave your site and keep looking elsewhere to find what they need. Relevant, informative, and interesting content helps keep readers on your site and learning about your offering. It’s good for your site and good for your business.

Master your Organic CTR (click-through rate)

Because organic traffic is still significant to Google indexing, it is a very important part of your SEO strategies. Click-through rate, usually associated with ad marketing, refers to the ratio of clicks on a direct link to your site to the total number of visitors who view that website or page.

How do you improve your Organic CTR without paid search ads or display ads? Optimize your webpage title and descriptions for search engines with content that succinctly answers your target audience’s pain. Websites appearing on a search result with a description that compels the user to click the link accomplishes higher CTR.

Make your site mobile-friendly: Google’s Mobile-First Index.

In 2017, Stone Temple Consulting released a study that said 55% of all web traffic is coming from a mobile device. That number is expected to continue to grow. It’s clear that websites with a mobile-friendly, responsive design are the ones that will thrive in Google’s mobile-first indexing.

Employ the smarter use of keywords and LSI (latent semantic indexing).

Unlike the (often rudimentary) use of keywords from 10 years ago, today they should be a natural, relevant part of your content. (see #1 on relevance)

If you want a robust set of keywords to work with, try using latent semantic keywords in your SEO strategies. These are synonyms related to words a user might type into a search engine. Since there are several variations of words and phrases people choose to search with, tools that use LSI can help to identify those variations.

RankBrain, Google’s artificial intelligence algorithm, attempts to better interpret search queries by associating them with more common queries and providing better search results in response. If you can incorporate some of this latent semantics into your content, it can improve your website’s visibility in Google search results.

Add video content —it’s what consumers want!

Relevant, high-quality video content is in many ways a turbo-boost for your website ranking.

Among other reasons, video content is a key-player in your SEO strategies because videos are easily shareable and increase engagement with your audience.

Optimize your website for voice search.

Not everyone types to search. Smartphones, tablets, and some laptops and desktops are equipped with voice search commands for a reason. People use them.

With the advent of smartphone devices and voice assistants like Google Home and Amazon Echo, voice searches have changed the way people find information. Voice search strings tend to be longer than typed searches and are more conversational.

Often, voice searches initiated on mobile devices are done with the purpose of finding local services while on-the-go. One way to optimize your site for voice searches is to list your business with the locality in mind.

Direct link whenever possible.

Direct linking matters to google when you engage with your audience in a way that links to your site. If you have a blog, use social media posts that include links to your blog. Other places to deploy a direct link strategy include:

Email

If you do any email marketing, your emails likely have links to your website (and if they don’t, add them). Your email signature should also contain a link to your site.

Call to Action Buttons

CTA buttons can be placed on landing pages, lead magnets, or any on-site elements like images and headlines.

In both email and CTAs, be sure to optimize the linked element for maximum clicks by using best practices on things like power words and strong headlines.

It’s a new world for SEO in 2018. Tweaking your website today will help position your business to be on top of its game in the world of search engines.

Ultimately, it’s part of a sensible strategy to employ video content and social media together, but which one is the real performer?

You can probably guess which choice is a sure thing in your SEO content strategy for increasing search engine page ranking. However, there’s valuable information to be gleaned by taking a closer look at them one at a time –and together.

The Power of Video

Out of all the content on the web today, video content is consumed the most. According to MWP, 55% of people watch videos online every day. Video content accounts for half of all mobile traffic, and by 2018, video content is projected to make up a whopping 80% of all consumer internet traffic.

According to IMPACT, video boosts organic traffic from SERPs by 157% and marketers using video content see revenue growth 49% faster than those who don’t. If that’s not enough, 95% of viewers retain a message better when they have watched a video.

It’s hard to argue against statistics like these when it comes to SEO content strategy.

Video content helps keep people engaged with your site while increasing dwell time (the amount of time spent on your page from the moment a user clicks the link to the moment he/she leaves the site). Dwell time is a metric that Google takes into consideration when ranking a website. The more a user interacts with and dwells on your site pages, the better.

That said, the statistics are only meaningful in the world of SEO if the video content is relevant and perceived as valuable to its consumers. Just like written content, if your video content doesn’t deliver what was promised, users won’t stick around on your site. If your bounce rate is high, (when visitors click your link but leave the site quickly without visiting your other pages), some believe that can hurt your page rank.

