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10 Tips To Increase Conversions From SEO Content Writing

Advice from SEO Content Writers

If you are not generating conversions from your content, read on. We have 10 tips that will increase your conversions through compelling SEO content writing. 

How do you make content that converts?

Many bloggers and marketers are looking to increase their web traffic and generate more revenue, but don’t know where to start. This post will provide you with 10 tips on how to create high-performing SEO content that is both engaging for your target audience as well as Google’s bots.

So, let’s dive in!

1. Write for Your Customers’ User Intent

Search engines use algorithms to process queries and show results based on the user’s query. As it turns out, 99% of all search terms fall under 4 different intent categories: informational, navigational, commercial and transactional.

The first step to writing for the right search term is to identify which intent your user is searching for. To test the current state of your product or marketing copy, ask yourself: “which of these intents are my users trying to accomplish with this search?”

Each intent has its own character and language, but they all have one thing in common: they are all about the user. For example, when someone is searching for a specific solution to their problem, this intent is called “informational” – which matches your customer’s language with words such as:

How do I…? What is…? Why should I use…? Which of these is best for me?

When your future buyers type in those questions, write with solutions and evidence so that you can position yourself as a thought leader. As an example, let’s write a search term for a hypothetical app about content writing. If someone were to type in “How do I write a blog?”, the intent is informational. In this case, we are looking for keywords such as: step by step, wow-to, best tools, templates, benefits, tips.

However, if the same person types in “blog writing services”, they are in a commercial intent. This means that they are “shopping around” for solutions. You certainly want your content marketing to position your solutions in front of those users.

The 4 types of user intent for SEO are:

Informational, navigational, commercial and transactional.

The intent of your user’s search is important in determining what your content needs to be. If you are not seeing conversions from your content writing, review your topics.

2. Write a Strong Headline/Subheadline Combination

Your SEO content headlines and subheads should be used to tease the main points. These are SEO copywriting techniques that will make your headings more dynamite for landing pages, engaging customers, and enticing clicks. Make your SEO headlines so intriguing that the customer will want to read more. SEO copywriting is perfect for this, but keep it short and sweet!

For example:

SEO Copywriting Techniques #1

SEO Copywriting Techniques: #2 

By optimizing your headlines will not only increase the readability of your content but will motivate your readers to read until the end and pursue your call to action.

3. Use Mobile User Intent

SEO content marketing needs to consider the particular needs of those who search from mobile devices. They search from their mobile devices, but they will access your page from their desktop, later on, to make a transaction. 

Do people buy more on mobile or desktop?

Regardless of which device consumers use to access the web, units per order—or the average total item count of an order, a new Episerver report finds that consumers still choose desktop as the dominate device to make ecommerce orders, even though smartphones are the majority of web traffic.

In this report, mobile was found to be the main device from which consumers accessed the web, with 50% of all online sessions coming from a smartphone device, 41% from a desktop and only 9% from tablets. Regardless of which device consumers use to access the web, units per order are 24% higher on a desktop than a smartphone and 14% higher on tablets than smartphones, with 3.6 units being purchased on a desktop and 3.3 units and 2.9 units on a tablet and smartphone, respectively.

Optimizing your website for mobile devices can increase conversions by as much as 300%.

4. Inform Customers in a Trustful, Creative, Accurate Way

SEO content marketing is not only about SEO copywriting; it is also about relaying information to consumers through attractive writing that grabs the attention of search engine users.

Writing for SEO is not the same as writing a blog post, an instruction manual or any other type of document. Rather, it requires a combination of the different writing styles in order to reach your target audience and increase your rankings at the same time.

Incorporate relevant and catchy stories so your readers can feel your presence behind your content.

5. Keep your article concise

Keep your article concise (most SEO specialists say that SEO content should be no more than 500 words). Short SEO articles are easier to read, more beneficial for search engine spiders, naturally SEO optimized and users will not get bored.

6. Write your content scannable

Scannable content is when people can read it and understand it quickly. SEO content should not be a one-time read. SEO content should communicate information that people need to know on their first read and in parts they can recognize on a second or third pass. SEO articles with good SEO copywriting are scannable.

A study titled “The F-Shaped Pattern of Reading Online” found that as a reader scans text, they read the sentence above the paragraph first. The reader then moves back down to the previous paragraph or two. This is an F-shape pattern of reading online. SEO content should be SEO designed to follow an SEO F shape design.

7. Integrate “people also asked” into your SEO writing

You should include in your SEO content a list of questions or an article that covers the topic you are targeting, but they don’t need to be identical. This will increase user satisfaction, as they will have more answers to their “people also asked” questions.

Adding questions will give your readers information they can further share on social media.

