Offline Marketing - Utah SEO Company

How To Get The Most Out Of Google Plus

Most Internet users are not very engaged on Google+, the social networking medium for Google. There are complaints that it is too hard to use, no one comments or shares anything, they took away authorship and so forth. The thing is, that Google+ can actually tremendously improve your online presence. The trick is to learn how to use it in order to maximize your engagement.

Get Your Google+ Page

The first thing you will need is a Gmail account. As soon as you have a Gmail account, you are automatically on Google+. If however, you are trying to set up your Google+ page for your business, then you will need to claim your business listing in Google’s directory. To do this, use Google My Business. There is a button for Get Your Page. Then you just follow the steps. If someone has already claimed your listing, then you may have to go through some reclamation steps. At this point, it makes sense to get an SEO Utah company to help you with this process.

Optimize Your Google+ Page

Once you have your page, it is important to fill it out. Don’t just leave the profile picture anonymous! Add attractive profile and cover photos. For a business, you also need to fill in your hours, business description and any other information. Sprinkling your keywords here and there will help too.

Engage Users

Start by adding all of your email contacts to your Google+ page. Then you will need to put them in Circles. Circles are a way of compartmentalizing your Google+ contacts into various lists such as Professional, Friends, Family and so on. You can create your own types of Circle too. If you are a business, get people to write reviews on your Google+ page. Also, it is helpful to post and participate in groups that are relevant to your industry, or simply interest you. This can expand your reach and boost your credibility.

Easy Tips For Google+

Join groups and post to them.
Take your time and view other people’s pages. Don’t be afraid to +1 a post or comment on something. +1 is the same as a Facebook “like”.
Periodically search your business in Google Maps and make sure you are still visible and everything is OK.
Post content often.

What Is The Point Of Google Plus?

Google Plus can be casually referred to as SEO gold. If you are a business owner without a Google+ page, then you don’t really own a business. This is because your Google+ page is tied directly to your location and presence on Google Maps. Let’s face it. Everyone uses Maps to find what they are looking for. So, if someone is searching for your particular service, and you don’t have a Google Plus page, of course they will neglect to call you. They won’t know you’re there!

By | January 27, 2015 | Social Media |

How to get the Most out of your Facebook Posts

Basic Facts of Facebook

One of the rules of thumb we have found is that when companies post too often on Facebook their posts are actually seen less. Posting on Facebook Pages is different than posting on your normal status. Depending on how many likes, comments, or shares your post gets the more Facebook will show your post on your Facebook Page to your followers. The majority of businesses that saw the most viral posts are businesses that post every 2-3 days. Facebook makes it easy to schedule posts so you can post multiple posts at one time. The best time to post on Facebook is before noon and after five. So when you are scheduling posts make sure you take that into account. The best day during the week to post is Wednesday. The best day to post during the weekend is Sunday. You might not think that Sunday would be a good business day but there are less posts on Sunday so you have a better chance of having your posts seen. Keep your posts short. 1-3 lines of text is all you need. Posts that are over 4 lines aren’t read as often and it’s harder for them to go viral. Also pictures can do your posts wonders. Any time you can add a picture to your posts would be a good idea. That way it will be shared, liked, or commented on more than just plain text.

What Kind of Posts Go Viral

Let’s look at the kinds of post you can put on Facebook and what the best format to post your content is.

First we will start with the very worst kind you can post. Posting just links to your content, either a blog post or a link to your website is the worst kind of post you can make. It won’t get clicked on and won’t get viewed by many of your followers.

Not far behind that is videos. Videos take longer to watch and don’t get shared near as often as other kinds of posts.

Highlighting posts should only be used for super important content and even then should be used sparingly.

About 2/3 of all posts that go viral have pictures. So having a picture on your post is a must.

So how can you improve on posts with a picture? Post with multiple pictures. Having a gallery of pictures get shared even more than posts with just one picture.

The very best kind of post that goes viral is surveys. Not only do surveys obtain the most shares, they also give you great insight to your followers.

What Kind of Content is More Visible

So what can we learn from all this data? It’s important to keep your posts simple, concise, and have some emotion to them. If your posts strike at your followers emotional sentiment they are share, liked, and commented on more which means these posts will be seen not only by more of your followers, but by all of their friends as well. You can have a post be seen by 10 times your followers.

By | January 22, 2015 | Social Media |

Why Did My Website Get De-Indexed?

If you are asking this question you are probably not in a very good mood. Google doesn’t really email your site admin to tell you the domain has been de-indexed. If you check your Google Webmaster Tools account frequently, you may have received such a notification. Still, the news that your site is in trouble is akin to being called to the principal’s office. Guilty or not, you are asking yourself, “What did I do wrong?” Many times, these problems can only be fixed by experienced SEO Utah companies.

What Does It Mean If My Website Has Been De-Indexed?

When your site is de-indexed or penalized, this essentially means that the search engine has decided to ignore your site when it crawl the world wide web for results to search queries. Thus, even if someone has just searched for your keyword phrase, you will not show up on the SERP, even if you are 100% perfectly optimized for that keyword.

