The post Marketing Tip of the Day: The SEO Pie — Social Media appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

The following is an excerpt from, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing, ch. 1, pp. 14 …

In plain terms, content is the copy (words) and imagery found on your website and blog. And, when it comes to content and SEO, there are two important factors to keep in mind.

The Relevance Factor
Just like a human, Google is judging your content and determining whether it’s rich and relevant or boring and “thin.” Rich, relevant content helps each of your web pages and blog posts gain more authority in Google’s eyes, which means ranking higher in search results. It also increases credibility and engagement with actual people, too.

Thin content accomplishes the opposite, and it might lead your website or blog toward what I call the “black hole of Google Panda” — never to be found in organic search results. The good news is that if you take the time to create quality content, your site is already partially optimized!

The Freshness Factor
Freshness is an important factor in how well your website ranks in natural search results on Google. But where you add that fresh content to your site is just as important as how rich, relevant and useful it is.

Many novice SEO practitioners will tell you that the best way to inject new content into your site is to “freshen up” your homepage and subpages with new copy and keywords — sometimes on a monthly basis.

Taking this approach on a well-optimized site will most likely backfire.

Why? Because once your site is well optimized, changing the SEO on your homepage or subpages is similar to changing your phone number every month: It makes no sense. Just as your customers depend on your phone number as a means to reach you, Google is depending on your optimized content to find you and connect you with individuals who need you. Once you change the SEO on a page, the result can often be going back to square one — losing some or all of your page authority (credibility) with Google.

In other words, unless something changes — like a service or product — or one of your pages starts to perform poorly, you’ll want to leave well-optimized content alone on your home page and subpages.

So, if you need fresh content, where does it come from?

Fresh Content Comes from Your Blog
Use that blog of yours (like I’m doing right now) to generate the fresh content Google — and your viewers — are looking for. Adding a minimum of one blog post per week can do wonders for your “freshness factor.” Why? Because every time you publish a blog post, Google notices and gives your website credit for having some new, fresh content.

And, by the way, each blog post is excellent fodder for your social media efforts, too. Speaking of which, we’ll be tackling that topic in part three of this series.

Ready to learn more online marketing tips?

You’ll find hundreds of additional ways improve your online marketing in my book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing …

The post Marketing Tip of the Day: The SEO Pie — Content appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Before we do, let’s take a moment to answer the question:

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

In a nutshell, SEO is a process that has the ability to improve the natural ranking of your website or blog in search results — leading to increased traffic, sales, customer engagement and overall growth. SEO is the connector between someone who’s making a specific query on Google (or another search engine) with websites and/or blogs that contain relevant information pertaining to the query.

We’ve all performed countless searches, right? And on the surface, it seems pretty simple. Someone performs a search — say with the keyword “plumber” — and Google looks for and delivers results that are relevant to this keyword phrase. This, in and of itself, is no big news. But the question is, how does Google decide which results to list? And why do some sites or blogs rank higher than others?

Search engine optimization is a large part of the answer to these questions. It plays a critical role in determining where a website or blog ranks in the natural (also referred to as “organic”) search results.

Let’s take a deeper look at how this works, and learn about …

THE SEO PIE

Part of search engine optimization is the selection and strategic implementation of optimal keywords into your website content. Keywords account for approximately one-third of the SEO pie — a significant amount, for sure, but not a complete package by any means. In the past, keywords were a bigger piece of the pie. Then blogs and social media came along.

Now, effective SEO is broken into three major parts: keywords, content and social media. Together, they make up the SEO pie. And in this tip of the day, we’re going to focus our attention on keywords …

Keywords
You’ve probably heard the term “keywords” referred to more than once in relation to your website. And although you may know they’re a critical element in SEO, you may be wondering exactly what keywords are.

Keywords are terms or phrases that, when implemented into your website, can help connect you with people who are looking for what you do. In other words, when the keywords you use on your site are in alignment with the search terms people use to find the specific products or services you offer, there’s a better chance Google will present your website higher in the search results.