An example of using the “people also asked” content writing SEO could be as follows:

Pick your best-performing blogs and add content based on what people have asked, paying attention to the questions that they ask when they are ready to buy. For example, instead of content writing SEO, look up for “hire seo content writing”.  The closer you get to those questions asked by people ready to convert, the higher your opportunities.

8. Use schema markups to increase traffic

There are many SEO tips SEO content writers should know, but by far one of the most powerful SEO strategies SEO copywriters can use is schema markups. SEO schema markups are a way for websites to tell search engines that their site has certain features such as location, price, and tagline.

What are these SEO markups?

The SEO markup fields in HTML are typically created using tags such as <h2>, <h3>, <h4> etc. SEO content writers should create headings for different topics and SEO categories under their article and then apply relevant SEO tags to them.

For example, a writer looking to SEO optimize SEO content SEO on SEO copywriting should SEO title SEO with the SEO topic and SEO keyword “how to write SEO content for SEO”:

<h1>How to SEO Write Good SEO Copy</h1>

<h2>Learn how to SEO write content that will rank in Google’s search results.</h2>

Take advantage of markups, especially those who can position your services.

9. Use H1, H2, H3, and H4 correctly

H1 is the heading for SEO content SEO writing that corresponds with SEO keywords.

H2 provides a detailed focus on the topic of the article.

H3 is used to separate topics in SEO content, and it should be placed under relevant sections in the article.

H4 heads provide users keywords while creating user interested formatting for scannable text. 

If your articles have subjects but they are not set up as headlines, this can be an opportunity to optimize them.

10. Avoid random topics. Be specific and build a campaign for a niche

Instead of building content to hit keywords, develop an entire content marketing campaign hyper focused on a target audience.

In Conclusion: SEO content marketing works great!

In general, writing for SEO should not take away the main focus of why you are writing, which is to communicate with humans! And if you want to see more conversions, you need to start writing for those users who are considering to buy what you have to offer, today! 

Accelerate Your Growth With Our SEO Content Services 

We hope you found some value in these 10 tips. However, if SEO content writing still feels like a lot of work and time to produce, book a call with our experts who can take an objective look at your current marketing strategy and provide expert advice on how we could help you improve it. There’s no better way to grow your business than by getting the right mix of quality content that gets shared online!

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How to Know Which Keywords Are the Best for Your Website: Advice That We Think Will Help

How to Know Which Keywords Are the Best for Your Website

When people are thinking about best keywords for their website, they often get confused with all of the conflicting advice out there. There’s a lot more to SEO than just picking the best keywords. In this blog post, we will go over how to find best keywords for your website as well as best practices on how to rank higher in Google search results!

What are keywords and why are they important for SEO?

Keywords are the words that best describe what your website is about. They will be used to help people find your site when they search for a topic related to yours on Google or other search engines (like Bing, Yahoo!, and Ask).

For example, when you are searching for “best social media marketing agency in Austin”, the keyword is only one: “best social media marketing agency in Austin”. If you, on the other hand, search “social media Austin”, that will be the keyword.

Why are keywords important for your website?

Keywords are the best way for people to find your site. They’re important because when they search Google, it will show them the best result that is most relevant to their query.

How to find keywords for SEO? What should you do first?

For best results picking keywords:

– Do some research on what potential customers might be searching for: For example, you might want to take a look at what keywords people are using on Google and other search engines for your business.

– Use Google Search Console to look at your best selling or most popular products to see if there are any keywords that they share. If your website is new and you don’t have enough data on your Google Search Console, you can still pick keywords based on a competitor analysis (no worries, keep reading, we’ll explain what this means!).

– Use Google’s Keyword Tool and other tools like it to find best keywords related to the information on your website. These will be words that best describe what your site is about and most importantly, the questions that your future buyers are asking.

– Look at the keywords that are already ranking highly on Google for content similar to yours: This will give you a good idea of how competitive it is, but also show you which words might be best associated with your website.

What should I do next?  Best practices for optimizing keyword usage.

Once you know about 10-20 fundamental keywords that will take your future buyers to find your site, you’ll use those keywords and variations to create your content.

– Use best keywords in titles, headlines, and content: Titles are the first thing searchers see on Google’s search results page. Putting your best keyword at the beginning of the title will help you rank higher. It also helps to use it in a headline and throughout your long form content as well when relevant!

– Try using your main keywords in your URL:

Example: If you are creating a page for your fitness coaching services, your URL will have www.websitename/fitness-coaching-city.

– Use keywords throughout the content of your website, not just at the beginning or end and make sure they are naturally part of what you’re saying: It’s important to use them where it makes sense to, not just where it’s best for SEO.

– Use keywords in your meta description: This is the short piece of text that pops up when you do a Google search about your topic and it will also show up on other sites like Facebook or Twitter. The best way to optimize them is by picking one or two best keywords from your best content and using them in your meta description.

