According to Hubspot and many of their sources, search engine optimization as a means of driving inbound visitors is just as valuable today as ever.

Below are 3 undeniable statistics that point to Organic SEO being a necessary tool in the overall marketing toolbox for marketers, but more importantly for businesses that have a presence online.

ONE

TWO

70-80% of search engine users are only focusing on the organic results. (MarTech, 2018) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)

THREE

Organic SEO is about 5.66 times better than paid search ads. (New Media Campaigns, 2018) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)

Guide to SEO Must-Haves: Rank Higher & Convert More Customers

Search engines strive to create the best user experience possible, providing the most relevant, useful information based on the user’s search terms. If they didn’t, users would no longer rely on them for information.

This is good news: the more relevant, informative and useful user experience you create, the better the chances that search engines will serve your pages. By practicing good search engine optimization (SEO) habits, you can continually work to increase your search engine results page (SERPs) position. Here are some top SEO practices for SERP success.

On page (your website) SEO practices:

1. Relevant keywords: Using a keyword tool can help determine which words will help attract the most visitors based on popular search terms. Pick the most relevant, popular keywords for your business and try to rank for different keywords on your web page.

2. Short, catchy and original title tags: Title tags describe what your website is all about while attracting the user’s attention enough to (hopefully) click through to your pages. Limit the title tag description to 55 characters so it will display well on SERPs. Keep title tags descriptive yet short and sweet to help crawlers and users determine the relevancy of your page.

3. Keywords at the beginning of page title tags: Google puts more weight on the start of the title tag, so try to keep the keywords at the beginning.

4. Keyword focused meta descriptions: The meta description appears under the title tag on SERPs and gives users a chance to learn more about your company before clicking into your site. Aim for a meta-description length of 150-160 characters.

5. Proper sitemap: Make sure your website’s structure is up-to-date and easy to navigate. The better the site structure, the easier search engine crawlers can find and index pages. Aim for a three-click rule—customers should find what they need on your site in three clicks.

6. Properly structured, SEO-friendly URLs: URLs help crawlers to figure out page topic and relevancy. Creating short URLs with your keyword in it, using “-” instead of “_” between words as well as static words (rather than numbers) will help users and crawlers read URLs faster and easier. Also, try to use sub-directory root domains instead of sub-domains.

7. Link internally with anchor text: Linking internally to your other web pages adds keyword-rich internal links to every page. Internal linking helps search engines crawl and index your site, provides readers with more reading options and improves ranking for some of your keywords.

8. Outbound links: Referencing and linking to reputable (authoritative) sources shows you are a helpful internet information steward that is willing to share pagerank. On the internet, helpful sharing is caring.

9. Website’s loading speed: Search engines do not like slow pages as they know that users will not wait long for a website to load. Strive for lickity-split load times.

10. Really helpful content: Create relevant content on your pages that is easy to read, unique, helpful, fresh and grammatically flawless. Your content should be so helpful and relevant that your target audience will want to stay on your page and others will want to link to it.

Off page SEO practices:

1. Search engine submission: It can take a while for search engines to find and crawl your site. You can help to speed up the process by submitting your website to popular search engines.

2. Local directory submission: Submitting your business listing information to top or niche directories creates more places where users can find you and crawlers can confirm your business information. Be sure to submit NAP (name, address, phone number). And, if possible, website and category. A high percentage of searches are by keyword rather than business name, so strive to use category information wherever possible.

3. Social media marketing: Be present on all relevant social channels and manage your online reputation. Strive to get likes, shares and links by being 80% helpful and 20% promotional.

4. Video marketing: Help users find out about your business by sharing your relevant and helpful videos on sites such as Youtube, Vimeo, etc.

5. Backlink outreach: Earn backlinks by conducting content PR to get others to read your pages and possibly link to you. The more quality backlinks your web page has, the more authority it has, and the more search engines will deem the page as relevant and useful.

6. Forums and communities: Answering questions in forums and communities (and your content, too) can help to build your reputation as an industry expert. This can provide a possible opportunity to include your website or blog link if it is relevant to the answer.

Undeniable Tricks To Help You Manage and Benefit from Negative Reviews

You’ve taken the (necessary) leap to jump feet first into the ocean of digital platforms, competitors, and customers. It is, after all, sink or swim when it comes to owning a business — but are the waters full of sharks? Yes. But it’s full of sharks for all businesses — not just yours.

You’re talking online. Your digital footprint proves that! Your competitors are talking, your customers, and your employees are all throwing in their two cents online.

Do you know how you know?

Simple: reviews. Yup, both positive AND negative. The first trick to managing them isn’t a trick at all, it’s a proven practice — respond, to both positive and negative. This way you’ll be able to better control the conversation — otherwise, especially with negative reviews, the public that is hiding behind a keyboard has the conversational upper hand.

