Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

A Simple SEO Checklist

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Free search engine traffic is an amazing thing. It can grow your business by bringing you new subscribers and customers. But the thing is, you have to work at it. And it seems as though the search engines are always changing the “rules” about how they rank sites.

Even so, there are some things you can do that will usually help your search rankings as well as increasing customer engagement and often bringing traffic from sources other than the search engines. If you want to improve your search engine rankings, keep this checklist handy to steadily grow your traffic.

For Your Off-Page SEO

These are things that will affect your search engine rankings from outside of your web page. These are very important for growing the overall popularity of your site and make it easier for you to rank well for your chosen keyword phrases.

  • Create excellent content because it affects the following:
    • How much your content is shared on social media…this provides important clues to search engines about the quality of your content.
    • How long a search engine user stays on your site. If searches on a search engine and finds your site, but clicks back right away, it will tell the search engine that you may not be very relevant for that phrase.
    • How often your content is linked to. If you have good stuff, people will link to it…but beware, search engines can detect quality links, so old self-linking practices are dead.
  • Ways to ensure you’ve got quality engaging content that attracts users and search engines:
    • Each page should be on one unique topic.
    • Your navigation is clear and all your content is easily found by humans and search engines.
    • Use relevant, attention-getting headlines to grab your visitors’ attention and so they know they’re in the right place.
    • Make your content easy to read by using short sentences and paragraphs. Keep your words simple.
    • Break up your copy with subheads and bullet points, so viewers can scan it easily…instead of having them click away.
    • Use images to draw the eye in and tell a story with your content. Humans are visual creatures and photos and other images can help retain their attention, as well as a good site design, as stated at https://www.sandcastle-web.com/.
    • Don’t forget to connect with other website owners in your niche. Friends tend to share the content of others, so this is just a win-win for all of you.

For Your On-Page SEO

In addition to the big overall picture of creating great content that makes its way around the web, there are things you can do on each page you post to your website. Here is a list of some of the things that can affect your rankings, but remember…don’t overdo it. Keep your optimization natural and make sure it makes sense. Otherwise you might alienate both your visitors and the search engines.

  • Make sure your content is at least 300 words long. I usually aim for 500 – 800 words.
  • Conduct keyword research to find a highly targeted phrase that gets decent traffic, but doesn’t have too much competition. Try a tool like WordTracker.com or the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.
  • Use your keyword phrase in the title of your post and in the title tag, but make it sound natural to human website visitors. Don’t repeat the keyword – just use it once.
  • Use your keyword phrase in the description tag for your post. Make sure the description not only includes the keyword phrase, but is interesting enough to make people want to click. Although the description tag probably does not affect how your site ranks, it may be shown in the search results and affect how many people click to visit your site. Make sure it includes your keyword phrase and an accurate description of what is on the page.
  • Incorporate the keyword phrase into the URL of your page. For example: fun-family-vacations.html
  • Add the keyword phrase and other useful description to your images with the use of ALT tags.
  • Employ the use of H2 and H3 tags. They make your content easier to scan and are also a good place to include your keyword phrase and variations of it. The H2 and H3 tags are for headings. They tell both human visitors and search engines that content within the tags is especially important.
  • Include the keyword phrase and variations of it in a few places in the body of your content. Try to include it in the first paragraph.
  • Show you are a hub of useful information and link out to a related page on another website, especially authority sites.

Keep track of your rankings and tweak things as you go along. Just remember, it can take a bit of time before search engines update their listings, so give your changes time to come into effect.

Source: https://web20ranker.com/category/search-engine-optimization-tactics/

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Use Google Analytics to Grow Your Business

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Do you know who visits your website and how they find you? If you aren’t monitoring your website traffic, you are missing out on information you need to grow your business.  There are tools and reports available, many of them free, which provide valuable insight as to who is visiting your website and why. Your webhosting company may have reports available, but I like to use Google Analytics.
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5 Step Google Places Page Optimization

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NOTE: An updated version of this post is available: 3 Steps to Claim and Optimize Google Places for Business Page

This post is from Lauren Bradley of Boston SEO Services.

If you haven’t noticed, Google drastically changed its local search results late in 2010. Prior to the change, when a user would type in “Plumber St. Louis” the results would show 7 listings at the top next to a map.

After the change, the local search results take up the entire first page (for most searches) pushing organic listings way far down.

This change is powerful for small business owners. If you simply type in “shoes” to Google, it will most likely return shoe stores closest to your current location.

Google has made it pretty simple for small business owners to set up and optimize their Google Places pages. These are the pages that help to determine local search rankings. Many local business owners do not want to mess around with setting up and optimizing their Google Places page because 1. they don’t know where to start or 2. don’t have time to set it up.

I have simplified the process as much as possible for these reasons. If you do anything to help build your online presence, complete the following five steps.

Step One: Verify and Claim your Google Places page
Verifying your Places page as the owner of the business is important if you are at all concerned about controlling information about your company that is on the internet. As a verified owner, you can edit and add information to your Places page as you wish.

Verifying it is simple, after finding your Google Places page, there is a link in the top right corner that will either say “Owner verified” or “Business owner?” After clicking on that, you will be walked through the process of claiming your Places page.

Step Two: Consistent NAP
Maintaining a consistent NAP (Name, Address and Phone number) on your Google Places page and across the internet plays a strong role in rankings. Everything on your Places page from the name of your company to the suite of your office needs to be consistent with your website. Saying Suite 210 on one place and then #210 on another is inconsistent. This seems minor, but does play a role.