– Use keywords when posting on social media:

Content you post to Facebook, Twitter, or other sites like these will often show up on Google’s page as well for people searching the same topics that they’re interested in. If possible use best keywords followed by a short sentence about what you’re posting about, for best results.

– Add keywords to your backlinks: One way that people sometimes try to hack the system and rank higher in Google is by getting their link on another site where they show up highly ranked already (like a best website directory). These are called “backlinks”. It’s important not only to add best keywords, but to do so naturally and not make it look like you’re trying too hard.

– Make sure best keywords are in the title tags: If your website uses HTML code that’s visible on a web page then best keyword should be at the beginning of each relevant line, before any other text is displayed. This will help your best keywords show up on the top of your page.

Read next: Local SEO Made Simple: Strategies That Work in 2021

How many keywords do you need for SEO?

The number of keywords will depend on the content that you are trying to ranking for. The more competitive the topic, the more keywords and keyword variations you’ll need.

You can have a high converting page with a handful of keywords. The number of keywords doesn’t matter. What matters is that the website page fulfills the user intent.

For this reason, we recommend taking a page by page approach.

SEO Competitor Analysis

SEO competitor analysis is an important step to SEO. It will help you choose what keywords to focus on and which ones to ignore.

What’s in a competitor analysis?

– The best keyword rankings for your competitors: This will give you a good idea of how competitive the topic is, and which words are best associated with it so far.

– Best pages to compete against using best keywords: Once you know what’s ranking well on Google in terms of content similar to yours, you can decide which best keywords to use and target.

– Best pages that rank well with best keyword variations:  This is really important if you’re targeting a competitive term like “best marketing agency”. The best way to do this would be by using best SEO tools or best social media marketing agencies in Austin as your best keywords.

– Best keyword searches:  If you’re targeting a specific best word it might be helpful to know what people are searching for when they enter the term in Google. This list will show that information as well and help give you an idea of how many keywords or variations there are on your topic.

It’s important to take these SEO recommendations into account on a page-by-page basis.

Take Your Online Presence To The Next Level

If you’re looking to take your site to the next level, it may be time for a full SEO audit. You can definitely do some self-auditing with tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush, but they are far from foolproof. The best way we know of is by tapping into an expert who knows how search engines work. We have been in the online marketing business since 2008 and pride ourselves on being the go-to experts when it comes to website optimization. Schedule a visit today so that one of our team members can review your site during a free consultation session – no strings attached!

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The 7 Key Local SEO Strategies To Improve Google My Business Rankings In 2019

If you’re wondering why your business isn’t bringing in new customers, look no further than your ranking on Google. It can be overwhelming with all the information on the Internet about ranking higher and optimizing your site so your customers can find you. From content creation, SEO (search engine optimization), backlinking, the list of ways to rank higher can feel endless and exhausting. 

As a business owner, you want to succeed, right? 

No one goes into business wanting to fail. It’s important to understand what percentage of small businesses fail–because many do actually succeed. You need to know the facts rather than listening to anyone out there trying to put fear in your mind and convince you to walk away from your dreams.

What Percentage of Small Businesses Fail? The most recent stats from Fundera show:

20% of small businesses fail in their first year

30% of small businesses fail in their second year

50% of small businesses fail after five years in business. 

Before you throw in the towel, you have to remember that many of the reasons why small businesses fail are in your control. For example, ineffective marketing is one of the top reasons why your business may not be getting the attention it needs in order to grow and prosper.

Your marketing is something that you have power over. 

If you don’t really understand HOW to market or WHO you’re marketing to, we’re here to help you. 

Google My Business: How It Works

According to Google, 50% of all the mobile consumers who search for a local business in a day visit it as well. Furthermore, 18% of them end up making a purchase.

GMB is a free tool that lets you manage how your business appears on Google Search and Maps. That includes adding your business name, location, and hours; monitoring and replying to customer reviews; adding photos; learning where and how people are searching for you, and more.

If you’re just getting started with local SEO, your Google My Business listing is a great place to focus your early efforts. After all, when people search for a product or service near them, they’re usually very close to making a purchase — one in two people who conduct a local search (think “watch repair near me”) visit a store that day. So it’s important the information about your business that shows up when people search Google is as accurate, complete, and optimized as possible.

Consider reading: 8 Strategies To Leverage Google Local Guides For SEO (After Google Plus Massive Fail).

Imagine that your exact customer or client has been searching endlessly for a specific product or service. Your business happens to be the solution. And just when they want to give up on trying to figure out which phrases to use to get the answer to their question on Google, YOUR business shows up first in their search results. 

How Does Your GMB Listing Looks Like In Local Results?

