Local SEO

Is Monthly SEO Worth The Cost?

marciacatlin · November 27, 2021 ·

To understand SEO, we need to understand Digital Marketing and SEO’s place within it. Digital marketing is a direct assault against traditional marketing channels like print and TV.

While Amazon soared, Sears and Toys R Us fell. While YouTube and Google ascended, newspapers and magazines withered.

Adapt or die because people love their Internet, and digital marketing is how we monetize it. Don’t underestimate the importance of digital marketing.

People will find your website before they find your store, before they meet you, and before they purchase from you.

Without a single storefront, Amazon has become the 7th largest retail store. It has the largest market capitalization of any retail store, including Wal-Mart… and it is just warming up.

Major digital marketing channels include search marketing, social media, display advertising, and email marketing. Combined, digital marketing budgets exceeded TV ad spending in 2017. Of these digital marketing channels, the search engines are the primary driver of business generation.

Search engines produce about 200 billion searches per month.
There are over 236 million people in the USA that will be search engine users in 2019.
66% of marketing professionals say that growing their organic presence is their top online marketing priority.
Over 72% of people seeking a local store on their mobile phones will visit the store.
Social media actually generates only 3% of the traffic on average to a website. When you add it all up, search engines generate the lion’s share of online-based sales, while leading to on-site visitations as well.

Search engines are the king of digital marketing sales.

Search engine marketing comes in two varieties, sponsored search (PPC) and organic search (SEO). When executed properly, SEO tends to yield the best ROI, due to the expensive and competitive nature of PPC.

Search-based web traffic is second only to a referral. Search engines display your website to a person seeking the products/services you sell at the very moment they are interested. Investing in SEO is a common-sense marketing strategy.

Over 72% of people seeking a local store on their mobile phones will visit the store.

Any SEO effort must be viewed as a long-term approach. Websites don’t go from #1000 to #1 overnight. You must build trust with the search engines, and that takes time. Ongoing SEO is necessary because search engines are always evolving.

We SEO differently today than we did three years ago. This is serious stuff and your business is on the line. Are you going to give up on SEO quickly after knowing that it is one of the most important, and possibly THE most important, marketing influencer?

Get a FREE SEO Review! CLICK HERE.

If you have tried it, and it failed, it means that you need to work harder or find better help.
Check out our Monthly SEO Package.

Courtesy of SharpNet Solutions

Why you’re not ranking #1 in Google?

marciacatlin · July 25, 2019 ·

6 most common SEO mistakes according to Yoast.

Mobile site speed is critical to success, no matter what kind of business you’re in.

Faster is better
The faster your site, the happier Google will be. Google has indicated that site speed is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages.

Here’s a useful tool from Google to check your site speed: Google PageSpeed Insights.

Resize your images to speed up loading time. If you have a WordPress site, you can do this easily by installing Smush, a plugin that does that for you.
Optimizing for the wrong keywords
Small business owners often optimize for very generic keywords. So the universe of competition is way too large for a ranking. Suggest adding your location or something more specific to the keyword to narrow your focus, thus improving your ranking.
Not intriguing visitors
The page title on your website is the first message visitors see on Google Search — one of the most important ranking factors for Google.
It must include the relevant keyword and be written in a way that intrigues your visitors. It must be 400-600 pixels in length or succumb to Google’s decapitation. You don’t want visitors to be unable to read the full title in the SERPs!
Failing to write professional content
It’s more important now than ever to stand out from the crowd. That’s what quality, original content (at least 300 words) can do for your business. Google will not see you as an expert on any topic if you only write a few paragraphs.
No call to action for your visitors
Your CTA is the chance to motivate your audience to take steps toward becoming a customer or client. Many argue that the call to action is the most important part of your site. Skipping it is a grave mistake that won’t bode well for your company!
The future is mobile
Google switched to mobile-first indexing last year. So Google now looks at the mobile version of your site to determine your ranking.

It means that the mobile version of your website becomes the starting point for what Google includes in their index and the baseline for how they determine rankings.

Is your website mobile friendly?
Test it here: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

High-Performance Local and Small Business SEO
With nearly 50% of all Google searches having local intent, local search engine optimization is more important than ever. 50% of customers who perform Google searches for local businesses on smartphones, and 34% who search on a desktop, visit a business within 24 hours.

Today’s SEO has been elevated to a strategic element. Business owners and marketers now view their websites as marketing tools primarily not just great designs. Read more about our Local SEO Services.

Read the full article by Yoast.
The 6 most common SEO mistakes and how to avoid them

SEO Success Results

marciacatlin · June 6, 2019 ·

How many SEO agencies and freelancers are there in the world? Nobody can answer that question based on my research today (included Quora). In the millions, obviously! SEO success results are needed.