Google’s algorithm is favoring video in new ways each year. If you’ve performed a search recently, you may have noticed Google is placing suggested video clips on SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) when relevant. Usually, these come up when a search string includes words like “how to.”

Videos aren’t just for full websites. Landing pages that contain video content are favored by Google as well.

In a nutshell, you can never go wrong using relevant and valuable video content.

The Power of Social Media

While social media doesn’t have a direct effect on search engine ranking, there are plenty of reasons to incorporate it into your SEO content strategy. In fact, it can be the perfect complement to video content.

One of the ways social media helps your website is through link sharing. Social media is a sharing platform. When your content is shared, it gets in front of a wider audience. The more people see your content, the more opportunities there are for clicks to your website. Direct link clicks help you to rank higher in search engines. If you are incorporating video content on your site, you can harness the power of the social share to get it moving through the web quickly.

Social media can be used to propel your written content in much the same way. If you have a blog, one of the easiest ways to encourage social sharing is through the strategic placement of a preformatted tweet right in the middle of a page of content. The tweet can be a quote from your blog post, an image, or another element –and of course, a direct link to your site.

You can also use social media to build an audience as part of your sales funnel. If you post on social media platforms regularly, you establish familiarity, which helps with your brand awareness.

Conclusion – What’s Your SEO Content Strategy?

After further examination, if you’re still wondering which of these two powerhouses are better for your website’s SEO content strategy and higher rank on a SERP as a stand-alone strategy, it’s video, hands down. However, if you want a comprehensive approach, using them together is even better.

Learning how to do SEO can be intimidating at first, but if you concentrate on a single tip at a time, you can start advancing.

To start, you need to understand a little bit about search engines. You also need to use techniques that satisfy both the search engine and the site visitor. For businesses, you want to use SEO to make your website a profitable tool for your business.

14 Search Engine Optimization Tips for Your Website

Tip 1: Give Search Engines Relevant Content for Their Users

Search engines, like Google and Bing, want to make their users happy. That earns money for the search engines and provides a quality experience for the visitor.

Search engines try to direct internet users to the most relevant content available. To give search engines what they seek, you need to provide quality, relevant content on your website.

You can tell search engines that you have that content by writing well-written body content on your pages and write effective titles and descriptions that explain exactly what the page is about. Using keywords in the text, titles, and descriptions on your website is the way to do that.

Tip 2: Help Readers and Search Engines without Insulting Them

Avoid insulting people and search engines by slamming them with keywords in every sentence. That’s called, “keyword stuffing.” Google provides a great example:

“We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom cigar humidor, please contact our custom cigar humidor specialists at custom.cigar.humidors@example.com.”

You know it when you see it. Keep it off your website, or Google will penalize you for it!

Tip 3: Make Your Website an Authority in Its Niche

As you create content for your website, think about how others will view it. Is your content interest and useful enough that people will link to it?

If your website sells tools, you can improve your SEO by posting authoritative information about tools: how to use them, how to select the best ones, how to maintain them, who needs them, what each one does, etc. Infinity Tools, for example, posts regular blog posts about using the different tools and accessories that they sell (below).

If you put together attractive content that pleases visitors, some may link to your site. That shows web crawlers that your site has authority and builds a reputation.

Tip 4:  If It is Not Fast, It will Come in Last

People expect speed today. According to Maile Ohye of Google, “Two seconds is the threshold for ecommerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half second.”

Site visitors click away from sites that load slowly, and Google will lower your pagerank on the search engine results page (SERP) if your page loads slowly. There are plenty of ways to improve page load speed, says SEO company, Moz. You might have to do some research or consult an SEO expert to help you, but improving page speed will likely improve your rank on the SERP.

Tip 5: Fix What’s Broken

You probably have a checklist of things that you need to fix on your site. It might have little details, like this:

• develop long-tailed keywords to attract more qualified visitors
• correct the spelling of, “torque,” on my ratchet wrench page
• re-label the image of the screwdriver so that it says, “screwdriver,” instead of “ice pick”
• fix the broken link to the metric conversion page
• update the email on our contact form
• update the sales representatives’ names
• remove products that we no longer stock

Broken links, misspellings, labels that do not match images, lack of updates, and other errors on your website send red flags to search engines. People who visit your site will see them, too. Who will find your torque wrenches if you call your product page, “Tork Ranches?”