Your primary listing at Google that is editable in the GMB dashboard and publicly accessible at 3 locations:

Google Search (knowledge panel) 

Google Maps

Local Finder

Small businesses readily rely on consumers in their own backyards, as opposed to a national audience, to keep their doors open. So what are you doing to ensure everyone in a 25 mile radius knows you exist? If you’re not showing up in “near me” searches you’re likely missing out on a bevy of business and frankly, we’re not happy about it.

When people search using Chrome on their smartphones with an “emoji + near me,” you might be surprised by what they find:

How to optimize your Google My Business listing

You got it! Google knew that I was looking for a great burger joint around my home! 

This is the power of local SEO, also referred to as local search engine marketing. Google has revamped its tools to help local business owners show up effectively to promote and market their businesses online.

What is a “Near Me” Search?

Grab your phone and type in “running store” and you’ll see that Google tries to fill in the rest of the search with “near me”. They figure, whatever you’re searching for you’ll be happier with your search results if it suggests stores that aren’t clear across town from your current locale. Makes sense, right?

Why Should I Worry About Showing Up in “Near Me” Searches?

Think with Google recently reported that “76% of people who search for something nearby on their smartphone visit a related business within a day and 28% of those searches result in a purchase.” There’s also been a 500% increase in “near me” mobile searches that contain some variation of “can I buy” or “to buy” over the last two years. Source: Think With Google.  That’s pretty impressive.

If Google knows your business’ location and the user’s search query is requesting for nearby business’ this is precisely why you absolutely need to invest in local SEO marketing alongside standard SEO.

How To Rank Your Local Business In Google? 7 Strategies To Win Your Local Search Rankings 

There are specific strategies that you as a small business owner can implement after reading this article to start showing up in your Google local listings. 

Number One: Keyword Search (The Magic Starts There!) 

Before you put together your list of targeted keywords, you have to identify who your customers are and what they’re searching for online. After you’ve identified the personal traits of your customers, think about the ways in which they are searching for what you have to offer. This strategy will work when you carve out the time to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. 

You’ll also want to analyze your competitor’s winning keywords. Why? Because the whole point of SEO is to outrank your competitor’s search results. Once again, take the time to identify your competitors and how they rank for the keywords you’re targeting. 

A very simple way to verify your competitors ranking? Use your mobile and search for their services. Let’s say you have a cleaning business. Type “cleaning business near me” and see what comes up! By studying your local competitors using Google search, you will be able to have insights for your local SEO plan for your website.

It’s relatively easy to identify target keywords that will drive traffic to your Google My Business Listing. The key here is to identify the right keywords that will drive the right traffic to your business. There are many popular keywords tools to help with the local keyword search. We highly recommend semRUSH to create your local business keyword plan. 

Pro tip: If you own multiple locations, you can create a keyword plan considering local seo for each location. 

Number Two: Your Services Pages | Product Description Pages

When it comes to your products and services. Don’t be shy! This is an opportunity for your business to stand out using keywords that your target audience is typing into Google. You want your services to shine and be at the top of the query list.

A few things to keep in mind when writing out your services and product pages.

✔️ Focus on the benefits, not simply the features. You want to speak to the results that your customer is going to gain by working with your business. For instance, as a result of your services, will your customers save more money? Make more money? Get more leads? Then spell it out! 

✔️ Create rich, meaningful copy that speaks to your customers. Don’t be stingy with your words. Write detailed information about your services, the benefits, and how your customer can learn more. Remember, skimpy copy = no sale.

✔️ Make sure your website is mobile friendly.

Pro tip: Use your Google My Business Listing to share your products and services. 

Number Three: Frequently Asked Questions Page 

Many small businesses do not take the time to carefully map out their FAQ page. They think it’s a waste of time. However, FAQ content can provide answers to pertinent questions that your customers may have. It’s yet another opportunity to include SEO specific content, thereby increasing your ranking on Google.

Companies like Twitter, YouTube, McDonald’s all have very clean, simple FAQ pages that answer customers’ most commonly asked questions 

Think about it this way. A new customer is always going to have questions. Your FAQ page is a primary way to remove any barriers (lack of knowledge) that will prevent your customers from doing business with you. The page needs to be easy to read. 

When writing your content, remember to keep in mind that not everyone reads at the same level. This is where the Readability Score comes into play.

Factors such as sentence length, scalability, vocabulary, passive vs. active voice are all things that will either guide your customer to make a decision to work with you, or not.

Pro tip: Readability Score is a reliable plugin that you can use to check to determine what level a reader needs to be to understand your content. 

Number Four:  Videos 

Let’s say you’ve already spent a ton of money on strategizing, producing, and editing videos but it just isn’t getting ranked. What’s going on? 

Video SEO is not the same as standard SEO. If you want your videos to rank higher up the SERP (search engine results page) there are key factors to consider such as: 

  • ✔️Transcribing your video script
  • ✔️Making shorter videos 
  • ✔️Optimizing all video metadata such as titles, subtitles, description, and keywords
  • ✔️Creating high-quality thumbnails

Essentially, if you’ve invested time in producing videos for your business, optimize everything related to it as you would with your content on your website. 

