Site owners still love ranking reports. Despite the SEO industry’s attempts to dissuade them otherwise, everyone loves to see that their site is ranked #1 in Google and Bing for this and that keyword.

While ranking well definitely has its benefits, ranking reports can easily fool a site owner into thinking their SEO program is doing better than it actually is.

Here’s what web marketing expert Mike Moran had to say on ranking reports:

“Too many people have been happy when they see they have a #3 result, for example, without thinking about what the keyword is, whether they are getting any traffic, and–most importantly—getting conversions. Now that search results are personalized, I see marketers fooled that their pages are ranking well when they are only ranking well for them personally. It’s not that rankings are unimportant, but sometimes they do more harm than good.”

Related: Finding a Search Engine Optimization Consultant in Your Local Area

When looking at an SEO ranking report site owners need to ask themselves two questions:

Are you getting any traffic from that keyword?

Let’s say you run a local bookkeeping business out of Boston. Chances are your priority keywords center around “bookkeeping services Boston” and many variations of that search term. Ranking well for a priority keyword can definitely make you feel good, but what if you are only ranking OK for those priority keywords? That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but ranking #22 isn’t nearly as impressive as ranking #8, so you end up hunting for other keywords to include in your ranking report.

• Let’s say you rank #1 for “pet groomer bookkeepers in Boston, MA”—so what? Does that keyword drive any traffic to your site? Better yet, does that keyword get you any customer in the end?

Just because you are ranking well for a particular keyword that doesn’t mean that you’ll be getting any traffic for it. It’s easy to rank well for a keyword that no one is searching for because there is zero competition for it. And ranking well for a particular keyword is no guarantee that it’s the right keyword for your business.

Related: Find an SEO service to help you improve your search rankings

How biased are your search results?

The search engines are committing themselves to creating the best search results possible for their users. That means they are trying to personalize and customize your search results based on a variety of factors, including:

• Social signals (the Bing-Facebook integration and Google +1 button)
• Location (if you search for “pizza” chances are you’ll see only local listings, even without telling Google or Bing exactly where you are)
• Past searches and web history

Rankings are bound to change day to day, or even hour to hour, based on a multitude of factors. This means that if you and I were to search for the exact same thing at the exact same time we might see completely different SERPs.

Related: 6 SEO Mistakes That Can Kill Your Website

So which ranking report is the right one? How can you be certain that what you’re seeing is an accurate representation of unbiased search? And even if you do manage to pull a completely unbiased ranking report, what does that really matter if your target audience is having their search results personalized? An unbiased ranking report might have your site ranked at #9 for a particular search term, but for your potential customers you might be #2 or #33 depending on their SERP personalization.

If you really want to measure the success of your SEO program, leave ranking reports at the door and look at organic visitor growth, conversion rates for non-branded keywords and new traffic from referral links built as part of your link building program. Those numbers aren’t so easy to fool.

Bio: Nick Stamoulis is the President of SEO marketing solutions firm Brick Marketing, which is based out of Boston, MA. With over 13 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his SEO knowledge by writing in the Brick Marketing blog and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers. 

According to the 2011 Google Mobile Movement study, 88% of visitors coming from mobile searches act within 24 hours, with approximately 70% acting within the first hour. In order for your mobile site to benefit from the speed and volume at which mobile users make conversions, you need to start utilizing best practices for SEO.

These include both traditional SEO practices and tactics specifically geared towards the particular concerns of mobile.

Related: Hire an SEO agency to improve your efforts

Traditional SEO practices

While there are differences in how search engine bots crawl web and mobile sites, the value of title tags, heading tags and alt tags cannot be understated. Just as you would optimize your regular website by placing targeted, branded keywords in these tags, so too should you optimize your mobile site in the same way.

Remember, however, that mobile users search and navigate your site in different ways from regular computer users, and you may need to alter your keywords in order to best take advantage of your mobile audience’s behaviors.

• 30% of shopping-related content accessed on a smartphone is driven by search (Hubspot). If your keywords aren’t optimized for mobile-specific search, you’ll miss out on much of the relevant shopping traffic that could otherwise have been routed directly to your site. And if traffic isn’t coming to your site, you won’t get any conversions.