Tip 6: Turn Your Website into a Quality User Experience

As you learn how to do SEO, you also want your site to please and retain users. You need an attractive site that users can navigate easily and safely.

You should avoid clogging it up with too many advertisements or distractions.

A quality user experience (UX) means an easy and enjoyable for your site visitors. Your navigation should be so easy and straightforward that they do not even notice it as they click from page to page. Although SEO and UX are two different aspects of web page development, making improvements one directly or indirectly improves the other, according to Search Engine Watch.

Tip 7: Use Your Site to Convert Visitors to Leads and Leads to Customers

Search engines see conversions as click-throughs, and click-throughs boost page rank. If you design your web page to convert visitors to leads and leads to customers, your visitors who follow through the sales funnel will result in improved click-through rates on your website and, hence, your page rank.

To get conversions and click-throughs, create calls to action that help users understand what to do on your web pages. No one wants to take orders, but it’s nice to see a big button that helps us do what we came to do. Right? Provide calls to action (CTA) with clear guidance, like this one from OfficeVibe:

The clean design and convincing message lead into a simple, unmistakeable CTA: “Who Me How.” That UX should give your business the conversion from visitor to lead, and it will give search engines a successful click-through: two birds, one stone.

Tip 8: Learn How to View Bounce Rates on Your Website

Google still has not made its Analytics intuitively easy for beginning website users to set up and run. However, if you’re willing to learn how to do it, it provides excellent information about how visitors interact with your website.

If you cannot do it yourself, it’s worth getting an SEO expert to help you set it up. Google Analytics can tell you about site volume, bounce rates, and much more. When you know, for example, that you have a high bounce rate on a particular page, it helps you detect and correct problems.

Tip 9: Take Advantage of Social Media to Improve SEO

Using social media can, if you manage correctly, get your website content in front of new users and increase the quality of visitors to your pages. It can encourage other site and blog owners to link to your website, increasing your website authority as viewed by search engines.

Social media help your branding by getting your brand out, in front of viewers, where they can start learning your brand name and even start using it in searches. You can bet that will get your website closer to the top of the SERP.

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have options for making an identity or page for your brand within their platforms. Use your keywords consistently across all these media to help train users on the specific phrases associated with your brand and products or services.

Tip 10: Keep Domain Names Consistent, Logical, and Organized

Search engines crawling the web see domain names up front. That makes domain names extremely important as they explore your site and try to understand your web and each of its components.

That’s why we use subdirectory root domains, like “https://www.thinkbigseo.co/blog” instead of a sub-domain, like “https://www.blog.thinkbigseo.com” Note that the sub-directory root domain tells human users, just as it does machines, that the blog is part of Think Big SEO, whereas, in the sub-domain example, it would be unclear as to whether the website is part of a blog, or contains a post about Think Big Marketing. Using sub-directory root domains clarifies structure and relationship among individual pages and posts.

Keep your domain use consistent with your content and URLs too. If you use, “www,” sometimes and leave it off other times, you dilute your inbound links, causing search engines to interpret them as separate entities. That can cut your overall ranking as the search engine algorithm tallies their stats.

URLs, logically, should contain character strings that include your brand or, at least, the keywords that you use. Both people and machines can more readily see the relationship between the link and your content if they match.

Tip 11: Responsiveness Counts

As of the beginning of 2018, 52.2% of worldwide website traffic came through mobile phones, according to the statistics portal, Statista. That means you need a responsive theme for your website.

Tip 12: Multimedia Ranks Higher Than Plain Text

Search engines rank all types of content on websites and adding videos, images, pdf, and other media diversify elements for search engines and human users to view on your website. You can optimize your non-text content to give web crawlers more types of material to view and rank.

Tip 13: Tweak Your Meta Tags

When you publish or update a page, check your meta tags, especially the title tag and meta description. You want a unique and accurate meta description, with your keywords, for each page on your website. Likewise, pages should have meta titles that are unique and accurately describe each page’s content.

Both the meta titles and meta descriptions will appear in SERP snippets that look like the one below:

Tip 14: Review Your Snippets

Search engine users will see your snippets and compare them to other snippets: snippets competing against your snippet for the user’s click. You want to make sure that your snippet ranks better and entices more than any other snippet on the page.