No business owner should want that or let that happen.

So what’s the deal with negative reviews? What are the best practices? Who knows — there’s no definitive rule book. You know what there is, though? Data to back up the following tips and tricks to manage and even benefit from negative reviews.

Believe it or not, the same premise applies to negative review response as it does to positive reviews. How you respond to a negative review impacts not only the reviewer, but all the sets of eyes (and attitudes and customer actions) that come afterward.

Seeing a business handle a particularly challenging review online suggests that the business as a whole is proud of their business, their products, and their services. It also proves, undeniably, that you’re willing to go the extra mile to maintain not only your reputation, but that your brand truly cares about its customers.

4 Proven Steps To Manage Negative Reviews Like a Pro

Make potential clients see the light with these four steps:

• Apologize
• Promote
• Get offline
• Keep it simple

How to respond to negative reviews using the above 4 business-saving tactics

Apologize and sympathize: 
The first step towards fixing a problem is acknowledging that one occurred. Regardless of what happened, a simple apology and sympathy for your customer’s experience goes a long way.

Promote
: So the famous crab cakes weren’t up to par the day this particular customer visited. If they’re what you are known for, why not reiterate that? “Our crab cakes are usually a hit, we’re sorry to hear that they weren’t up to par when you visited!”

Move the conversation offline: 
Don’t open a can of worms. Keep the lid on tight by offering the reviewer the chance to reach out via phone, email or both.

Keep it simple: 
Avoid specifics and don’t ask questions. Those conversations are much better served in a space away from the prying public.

One last pro tip/trick: Leave your business name, location and category out of this. You don’t want your negative reviews showing up in search!

You Reclaimed the Conversation, Now Benefit From It

Being the stellar marketer/business owner that you are, you followed the above 4 steps. And now that you’ve responded and stoped crying yourself to sleep every night because of a negative review/mention, it’s time to use the situation to your advantage.

Awesome, but how?

It’s tempting to creep over to the dark side, but now that the process for turning things around is gaining some momentum, it’s time to do the following:

Understand that negative reviews aren’t the revenue destroyer that you think they are. In fact, less than half of polled consumers say they’d stay away from a business because of a negative review.
Additionally, consumers actually don’t mind a full spectrum of review sentiments. Consumers who have the opportunity to read the good, the bad, and the ugly feel better informed during their decision-making processes.

3 Marketing Wins from What Seemed Like a Marketing Fail

Let’s let Harry Truman chime in (who knew Harry Truman had the insight of a modern digital marketer!?):

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

So, whether you’re a glass is half empty person or a glass is half full person — the perceived set back of a negative review needs to be redefined in your mind:

The facts about what negative reviews can positively do for your business:

• They alert you to problems you weren’t aware of, so you can fix/improve them.
• They give you an opportunity to improve brand sentiment by how and when you respond.
• They can provide a search engine optimization (SEO) bump, since they add legitimacy (and trust and credibility) to your business.

When you have a negative review, it’s better to do what we’ve outlined above — but know that every failure is an opportunity — do you think Thomas Edison didn’t fail thousands of times? Amazon? Apple?

Just like we use data, as marketers, to improve our marketing campaigns, that’s all a negative review is: data for you to either use to your advantage or it’s wasted data that can hurt in the long run if you don’t wield it like a sword to cut through the noise and (instead) send the right signals — to your customers, your potential customers, and the search engines.

And don’t ignore positive reviews. They need love (responses) too! Have you seen our Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Responding to Positive Reviews?

Every website hopes to drive traffic; but not just traffic, the right traffic. But once your audience is on the the site, how do you make the experience worthy of their time? Certainly, a great user experience is important, but that is a broad subject that could be entire series of posts.

For this post, however, let’s look at anchor text and how a site owner can make use of it to make the experience valued; while also lending some of its value to your SEO efforts.

Wait, What Is Anchor Text?

Good question. Quite simply, links on the Internet come in many shapes and sizes. For example, there are images, that when clicked, load a new page or new section of content (sometimes an entire new website). Anchor text, therefore, is the actual text (and words used) in a link that your audience clicks to load new content.

This is an example of anchor text (see the different styling of the words?).

The Dynamics of Anchor Text

Many business owners and marketers tend to miss the boat by sidelining anchor text; however, it is a dynamic element in boosting the brand and company on the Internet as part of the link displayed on the browser for quicker access to another piece of content or another website all together. It is a vibrant factor in the optimal application of on-page and off-page optimization in the SEO marketing approach — but it is also super helpful to the user, when implemented correctly.

The Types of Anchor Text

There are many specific features which anchor text could prove dynamic and vibrant in an online marketing strategy.