Related: How to Get More SEO Value from Your Blog

Speed

According to SmallBizTrends.com, 60% of users expect a mobile site to load in three seconds or less. Both users and search engine bots take into account your mobile page load time in determining how valuable your site is. If your mobile site doesn’t load quickly, it can hurt both your SEO rankings and your conversion rates.

• Since images are the greatest drain on bandwidth, you need to be extra discerning about what images you use on your mobile site and how you use them. Be picky about the images you use, and make sure that they are optimized for smaller screens.
• Avoid using flash, object and java script in your mobile site, as they also use more bandwidth than they are worth and often cause compatibility issues on older phones.

Content

Mobile users move at a much faster pace than regular web users – they want to find what they’re searching for quickly and easily, and don’t want to be bogged down with extraneous details and text. Produce content that is optimized for mobile – but don’t try to stuff it with keywords, as this makes it more difficult for customers to read.

• Changes like the increased personalization of search results and the inclusion of real-time content like tweets and wall-posts are beneficial for mobile search because they provide information quickly and easily.

Related: A Checklist for Effective Blog Writing in 2013

Local

Mobile is geared toward local visibility. According to Google, approximately 97% of users search for local businesses online. Furthermore, one-half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices (Hubspot).

• Make sure your business’s name, address, and location are readily available on your mobile site – in more than one place. Have it appear not only on your contact page – where users can use click-to-call to contact you – but also local directories, Google places, online reviews and ratings.

Always test your mobile site on a variety of devices to ensure that it is functional on various platforms, screen sizes, and screen resolutions. Glitches, broken links, and failed code frustrate both your customers and the search engine bots – reducing your rankings and conversion rates at the same time. Follow these best practices for mobile SEO to make sure that customers can find, navigate, and make purchases on your site easily and efficiently.

Photo credit: techi.com

We know you’re a smart, savvy business owner (you’re reading this post, after all), so we know you’ve written a thoughtful business plan that you revisit periodically.

We also know that you have an easy-to-navigate and easy-to-find website, where customers can find and buy what they’re looking for with no hassles. Now all that’s left to do is increase traffic to your site.

For advice on perfecting your internet marketing, we turned to Claiborne Yarbough, the business development manager for Paveya, a North Carolina-based inbound marketing agency. Yarbough spends a third of each day following trends and reading blogs of industry influencers to stay up-to-date on the latest internet marketing.

She says one of the most critical thing a business owner can do to build traffic to her site is to keep the site current.

“Never has relevant, updated content been more critical,” Yarbough said. “I participated in a webinar the other day where the speaker said that your blog is ‘like an annuity that pays out over time.’ Great distillation of the value of a blog.”

For more advice from Yarbough on building a great website for your business and polishing your marketing plan, read on.

What are some best practices for building an effective website for a small business?

• Build a strong foundation for continued growth by working with a professional marketing agency that will understand your goals for your business — that tells you how to construct the website.
• Be realistic. Don’t overbuild the website in anticipation of the business you are going to become. On the other hand, use good technology, like content management software, so that you will have some flexibility in the short and long term.
• You must include a blog. You must write the blog. If you are passionate enough to start a small business then you have a great story that makes you different from everyone else.
• Make sure you leverage your social channels to drive leads and traffic to your website.

What are the most common mistakes small business owners make when building a site?

I can’t tell you the number of times that a small business owner has told me that their “brother/son/college roommate/the 18-year-old across the street” does websites. I also can’t emphasize enough that you get what you pay for and there is a lot that goes into a successful website. If the small business owner doesn’t at least try to set a reasonable marketing budget and use most of it on internet marketing, their company will be left behind. Consider that as we speak, 46 percent of us are online searching for goods or services each month, and 70 percent of these people will use their smartphone to search for a product or service that will result in their taking an action (find the store, make a purchase, recommend to a friend) in less than one hour.

What component should every internet marketing campaign have?

Honesty. Marketing as a shell game is over. Your customers are looking for goods or service and they want to trust the business owner that can provide that to them. Engage them in a one-on-one, genuine conversation (which you can do through a variety of channels) and you will have a successful internet marketing campaign.

Where can a small business owner go for help building a website and marketing on the web? What tools should they use to build traffic?

A small business owner should probably do a search for an inbound marketing agency … this kind of marketing agency is geared to a consultative sales approach that will benefit the small business owner. I can’t say this enough, blogging  is so important and it is something that everyone can do.

