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Search Engine Optimization

For beginners–and even SEO specialists–to SEO, the terms organic traffic, paid traffic, direct traffic can be difficult but they don’t have to be.

What is Organic Traffic?

Organic traffic is the term used to describe visits to a website coming from a search engine’s organic results and not paid ads. According to SEO specialists, organic traffic is vital because it is targeted. Users visiting your website from a search engine’s organic results have a very specific intent and if you can give them a solution or answer to their question, they are more likely to change.

The difference between organic search traffic to paid search traffic is organic traffic is free while paid search traffic is paid for. With paid traffic, you pay the search engine every time an individual clicks on your ad (Pay Per Click) from listings and visits your website.

Individuals typing a query in a search engine have a very specific reason and if you can direct them with a solution or answer to their question, you will possibly gain a new customer, email subscriber or follower.

In addition to the above information, organic traffic is important because it boosts website trust and this has a number of additional benefits.

Users trust Google and websites that rank in the top positions of Google organically are trusted by users. Meaning that it is more likely to convert an organic visitor than a visitor coming from Facebook or other platforms.

Best Ways to Increase Organic Search Traffic

The best way to increase organic traffic and get more visits from search engines is to follow tested white hat SEO practices.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is the guise to follow to optimize your website so that it can gain a higher rank in the search engine result pages (SERPS).

There are more than 255 Google ranking factors but according to SEO specialists, the most important are:

1 – Publish information that users want to read

One of the factors of users using a search engine to look for information is that they have a very specific reason.

Your job is to satisfy their intent by giving them the right kind of information.

To do that you need to do your keyword research and find out which keywords to target with your content.

In order for a page to have any chances of ranking organically in search engines, it has to target a specific keyword or topic.

Pages targeting several keywords or no keywords at all, are lesser to receive any organic traffic.

2 – Include Relevant Keywords

The page title is one of the most critical SEO factors. The title is used by search engines to get an idea of what a page is all about and it is mostly shown in the search results.

The best page title includes search terms users can figure out and is interesting to make users click on it and visit your website.

Optimize your page titles.

3 – Get Links from Other Websites

Backlinks from other relevant websites (that don’t carry the no-follow attribute) act as ‘votes of trust’ and this the organic rankings of a website much better.

In the SEO world, SEO specialists know this as off-page SEO.

4 – Create easy to use websites

Website usability is both a direct and an indirect SEO factor. You need to develop websites that load fast, are mobile-friendly and free of technical SEO errors.

Failure to do so will minimize your chances of getting organic traffic from any search engines.

In today’s market, businesses of all sizes – both large and small – see the benefits of bringing in the skills of a professional digital marketing agency. As specialized marketers who are experienced and targeted on growing business, generating leads, and keeping people coming back for your products and services, they have a big task on their shoulders.

And as the business owner/operator who has decided to hire them, you need to know how to work with them efficiently. Should you just give them free reign to do anything they think is best? And what are they doing, anyhow? You probably don’t want to be involved on a day-to-day basis, but if you do, know how you can be most helpful and not in the way of letting the professionals do their job. Hire the right digital marketing agency, then watch them work their magic.

What Your Digital Marketing Agency Can Do For You

Although agencies vary in what services they provide, it’s common for many online marketing agencies to offer the following services.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) for your website. This includes writing, revising, and redesigning your website for the right keywords that will help clients find you. Keywords should be thoroughly researched, and implemented throughout the site in an organized strategy, according to a specific plan.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing for your company’s most active channels. Whether your plan includes expanding to new social media platforms in the future, a good agency will immediately be able to pick up your current marketing efforts and capitalize on them. This includes researching the best hashtags to use for your posts, strategizing your use of images and video content, and getting your company’s name mentioned in online forums, chatrooms, groups, and even reviewed by bloggers and influencers.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads

Digital advertising, or “pay-per-click” (PPC) advertising, which can include Google ads, Facebook ads,  Instagram ads, and other online advertising. You’ll find, as you look into this, that there is a fine science to finding out where your potential customers are online, and getting the ads for your business strategically in front of them enough that they begin to pay enough attention to become customers. Ads must be designed to be eye catching and relevant, and they must be placed not only on the right platforms but on the right days.

When you’re talking about PPC advertising with a digital marketing agency, make sure you ask them if you can see some examples of their specific strategies and success stories. You want to know, on a granular level, what they’re doing. Then, you can decide if you want to be highly involved in this process or not. No one knows your customers better than you.