Pro tip: use Google Local Guides to share photos and videos! You will activate the power of Google Maps! 

Number Five: Tags and Meta 

Meta tags are small pieces of text that describe a page’s content. The meta tags don’t appear on the page itself, but only in the page’s HTML. Meta tags make it easier for search engines to determine what your content is about, whether it’s relevant and rank it accordingly. Unfortunately, this is where most people fail in the Google local SEO.

Your Google My Business description is a great place to add your tags and meta.

What not to do?

If you’re promoting your pizza restaurant, it’s not like you will be able to write “best pizza in Austin pizza near me best deals to buy pizza order pizza 24 hrs coupons pizza”.   That will be keyword stuffing and will be completely opposite of the results you want!

Make sure you follow the guidelines. 

Business description guidelines (Google is telling you what to do!)

Published content should highlight what makes your business unique. You can use this field to provide useful information on services and products offered, as well as the mission and history of your business. 

This is your opportunity to stand out from the crowd! Don’t take it casually. Hire a copywriter if you need to.

More advice from Google: 

You should be upfront and honest about the information provided, focusing on content that is relevant and useful to your customers to understand your business. 

Content that’s irrelevant to your business or has no clear association with it isn’t allowed. Refer to our overall guidelines for representing your business on Google.

Content published in this field should not:

  • ✔️Be misleading to users. Do not provide inaccurate or false information about your business or the services and products offered.
  • ✔️Display low-quality, irrelevant, or distracting content. For example, misspellings, gimmicky character use, gibberish, etc. 
  • ✔️Focus on special promotions, prices, and offer sale. Examples of content not allowed include, “Everything on sale, -50%” and “Best bagels in town for $5!”
  • ✔️Display links. No links of any type are allowed.
  • ✔️Display offensive or inappropriate content:

The best way to highlight the importance of meta tags is to highlight the Google search process. 

When you search on Google you’ll be shown many results. But how do you pick? You pick based on the preview. The preview is written, not from your web page but from your meta description. This is a fundamental aspect of the optimization process. Always think about how can best promote your content so that people feel excited and curious to read it.

Number Six: Optimize Your Google Maps Search With Citations

A citation is simply a record of your NAP, which is your business name, address, and phone #, and in some instances your website URL as well.

Google uses citations as a way to validate your business location.  Think of citations as the equivalent of backlinks in organic SEO strategy.

The more authoritative and relevant the citation sources are to your business, the more punch that will give you in boosting your Google Maps rankings.

I also recommend going granular with your citations.

This means finding websites and directories that are either specific to your metro area or targeted to your specific business category.

For example, if I’m a divorce attorney in Austin, then publishing your law firm’s NAP on sources specific to metro Austin and divorce lawyers would help increase the relevance factor and improve your overall location authority.

And the more location authority you have in your business category, the higher you’ll rank in Google Maps.

How do you build location authority?

We think of location authority as synonymous to domain authority.

Domain authority is your ranking power in Google organic search results.

Whereas location authority is your ranking power in Google Maps or Google local search results.

Domain authority is built by doing things like acquiring high-quality backlinks to your domain name or key landing pages within your website.

Location authority is built by distributing your local business data – sometimes referred to as your NAP (business name, address, phone #, and website URL) or your location business citation – across the most authoritative local business directories and resources relative to your business category.

In other words, citation distribution is to location authority as backlinks are to domain authority.

If you want to rank higher in organic search results, you need to build more domain authority.

If you want to rank higher in Google Maps or Google local search results, you need to build more location authority.

Number Seven: Include City Pages in Your Main Navigation

City pages should be incorporated into your site’s navigational structure. For example, create an “Areas we serve” link in the main navigation on your homepage. Or in the “Contact Us” link, include sub-pages to each location.

What is a City Page? 😧

In simple terms, it’s all about opening a page inside your website with /city/.  City pages have been a common strategy to improve local SEO rankings. However, there’s a catch! Your page format! Vital Storm has a great template to format city pages!  It might be advanced but some of you, but here it is! 

Title Tag: keep under 60 characters; give every city page a unique title.

Meta Description: keep under 160 characters, write to encourage someone to click, and do NOT keyword stuff, but do try to use the keyword/city once in logical sentence.

Page Name: example.com/city/

Menu Title: [City]

Title Tag: [Main Service] (Ex: Air Conditioner Repair) + (in/for) [City, State] | [Company Name]

Meta Description: Since [year], [Company] has provided prompt and professional [service] to [City] area residents and business owners.