That said, the quality of your keywords makes a big difference in how effective they are. Many factors go into determining which keywords are best for your website and blog, including:

• The size of your site
• How long it’s been around
• How many people are searching for a specific keyword phrase
  within the region(s) where you do business
• How much competition you’ll be facing for that particular keyword
  or keyword phrase
• How relevant a keyword phrase is for your organization

Now that we’ve got a basic definition in place, let’s dive deeper for a greater understanding of what I like to call …

Keyword Hierarchy
This is something I’ve developed over the years to help identify optimal keyword phrase usage.

Essentially, when optimizing content, you don’t want to have just one keyword phrase that you hammer on ad nauseam. Instead, you’ll want to create a well-rounded list of keyword phrases for every web page and blog post. Depending on the topic and the content length, this list could include 3–5 keyword phrases or more than a dozen.

No matter the length of the list, make sure every single phrase is relevant to the topic, service or product you “discuss” in your content.

Once you’ve developed your list of keywords for a particular web page or blog post, you’ll need to decide which are primary, secondary and semantic, respectively.

• Primary Keywords: As “primary” indicates, these are the main keywords in your content. Sometimes you’ll determine them in advance; other times your organically written content will dictate them.
• Secondary Keywords: Used less often than primary keywords, these are still specific to the website page or blog post you’re optimizing.
• Semantic Keywords:Used only once or twice, at most, these stillplay an important role in “rounding out” the relevance of the content.

As you can see, semantic and secondary keywords play a supporting role in the optimization of content. They’re good to use, but they don’t have the oomph that a main keyword has, typically for three reasons: 1) they have low search numbers; 2) they have high competition; 3) they’re not the main topic of the page, but they work tangentially to support the main topic. An SEO novice might use secondary and semantic keywords as main keywords — or might overlook them completely. In Part 2 of the book, we’ll dive deeper into primary, secondary and semantic keyword usage.

Long-tail Keywords
This is a fancy term for using keyword phrases that are typically three or more words long. Very often, what makes a keyword phrase long-tail is the fact that it has some “definers” or “qualifiers” in it, making it very specific.

For example, “dentist” is most likely going to be a strong keyword, no matter where your dental office is located. But I’ll bet it also has very high competition. Adding qualifiers to the keyword — “Dentist Madison WI” for example — makes it more specific and might have less competition from other area dental offices.

Keyword Density
The term “keyword density” is worth a quick mention here. Keyword density is what it sounds like: the number of times (density) a keyword phrase appears on a page compared with the total number of words on the page.

Over the years, I’ve heard SEO experts argue that a keyword phrase needs to occur a certain percentage of the time to be considered an actual keyword. Through testing, I’ve found this untrue. Although a keyword phrase typically needs to appear more than once within the content to be taken seriously by Google, it DOES NOT need to appear a certain percentage of the time. That’s no way to optimize — and that’s no way to write good, relevant content.

Next time, we’ll dive into the content slice of the SEO pie.

Ready to learn more online marketing tips?

You’ll find hundreds of additional ways improve your online marketing in my book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing …

The post Marketing Tip of the Day: The SEO Pie — Keywords appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

• Does it attract visitors on its own?
• Does it make those visitors feel comfortable when they arrive on the site?
• Does it make it super-easy for visitors to take the next step in becoming customers?

Unfortunately, many don’t.

Before we talk more about what goes into a successful website, let’s talk about why so many websites fall short on what I’ve mentioned above.

It’s because of lack of knowledge. Let me explain …

Not all websites are created equal. But to those who are outside the industry, there’s no way of knowing what’s good and what’s not good. It’s almost like someone going to buy an automobile who knows absolutely nothing about cars.

If the options are a 1979 Ford Mustang (my first car), and a 2021 Subaru Outback (my current car), and both look good from the outside — it may appear that other than the shape, size and color — there’s no difference between the two. Realistically, how can somebody who knows nothing about cars know the difference? Especially if they don’t know the right questions to ask? They may be thinking. “a car is a car — and they’re all the same. I like the blue one, and it’s also less expensive …”

Same deal with a laptop. If you know nothing about computers, there’s no way of telling which computer is more powerful than another — because you don’t know what to look for, and you don’t know what to ask. So you may judge on color or price, thinking they’re both the same …

These examples may sound far fetched, but this is EXACTLY what happens when most businesses hire a web developer to build them a website. They think that the product is the product, no matter who builds it — and this is not surprising because the business doesn’t know what to ask for, or to look for, in a well-built site. So they trust the web developer to take care of it for them.