Google is always adjusting their guidelines for quality content. As the king of Internet searches, Google must continue to deliver the highest quality search results. As SEOs continue to find ways to work around Google, the big G must constantly update their algorithms so that some rogue SEO doesn’t mess up their business of delivering the best search results. This means, that while Google may have been fine with your site last year, the most recent algorithm update may have bumped your site out of the results.

What Did I Do Wrong?

There is any number of things that can get you on Google’s naughty list. Google has criteria for the technical, content, design, and other quality guidelines that must be followed. Google’s take home message for quality websites is that your site needs to be valuable and offer the World Wide Web something it does not already have. The keys to this are:

Publishing new, original content
Easy to read content that is not stuffed full of keywords
Having your robots.txt up to date and your sitemap submitted

What To Avoid

Scraping content from other websites
Participating in link schemes
Spam
Anything sneaky that won’t help your users
Anything automated

How To Recover From De-Indexing

What was ok with Google yesterday may have gone out the window today. So, if this happens, you need to take action to get your site out of the penalty box. Make sure you have your site registered with Google Webmaster Tools. If you do, then you may be able to fix what went wrong. GWT sends you messages if something went wrong with your site. By following GWT instructions, you should be able to put your site back on the Google Index.

By | January 13, 2015 | Blog |

3 tips to create engaging content

Have you ever thought about what you need to include in your content to increase your search engine optimization (SEO)? It doesn’t have to be rocket science, though it may be intimidating all you need to do is follow these three simple steps to creating amazing content to increase your SEO.

Make images the highlight

Images are critical to every page and not just pictures but using pictures to tell a story, relay information, or encourage interaction. Using infographics, charts, or compelling photography that will entice people to share your images. In the craziness of the internet and words being thrown at every person who enters your website, the use of images will capture their eye and hold them on your site longer.

Interactive

When your content is interactive it will hold the attention of your audience longer than a flat page. Creating an interactive post or page can be as simple as an email subscription or online survey. Give your audience something to do, engage them and they will be more likely to share on social media sites. Not to mention having activity on your site is great of SEO!

Video Presentation

When you put the two previous tips together you get a dynamic visual and interactive design. Including a slide share on your site allows you to tell a stories while engaging your audience. It is easy to inform, creates a rich picture, and is straight-forward. Not to mention your videos can be very versatile.

Creating an engaging site is two fold, when your engaged it will not only help your SEO but it will also increase the amount of time people stay on your site. If you want more tips and tricks for increasing your SEO or creating engaging content find more information here. You will be amazed at how having the right kind of content on your site will change everything.

By | January 11, 2015 | Blog |

Which is better social media marketing or email marketing?

In the content marketing world there is a heated debate on which is more effective, social media marketing or email marketing. There are many valid points for each avenue. Social Media marketing has taken the content marketing world by storm and it’s all the rage. There are still valid and profitable reasons to keep your email marketing campaigns. Lets take a closer look.

Social Media marketing is growing but still is no where near email marketing. Email marketing is the majority of what online marketers do. Social Media marketing come next. When someone follows you on Twitter or likes a comment or post on Facebook it usually is very general in content. When you run an email marketing campaign you can be more specific and to the point. You are also targeting people who already love your products and services. This way you can market and upsell your clients and customers easier and keep them up to date with your products and services.

Email marketing is a better way to get conversions. The people on your mail list already know you and trust you or else the wouldn’t have given you their email address. Social Media is geared more toward sharing information with friends and engage they way you would at dinner or in the break room at work. It’s more for casual conversation.

Companies and businesses are still spending money on email marketing. In fact recently companies have increased their spending on email marketing by 60% over previous years. This increase has also increased their return by 4000%! That’s an amazing rate of investment. To see a fraction of that success in Social Media it is generally agreed that posts and information needs to be more of an entertainment approach. This is what people on social media outlets are looking for.

When people like Facebook page and see what kind of things page is posting they like to stay on Facebook and not go to other sites. When running ads on Facebook to opt-in lead them to your Facebook fan page and not your home page. When people opt-in for a email campaign they are doing so because they are interested in your products or services. They are already in the mindset of getting commercial content from the start.

When it comes to ads social media now can target the exact kind of prospect that would be perfect for your products and services. Your email list is like an instant source for traffic. They are just a click away from your site and already have interest in what you have to offer.

Both of these methods can work well together. When running ads on social media sites have an opt-in section so you can add people to your email list. When you send out emails to your different campaigns have links to your social media markets. There is no winner when it comes to email marketing or social media marketing. The real winner is you when you combine both marketing plans to work together.

By | December 28, 2014 | Social Media |

SEO vs PPC, Which is better?

When you are starting a website and want to get traffic to your site there are two ways you can do it. Pay for it through online ads – Pay Per Click (PPC) or you can pay for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). When you pay for ad space your website will show up on the very top of the page as well as the side of the page. When you use Search Engine Optimization your site shows up in the “organic” search. The obvious benefit of using PPC is that your site gets exposure from day one. When you optimize your site for the keywords you are targeting it takes a while for your website to climb to the top of the page. Let’s go over the data and see which one is better in the long run.