What tips do you have for launching an effective marketing campaign on social media? What should you be doing beyond posting a link back to your website?

Social media is a great opportunity to be in conversation with your leads and customers. There is nothing wrong with posting a link back to your site (in fact you had better do that). But I see social media as the opportunity to continually refine who your target market is and what it is that they are looking for and what speaks to them. Marketing is no longer outbound only. Be in dialog with your “community.” As you become a trusted resource, your posts or pins will be shared with the holy grail of marketing — the recommendation to friends and family.

Name some companies you think do internet marketing well – what can we learn from them?

Paveya is now a strategic partner with HubSpot (www.hubspot.com), which by far has the slickest internet marketing campaign I’ve seen. I am also very impressed with Amazon and Zappos—the level of consistency of service is remarkable. They invest in it and it shows. Finally, I am also watching Target come up to speed.

What are the top three things every small business owner should know about SEO?

1. You have to have it or no one is going to find you. Everyone has a website.
2. Don’t be afraid of long tailed keywords. Think men’s-red-athletic-shoes-for-hiking, not red shoes.
3. SEO is now as much about relevant, updated content. Can I say one more time how important it is to blog?

How often should you reevaluate your marketing strategies? How do you know when to change what you’re doing or try something new?

You should spend an hour or two every month analyzing and thinking about your marketing strategies. If you are not seeing consistent growth (lead conversion) it is time for a new approach.

Learn more about Paveya and read Claiborne’s blogs at www.paveya.com.

A New Year means a new chance to get your SEO campaign off on the right foot. If you’ve already done a little SEO in 2012 and want to know where to go from there, here are 3 things that should be on your SEO to-do list for 2013.

1. Commit to writing more content.

Hopefully you are already writing in your company blog at least once a week – consistency is key to long term success – but, regardless of how much content you produced in 2012 make a commitment here and now to produce more in 2013.

• Go from one blog post a week to two; write a new white paper every three months; finally get that eBook off the ground! I cannot stress the importance and value of great, quality content on SEO and content marketing is only going to get more important in 2013.

Stop looking for ways to get a lot of content on the cheap, as well. It’s better to have one or two fantastic blog posts each week that educate your audience and is something that people are going to want to share than to have 5 poor posts going live each day.

• Carve out a little time for yourself each day to work on new content—for your blog, your website, other industry sites and so forth. Remember that it takes time to find your voice and writing style and learn how to give your readers the kind of content they want, so don’t give up after only short while if it doesn’t feel like things are working out.

2. Get at least one quality link each week.

For a lot of small business owners link building is often just one more thing that gets added to the list of “should dos” that is often pushed to the backburner in favor of the daily “must dos” that come from running a business in this online world.

I know a 12 month link building strategy can get very overwhelming for a lot of business owners or over-worked marketing managers so for 2013 set a goal for yourself to get at least one quality link each week.

• Look for guest blogging opportunities, niche industry sites, forums and directories, local business sites and more—all of these are valuable link building opportunities for your site. Chances are that in the process of looking for one great link you’ll come across a bunch more.

3. Add new content/update old content on your website.

When was the last time you spruced up your website? I’m not saying that you should completely redesign your site in 2013, but take a look at your analytics and see which pages are performing the best and which ones are doing the worst.

• What pages of your site could the content be rewritten and better focused so they convert better?
• Are the keywords that you’re targeting on those pages matching up with the way your target audience searches?
• Should you combine these three ok pages into one stellar page and consolidate your efforts?
• Are there any pages on your site where the content is outdated (like a product you no longer carry) that you should remove from the navigation and redirect the URL?

A website is a living, breathing thing. Pages should be edited, tweaked, deleted, added and more all the time. The New Year is the perfect time to revisit your onsite SEO basics and make sure every page of your website is up to snuff.

Remember that nothing you do for SEO is set in stone. 2012 was a big year for SEO, with the Google Panda and Penguin updates (not to mention the ad layout update, the Venice update, the exact match domain update) knocking a lot of sites around; the rise of mobile technology, the stellar growth of social networking site Pinterest and much, much more. SEO is far from dead, no matter what people may say, but it is evolving. Your strategy has to be ready to evolve with it.

Good luck in 2013!