Since all websites are not the same, here’s a list of what needs to be baked into your new site. This will equip you with some knowledge — and the ability to ask specific questions — to make sure you’re not paying someone for a clunker of a website.

The following criteria will help you attain a website that functions well, and gives you a good ROI …

1. Custom Web Design: Your site should be customized to your company’s personality, goals and needs. Avoid cookie-cutter sites that make you look like everybody else.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Every nook and cranny of your site needs to be optimized with SEO in an effort to bring more visitors to your site. Ask your potential web design firm IF they do SEO, and HOW they do it. They should tell you they optimize every single title tag, meta description, image name, alt image name, headline, copy and text link. Don’t say this to them, just know they should be saying it to you! I will bet you a cup of coffee they don’t mention most (if any) of these optimization methodologies. Oh, and they should be creating a custom keyword report for you — and meeting with you to review and explain it.

3. User Experience (UX): UX is exactly what is sounds like — the positive, negative or neutral experience a viewer has when they visit your site. This needs to be discussed. If it’s not, you could wind up with a lot of noise and distraction on your site, which is a big turnoff to visitors. Visitors need to immediately feel comfortable when they arrive on your site, and easily understand the lay of the land. Content, imagery and calls-to-action need to be easy to digest — without having to think about it. This adds up to a pleasant experience that helps build trust. Same deal here. Don’t divulge this info to the web design firm you are considering, just ask them what they do to ensure a solid UX and see what they say …

4. Conversion: A solid website conversion strategy ensures that the visitor knows exactly what to do next. Whether it’s filling out a contact form, giving you a call, or downloading some complimentary content, conversion strategies need to be crystal clear. The best way to create a conversion methodology is to focus on the solutions you provide to ease someone’s pain. In other words, provide a benefit. Never use fear tactics, or try to strong arm — or over promise.

5. Desktop & Mobile Design: Your site needs to be responsive, AND be designed for both desktop and mobile so the user experience and conversion methodologies do not suffer because of a different screen size.

There’s more to it than this, but these five items can put the power in your hands to make sure you’re hiring the right web design firm to build your website.

For more information about SEO …
You can download a free chapter from my book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing.

Buy the book …
If you’d like to learn more about the entire web design process, you can buy A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing on Amazon.

Thanks for visiting!

The post What Successful Web Design Looks Like appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

What is the Marketing Treadmill?

Exactly what it sounds like … never ending tasks, social posts, blog posts, outreach, videos, webinars, podcasts, Adwords, etc. — that never seems to end and is impossible to keep up with. And whether you have a marketing team, or you are doing it all solo, it’s simply impossible to keep going at full speed day-after-day, on the marketing treadmill.

No matter how good someone’s advice is, if it’s not sustainable you only have a handful of choices:

• Get help so it is sustainable
• Choose another tactic that IS sustainable
• Or keep running on the treadmill until you collapse — this last one is not a joke. If you keep pushing yourself eventually you will break down and be good to nobody …

Let’s assume you don’t have the budget to hire help right now. What’s a small or medium sized business to do?