Email and Retention Marketing

The best digital marketing agencies will not only look at how to get new leads to your business, but they will be able to help you capture those leads and translate them into dollars spent at your site or at your brick-and-mortar location. Then, what you really want is a digital marketing agency that can help you retain the old customers and keep them coming back again.

One of the most effective ways to do this is through email marketing campaigns, but again, it is a fine science. The emails must be written and designed with the specific lead or customer in mind, and the programming must be in place to get them distributed exactly when the reader needs them. There are a number of services and sophisticated software that a digital marketing agency can use to time this crazy dance of information, and it can be simply one person’s full-time job to keep up with your email marketing campaigns, depending on the size of your company.

Digital Marketing Agency Effort Coordination

Coordinating your efforts with those of your digital marketing agency should be easier when you know the exact points of their strategy. Now that you have more general knowledge about some of the services they can provide, you might be able to see which of those services is most likely to reach your customers. But, you also need to step back and know that they may know some things about the industry, the local or national area, or that specific advertising platform that you don’t. So it’s about bringing the efforts and knowledge of what you can offer together with that of your digital marketing agency. That’s the only way to do what’s truly best for your company.

Your restaurant is superbly set up and decorated. It’s in a nice location. You serve delectable fare. You give good service. But after all the work you put into it, you can’t seem to get new customers walking through your doors.

It may be because they aren’t finding you in the first few pages of online results when they type in “local restaurants.” This is when you need a reliable SEO provider for your restaurant business!

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is a digital marketing aspect that businesses utilize to gain visibility online. In today’s post, we’ll discuss how you SEO can work for your restaurant business and bring you many new patrons.

This is just a primer on what SEO is. Since every business has different needs, circumstances, and specific goals, yours may require a set of SEO strategies different from another.

To learn how to improve your online search ranking, it’s best to consult directly with an SEO provider to discuss your needs and goals.

Tried-and-Tested Restaurant SEO Strategies

There are tried-and-tested SEO fundamentals that will lead you to SEO success. However, achieving success takes time. Don’t listen to any SEO provider who promises you “fast and quick results.”

If you employ short-term tactics to cheat the system, then the success you gain from it may also be fleeting. Eventually, search engines will catch up on these dishonest tactics and may even penalize your website.

Here are the long-term SEO strategies we highly recommend for your restaurant business.

It’s All About the Customers

Whatever industry you’re in, the main focus should always be on the customers – whether they’re potential or existing ones. This fact is especially true for a restaurant business. An experienced SEO provider will always say that it’s an effective strategy to give your clients a pleasant experience. This extends to when they visit your website.

When you create a restaurant website, you’re also creating an experience for your target market. Google and other search engine companies aim to filter through all internet content and give the users the most relevant results to their search queries.

Thus, as you initiate your SEO efforts, go into the mindset that your website should cater to the needs of your customers. Your website exists for your customers, not for Google or any other search engines.

Go Local

Every potential customer is just around the corner. Focus on your local community first; that’s where most of your patrons come from. By catering to target customers in your locale, your local popularity will only grow outwards – drawing more people in.

A restaurant SEO provider will suggest that you should target a smaller niche first. Eventually, you can expand to a broader audience. This is an effective restaurant SEO strategy – rather than casting a wide net initially then discovering you have big holes in it.

Here are the basics of developing a local SEO strategy for your business.

• Determine your restaurant’s geographical reach. Don’t include areas or zip codes that are outside your radius.

• Avoid using generic keyword terms. Use targeted keywords that are specific to your audience.

• Dedicate a location-specific webpage.

If you want to jumpstart your restaurant SEO efforts, we can help you.

What Is Your Brand?

As we mentioned above, search engine companies aim to offer the best, most relevant content to their users. When someone types a query on a search engine, the information they get must be relevant and from a trusted source.

Thus, search engine companies like Google must know that your restaurant branding is trustworthy before it moves you to the top of search results.

How?

SEO is not just an online marketing tactic. It’s part of your overall marketing and branding strategy. The more your brand is known and trusted, the better your online rankings will be. And you can achieve this by first and foremost, offering excellent service. Customers tend to share good (and bad) experiences they’ve had through social media or review sites.

Everyone’s Online

A recent study revealed that over 80 percent of consumers go through online reviews for local businesses before they engage with them. The battle for acquiring good reviews, decorating your place for it to be “Instagrammable,” and engaging with customers on social media are ever present in the restaurant scene.