Photo credit: prediseo-en.blogspot.com

Bio: Nick Stamoulis is the President of Boston Internet marketing firm Brick Marketing. With nearly 13 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis share his knowledge by publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers and hosting full day SEO workshops in major cities across the country. 

Whether you have created your website to represent an enterprise, for e-commerce purpose or even to tell the world about your new startup, it’s important that your customers and clients are getting to it and finding value in it.

Everybody knows that any business needs to be optimized properly to become customer-friendly, and so does your business website. Consider these tips to usher customers your way and get long-awaited, new leads as well.

Press Release 

Many companies overlook this great opportunity to shed light on their business. If you have something newsworthy, let the press know about it. Get this information to all the right people, and see earned attention in return. Be sure to consider a variety of sites that can get your press release out to the masses.

Enable Subscriptions

If someone interested in new blog posts, products or services, it’s likely that they’ll want it delivered directly to them. Subscriptions give you an opportunity to earn regular visitors which in turn, increases your overall traffic and word of mouth opportunities.

You may want to write a newsletter encouraging visitors to visit your site and sign up or it. Make sure each of these call to actions have a title and specific purpose.

Quality and Interesting Content

Before you begin to fill your website with content you want to make sure it will be welcomed by your target audience. Follow some recommendations when writing articles:

• Pick attractive topics
• Keep length in mind: not too long but informative
• Use relevant keywords
• Make text user-friendly (background and text colors should be compatible)

Classified Ads

There are a variety of free classified or directory sites your website can benefit from. However, keep in mind that not only should the site be high quality, but your profile and links to your site need to be correct and working. If you know html code you can post it by yourself, otherwise ask a webmaster to do it.

Links

Natural links make Google happy – and you want Google to be happy when it comes to your site. This is one of the most reliable ways to make your site search engine-friendly. But how do you get them? There are some simple ways to earn links honestly:

• Guest posts – There are likely plenty of websites in your niche which welcome guest posts. Reach out and be genuine to get the answer you want.
• Spreading the information in social networks
• Reciprocal links – Find related websites that are willing to put your link on their site to yours. It’s not difficult and adds an additional vote of confidence to your website.

There are plenty of ways to attract customer and clients to your website. As search engines become more serious about providing quality search results, it’s important that you take part in in white hat tactics for gaining more traffic and ranking higher as a result.

Photo credit: libeltyseo.com

Bio:  Andrew Smith is a Web Developer, small writer, and social media enthusiast with QArea, a full service Web, Mobile, SEO services, Software Development, etc. For more information visit www.qarea.com.

In my opinion, a company’s blog is the second most valuable piece of online real estate it has, after their corporate website.

A blog, when leveraged properly, can provide immense value to your SEO program, not to mention your social media and content marketing efforts.

6  ways to get more SEO value from your company blog:

1. Target long tail keywords in the title and content.

Chances are a blog post isn’t going to outrank a large brand for broad keywords like “SEO” or “IT” or “Insurance.” But blog posts, just like the individual pages on your website, can rank in the search engines for a variety of related keywords.

Think back to when you optimized your website—chances are you have a lot of keywords left over that didn’t make it into the content on your website but are still a great keyword for your brand. A blog post is the perfect place to go after that keyword! Long tail keywords tend to be much less competitive and your blog post has a better chance of doing well in the SERPs for related searches.

2. Incorporates the appropriate anchor text with links back to your website.

I see so many sites that don’t advantage of the link building opportunity that their company blog provides. Hopefully if your blog was built on a sub-domain it has been seamlessly integrated into the overall design of your website, but you should still link from individual blog posts to different internal pages on your website.

3. Add social share buttons.

Make it as easy as possible for a reader to share your content; add social share buttons for so readers can share your content with their social network without having to leave your blog. I usually recommend adding the buttons at the top and the bottom of each blog post, again, making it easier for a reader to share your content.

4. Link to other articles/authors.

Don’t be afraid to link to outside sources, especially if you are using them to back up your own opinion. When you promote your blog post you can let the cited authors know with a Tweet that looks like “New post blog title by @yourcompany feat. @citedauthor.”

By adding their Twitter handle to your Tweet it alerts that blogger that you quoted/cited them. They might send you a thank you message or even reTweet your content, which means your blog post gets shared with their social network and you get more targeted traffic over to your blog.