Search Engine Users Behavior

It doesn’t matter which search engine your customers or clients are using, all search engines work relatively the same. 62% of all users are impatient and only look on the first page of search. Because of this you can see that even if your site is on the top of page 2 more than half of the people searching for you won’t ever see your website. Then only 23% of users will click on links after the first page. Even if people go to the second page, not many are even clicking. You can see that being on the first page is critical to your online success.

The good news is some search engines are easier to rank on than others. You can be on page one on Yahoo and Bing and on page 2 or 3 on Google. It’s important to see where you stand on each search engine platform. 15% of search engine users look on other search engines so if you rank well on Google, but not on Yahoo there is a chance that your users will look on other search engines.

Rate of Investment

So now that we have looked at the behavior of users, let’s look at the ROI. When you are starting a new website every penny counts. Your rate of investment is important to look at. When it comes to SEO vs PPC 40% of SEO campaigns yield returns of 500% while this is only true of 22% of PPC campaigns. So when you invest in an SEO campaign your return is going to be better than just focusing on PPC.

As you can see it is more beneficial to focus on an SEO campaign with high quality keywords than just using PPC. The best strategy would to use a little of both, but still focus more on your SEO. If you are ready to take the plunge and hire an SEO company. Let us know.

By | December 16, 2014 | Blog |

5 Tips to live by when focusing on Online Marketing

When it comes to online marketing there are a lot of ideas of what works and what doesn’t. Some of these strategies do work, others may not. Because search engines keep changing their algorithms some strategies might have once worked, but they don’t work anymore. We have researched and found 5 tried and true strategies to keep in your online marketing portfolio that will give you the most return and won’t become “out of style”.

1. SEO friendly urls. Have all the url’s be search engine friendly. This way it is easier to remember and makes your pages load faster. Here you can even put some of your keywords in your urls.

2. Look at your competitors. Know what your competitors are doing and see what is working and what you can do better. Study your competitors but don’t be a copycat. You want to write articles on your website on hot topics, but make them unique. You don’t just want to copy what others are writing. Take a topic and write about it in your own words. It should be informative and entertaining.

3. Get Backlinks. Backlinks are king. You can post relevant content on blogs and forums with links back to your website. Your content should be linked back to your content or services. Use your link power and link to your home page as well as posts, products or other services that you offer. You can also be a guest blogger on other people’s blog and have them link back to your website.

4. Social Media and Networking. Create a network for your niche. You can do this through blogs, social media groups and online stores. You can share your updates to all your network followers through podcasts, social media avenues, and email marketing. You can also hold giveaways and contests to build your brand. This is a great way to boost your business.

5. Be the Expert. When it comes to your niche write blog posts or social media updates like you are the expert. Focus on your niche and your goals. What do you know and how can you educate those who look up to you. It’s better to have quality posts than quantity posts. Three blogs a week with high quality content is better than having two posts a day with filler content that no one wants to read.

In conclusion, when you follow these five strategies and implement them into your online marketing plan your website will start to rank higher in search engines and in turn your sales or lead conversions will increase. Remember to make your urls friendly, study your competitors for what is working and what isn’t, get links back to your site, create a network using social media, and be the expert for your niche. These five strategies are a must in any online marketing plan.

By | December 9, 2014 | Blog |

Rank your websites SEO and Google ranking

Taking a quick glance at your SEO status on your website may seem like an overwhelming and daunting task but in reality it isn’t hard at all there are a few points to cover to get the big picture. I want to go over some of those you so you have a good idea of how to get the big picture.

First, you need to start with you need to find your Domain Authority. This is a score that is given to every website based on their SEO, back links, and also age. You want to aim for the highest score possible but it is something that takes time. This score will also give you an idea of what you need to do to improve your site.

Second, determine your site load time. If you site takes a long time to download Google is not going to rank you very high. Speed is important. Your site should load in 1-2 seconds to be considered in the “good” range.

Third, sitemaps. You may not thing that having a sitemap on your website is terribly important, however sitemaps show that you are organized and make things easy to find throughout your site. This is important to Google ranking. If you don’t have a sitemap you can add one quickly and easily but remember you must have one.

Fourth, Look for robots.txt. If you have a site with good SEO you will have a robots.txt file with no major disallows. All this means is that if you don’t have a robots.txt file the “Google spiders” are allowed to crawl every page of your site, some of which may not be important to them causing to lower your Google ranking. Make sure your robots.txt file is intact and disallowing the right pages.

Fifth and final tip, Check for H-tags. H-tags are basically just headers but they are tagged (bolded) in such a way that it makes Google and your audience easy to spot the important content. On a good post, and really throughout your website you should not only have H1 tags (most important) but also include H2, H3, and H4 tags.

Now, don’t expect these little test to answer all your SEO questions but it will however give you an idea of where you stand in the SEO world. This is a quick and easy way to find out how your ranking is coming and what you need to do to improve.

By | November 24, 2014 | Blog |