SEO And Online Marketing Tips

SEO and online Marketing Tips By Orange Counties Premier Website Development, SEO and Online Marketing Firm WebVisable. Webvisable has worked with some of the most reputable companies in Southern California… And they’ve done so with an average traffic increase of over 20% in all cases. I fact, WebVisable doubled the blogging traffic for the OC register from 1.2 million hits to 2.4 million hits in just under 6 weeks. How do they do it you ask???

Well, they cant reveal all of their secrets, however, they were happy to share a few SEO & online Marketing tips…

With the hustle and bustle of producing content consistently, we often get into a habit of following an editorial calendar. After all, content is the key to building community, driving interaction and thought leadership. The issue that many of us overlook is that the audience needs to be able to find that valuable blog post you spent time writing.

SEO and online Marketing Tips By Richard Linden MBA, Ph.D.

Without a properly optimized web property, the audience cannot easily find your content. Without properly optimized content, the audience cannot easily find your site and profiles. The two go hand in hand with a concept called Social SEO. The temporal relevance of social media content requires it to be fresh, pertinent, credible and optimized for search engines and social networks for it to rank online.

Here are 8 SEO and Online tips for optimizing blog content:

1) Website and Social Profiles – SEO and online Marketing Tips

Although the architecture and technical aspects of blog sites are a little bit out of the social media side of digital marketing, you can’t build anything on a weak foundation. Ensure that your web property can be searched and indexed by Google and the rest. The good news is that when properly deployed, even free website software like WordPress works well with search and social networks.

2) Keyword Search – SEO and online Marketing Tips

Your blog will not rank for them all, so don’t try. Choosing the right keyword phrases is the difference between qualified traffic and no traffic at all. First find keyword phrases that relate to your topic and that drive search traffic, and then use them strategically. You can do this by using free keyword research tools like Google’s as well as manual searches.

One of the most common mistakes in blogging is to over-stuff body copy with keyword phrases that relate to the subject of the post. Another is to not use valuable keyword phrases at all. The commonly accepted tactic is to use an on-topic phrase 2-4 times in an average post. Use keywords sparingly. A handful per post is enough. The search engines do penalize the overuse of keywords.

3) Title and Copy – SEO and online Marketing Tips

The title should include the top keyword phrase that speaks to the content of your post. Social media marketers get in the habit of coming up with cheeky and fun titles, but if it does not relate, then it does not help.

Because it can be a detriment to your blog’s search engine optimization to over-stuff a post, you should consider the top phrases that are most important for that post. A key tactic is to use different iterations of the top keyword phrases a handful of times throughout the body copy. If your post is, “blog marketing tips,” then you can use similar phrases in your copy like, “marketing tips for your blog.” Different iterations of the same topic become a keyword cluster working in tandem to support the same subject.

The length of the post does not necessarily mean that a longer post has more search value than a shorter article. The search engines focus on the first few hundred words. The rest of your copy is for the audience. Also, avoid re-posting the exact same copy multiple times on your blog. Linking to past posts and referencing them is good. Re-posting the same content over and over can have a negative effect on your site’s SEO. Duplicate content is seen as spam by the search networks.

4) Tags and Links – SEO and online Marketing Tips

Ensure that you use any tagging feature on your blog to increase the likelihood that your content can be found. Tagging is generally a behind the scenes activity. The sole purpose of keyword tags is to add those top 3-5 keyword phrases to the back end of your post. This helps back up those phrases included in your article basically telling the search engines that these topics are the focus of your content.

Links are critical. When used properly, your audience will have a better user experience and the search networks will follow the trail across the web. Do not over-stuff links either. Linking to other sites is not as valuable as those sites linking to you, but linking to credible and relevant content is like a citation to a valuable source that supports your subject. This is good for capturing the attention of the reader as well as being another little detail telling the networks that you are focusing your post on a subject that is valuable to others.

Make sure your links are contextual. This means that the clickable hyperlink in your posts should be the text relating to that site or topic. Do not name your link, “click here.” When quoting a title or the body copy from another web post, use that text as an opportunity to link back directly to the original source.

5) Multimedia – SEO and online Marketing tips

Videos, images, infographics, slide shares and other multimedia content rank in the search engines. Google and the social networks are aware that multimedia content is powerful and that it will often drive more traffic, sharing, comments and interest from the target community. When applicable and properly optimized, using videos and images will only help your chances of positive SEO rankings.

Much like the post itself, titles and tags are incredibly important. The search engines cannot read or crawl an image or video. They cannot understand the content or context without help. Use the keyword, title and tagging concepts above. Also ensure that content is hosted in a way that it gives your blog the most benefit. Many find that hosting a video on a site like YouTube and then imbedding it in the on-topic post will help both your blog and your social profiles.

6) Syndication and Sharing – SEO and online Marketing tips

The ways that you post, syndicate and share your content have a large impact on your audience finding your posts. All of the social media best practices apply. The industry, topic, times of day, networks, engagement and other important social marketing tactics are keys to success. Those concepts are most important for user experience and community activity, but you can also boost the qualified traffic with some basic SEO principles. Ensure your tweets and social sharing of an article have a title or description that takes into consideration all of the concepts above. Also check your blog site to confirm that your content can be shared and that your links to that content go directly to that post and not your site’s homepage.

7) Conversation and Conversion – SEO and online Marketing tips

Community management and interaction with your audience are the obvious and most important ways to encourage activity, but again search optimization plays a part. Comments, likes, shares and other audience engagement can only benefit your blog’s positive SEO. If others link to and share your content, then it becomes credible and relevant. Search and social optimizations is not just about keywords and body copy. Conversion is the true measurement of success. Your site’s conversion points should be easy for the users to find and use. Make it easy for your audience to interact with your posts. Display your social sharing, RSS signup, contact forms and other conversion points prominently. Most readers will not dig around and continually scroll down your blog to find those features.

8) Measure and Evolve – SEO and online Marketing tips

By using your eyes and your site’s analytics, you can determine what tactics are working and which ones that should be reevaluated.Google Analytics is free and it does not take a long time to become comfortable with its capabilities. With a little effort you will be able to see the inbound traffic from the social networks, the keywords that are producing results as well as a number of other key performance indicators that will help you improve your blog site’s SEO.

Although I’ve listed a number of SEO and online Marketing tips and strategies that may sound like a lot of extra effort, the best part is they are “free.” These tactics require time and energy, but not complicated and expensive tools. Take an extra 10 minutes after your create any web content to make sure you have taken the necessary steps to get the value out of the post you worked so hard to develop.

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