Thus, apart from offering good service at your physical store, you must provide the same excellent customer experience online.

Okay, that’s it. You’ve launched your business website. It’s out there now, and you’ve got a great digital marketing strategy all laid out in front of you. And it’s probably a good strategy – one that you worked hard on and took several buyer profiles into consideration.

But, as I was recently reminded, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

And one truth of the internet is that it will (metaphorically) punch you in the mouth.

Keep your digital marketing ahead of the game! Are you sure the strategy you’ve got now can’t be improved, even just a little? Here’s our top three tips to improve your digital marketing.  

1. Create Stellar Content

It’s got to be thumb-stopping. Scroll-pausing. The world moves fast, and potential clients give you very little time to capture their attention. Once you’ve got it, you’ll have to keep it, and there’s a few ways you can do that – and then you’ll have to do it repeatedly. The days of people tearing an ad out of a magazine and taking it into the store to buy that specific item are over. You want people to buy it, you might really have to sell it to them.

It can take up to 17 touchpoints before a lead makes a first purchase. It can two years after you start publishing content for your customers to see you as an “expert” or “reliable.” Although the online world moves fast, there’s so much of it that it’s easy to get swept away in a tidal wave, never seeing the fish right under your nose in the first place.

Don’t post images that are dark, out of focus, or low quality. If you’re not sure – ask! Whatever social media platform your business is on, do a little research using hashtags, tags, location, or search terms. Find a local graphic artist or photographer, and – sometimes for a small fee – ask them for a consult to help you determine how to put up the best social media and website images possible.

Make your copy bright, engaging, and with a unique and genuine voice. Whether it’s a blog post, the caption of an image on social media, or a press release, your digital marketing will benefit from an authentic, professionally written tone.

2. Learn What Works

Capture and measure success metrics. Analyze the data. Identify and fix your nonproductive marketing efforts. Adjust your strategy based on what you see works – not what you think might work. Listen to and engage with customers on social media.

A/B Testing

One of the most common and effective ways to find out what people really like is to use A/B testing. This means you send out two slightly different versions of the same email – say, it is the same copy in both versions but uses a different image. Or, all the copy and the image is the same, but the subject line of each is unique. When you can narrow down specifically which elements of your material people respond to best – click on more, open more emails, follow more links, buy more products – then you know how to combine all those elements to put together a superpowered digital marketing campaign.

Change Is Constant

Then, of course, once you’ve got it perfect, be ready to adjust it. People are constantly interested in new and different things. What worked for your audience last year (or even last month or last week!) might not be the best choice for a long-term strategy.

Trending

Do you want to be a trend chaser or a trendsetter? Do you know what your company’s brand sounds like and you want to establish long-term customers who stick with you year after year? Keep these things in mind when you tweak and make adjustments, and don’t chase the highest point of every metric. Realize that having several solid metrics might be a better long-term strategy for your company than having one strong and several weak metric points.

Stay Consistent and Persistent

Like any slow process, digital marketing is not often an overnight success. Oh sure, you can hit on a real winner here and there, but for the most part, you’re looking for strong, steady growth that you can replicate. It’s a snowball effect. So keep your digital marketing snowball rolling down the hill – you will see the results eventually.

You’re building your online presence. Your website seems strong. But you don’t seem to be getting new business from it. People have mentioned that you should hire an “SEO expert”, but you thought, “What can they really do for me? What do they really know that I don’t know or can’t learn?”

It’s true – you can become an SEO expert if you want. It takes time and investment in a number of tools, processes, and newstreams to learn everything there is to know about optimizing a website.

SEO is an amazing skill set, and as a business owner, it helps you to know a thing or two. But unless you want to make web optimization your full-time gig, consider limiting your knowledge. There are already experts out there, and we suggest hiring one who has the experience to handle your business’ site.

When you’re looking to hire the best SEO expert, you can ask the right questions to find out what they know.

First and Foremost: Keywords

SEO experts are experts in language. The right person to build your SEO strategy should fully understand your business, your products and services, and your goals. Keywords will change based on location, target audience, and industry. And a true SEO expert is prepared to handle them all.

Keywords are the basis for all website optimization. You need to use the right words, in the right places and in the right amounts, in order to attract the attention of both the search engine bots and real, human readers.

