The Changing SEO Landscape: How To Keep Up With Content Marketing Tactics In 2018 In Order To Rank Your Content High And Ahead Of Your Competitors For Your Target Audience

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a cost-effective, fast-acting strategy for businesses, particularly small businesses. Problem is: SEO is an evolving strategy, which means more than half of the millions of articles you come across on the internet may contain outdated, generic content.

More than 80% of modern shoppers conduct online search, majorly with Google, before making buying decisions. Needless to say, attention to detail in marketing your content, specifically its SEO elements, is imperative to improving online visibility.

Without further ado, we’ve put together a checklist of SEO tactics to help you improve your small business website’s ranking on SERPs (search engine result pages) in the current digital age.

Keyword Research

Whether it was SEO five years ago or SEO today, keyword research remains a timeless first step in this digital strategy. However, the length and format of commonly used keywords in any industry has changed over the past few years.

Choose incorrect keywords, and no matter how trendy your website’s design is, no matter how informative the content, your efforts will go to waste if your target audience never makes it there.

Following are the factors that determine the correctness of SEO keywords:

–       Relevance

The targeted keywords should be extremely relevant to your business’s products/services. It’s simple: the higher the relevance of keywords, the higher the percentage of website leads.

–       Competitiveness

A small business’s SEO strategy involves keywords that comply with ongoing, short-term trends and are not targeted by bigger businesses in their industry.

–       Volume

One of the evolutions of SEO is the move from short to long-tail keywords. For starter, these phrase-like keywords cover more terms that users are likely to search for. Also, the rise of voice-based search means that users conduct online search using complete sentences (“Hey Siri…”).

–       Commercial Intent

The secret to attracting the right traffic at the right time is to make sure that your content catches user attention during the right stage of the buying cycle. Intent is everything; ideally, you want to attract user who have made up their minds to spend money.

Responsive Web Design

Website design is a tad more expensive service than most online businesses, but a one-and-done solution to contribute to the success of your small business SEO strategy.

Why? In addition to keywords, factors such as page load time and bounce rate affect how Google ranks your website on SERPs. In a world where 60% of internet access is primarily mobile, users want your website to be appealing on their smartphone and tablet devices. An expert web development service can provide you with the virtual architectural excellence you need to drive your SEO efforts.

Onsite & Offsite SEO

Onsite SEO is simple enough; it’s the SEO strategies applied to the content on your website, from blog postings to landing pages.

What most marketers ignore when opting for SEO services is their offsite content. We’re talking social media accounts, guest blogs, even customer feedbacks. Facebook alone receives more than 22% of the global internet population, and unlike most social platforms, it’s the one that attracts user attention towards text-based content.

Don’t miss out on this “popular” part of your SEO strategy, otherwise referred to as link building. A professional digital marketing expert such as SearchBerg that offers both social media management services and SEO can enable a smooth flow of traffic between your onsite and offsite content.

Title Tags & Descriptions

20-40 words—that’s how long a typical title description is, and yet a large number of businesses fail to pay attention to creating any.

A title description is specifically formatted to provide users on a search engine page a short description of what they will see when they explore the website. The keywords for your SEO strategy should be present in these descriptions, ideally in the beginning.

Reputation Management

This is a rarely-need but no less important step for small businesses to know about. No, reputation management SEO is not just for failing small businesses. Often, a simple error in content can put your website in an unfavorable light on search engine, a situation you can rectify with reputation management SEO strategy. The idea is to dilute the content that has your business’s name in a negative light with content doing just the opposite.

Google Places Registration

Every aspect of a local SEO strategy is about targeting people within a short radius. We’re talking as minimum as a 5-mile radius, and to make sure you can effectively appear on your customer’s radar, you need to register with Google Places.  This means providing Google with your country, state, city, neighborhood, street address, contact number and even hours of operation.

The next time a consumer uses voice search to ask for “[insert service category] near me”, your business can conveniently pop up on top of the SERP list on their smartphone (right-side of the desktop search engine page), accompanied by an extension to Google Maps location.

Online Reputation Management And SEO: Is There A Link?

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In an age when digital technology has made online communication easier and faster than ever before, creating a positive online image has become an absolute must for businesses.

Regardless of the type of business or industry, business owners must go the extra mile to safeguard their online reputation. Negative customer reviews or bad publicity can cause unimaginable damage to a business.

Simply put, your company’s online reputation can make or break your brand.

Reputation 101

A brand’s online reputation is what customers think of it. Creating a positive image or reputation is crucial for any business. As a matter of fact, it’s the stepping stone toward business growth and success.