H1/H2: [City] [Service] (Ex: Expert New York Air Conditioner Repair)

Integrate city pages into your navigation

Integrate city pages into the website’s navigation (service area drop-down, footer navigation, somewhere).

Consider using call tracking and contact form tracking for each city page to help gauge their effectiveness. Consider adding city-specific coupons or special offers.

Do You Think You Need a Google Local SEO Expert? 

I get it. This is a lot to wrap your head around. SEO isn’t something that you’re supposed to know when you start a business. It may seem like a lot of work and headache for you, but for us, this is our zone of GENIUS and JOY.

In 45 days, you would be surprised at the results your business will achieve by working with our company. I help business owners just like you who are driven, passionate, and want to provide solutions to their customers.

It may seem like a far reach to rank #1 in Google. We can make it happen together. I would first need to audit your online presence and evaluate your current ranking, and then, set a clear SEO strategy in place.

Request a Free Assessment and let me see what you can’t see! 

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10 Amazing Tools We Use To Activate Your SEO

SEO marketing is in high demand. There is a good chance you heard about it and have been searching for SEO definition, SEO agencies near you, etc. You’ve found me, so I want to honor your time and explain our journey with this amazing marketing strategy called Search Engine Optimization.

I’m in Austin and I’m a forensic marketer. So technically, I can say I run an Austin SEO Agency, but the name won’t be fair. So let’s say I’m not an agency. I’m a consultant, mentor, and lead a team of amazing marketers, on a project-based, to get my clients the success they deserve. That has been the best way for me to avoid paying outrageous overhead and making marketing for small business owners.

We’re Not A Traditional SEO Agency

Many SEO agencies and firms will outsource their work (your website) to third-party providers, mostly in India, at a cheap rate to do subpar optimization. We don’t.

I work with clients that have sensitive compliance requirements and I like to give my client full access to everything I do on their behalf.

You probably have heard horror SEO stories! I’ve heard them too (and see them). A client of mine hired an agency overseas for their SEO work. Months later, they started to get spam emails (hundreds) and hundreds of comments on their Facebook business page that were very inappropriate. Guess why that happened?

When I checked their traffic, I showed them that their website had been shared in sites with restrictive content. And let me tell you one more detail about this client. They were plastic surgeons so their images had sensitive content.  Use your imagination and guess where their website had been shared. Did you guess?

Your SEO marketing goal isn’t just about driving website traffic.  My plastic surgeon client was seeing growth. But, what kind of growth? This is why I like to clarify how lead my SEO marketing projects.

Special note: if you talk to “the best SEO agency” you should ask them to explain the process they use.  

So What Is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Anyway?

Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine. SEO refers to the improvement of unpaid results and excludes the purchase of paid placement. You want this!

Let’s say you are a Divorce Attorney. One of the free SEO tools is Google search! When you type in Google “causes for divorce in Texas” notice that Google gives you suggestions. Those suggestions are called “long tail keywords” based on the questions people are asking.

How Much SEO Do You Need?

Most clients we help don’t know anything about their rank.

I’ve seen established businesses that, sadly, only have a few keywords and, therefore, don’t have any website traffic coming from Google search or any other search engines.

On the other side, I’ve seen businesses that were having success and all the sudden, their Google analytics show no traffic.

Generally speaking, every business needs to be improving search results, to make sure that they stay in business. Google Search Console is a great place to learn about your website traffic.

 

 

My Personal SEO Chaos (Don’t Make The Same Mistakes)

I’ve been in the digital marketing space for over a decade and recently my website traffic fell through the cracks. Not only we lost all the work that at some point we had 1 million hits from it, but we needed to migrate our website with over 100 pages. Painful.

Why did it happen? There was an error on the tagging codes and that created several broken links.

Every website experiences a few broken links now and then, and a few may not destroy your website’s life, but, when all your “tag” pages are landing at the error page, you’re in trouble. In case you’re not familiar with taxonomies and what a “tag” page is, you can learn more about it here.

Google is all about providing a user-friendly experience, which includes protecting users against websites with broken links.

Broken links are not the only factor that can affect your SEO.

  • ✔️Tags
  • ✔️Description of your content “meta description”
  • ✔️Post type
  • ✔️Duplicate content (cannibalization)
  • ✔️Speed
  • ✔️Readability
  • ✔️Headlines
  • ✔️And many other factors!

After I went through that nightmare I promised myself to always pay attention to Google Analytics. Now I’m there almost daily.

My before and after! From a 100% bounce rate to 35% in 3 months.

A big shout out to the amazing Julia McCoy from Expresswriters.com. I’ve learned so much from Julia. Please follow her and take her courses. She’s amazing! I recommend starting with her Write Blog.

A Poor Website Is A Poor Reflection Of Your Business (And Not Having One, Too)

Remember when websites were like a collage of links?  I’ve done thousands of digital strategy assessments and the main focus is the website. Without a powerful website, there’s no point of building a social media channel. I mean, you could, but people will take you more serious if you have a professional website.