Researching keywords is essential. There are similar terms that may not result in as high of traffic rates for your website, or there may be closely-related phrases that could make your website rank better. But without the right software and processes to compare and strategize for the most effective SEO layout, your site will never be able to take advantage of these search features.

Second: Site Structure

Google and other search engines like to see websites structured in a certain way for SEO. It won’t help to use high-ranking search terms if multiple pages on your site are competing for rankings for the same term. And it won’t help if there isn’t a cohesive keyword strategy that is reinforced and supported throughout your entire site. You have to make sure that each page connects to appropriate pages in the right places, and that all your site’s links funnel correctly. The stronger a foundation of SEO you have built into your site, the stronger results you’ll see.

Third: SEO Details

Do you know how to optimize your images? What about meta descriptions? Don’t forget to categorize any posts and optimize your blog post categories.

There are a number of small details in site optimization – from how to title your images, to how to write captions and Alt text for those images, to how and where to place mention of your social media accounts. The more of these details your site has optimized, the easier it will be for your site to rank. And an SEO expert who has worked on optimizing many different types of sites will be able to find the small details that will really matter to making your site competitive in your market.

Fourth: SEO Expert Link Building

You may have heard about link building, and even have some idea how to link the pages on your site together. But do you know how to get high-ranking websites to link to your page? Do you know how to create a boost of link building power using Tier-2 and Tier-3 link structures?

These are advanced techniques, and a valuable SEO expert should be able to tell you how they plan to use the high-rankings of other websites to generate more power and traffic to your site.

Lastly: SEO Experts Plan for the Future

Search Engine Optimization changes with every major search engine update. As Google and other search engines develop more sophisticated algorithms to provide people with better search matches, websites have to keep up.

Even if you recently optimized your site – say within the past year or two – it may be time for another update. Working with a true SEO expert can keep you at the top of your game no matter what is going on in the search engine world.   

In today’s digitized world, one of the goals for many business owners is to adapt to modern ways to reach and attract potential new customers as well as retain current ones. This fact is especially true for construction businesses. Thus, many have sought internet marketing firms to help boost their company’s sales.

One of the most effective ways to thrive online – for any business – is to utilize digital marketing strategies, and one of these strategies is search engine optimization (SEO).

Want to transform your construction company’s website into an instrumental tool that helps increase your revenues? In today’s post, we’ll share some invaluable tips to prepare your construction company’s website for the digital world.

For those who are not familiar with SEO, it’s the process of developing web pages to make them more visible in SERPs or search engine results pages. And internet marketing firms would perhaps agree that it’s an essential internet marketing strategy of today.

Going Digital

Everyone has gone digital, and that involves consumers. And we have certainly been enjoying the benefits of it. With entertainment and media companies such as YouTube and Netflix, the chance for traditional advertisements to be seen by people is slowly disappearing.

These days, people are more inclined to connect with brands or companies, where? You guess it: online. In fact, over 6.5 million searches are going on daily all around the world. And 80 percent of these result in a sale or conversion.

Consumers have willfully ignored old-school and traditional advertising schemes. This consumer behavior has negatively impacted the success of ads through traditional mediums: print media, radio, and TV. However, depending on the nature of your industry as well as your target demographic, traditional marketing tactics can still be advantageous.

Still, it’s going to be in your construction company’s best interest if you take the necessary steps to adapt to SEO and digital marketing. From finding the right keywords (keyword research) your website needs to use to how to write it (content marketing) to attract consumers effectively, SEO can be a complex and time-consuming undertaking. Don’t be discouraged! There are many internet marketing firms available to help you. And how do you find them? Through an online search.

How Can Your Construction Company Utilize SEO?

Here are some fundamental tips to help you get started.

Understand Your Target Customer

Any marketing campaign – whether it’s traditional or digital – starts with knowing who your target audience is. However, you need to delve deeper into that. As a business, you’ll need to understand your target customer’s background, interests, etc. And you can obtain these data by conducting a buyer persona exercise, which can give you an insight into your customers that you wouldn’t have thought of – and that would ultimately help boost your revenue. A great deal of research is conducted to perform this exercise successfully. Start with your current customers. Use them as a benchmark as you create your buyer personas.

Secure Your Google and Bing Listings

Google My Business and Bing Places are online avenues you wouldn’t want to ignore. They are critical to SEO, especially for local construction companies. In a separate post, we’ll discuss how to utilize Google My Business and Bing Listings more, so stay tuned for that.