Choose sustainable initiatives that work for you long term. They include …

1. Improving the SEO on your website so you are getting found more easily. Yes, you’d expect to hear this advice from a web design firm that specializes in SEO — but it’s true. One of our clients, Lighthouse Healing Massage Therapy, doesn’t even blog, and yet they still acquire 4-8 NEW clients per month because of the SEO we’ve implemented into the site we built for them.
2. Get some citations using a tool like Bright Local. It’s inexpensive, and doesn’t take a lot of time to set up — and takes even less time to maintain (maybe 15 minutes a month after the initial setup). In case you’re not familiar, citations are directory listings — which are backlinks to your website … and backlinks are good for SEO!
3. Blog: this is often a tough one, as businesses and team members often feel strapped for time. Just one blog post a week can do wonders for your SEO and your organic ranking in Google search. In my book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing, I detail how to make blogging part of your work week so it’s more manageable and less stressful.
4. Be Visible: This one is going to look different for everyone depending on manny factors — so I will pose a question to you: what has been the most successful way of your being visible professionally? “Successful” being defined as — gaining something of value like customers, good relationships or referrals. Do you have some time each week to do some of that? HINT: this doesn’t necessarily mean more social media, and it doesn’t necessarily mean getting in front of hundreds of people. For me, successful ways of being visible include:
   • Keeping in touch/active with my professional relationships (Zooms, coffee, emails, etc.)
   • Speaking in public, online, and on podcasts
   • Commenting (when it’s relevant) on social media, and posting on social media

These are just a few suggestions — and that’s on purpose — as I want you to be able to succeed with them, not get stuck on the marketing treadmill sweating away the day …

Want more tips and insights from Cuppa SEO?

The post Are You on the Marketing Treadmill? appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

The following is an excerpt from my book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing …

Getting your website to appear at the top of search results can be compared to how a raft works. Let me explain …

Imagine that you’re embarking on a whitewater rafting expedition. You and five fellow adventurers are ready to brave the rapids — and probably get soaking wet!

What would happen if you took your un-inflated raft out of your car and threw it in the water? It would sink, right?

Before you get into your raft, you have to pump it up to the optimal number of pounds per square inch (PSI). With every pump of air, your raft comes closer to its optimal PSI, which makes the raft more and more buoyant.

Half pumped, some parts would probably be above water and others below, but the raft would not yet be ready to bear any weight. Once you’ve attained the optimal PSI, the entire raft will sit on the surface of the water — even with six people in it!

Your website, metaphorically speaking, is similar to a raft. It needs to be “pumped up” before it can rise to the top. But instead of air being the catalyst to bring it to the surface, your SEO efforts help your website become more buoyant.

Every well-optimized web page and blog post is like a pump of air into that raft, assisting with your website’s “buoyancy factor.” The same is true for your social media efforts. Every optimized social platform, and every optimized post, is like a pump of air that improves the “PSI” of your website. As mentioned earlier, Google My Business is going to be the most influential channel for SEO value.

Want to learn more about SEO?
Check out A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing, or contact Cuppa SEO Web Design anytime to schedule a complimentary consultation to discuss.

Stay well!

The post SEO & The Raft Analogy appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Optimized images help improve the SEO value of your website and blog. They also make it possible for people to find you through the Google Images tab during an organic search. 

In the example below, I did a search for “SEO Madison WI.” Note how the entire first row of search results in the Google Images tab are Cuppa SEO homepage images …

“Logo.png” or “Image12867.jpg” are meaningless to Google, so the algorithm just moves on and pays these images no mind. Instead, use a phrase that’s rich in one or more keywords that are relevant to each particular page or blog post. In other words, name that image! It will improve your SEO!

How to Implement an Optimized Image Name

1. It’s best to optimize an image name BEFORE you upload it to your website or blog. But if you’re beginning work on optimizing an existing website or blog, you won’t have that luxury. If this is the case, you’ll have to save your current website images to your computer or a cloud account like Dropbox or Box. Now you’re ready to caffeinate each image with some SEO.
2. Take out your keyword report. It’s the foundation for optimizing every image. Don’t have a keyword report? Contact Cuppa SEO Web Design for a consultation — we can create one for you!
3. Assess what your image is about. For this example, let’s say you own a dental office and you’re optimizing an image for your root canal page.
4. The original image name is: “IMG_28651.jpg,” which has neither SEO value nor value to the human eye.
5. You look at your keyword report and determine “Root Canal Madison WI” is a good keyword phrase for this image.
6. So you change the image name to “Root-Canal-Madison-WI.jpeg.” Or even better, maybe you include your business name: “Caffeinated-Dentist-Root-Canal-Madison-WI.jpeg” (fictitious, of course).
7. Notice how I’ve structured the hierarchy of these image names with each word being separated by a dash. There are NO spaces, and NO underscores — both of which would hurt the SEO value of the image.
8. Now, within this one image name, “Caffeinated-Dentist-Root-Canal-Madison-WI.jpeg,” I am actually using ALL of the following keywords: Dentist, Dentist Madison, Dentist Madison WI, Root Canal, Root Canal Madison, Root Canal Madison WI.