• Exact match: A successful online search refers to the exact keyword phrase chosen to match the title of contents in a webpage or site; this would generate a higher ranking for the content piece.
• Partial match: Anchor text that contains part of the keyword phrase selected may find more choices for the preferred information with a moderate ranking.
• Branded: Such anchor text has the brand name included to give a clear focus of the brand and its offerings.
• Generic: The anchor text comprises a general phrase that may not have any targeted keyword identified. This could relate to the general theme of the desired contents which makes it more challenging for website visitors to confirm the success of their search.
• Naked anchor links: This anchor text includes links that direct web visitors to the site using the available URL. This proves a dynamic way to bring in web traffic to the website where deeper online interaction could be fostered with frequent engagements by web users.
• LSI keywords: Such anchor text refers to the synonym(s) of targeted keywords which make it easier for site visitors to find what they want more precisely.

The best anchor text must have relevant features that would have it function as identified to benefit brand building and company growth.

1) Real and Versatile

According to the tough requirements of Google, every section of a website must offer true value to all of its users; this includes links and anchor text which web visitors may click on. Links should be positioned in the right places, in the best format, to ensure that site visitors are able to find them and click easily for further information that would benefit the user.

Good links must provide relevant and up-to-date information that would keep attracting site visitors to the site. Such links must be created without repetitive keywords; where relevant pages would be quickly directed to help website visitors make their favorable decision on the brand or company.

2) Avoid Over-Optimization

Google does not favor excessively optimized anchor text or any keyword-based anchor text that is overused in any page or post. An overwhelming amount of anchor text could result in red flags for Google; it is better to spread anchor text across the site in appropriate proportion and need. This would make the presence of anchor text more natural and relevant to attract the attention of website visitors for better reading and a better experience.

3) Relevant Anchors

It is the objective of top search engines, like Google, to want only the best of online user experience for website visitors at any site they visit. Therefore, it is preferred that anchor text links are placed where appropriate and they should be relevant (to bring more useful information to the site’s visitors).

Non-relevant anchors tend to be avoided or sidelined by search engines, particularly those with irrelevant or out-dated links. Relevant anchor text in any content tends to lend to a better user experience – and the major search engines look for that for your users.

4) Tracking Anchor Texts

The best SEO happens when noticeable attention is placed on actionable anchor text. This involves planning and implementing relevant backlinks that could direct targeted web visitors to the web page. Such links should be updated regularly to avoid website visitors from being directed to outdated content.

5) Good Anchor Distribution

Anchor text needs to be well-distributed on the website to ensure a fair proportion that captures the attention of site visitors, but also adds to the conversation. It can be overwhelming for website visitors to be bombarded with anchor text at every paragraph in every article in every sentence. Over-stuffing of keywords in the content should be avoided to allow visitors a valued experience; for better understanding and consumption of the message.

Can you name someone in your life, over the age of 18, who doesn’t have a mobile device?

With 60% of all online searches carried out on a mobile device, and some sectors (like food and beverage) now reaching 72%, Google now takes the user’s location into consideration when determining search results.

No one needs to tell you that ranking at the top of search results is incredibly important! The question becomes, how do you improve your local search results? One way is with local citations.

What’s a citation?

Simply put, a citation is your business’ information (particularly name, address and phone number (abbreviated as NAP)) in any combination listed accurately (this is super important!) on the web. These listings can occur in a variety of formats such as directories, websites, apps or social platforms; they are a significant contributor to local search results.

The benefit of having your business listed means that search engines will look at a user’s search query and determine the businesses that are local to the individual. Being local to the user means that the search engine is more likely to award the website with a higher ranking on the search results page. Just having your business’s NAP on a website isn’t enough anymore, you’ll want to list your business in other strategic places as well.

Where do I list my business?

The best places to list yourself are websites like Yelp, Facebook and Yellowpages (you may be familiar with them). These pages are highly rated as they tend to be used most often by people searching for businesses. Other directory sites that don’t have the same popularity are still useful but aren’t as valued as the bigger ones. It is best to start with the most valued sites, and branch out from there.

How do I list my business?

It’s super easy to collect the information you need to create a local citation. You just need the following:

1. Name, address and phone number of your business.
2. A link to the homepage of your website.
3. An email address – bonus points for an email that is domain-based. (Ex. You@digitalmarketingbusiness.com)
4. A category that accurately describes your business such as ‘restaurant’ or ‘auto dealer’
5. Links to your social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc…
6. A short description of your business that goes into detail about what it is that you do.

Having this information available will allow your business to be listed accurately and consistently. Search engines love that accuracy and consistency.You’ll want to make sure you’ve listed yourself consistently and correctly because any discrepancy in information can hurt your ranking! If you ever change any of your business information you’ll need to update it as soon as possible in order to keep your search engine rankings up.

The future is mobile and the future is already here. Local search results are more important and competitive every single day. A citation can help you climb the search engine results page and connect your business to nearby customers. So get listed and get found!