If improving your website appearance and visibility is your goal, you’re not alone.

Social media, websites, email, SEO, videos, and content are the most popular digital marketing channels and tactics with small businesses, according to recent research from The Manifest.

The report was based on data from a survey of 529 people who own or work for small businesses in the United States.

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents say their business engages in social media marketing; the same proportion also use a website to market their firm.

Some 57% of small businesses engage in email marketing, 49% in SEO, 34% in video marketing, and 32% in other types of content marketing.

 

Image result for top marketing channels for small business owners

As a forensic digital marketing strategist, I recommend to integrate your online marketing efforts with SEO. Trust me, it’s not that complicated.

There Are 3 Main Types Of Seo That An Seo Strategist Can Focus On:

Image result for off page seo vs on page seo

On-page SEO: This SEO focuses on the content that’s “on the page,” and how to optimize that content to help boost the website’s ranking for specific keywords.

Off-page SEO: This SEO focuses on the links that are directing to the website from elsewhere on the internet. The number of “backlinks,” and the publishers carrying those links, that link to your website helps you build trust in the eyes of a search engine. This causes your website to rank higher as a result.

Technical SEO: This SEO focuses on a website’s architecture, examining the backend of that website to see how each webpage is “technically” set up. Google cares as much about the code of a website as it does its content, making this specialty quite important to a website’s search engine ranking.

SEO Services We Provide

Like I mentioned in the beginning, I’m not a traditional SEO agency. I’m a consultant and a digital marketing nerd. All the work you see (except for correcting my grammar because I speak English with a Spanish accent and I’m bilingual) is my work.

I lead a team of SEO experts who can do the ninja work. But, before talking with the team, I create your digital marketing strategy, integrating SEO and social media marketing. The main deliverable of my strategy session is a Visibility Method. A blueprint that allows business owners to have a plan to market their business the right way.

Overview of the SEO tools we use

 

1- Keyword Magic Tool

We use paid keyword research tools, because it’s just a premium service we do for our clients. There are free SEO tools, but they are more like a one-time use. Having a list of keywords that feeds you opportunities it’s gold.

2- Keyword Planner

Google has a keyword planner, but the one I use it’s 100% for SEO, so it integrates with other SEO tools (and PPC too). Plus I have even more data – all in one place, which makes it easy for us to scale.

It takes me a few hours to work on a strategy and send you a keyword planner. This is great if you’re creating, for example, a sales page, or a course.

We start with a list of 100 keywords and draft content to target those, 25 keywords at a time. It takes about 2 months to index 50 words.

Our SEO system monitors performance and gives us alerts of opportunities.

3- Content Marketing Analysis

I see marketing from a holistic perspective, instead of tactical. Gone are the days of claiming “the secret to get clients from a funnel”. Consumers are educated and they rather do their research before making a commitment. Especially when it comes to hiring a professional at a high price value.

What is Content Marketing?

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as a strategic marketing approach focused on the creation and distribution of content that is relevant, consistent, and valuable, which is aimed at both attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience, and ultimately driving profitable customer action.

The keywords are “valuable,” “relevant,” and “consistent.”

Content marketing isn’t a tactic you do once and it’s done. Instead, it’s a process that requires a strategy and a series of repeatable steps to build results over time.

The content you create – whether for blogs, social media, etc. – needs to have relevance, value, and consistency to win readers.

Why Most Marketers Prefer Content Marketing?

Another great thing about content marketing is that people prefer it over paid advertising.

A study from WP Engine found that 66% of consumers preferred to read content directly from their favorite brands. In contrast, one in five people use ad blockers all the time, every day, according to a Kantar Media study.

Ads are annoying. Content is useful.

First Steps To A Successful Content Marketing Strategy

We are here to learn about SEO so I won’t get too technical about content marketing. Most of my clients understand their duty to create amazing content. However, they don’t know if their ideas are amazing enough and they don’t have access to professional marketing tools.  

Hubspot has a blog idea generator that brings many creative options. I use it sometimes, when I’m trying to get inspiration for captions or headlines. But for my SEO projects, our SEO software comes with their own idea generator tool.

The bottom line: we do our social media management using SEO practices, so you share content that actually adds value to your community. It’s the key to stand out from the crowd.

4- SEO Writing Assistant

The SEO writing assistant is honestly my favorite. I know exactly what I need to say to rank the article, while I’m writing. For example, to write this article, my target keyword amount was 1,958. This means that I need to write over that number if I want to have a shot to get visible. I also need to keep a readability score under 62 so this helps me to use plain language (great because I could get technical). Then the writing assistant uses the keywords suggested by the writing templates and adds suggestions and examples.