As you might have guessed, at first it may be a challenge for you to fit six different keyword phrases into one image name. It’s not something we’re expecting you to be able to do out of the gate, but it’s a good goal to shoot for as you become more and more comfortable with naming images.

Want to learn more about optimizing your image names and your website? Check out A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing by Joey Donovan Guido (our fearless leader over here at Cuppa SEO). Or, contact us anytime to schedule a complimentary consultation — we’re happy to take care of optimizing your website for you!

The post Image Names Matter More Than We Think appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

What are Keywords?

Keywords are terms or phrases that, when implemented into your website, can help connect you with people who are looking for what you do. In other words, when the keywords you use on your site are in alignment with the search terms people use to find the specific products or services you offer, there’s a better chance Google will present your website higher in the search results.

For example, if you were a dentist in Los Angeles, CA, phrases like “Dentist,” and “Dentist Los Angeles” would be good keywords because they’re actually terms people use to find a dentist in Los Angeles, CA.

Picking the Best Keywords

The quality of your keywords makes a big difference in how effective they are. Many factors go into determining which keywords are best for your website and blog, including:

• The size of your site
• How long it’s been around
• How many people are searching for a specific keyword phrase within the region(s) where you do business
• How much competition you’ll be facing for that particular keyword or keyword phrase
• How relevant a keyword phrase is for your business or organization

Making Your List

When optimizing content, you don’t want to have just one keyword phrase that you hammer on ad nauseam. Instead, you’ll want to create a well-rounded list of keyword phrases for every web page and blog post. Depending on the topic and the content length, this list could include 3–5 keyword phrases or more than a dozen. 

No matter the length of the list, make sure every single phrase is relevant to the topic, service or product you “discuss” in your content. Some call this “topic-based SEO,” among other things, but we just call it good writing.

For instance, if you have a pet food store that caters to dogs, well-written copy won’t be limited to dog food. You’ll want to talk about food for puppies as well as for older dogs … about different breeds of dogs and what foods might be best for them … and don’t forget dog treats! You might even want to cover how the foods you sell affect not only canine general health, but also canine dental health. You get the idea. Well-rounded keyword usage helps produce well-rounded content that’s good for the human eye — and for SEO.

Want to learn more about keywords and optimizing your website? Check out A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing by Joey Donovan Guido (our fearless leader over here at Cuppa SEO). Or, contact us anytime to schedule a complimentary consultation — we’re happy to take care of optimizing your website for you!

More SEO Tips …
– Optimizing Your Website: SEO By The Numbers
– Does Every Website Need SEO?
– 5 Simple Ways to Optimize Your Blog for Better SEO
– Soup Up Your Sub Headlines with SEO

The post Selecting the Best Keywords for Your Website appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

What is a Backlink?

If you’re not familiar with the term, a backlink is a link from somebody else’s website or blog to yours. Backlinks are important because they have the ability to raise or lower your website authority in a meaningful way, depending on the quality of the backlinks you attain. I say “depending on the quality,” because not all backlinks are created equal.

Good Types of Backlinks

• Sharing a link, or someone sharing a link to you, because it’s great information that’s relevant to readers
• Links that come from reputable websites — with low spam scores and high authority scores (sites that have higher authority scores than your site are preferable)
• Backlinks that require some amount of editorial control. Examples include: guest blogging, directory submissions (citations), press release distribution, blog commenting, niche forums and community sites. All of these are editorially controlled (gaited). In other words, someone has to approve or reject the submission as opposed to simply being submitted and accepted (non-gaited).

Bad Types of Backlinks

• Paid links, which is a link that’s actually paid for (with money, a favor, gifts, etc.).
• Link networking, which occurs when two websites trade links, or link to each other in order to boost backlink numbers.
• Links from overly spammy sites. A good way to check for site “spamminess” is to use an application like MOZ’s Open Site Explorer. It’s free to use, and it will tell you the spam score of any website for which you are considering creating a backlink. You can also check sites that have already added a backlink to your website (with or without your permission) to check their spam score. While you’re there, check your site’s spam score, too!