So how do you find the best SEO agency for your business? Start by assessing an agency’s work, results, and competitive edge.

Working with our partner, here are our latest SEO success results:

Cedar Supply – Designs vinyl pergolas and patio covers.
View Cedar Supply’s SEO Ranking Report

Hinerman Group – Provides impaired risk and elevated-risk life insurance services.
View Hinerman Group’s SEO Ranking Report

Corporate Teams– Provides team building & corporate events services.
View Corporate Teams’s SEO Ranking Report

Our Competitive Edge

We address all key areas of small business SEO: (1) Content Optimization, (2) technical SEO and (3) Business Citations and Inbound Links.
No contract.
Industry-leading performance guarantee.
Monthly Ranking Reports & SEO Campaign Updates discussing progress and campaign details.
Over 20 years of continuous operation as an SEO provider.
Contact us for a free Local SEO Analysis and Campaign Proposal.

How Does SEO Get You Customers?

mcoffey@jmgroup.net · January 1, 2019 ·

How does SEO get you customers? It’s all relative as Einstein would say!
According to Einstein’s “Theory of General Relativity”, your position and speed in the universe influence what you observe. A different person in a different place, moving at a different speed would make a different observation.

What does this have to do with SEO?

Rankings are determined by the environment they are competing in.
Say, your website offers a service to a community with no competing websites, then capturing strong keyword rankings is easy. You could have a terrible website, with typos and poor navigation, but still rank #1!

The Competitive Marketplace

That same website would perform poorly in a highly competitive marketplace. To compete in a small and limited marketplace, you can do well with a mediocre website and mediocre SEO.

But, to survive in a competitive marketplace,
your website must be extra special!

Google displays websites in its search results that satisfy a search query. To do this, Google considers the user’s experience. Websites that best satisfy the purpose of a search tend to rank better on Google. So, to remain competitive on Google, your website must satisfy the search query better than your competitors’ websites.

How this is accomplished is a very complex process as you can see below:

How fast is your website?
Does your website look great? It really matters when there is competition!
Does your website provide quality content?
Is your website mobile-friendly?
Is your website organized? Can people easily find what they are looking for?
What do you offer that is better than your competitor? Pricing, testimonials, results, guarantees, etc.

How To Begin?

Search Google for phrases that your customers would use.
Then discover which websites consistently come up at the top of Google’s search results.
Also, add content, look sharper, be better organized, and make it easier to communicate with your company.
Goal 1: You need the best website for the marketplace you serve.
Goal 2: You must be willing to put in the time and effort so your website will stand out.
Over time your efforts will be rewarded by Google.
Call us to learn more about our High-Performance Local SEO Package.

CAUTION
Don’t underestimate your competitors. If you want to achieve greatness across the search engines, give Marcia Coffey a call at 561-906-3436 or learn more about her High-Performance Local SEO service.

What Does SEO Mean? On-Site vs. Off-Site SEO.

marciacatlin · April 8, 2018 ·

What does SEO mean? It’s complicated.
“I have heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But what does it actually mean? What are you actually going to do?”
These are questions that I receive from clients when they explore our SEO services. They try to understand what it is they are paying for and why it is important for them.
Unfortunately, in the SEO market, there are many people who claim that they can put companies at #1 on Google.
The reality? It is NOT that simple. No guarantees can be made. A track record backed up by data and research is the only real way to know if someone can help you with SEO. Still, it will take time.
When we look at reasons why companies don’t involve themselves in SEO, three main reasons stand out:
1. It seems too expensive.
2. They have been burned before by someone promising everything and never seeing results.
3. They just don’t understand why SEO is needed or important to them.
All legitimate concerns!
I will break it down into simple yet important points to know and keep in mind.
1. What is the difference between On-Site SEO vs Off-Site SEO?
Great question! We first need to understand the different pieces of SEO before we can discuss the next steps.

On-Site Search Engine Optimization

To put it simply: it is how you optimize your website for focus keywords and search engines.
What it involves:

- Setting up an SEO plugin (we recommend Yoast)
- Reviewing page loading speed
- Making sure that the content on the website is focused and clear
- Setting up a sitemap with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools (plus Yandex if you have a more global audience)

This is what I would call a basic setup for your website, to ensure search engines can find, read and understand your website. The focus keywords will be “indexed” along with all the pages / posts you have on your site so that your website is sharing the most relevant information aka the information you want Search Engines to know.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Off-Site SEO

Things get more complicated with Off-Site SEO. With On-Site SEO, once you set it up you will have to maintain it. But for the most part, you don’t have to change things very often.
But, Off-Site SEO is always changing and is something you have to constantly keep up-to-date.
Off-Site SEO refers to backlinks to your website. This is the core of how Google measures your domain authority and trustworthiness. The more trustworthy and high authority domains link to your site, the better Google will view your site.