5. Promote your content everywhere.

Publish snippets of your blog post on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ profiles. By publishing a snippet as opposed to the whole post you are pushing readers back to your blog to finish the content. LinkedIn Groups is a great resource for most B2B websites. You can join a number of groups that cater to specific sections of your target audience and create content that speaks specifically to that niche and their needs.

Also submit your content to social bookmarking websites. StumbleUpon is still a great source of traffic for a lot of websites and I’ve found that, for my own company blog anyway, that bookmarking a post as soon as it goes live is helping get that post indexed faster in the search engines because it gets the link building ball rolling.

6. Install SEO plugins.

There are a variety of plugins that you can install to help optimize individual blog posts but my favorite is YOAST. The YOAST plugin lets bloggers customize the title tag (which should usually reflect the title of the post itself), write a custom Meta description and list the Meta keywords; these are what a searcher will read in the SERPs. If you don’t create your own Meta data then the search engines typically just pull a random snippet of content from the page to fill the space.

These are just a few of the ways that a company can get a little more SEO value from their blog. Remember: content marketing, social media marketing and SEO go hand-in-hand-in-hand so get all the value from your efforts as you can!

Photo credit: turbonetsolutions.com

Bio: Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing, a white hat SEO company based in Boston, Massachusetts. With 13 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his SEO knowledge by writing in the Brick Marketing Blog and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers. Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com

Last Friday we gave you Part 1 of how to choose the best SEO provider for your business, and now we’re excited to bring you Part 2.

If you need a refresher, you can check out Part 1, one more time.

Choosing an SEO provider is no small task for any business, but it can be especially tricky for site owners that don’t know much about SEO to begin with. How can you interview a potential partner if you don’t know the questions you’re supposed to ask or the answers you should get?

Here are the final three questions to ask yourself when looking for an SEO provider:

3. Are they willing to teach you?

In my experience, an educated website owner almost always turns out to be a better client. When you know a little bit about SEO you know how to leverage things internally to help your own efforts even as your SEO company is working on your behalf. If you have questions or concerns, a white hat SEO provider should have no problem guiding you through the process. Obviously you can’t expect them to answer the phone at 10:30 at night, but it shouldn’t take hours or even days of chasing to get an answer. The best SEO firms are also willing to teach the rest of your company as well. Do you have an in-house PR person or work with a PR agency? A good SEO partner shouldn’t mind spending an hour or so explaining how SEO and PR fit together and how PR can be used to build links and improve your search presence.

4. Will you have a dedicated SEO specialist?

Some larger SEO companies have a bigger turnover, so you might find yourself working with several account representatives throughout the course of your partnership. Some site owners don’t mind, but if you want a dedicated SEO specialist that is going to stick with you from start to finish of your campaign than be sure the firm you are working with can guarantee that. You’re going to be working a lot with this person, so it needs to be someone you feel comfortable with and trust.

5. Can they provide client references?

And when I say client references, I mean actual clients that are willing to put their real name and company down. A review from John S. (no website) might not actually be fake but it shouldn’t be that hard for a good SEO company to get a few of their clients to leave testimonials or reviews. Most SEO providers are proud to showcase the work they have done for former and current clients, so they might have a case study or two as well.

Above all else, if you come across an SEO firm that can guarantee you results then RUN THE OTHER WAY. No SEO firm can guarantee anything. Remember, it’s your site and your business in the balance. If your SEO partner does a crummy job and your website gets hit with a search engine penalty because of their efforts you are left to clean up the mess.

Also know that you don’t always have to work with the largest or most expensive firm to get great results. Find a company that works well with yours and will treat you as a partner, not just another client.

Photo credit: webseoservices.in

Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing, a full-service SEO and social media marketing management company. With 13 years in the industry, Nick Stamoulis shares his knowledge by writing in the Brick Marketing Blog and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, which goes out to over a 150,000 opt-in subscribers. 

Choosing an SEO provider is no small task for any business, but it can be especially tricky for site owners that don’t know much about SEO to begin with. How can you interview a potential partner if you don’t know the questions you’re supposed to ask or the answers you should get?

In my opinion, the majority of SEO providers out there ARE white hat and well-qualified to build your site a successful SEO campaign. Unfortunately, there is also a large enough percentage of unscrupulous SEO providers that are also looking to take advantage of unsuspecting site owners, making the process of finding a qualified SEO provider tough.