For those who are writers, having this framework will help tremendously.

What If You’re Not A Writer?

You can outsource that to us! I have access to amazing writers with amazing writing packages that will make your life very easy! A professional blog post can be less than a $100.

Need me to produce great content for you? Schedule a call with me to discuss your writing needs.

Need me to produce great content for you? Schedule a call with me to discuss your writing needs.

 

5- Marketing Calendar

The tools discussed above have been more related to content marketing using SEO best practices. Our SEO project will have on-page SEO and this means optimizing (SEOing) your content that has been published already.

We take those SEO tasks with the ideas to produce in the future and create a calendar with the actionable steps.

 

6- On Page SEO Tracker

Like I mentioned above, on-Page SEO means optimizing (SEOing) your content that has been published already. In some cases, we get clients who consult us before building their website (this is a great idea) so they don’t waste time.

Our software has a tracker and makes the on-page SEO work doable. It can even be combined with Trello.

You’re probably wondering who does this work?  It depends. I don’t have a one-size-fits-all. Typically, big organizations have a marketing team that can handle this work. Once I share the findings and filter them (not all the findings are relevant), their team execute.

If they don’t have a marketing team, we filter the actionable steps and create a project. I have SEO experts on my team who can execute these “monkey work”.  I call this “monkey work” because it’s not high-level strategy. It’s more about meta tags, fixing headlines, paragraphs, etc.

So that’s pretty much the foundation of SEO. Obviously, it’s not a one-step deal. It requires love and care! So let’s discuss how does this look.

7- Organic Traffic Insights

Monitor your traffic and look for trends and opportunities. This is for sure high-level strategy. Typically my clients like me to “call the shots”. And I have to say, I’m very assertive in predicting the readers behavior.

8- Lead Generation Optimizer

Once we have healthy keywords and healthy traffic it’s time for a change! What? Starting again?

Yes.

Your website traffic will be analyzed using complex tools to decode your path to turn your web visitors into clients. I’m at that level with 2 organizations and it is amazing. I must confess, I’m jealous! I wish I had taken SEO more seriously before! Don’t you?

At lead generation optimization means landing pages and call to actions. But for now, don’t worry about it! Let’s concentrate on the fundamentals!

9- Social Media Strategy And Implementation

You probably thought that I’m a social media manager, ha!

No.

It’s way more than that.

I hope you can see it! It’s more of a big-picture strategy. It’s like me going for a trial, without having to deal with the judicial system! It’s heaven to me!  Digesting the facts, formulating a theory to present my winning formula, and winning!

We have an amazing team of marketing experts who can take care of your social marketing heavy lifting.

10- Accountability

I won’t be surprised if by now you’re overwhelmed just by reading this. I don’t blame you. Here is the reality: leave this work in the hands of people who truly LOVE doing this nerdy work. Lead your marketing activities like a CEO, instead of doing everything yourself.

I do all of this myself because this is therapy (and I don’t watch tv!).

Image result for accountability

What results can you expect?

The graphic below is my website- after the massive fail. I needed to start ALL OVER. Look how we are quickly moving up, all with relevant keywords to attract the right traffic.  For some industries, 400 keywords are ok to win their competitors. My industry is highly competitive, so I need to work a bit more strategically.

Notice how:

  • ✔️ SEO has a compound effect. It means that once you dominate a set of keywords and take the next set of keywords, all the traffic gets combined and this creates momentum, unlike other online marketing methods that, if you stop them, they stop working. For example, Google Ads or Facebook Ads. If I stop the ad, then the traffic stops.
  • ✔️ SEO, in my opinion, it’s like creating a passive income, by having a sales force called “Google searches” working for you, driving people your way.

How do we get things done:

Onboarding

  • ✔️Once you’re an active client, we schedule your VIP Session. This is a 4-hr session and can be done in a day or in 2 separate meetings.
  • ✔️We get familiar with your business model and draft a strategy to grow your business.
  • ✔️We use several tools to help our clients to have a clear vision of how they want to grow their business and what are the strategic key steps. Very often, we find that business owners are spending a lot of time in non-productive activities. We analyze all aspects of your business.

Read next: Business Model Canvas: It’s Time to Bulletproof Your Business

Taking Over

This means we include your digital assets in our tools to monitor SEO and ranks.

Execution (depends on each project)

✔️Business consulting & strategy

✔️Unlimited consultation via email

✔️ Brand development

✔️ Marketing collateral

✔️ Branding kit

Monitoring And Reporting

✔️Monthly meetings

Other Perks

✔️Our success comes from working with people who are compatible with our values. We treat your business even better than our own.

✔️We meet high compliance standards that your industry requires.

✔️Access to a powerful network all available for you.

Interested in learning how can we help your business? Schedule a commitment-free and eye-opening assessment! Start here!