Step Three: Keyword Optimized Categories
This seems intuitive, however the number of business owners who list their categories incorrectly is a little shocking. If you have already done some keyword research for your company, this is where those words come into play. If you haven’t, you should have a decent understanding of your products, services and how your prospects might be searching for you.

Use those keywords when filling out your categories. As you type in words, Google will make phrase suggestions for you to choose from. I would recommend picking at least two Google suggested phrases of your five categories. It is important to also fill out all 5 categories.

Step Four: Natural & Complete Description
Completing your description is something you should put a few minutes of thought into. If you sell pastries, put a little more thought into your description than just, “Your neighbor pastry shop.”

What’s unique about you? Do you do something different than others?

Google gives you this opportunity to talk yourself up to your prospects. So do it. Don’t stuff it with keywords. This about writing to impress the reader and not the search engine.

Step 5: Collecting Honest & Legitimate Reviews
Word of mouth advertising is the most profitable, powerful and persuasive marketing tactic. Google has set up a review system that allows your current clients to talk about you and your services. Not only does this give your prospects more information about your offerings and personality but Google also uses this as a “voting” system when determining rankings.

Keep in mind that you are not wanting to scam the system or seem at all spammy. It is important to collect legitimate and honest reviews from your clients.

Get Links to Your Website

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An important element in getting your site ranked well with the search engines is to fill it with quality content. How do the search engines judge what is quality content? 

They have a number of proprietary algorithms, and they tend to be secretive about many aspects of how they evaluate sites and determine rankings. However, one thing we know is that having a lot of good links coming in to your site is one factor that can help you to rank well.

You might think of links as “votes” for your site. That’s a simplistic way to look at it, but it is not a bad analogy. When someone likes your site, they link to it. When a lot of sites link to your site, that means a lot of people like it.

The search engines like links to occur because people want to link to your site. They are opposed to things such as “link farms” (massive link exchanges) or paid links that try to game the system. The best links are those that occur naturally. However, it is possible to do things that ethically encourage incoming links.

Some links are more valuable than others. A link from an authority site to yours is worth more than a nofollow link you got by placing a blog comment. Just about any link will have at least some value, though, and you should always be on the lookout for ways to get more links.

Also remember that links have value beyond the search engines. Links may be followed by humans looking for more information about your topic. Posting an article, blog comment or other useful information, along with a link to your site, can lead them directly to you.

When talking about leads, we advise to consider following six ways to generate incoming links to your site:

Publish quality content. Bloggers and other website owners like to link to relevant content. If you write and publish tons of quality content, you’ll receive tons of incoming links.

Write articles for other sites. Writing articles and publishing them on other sites, especially respected sites in your niche, is a great method for getting inbound links.

Guest post on other people’s blogs. Bloggers are always looking for fresh content, and many are open to using guest posts. Approach bloggers in your niche and offer to write guest posts. They get the content, you get links to your site. Subscribe to http://BloggerLinkUp.com to find guest posting opportunities.

Write press releases and submit them to online press release websites. Be sure to include your website link at the end of the press release so media representatives can contact you, but also so you have an incoming link and interested visitors can find your website.

Get reciprocal links. Some reciprocal links are good as long as they’re coming from relevant websites. The trick is to balance reciprocal links with one-way links. Mix up your linking tactics so it looks natural to Google.

Participate in social networking. Posting tweets, and Facebook posts create incoming links to your website. In addition, when you comment on forums and other blog posts you also create incoming links via your signature.

As you’re creating and implementing your search engine optimization strategies, take the time to consider and include these linking tactics. While you may not be able to complete them all at the same time, instead focus on one tactic at a time adding to your SEO strategy as you grow.

Put Your Business on the Map with Google Maps

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Do Google search for a type of local business (e.g., “Houston chiropractor”) and you will see Google Maps listings at the top of the search results. So how can you make sure your business shows up there? It’s easier than you might think and the best part is that it’s free! 

Here is what you need to do to make your business show up in Google Maps local business listings:

Claim your business listing in Google Local Business Center. http://Google.com/lbc You will need to verify that you own the business. Then make sure all of the information listed for your business is correct.

Categorize your business properly. What will people be searching for when they look for a business like yours? You may list up to five categories.

Include your top keywords are in your Google local business listing description. These keywords may include the type of business, top products, services, location, etc.

Provide as many details as possible to make your listing complete. You can include hours, the payment types you accept and more.

Add a coupon to your listing. You may include a printable coupon with your Google Maps listing.  Give customers a special introductory price on their first visit, a percentage discount, or a free bonus with purchase.

Encourage customers to post reviews. People trust peer reviews. If your business has lots of reviews, those reviews provide social proof about your business. A big caution: Never write fake reviews praising your business—when discovered to be phony (and they often are) fake reviews destroy your credibility.

On your website, include the name of your city, surrounding cities and even neighborhoods, if appropriate, along with your keywords. For example, “Landscaping and lawn care services for residents of southwest Houston, Stafford, Sugar Land, Missouri City, and eastern Fort Bend County.” This will help your overall search rankings.

Get links to your website. Links help to build your credibility with the search engines. When you control the appearance of the link, include your location as anchor text. For example, a good anchor text link might be, “Pete’s Pizza serves San Diego’s best pizza,” where San Diego’s best pizza links to your website.

Google Maps provides an excellent way for local customers to discover your business. Optimize your Google Maps listing and your website to get more customers to your website and bring more customers to your local business.