What are Citations?

You may be wondering what citations are, as the term has more than one meaning. In this case, we’re talking about website citations, which are essentially directory listings for your website. They’re important, and luckily easy to build upon, especially if you use an application such as Bright Local. Bright Local helps you identify where you already have citations, suggests potential new citations, and SUBMITS these citations for you so you can spend your time doing something else.

Avoid Sketchy Backlinks Dealers

If anyone offers to increase your backlinks by hundreds or thousands in a short amount of time, that person is probably practicing questionable strategies to do so. And that can mean trouble for your website. In fact, large amounts of backlinks created in a brief amount of time can look suspicious to Google. If this happens, your efforts can actually work against your website, so build your backlinks carefully and with patience. According to Bright Local, “citation building should appear natural to the search engines and be built gradually over the course of a few months. A good figure to work on is around 25-50 citations per month.”

At Cuppa SEO, we’re sometimes even more cautious with clients, rolling out about 10 new citations every 3–4 weeks. Why? If anything looks unnatural to Google, a penalty could ensue. And if we’re building a brand-new website, nothing says “unnatural” more than 500 backlinks cropping up just days after a site goes live. Beyond citations, there are other ways to legitimately increase your backlinks — natural editorial links and manual outreach, for example. But no matter how you slice it, it’s a long-term process.

This article was gleaned from Joey’s book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing, which is chock-full of tips and marketing strategies to help you grow your business. Want to learn more about backlinks and optimizing your digital presence? You can get your copy of A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing on Amazon. 

Need assistance with your website?
Contact Cuppa SEO Web Design anytime for a complimentary consultation! 

The post Let’s Talk Backlinks appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Yes, we understand it’s only May, but …

… don’t overuse your keywords, it could make Google angry!

Overuse of a keyword phrase is something you want to avoid. This is referred to as “stuffing,” and although it’s great on Thanksgiving, it’s best to avoid stuffing altogether on your website and blog.

Why? Because if you get caught stuffing keywords into your pages, you could get a penalty from Google, and it’s one of the factors that can land you in what we at Cuppa SEO call, “the black hole of Google Panda.”

In a nutshell, Panda is part of the algorithm Google uses to assess the website authority and SEO value of each page of your website, and your website as a whole. Best to stay on Panda’s good side and avoid the black hole — so don’t stuff!

Check out this fun one-minute video about stuffing, starring our fearless leader’s kids!

To sum up, keyword stuffing is exactly what it sounds like — jamming the same keyword or keyword phrase into your content as often as possible, just like the example the kids provide in their video.

Reasons to avoid keyword stuffing are:

1. It has the potential to land you in the black hole of Google Panda. In non-tech terms, this means the page you stuff — and possibly your entire website — may never be found again in search engine results. Stuffing is bad for SEO, and just as importantly…
2. Even if Google doesn’t hit you with a heavy penalty, your readers will not appreciate this tactic, and they very likely won’t come back. In other words, it’s a bad user experience. There’s a good chance you’ve seen writing like this on somebody’s website: “Our dentist will take very good care of you. Our dentist is a pain-free dentist, so make an appointment with the dentist today!” Yuck.

Now imagine this, paragraph after paragraph, page after page, and you can see why Google would take a site like this and hide it from view.

There was a time, back in the wild west of the internet, where adding a bunch of the same keywords could elevate a page in search engine results. Google quickly said “no way!” to this tactic, labeling it black hat SEO for good reason.

A better strategy is to write rich, relevant content that connects with customers, solves a problem, offers insightful info, or highlights a benefit you offer that can help with a pain point.

In summation, leave the stuffing for Thanksgiving. It has no place on your website or blog.

This article was gleaned from Joey’s book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing, which is chock-full of tips and marketing strategies to help you grow your business. Learn more about the book.

The post Leave the Stuffing for Thanksgiving appeared first on Cuppa SEO.