Before you publish a web page, use a tool that will allow you to visualize your snippet as it will appear on the SERP. If you use WordPress with Yoast, you can do it right in your Yoast plugin. Otherwise, try an online tool, like the Google SERP Simulator (Snippet Preview).

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These search engine optimization tips should get you started learning how to do SEO. Working through them will teach you a great deal about your website and drawing traffic to it. Don’t let the terminology intimidate you when learning how to do SEO on your own site can be quite rewarding, once you start.

Social media – does it, or does it not affect search engine rankings?

While hardly anything is absolute in the world of SEO, it is known that providing quality content to your audience is always a known metric for online success. Hopefully, this blog will help you learn how social media helps SEO and gives you some ideas on how to grow your brand.

What we want to do is look for correlations that meet a statistical threshold and use them in the relative sense for SEO best practices. There have been countless studies to determine whether social media is a ranking factor. Almost all research has established a correlation between social signals and ranking position.  But then again correlation isn’t causation.

For now, social media isn’t a search ranking factor – from Matt Cutts (Google software engineer) to Gary Illyes (Google webmaster trends analyst). Google has repeatedly been telling us this.

However, even without the direct inclusion of social media being an SEO ranking factor, they do complement each other: social media can be used to leverage your SEO efforts, even if it cannot be used to create a direct impact.

So, why aren’t social signals likely to be a ranking factor? If Google were to consider shares or community size, everyone would try gaming the system. Besides, Twitter links are nofollow – you cannot expect link authority to pass through these links. Of course, Facebook links are followed, but with millions of shares, likes, and comments taking place every minute, it would be difficult for Google to keep track.

How does Social Media Help SEO?

•         It Helps Build Brand:

If you are using social media with the intention of growing your search engine rankings, you should consider another approach.

Social media is most effectively used to create and maintain your brand. Social media is incredibly effective at improving customer interaction, prompt customer service, and promoting engagement from your audience to develop a stronger connection and understand who your market is. This helps you develop both trust and authority within your industry. Ultimately, these are the key factors that help you drive traffic to your website.

The benefit to your search rankings comes indirectly as a result of this. The more engaged and connected your audience feels with your brand, the more they reference your site, make more return visits to purchase your products or tell their friends and family about the new blog you just posted. These are the benefits of social media that will indirectly increase your search engine rankings.

It would be safe to assume Google uses social media links to gauge a website’s popularity, despite the nofollow tags. However, they’re more likely to take into account ‘who are sharing your link’ rather than care about the same set of links sharing to a single website over and over again. For instance, take this case study where a celebrity endorsement of an article in the form of a tweet led them to ranking success for a very competitive keyword.

•         Use Social Media to Get in Front of Your Audience:

We all know it is very difficult to get visitors to our websites. I am willing to guess that you have put a lot of hard work into what your website offers: products, services, or information.

Consider this approach when thinking of your social media strategy: rather than trying to push your products or services out to the massive audience of Facebook and Twitter, use social media as an entry point to build a connection with a specific audience you think will appreciate what you are offering.

Rather than thinking of what you can get from the people who see your social media posts, consider what you can give them. Offer free advice that might help them better their lives, brighten their day, gives them information related to your market that they will appreciate. Build a connection with your audience before asking them to purchase or give you something.

As your audience grows and begins to trust you and your brand, they are much more likely to purchase what you are selling or promote the ideas you have.

•         Use Social Media To Promote Content:

Once you have built an audience who trusts you and your brand, it is perfectly fine to then promote your products or services. Just be aware that users on social media are not there to look for their newest purchases or to be sold services. Most often, they are on social media to see what their friends and family are up to or to find funny cat videos and silly memes.

Think of your desired audience, determine what their motivations are, and present your products, service, or information in a way that will relate to their mindset while surfing Facebook or Twitter.

By creating engaging social media posts linking back to your website, you can leverage your social media audience to acquire high-quality backlinks.

•         More Links, Faster Indexing:

The more people who share your links on social media, the more opportunities people have to view your content. In fact, both Bing and Google have stated that they consider links shared on Twitter and Facebook through tweets and shares as beneficial in building your website domain authority.

It doesn’t matter if your link was shared via Facebook or Twitter – if you have quality content, you will get links from other websites. Likewise, links from social media also allow Google to see your links faster.