Here are the first two questions to ask yourself when looking for an SEO provider:

1. Do they practice what they preach?

This may seem like “well, duh” advice, but if you want to know if an SEO provider is going to do a good job for your website then take a look at theirs. Obviously you can’t see everything that is going on behind the scenes, but there are a few things a white hat SEO company will have going for them, including:

• A company blog that is routinely updated and primarily full of informational content. Each company is different, but my SEO company is fairly small and we still manage to publish at least two blog posts a day. A larger SEO company should have no problem producing great content day in and day out. Check and see if they have any white papers or webinars available for download as well. A good SEO firm knows the value of content marketing in all its forms.
• An active social presence. They don’t need to have thousands of fans, but they should be leveraging their own social profiles to market themselves and help their own SEO efforts. Are they promoting their own content as well as other industry thought leaders to help their social network? Do they engage in conversations with people or just promote their own services?
• A diverse search presence. If you were to Google your potential SEO partner you should see a diverse SERPs page. In addition to the company website and blog there should be social profiles, business listings, press releases, guest blog posts and more. A good SEO firm should know how to dominate the SERPs for their own brand. A bad or black hat SEO firm will probably have a lot of consumer complaint reports mixed in the search results.

2. Will they be completely transparent with their work?

I firmly believe that transparency is the key to a great client-SEO service provider relationship. In order to find the best SEO partner for your website you need to know what kind of communication you can expect. Will you get monthly SEO reports showing visitor data or social trends? Will you have a scheduled call every week, every other week or once a month? Will your SEO provider show you what exact links they build each month so you know what kind of link profile your site is getting? A good SEO provider should want to keep in touch with you.

Photo credit: webseoservices.in

Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing, a full-service SEO and social media marketing management company. With 13 years in the industry, Nick Stamoulis shares his knowledge by writing in the Brick Marketing Blog and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, which goes out to over a 150,000 opt-in subscribers. 

When it comes to successfully marketing your business, search engine optimization is an integral piece of the puzzle. By maintaining an effective online marketing strategy that includes SEO you are ensuring that your website will rise to the top and stand out amongst your competitors.

So we all know the benefits of SEO, but the real secret is being able to adjust and roll with the punches. SEO is constantly fluctuating whether its changes in algorithms, tools, services, attitudes, etc. but the real secret sauce is in moving with flow or even staying ahead of the trends.

One such trend has been the revolution of Google Places to Google + Local and Google + Business. Recently Google replaced all Google Places pages with Google + Local with the intent of dominating the web with a revolutionary social media and search engine optimization one-two punch.  Eighty million pages of Google Places were converted to Google + causing business owners to scramble in order to update their online marketing strategy and take advantage of the advantages that Google + Local offers.

Merging the Google+ Pages

Google + Local pages offer an array of benefits that Google Places wasn’t able to offer. They are more visually appealing and provide more information overall. Much like social media, they allow for likes, messages and followers. Information from sites such as Zagat is also included so that visitors can access information about the site and the business. Users also have the ability to fill out a more detailed questionnaire and create full reviews for other visitors to see and read.

With the advent of Google + Local also came Google + Business which can be quite confusing, especially for business owners that created a page on Google + for their business when Google Local was replaced. When searching Google for a business, searchers will find links to a business’s Google + page which is a link to what was originally their Google Places page.

The Google + Business page is actually in a separate location. Google + Local is merely a new façade for Google Places, and includes features like maps and scoring reviews. Google + Business takes a Google + Local page to the next level with features such as posting, sharing, commenting, photos, hangouts, etc.

However, until recently business owners were unable to merge their Google + Local and Google + Business pages as they were considered two separate products. This meant that they had to manage two separate Google + profiles separately.  This recently changed with the advent of a process for integrating all Google listings including Google search, Google Maps, Google + Local and Google + Business with management from one central Google + admin section.

Integration currently involves the following steps outlined by smallbiztrends.com:

• A verified business owner on Google Places for Business will still have to go through the postcard verification process again when the two profiles are merged.
• In order to merge your Google+ Business page it has to be listed in the local business/place category. If you set yourself up as a brand page, you can’t merge it.
• If you only have a Google+ Local Page (previously a Google Place Page) you won’t be able to take advantage of the upgraded Google + business experience. You need to have both a Local page and a Google+ Business page. So if you want to upgrade to take advantage of the new features, you’ll need to create a Business page.
• Assuming you set up your Google+ Business page properly and you also have a Local page, the option to merge and verify is now available. If you didn’t set it up that way, Google should be continuing to roll out integration options in the future.