The important thing you need to know is Google My Business is an enormous help for local businesses to be found through a Google search and on Google Maps. It’s a free tool that allows you to manage your listing.

Crawling Your Webpages

This step is going to be handled by internet marketing firms. However, so you can get an idea of what the concept behind web crawling is, we’ll share the basics with you. Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other internet search engine companies use this practice to gather any kinds of information. They view a full webpage then index it. They use tools that can go through each website that can collect as much information they need.

Devising a Content Strategy

This step refers to producing useful and informative content, publishing it on your site, and disseminating it to your audience. People go online to search for information – whether it’s in a general sense or a particular product or service they need. Your website’s content is you attract visitors and retain them.

Therefore, you need a strong and effective content strategy in place. Good internet marketing firms should provide you with a content marketing plan that is suited for your construction business. Since content marketing is a whole separate approach, we’ll tackle more of that in a separate blog post.

In the meantime, please refer to our search engine optimization services. To learn more about how your construction business can succeed online, get in touch with us today.

To secure success for your clinic’s website, search engine optimization is a crucial step. Compared to 20 years ago, the way patients find healthcare providers has completely changed. Nowadays, the search all starts online. In fact, eight out of ten patients do an online search for local clinics before calling and making an appointment. Thus, healthcare facilities should work with an SEO company to help with their online standing.

Your clinic’s online presence will determine the success of your practice. And you’re missing out if you don’t take the necessary steps to make sure that your website is seen by potential patients online. SEO is critical in getting people to visit your site and into your clinic.

In today’s post, we’ll list down helpful search engine optimization tips to implement the best practices on your clinic’s website.

Utilize Video Marketing

A YouTube channel for your clinic is a fantastic way to enhance the content of your site. This method can also add appeal and value to your user experience. As a healthcare provider, the useful information you can provide to potential and current patients is nearly limitless. With an online video channel. Not only will you provide helpful information, but your videos will also be cataloged on YouTube, which can help your online rankings. YouTube is a great way to bring traffic to your website.

Harness the Power of Social Media

Always monitor social media channels and forums specific to the healthcare field. If you see a discussion that is popular and is continually being brought up, make sure to integrate these topics in your website’s blog and main content. This idea is also a great way to conduct keyword research.

Be sure to monitor social media platforms and forums specific to the medical field. If you see a topic of discussion that continually seems to be trending, incorporate this conversation topic in your site’s content and blog. This is an excellent way to do keyword research.

Keeping up to date with these conversational trends on the web will undoubtedly boost your site’s online presence in multiple ways. Talking about a popular topic or answering a trending question will improve your ranking for that particular key phrase.

Additionally, by offering an answer to a question everyone is asking on social platforms, you’re working towards gaining authority in that field. If you’ve hired an SEO company, they may even monitor these trends for you. However, as an owner of a health practice, you should keep an ear out for these conversations as you’ll be more familiar with them than anyone else. Harnessing the power of social media can help you increase your online presence and establish you as a thought leader in the field. 

Don’t Use Huge Images

Uploading big and high-resolution pictures onto your website may drastically slow down your website’s loading speed; and in turn, hurt your SEO efforts. A slow-loading site negatively affects user experience; users don’t like it when they have to wait forever for a website to load. A reputable SEO company will know better than to use big and high-resolution images. 

Make sure that the pictures throughout your site are mobile-friendly (compatible to view in various devices), have the right aspect ratio, have good quality, and have good resolution. A tool called Pingdom will help check all the images on your website to see if any of them are slowing down your loading speed.

Pay Attention to Your Meta Description

It’s a common belief among SEO companies in the digital marketing field not to factor meta descriptions into their SEO efforts. They think that Google doesn’t take meta descriptions into account, so they just throw in some language in the meta description field of their webpage and move on. This is a poor judgment; avoid this mistake for your clinic’s site.

Meta descriptions are essential. It’s the field where you can include a strong call-to-action prompt, enticing readers to click on your site using powerful, persuasive language. Take this excellent opportunity to come up with a creative and original meta description and watch the clicks and site visits roll in.

Final Thoughts

SEO is not just for e-commerce websites (sites that involve buying or selling products online.) SEO can help you attract potential patients searching for local clinics online. They turn to the internet in droves to choose which local clinic to visit. Utilize this opportunity by working with a trusted SEO company. Contact us to know how you can get started.