Generally speaking, some of the common social media SEO best practices would include building true followers, encouraging your audience to share inbound links to your website, and encourage social sharing to grow your brand awareness. Also, reaching your local target audience with localized content is a great way to build connection and community online with content that is relevant to your city or community.

Conclusion:

If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world. Twitter users across the world send more than 500 million tweets a day! And not to forget YouTube – it is the second largest search engine in the world. Search ranking boost or not, it would be foolish to ignore how social media helps SEO and its worldwide reach. If you are a business planning a marketing strategy, consider fun, engaging ways up your social game and start growing your brand!

With online marketing content, the reach is perhaps the easiest part of the strategy. But what good is reaching your intended audience if they don’t convert to customers? Simply reading an ad or a blog post does not necessarily equate to conversions. Conversions are the coveted objective of content marketing.

In today’s ever-accelerating pace of the global economy, many businesses are using video content marketing to market and sell their products on the internet. Video viewers are anywhere from 64-85% more likely to buy after watching a product video.

Why bother with video content marketing?

The ability to influence a consumer decision is a key component of good marketing strategy. Video content marketing helps clarify questions people have regarding product performance and real-world application. The ability to see a product demonstration adds a dimension of confidence, good or bad, to that decision-making process.

In a recent Cisco Systems, Inc. survey, 93% of respondents find video helpful in comparison- shopping. The survey also reports 87% of respondents find video helpful for researching additional items from the same brand. Video content marketing is also a useful post-purchase tool. In the same Cisco survey, 93% of respondents find video helpful for post-purchase instructions.

Quick show of hands: How many of us have bought a product and turned to YouTube for help figuring it out?

Think of how much your customers would appreciate not having to leave your website to find this helpful demonstration, not to mention how it can boost their opinions of your customer service!

Video Content Marketing Helps Your Branding

Video content marketing is engaging because it stimulates more of the senses; it adds dimension to content and makes it more relatable. People are more likely to respond and recall what is presented after watching a video presentation.

Video content is more likely to be shared on social media outlets. Using social influence to share brands people like is a marketing strategy that can pay for itself.

Video has become an integral part of the research process or ‘pre-shopping’. Consumers turn to video for demonstrations and product reviews when making purchase decisions. As a result, video is now driving demand for brands and products. Since video is the most shared form of content, companies are capitalizing on the opportunity to engage their audience.

Google Likes Video Content!

It’s true. According to Market Week, 70% of the top 100 search listings contain video content. Search Engine Optimization is a valuable, but time-consuming exercise for any company that wants to leverage the potential of the web. Adding video content is an easy way to boost performance. Pages containing video have a bonus: They gain greater prominence, with a video thumbnail, helping them stand out from the crowd. (For more on this, ask a Think Big Marketing consultant how this can work for your business).

What video production options do small to medium sized businesses have?

If you want to get in on the benefits of business videos for your organization, you have two basic options:

1. DIY production
2. Professional video production services

Cost and ROI are likely the most important factors in deciding which direction is best. We’ve already discovered the benefit and return on investment, so here is a synopsis of cost for both options.

DIY Production

If you’re thinking about investing in the equipment needed for in-house DIY video productions, this list will get you started with what you’ll need and approximate costs for mid-grade equipment (keep in mind, this does not include set-up or training your personnel on how to operate equipment):

• Camera 
$2000 – $10,000
• Teleprompter 
$900
• Microphone (studio quality) 
$200 – $400
• Green screens & lighting kit 
$180
• Soundproofing 
$700
• Editing software 
$200

Professional video production

The second option is to go professional. The benefits of a professional video production are many, but boil down to one key factor; cost. The caveat? Cost can be quite high. There is no bootstrapping option.

Below is a sample cost table for 3-minute motion graphic online marketing video:

• Project Management $2,000
• Script Development 
 $2,500
• Motion Graphic Development 
$4,500
• Voice Over Artist 
$750
• Audio Editing 
$750
• Stock Music 
 $500
• Stock Imagery 
$1,000

While the layman’s video camera is great for family holiday videos, business videos that will reflect on the brand should be produced using at least semi-professional equipment. Fortunately, the digital revolution has reduced the size, complexity, and cost of building your own in-house video studio.

Get Started on Video Content Marketing Today

If video content marketing is right for your business, whichever option you choose, talk to an SEO professional like Think Big Marketing to make this strategy work to propel your website traffic.