Importance of Online Reputation

laptop displaying the term ‘reputation management’ in a corporate setting

 

It can take a business several years to carve a name for itself. Yet, sometimes, all it takes is one angry customer’s review to tarnish the entire reputation of a well-respected brand.

One shouldn’t undermine the significance of good online reputation management. Proper online reputation management can benefit your business in the following ways:

Build Trust, Loyalty, and Expand Your Customer Base

From customers to investors, people trust positive brands with an impeccable online reputation. Most people research a business before investing in their products/services. If they read negative reviews about the company, they’re more likely to move on to the next firm.

Earning customers’ trust and loyalty is an important goal for most businesses. Keep in mind, news spreads fast on the internet. If a customer is disappointed with your products or services, they’re likely to share their experience with their friends and family. As a result, this may hurt your company in the long run. A proper online reputation management plan can help you take control of the situation.

Generate Substantial Returns

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When it comes to revenue, a positive online reputation can increase business sales. Increased sales come from customer trust and satisfaction. On the other hand, a poor online reputation can result in losses.

Good or bad, a company’s online reputation has a significant influence on a potential customer’s decision making and, in turn, the company’s revenue and profits. Therefore, businesses must come up with comprehensive online reputation management strategies.

We’ll go over a few options below.

SEO and Reputation Management

When an online user searches for your brand on Google, the information they see on the first page of search engines influences their purchasing decision. This means that both positive and negative information will be on full display for the customer to review and mull until they reach a decision.

As per research by Edelman Trust Barometer, 64% of people trust online search engines the most when conducting research on a business. This is primarily due to the fact that the Internet has become the number one source of information, including information about businesses.

Information appearing on search engine results can be the differentiator between the success or failure of a brand. If online users see damaging content or negative, false reviews about your business, it’s quite likely that they won’t purchase anything from your company.

SEO for Reputation Management

Search engine optimization is the fix for negative reviews and false information. Leveraging SEO can help you suppress and disavow incorrect URLs, and increase traffic to your website, resulting in more leads, conversions and sales. Statistically speaking, Google controls 77.98% of search engine traffic and that’s what you want to focus on.

A simple Google search can lead to customers having a negative or positive impression of your business. A negative reputation can hurt your business’s search engine ranking. It’s safe to say that online reputation management and SEO are closely connected.

In order to protect your brand’s online reputation, follow these golden rules:

Clean up Your Social Media

two phone screens displaying social media sites

Social networks enable businesses to promote and sell products/services to customers. Customers use their social media accounts to check out products/services and place orders. Simply put, social media is the new marketplace. It helps facilitate communication between businesses and customers.

Whether you run a Facebook or Instagram account for your business, post quality content (blogs, videos, product images, etc.) on a regular basis. As the leading social media platform, Facebook is a gold mine for marketers. Here’s some insight into how you can grow a small business through Facebook.

Your company’s social media profiles should include information that is consistent with your website. This includes information regarding products and services, contact, etc.

Register your business on Google My Business. Additionally, if a customer posts a negative review, refrain from ignoring the issue. Listen to and respond to a customer’s complaint or query immediately. Following these steps will strengthen your company’s reputation and boost your search engine rankings.

Find out more about the right approach to online reviews and testimonials to ensure you receive positive feedback and cultivate a strong online presence.

Quality Content Matters

Improve your brand’s reputation with quality content.

Be it social media or your website, original, insightful, and consistent online content adds value to a business. High-quality content is the key to building customer trust and loyalty, and improving search engine rankings.

Use industry and brand-specific keywords in your content without going overboard. Keywords need to be strategically placed to create a strong brand image. In addition, add Google-friendly links and promotional videos to cultivate a stronger brand presence.

Post Informative and Engaging Blogs

graphic design of an individual working on an engaging and informative blog post

Demonstrate your writing skills by posting insightful blogs about your products and services. You can promote blogs on your website and social profiles. Similarly, you can create guest posts for platforms with a high domain authority to attract quality backlinks and dominate search engines. Blogging can improve your SEO and online reputation.

Disavow/Report False or Incorrect Links

Any negative information about you must be redacted from the Google Index. This entails contacting the domain owner and asking them to remove the derogatory content. In some instances, further steps may be required. Facilitate the process by getting in touch with an experienced SEO agency.

Online reputation management can be a major undertaking that requires the technical know-how and expertise of a professional SEO agency.

At Search Berg, you can count on our reputation management services to deliver guaranteed results! After assessing your company’s online reputation, we will develop an effective reputation management strategy to strengthen the online image, reputation and search ranking of your brand. We also implement post-crisis practices to repair your company’s reputation and prevent long-term damage.

Call 855-444-4777 to discuss your business needs and get started! We also offer expert link building services to help your website climb SERPs and become an authoritative voice in the industry.