While it might sound easy, it is very hard to maintain consistent high quality backlinks to your site. The best way to do this is by creating high value content that people will share and repost.
– Adam Lawrence, Enspire Development

Also included in Off-Site SEO: social media, guest blogging, influencer marketing and brand mentions.

On-Site SEO vs. Off-Site SEO

On-Site SEO requires research, setup and basic maintenance. But once it is setup, you have a nice foundation. Off-Site SEO requires a full strategy for daily monitoring, creation of high quality content, social media sharing and finding opportunities to guest blog or submit a press release to news about something you are doing.
2. How do we know what our focus keywords are?
This is another question that is very important and asked often by clients.
The trick here is that most clients already know their focus keywords as they say them daily to clients and their colleagues. The process is collecting all the focus keywords, doing research on what your competitors are doing and then narrowing down the focus keywords to the most effective, relative to the industry / service you want to target.
There are some great resources and tools out there to help with this process such as Moz, ahrefs and Raven. Many of these tools are for agencies and not for small businesses as the pricing can be steep. Some do offer free trials for a limited time. There are also the free options, i.e. Google Analytics and Google Keyword Planner.
Say you have all the information collected and in front of you. What does it all mean? How do you know which is the best one for my company?
This is a process that takes time. Having all the research and information is only the first step towards great keywords.
Put yourself into your clients’ shoes and think about what they would search for in Google. How would they look for your service? Start to make a list of whatever comes to mind as it is important to balance what you know about your company within your industry and what your clients might know as well as understand.
Now it is time to analyze the data, competitor research, internal research and perspective of the client to find the best focus keyword(s). These are the keywords that should not only be easy to search to find your website, but are also naturally used in the content you have on your website.
3. Why is SEO so expensive?
SEO can become expensive, but it really depends on resources and how big of a reach you would like to have.
The question you will need to ask yourself is: how much are you willing to invest?
Keep in mind that there is an initial investment upfront to get some things setup.
What it includes: the setup fee for optimizing your site for SEO, installing plugins, setting up / refreshing Google Search Console, etc.
These are things that don’t need to be done all the time, but it is important to set them up correctly and maintain them to ensure there are no errors or problems impacting performance. This refers to On-site SEO.
In terms of how much you spend on researching key focus words and Off-Site SEO … that can really add up quickly.
If you don’t have the time or resources, then the most important part of the process is the research / finding the current focus keywords. If you don’t start with the right keywords then everything else you do won’t be as effective.
Off-site SEO would be the area that you would want to invest in last because the other two need to be setup correctly before your off-site SEO can be effective.
How To Grow Organically
This is also the part where you can “leave it” (but still maintain it) to grow organically over time, or invest in a blog, videos, infographics, white-papers and other high quality content along with a strategy to develop some serious backlinks. These efforts will give you stronger rankings, trustworthiness and domain authority.
You need to make sure you know where you are going (focus keywords) and have a good base (on-site SEO) before making a large leap (off-site SEO). Without the previous two, the last would land quite badly.
4. Can I do this myself? Or should I hire someone?
Yes, you can, but it will take time for you to learn what needs to be done. It will also require technical skills to make tweaks to your site.
Look at the trade-off of hiring someone or doing it yourself. You are going to spend a lot of time learning and setting things up yourself. How much is your time worth? Compared to hiring someone to do it for you?
The combination of the company working with an SEO expert is a winning combination. You are balancing the technical skills and understanding with the knowledge of the industry / company. Great things will happen with this combo!
5. What are some other factors that impact SEO?
There are a ton of factors that impact your SEO and we are not going to cover all of them in this post, but I would like to highlight a few that are very important to know and understand.
Website Page Load Speed: This is becoming more and more important in SEO rankings. While not the MOST important, it is a factor that will gain in significance. As SEO is not just about quality of information and authority, it also takes into consideration user experience and the site that offers the better experience is going to win. This means that if your page takes longer than 3 seconds to load you are offering a poor user experience.
Check out Pingdom and Gtmetrix to test your website and see how long it takes for your website to load.
Encryption: If you don’t have an SSL certificate, it will start to impact your rankings, as your website will be viewed as not as safe compared to a website that has one. Chrome browser will mark non-https sites as not secure in July, 2018.
It is important to stay up-to-date with the latest SEO trends. Things are changing faster and faster, but if you offer great value and user experience on your website, you are on the right track.
How can you harness all of the above to get your website working for you?
Check out our 3 Custom SEO Packages.
Please reach out to Marcia @jmgroupdesign or call her at 561-906-3436 if you have any questions or would like to talk more about our SEO services.