Despite the initial confusion, the benefits that the new Google + pages offer are sizeable. Business owners can offer more information about their business to browsing would-be customers and searchers are able to get more information and a better feel for a potential business. Only by keeping up with the trends and rolling with the SEO punches can business owners fully take advantage of all the benefits SEO has to offer.

Photo credit: buzzom.com

This post was provided by Page1 Online Marketing. For more information visit us at www.page1onlinemarketing.com or call 970-223-0797. 

The road to SEO success is fraught with pitfalls, dead ends and potentially lethal mistakes that can kill your website in the process. Since SEO is so long term, any mistakes you make now might take months to reverse and get your SEO back on the right track.

And while it’s not impossible, it’s very hard to recover quickly from a search engine penalty. Here are 6 SEO mistakes you want to avoid making as you execute your SEO campaign.

Top 6 SEO Mistakes

1. Targeting keywords based on search volume.

When choosing which keywords to incorporate into your content and online marketing, it’s important to remember that search volume alone isn’t the most important thing. You want to target keywords that:

• Accurately reflect the content on each page
• Takes the intent of your visitors into account. When someone searches for “apple” are they looking for information about the fruit or do they want to buy an iPod? If you own an apple orchard “apple” makes sense, and has an immense search volume, but “apple picking” would probably be a better choice and send more targeted traffic to your site.

2. Choosing quantity over quality in link building.

With the Google Penguin update that went live in April, the need for a clean and natural link profile has become more important than ever. Yes, links are the bread and butter of SEO but having more links doesn’t mean anything if they aren’t good quality.

• Stay away from unrelated sites, link exchanges, bad neighborhoods and other low-quality link sources (no matter how tempting or easy it is to get a link there) and focus on building quality links from relevant sources. 20 great links is much more valuable in the long run than 100 spammy links that could get your site in trouble.

3. Only creating promotional content.

The majority of your content marketing efforts should be focused on creating educational content that is designed to teach and inform your target audience. You want to become a valuable resource for your customers, and educational content is what helps build your reputation as an industry expert.

• While promotional content is fine every once and a while, I always recommend you keep promotional content to about 10% of your overall content marketing efforts.

4. Trying to “beat” the algorithm.

There is no secret formula to SEO success. There is no set number of links, keywords or webpages that is going to magically improve your website’s SERP ranking overnight—so stop looking for a way to beat the algorithm! Sites that try to beat the system are usually the ones that end up getting whacked with a penalty.

• In my experience, as long as you focus on creating the best possible user experience, building your brand long-term and stick to your white hat SEO campaign, you’ll be much more successful in the long run than any site that’s trying to stay one step ahead of the algorithm. You’ll sleep at lot better at night too, knowing that any algorithm updates are likely to help your site and not penalize it.

5. Copying everything your online competition is doing.

While a competitive link audit is a great way to see how your site is stacking up the competition, you don’t want to become an SEO copycat. Use your competitive link audit to find new link sources, but don’t think that your link profile has to become a carbon copy of your competitor’s in order for you to succeed. You want to make your website stands out from the pack, which means you have to build links that your competition doesn’t have.

6. Failing to leverage social media networks to their fullest.

The search engines are taking social signals into account when determining where your website falls in the SERPs. This means that every time a piece of your content is shared on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and so forth, it becomes more important in the eyes of the search engines. Creating content is only the first step, you have to promote it!

• Social networks thrive on fresh content, so make sure you are keeping your profiles up to date with new content on a consistent basis. Social media marketing is a great way to connect with your audience, build links and drive traffic to your website.

These are only a few of the SEO mistakes I see site owners make time and time again. Remember, the search engines can’t determine what you intended to do, they can only measure what you’ve done! Make sure you aren’t making any of these mistakes with your SEO.

Photo credit: dotsauce.com

Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing, an SEO company in Boston, Massachusetts. With nearly 13 years of SEO experience, Nick Stamoulis share his knowledge by writing in the Brick Marketing Blog, hosting SEO training classes and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers.

Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com