Search Engine Marketing Archives

5 Things You Should Be Doing To Grow Your Business Online

Posted October 19, 2016 by Christopher Long

The Web is an arena where all businesses are competing for attention. It is a place where you are either winning or losing, and if you are not playing, you are definitely losing. With the millennials now representing a significant portion of the workforce and everyone becoming tech savvy, gone are the days of setting up a website and sha’bam, in comes the clients. If all you do is build it, they will not come.

Worry not though, we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 things you should be doing online to grow your business and beat the competition.

Tip#1 – Set-Up Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and Bing Webmaster Tools

Being set-up with Google Analytics (GA), Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT), and Bing Webmaster Tools (BWMT) is hugely important. If setting up a website is the first thing you do for your business, this should be the immediate second.

Google & Bing have created a platform for you to communicate with them about your website through their webmaster tools. The benefit is it will help keep you aware of any issues Bing or Google detect about your website (404 errors, inaccessible content, etc.) and using their tools will help you rank and be found on their search engines. As we all know, being at the top of Google can be worth big bucks so it is important to get started right away.

All you need to get started is a Gmail account to access GWMT, and GA, and a outlook email address to access Bing.

Tip#2 – Email Market to Your Clients Regularly

Think about this: every client you have knows at least 5 people that would also be excellent potential clients. So, why are you not email marketing to them? You could potentially quintuple your business just by leveraging your existing client base!

Now, DO NOT use your regular old Gmail account to blast a list of 100+ people. That is a huge no-no in email marketing best practices. Moreover, it could get you kicked from your email service provider (ESP) if they even allow the email to go out in the first place. What you should be using is an email marketing platform (EMP). We recommend Mailchimp. They offer a free account with lists under 2K total email addresses, it is easy to use, and integrates well with WordPress sites. Also, if you upgrade to a paid account you can do nifty things like set up drip campaigns or auto-responders that will email a happy birthday to your clients on their birthday, thank them for their business after you complete their project, or offer promotions on holidays.

Tip#3 – Set-Up Google Places for Business

If you have a brick-and-mortar covering a service area, or if you have clients visit your location, being on Google Places for Business is essential. It is how you get on Google’s Map and get on their local 3-pack for local searches.

It is pretty simple to set up and will have a huge impact on your business. Just search “google places for business” or you can click on this link. From there, you can search for your business. If you find it, you can claim the listing and begin editing and enriching your profile. If you do not find your business then you can set up a brand new profile.

Once your profile is set up, Google will mail a postcard with a 4-6 digit PIN. They do this to ensure that you actually have a business location and are able to receive mail there. After you have received your post card, go back to your Google Business page and enter the PIN to verify your account. Once that is completed, you are off to the races and will be more easily found for local searches! Be sure to build out your profile, add copy, images, and work with your clients to get reviews on your page to make the most of your Google Business listing!

Tip#4 – Blog, and Blog Some More

Google wants your site to be more like a newspaper and less like a book. It should not be a static site that you set-up and never touch again. It should be a dynamic source of insights identifying you as an authority in your trade or business. This is best accomplished through regular blogging.

Give your site visitors professional inside tips about your industry, let them know about major milestones in your business (new hires, new offices, new equipment), offer case studies of the great results you achieve for your clients…the list of blogging topics are endless.

When you do this, Google & Bing will gobble up all of that content and will grow to love your site that much more for all the information you have created. Be sure to let Google & Bing know about your new content pages through their webmaster tools (GWMT & BWMT). The final results will be a better experience for your site visitors and better rankings and visibility on search engines.

We recommend at least 1 blog post a month but you should really be shooting for 1 per week.

Tip#5 – Leverage Backlinks

Backlinks are the secret sauce of a successful SEO campaign. Bing & Google pay huge attention to them and they act as a nitro boost to your rankings. So, leverage the hell out of any opportunities you have for getting a legitimate backlink. But, DO NOT, under any circumstances, get spam crap links from free link directories or anything of that ilk. Google & Bing will notice spammy backlinks to your site and will punish your site or even remove it from their index if they detect a bunch of spam links to your site. Instead, work with companies that you have a relationship with that might list you on a preferred vendor page or on a blog article.

We hope that you found the above information interesting, insightful, and highly actionable. If any of this is over your head and you think that you might need a pro to get it done, shoot us an email at team@capiscomarketing.com and we will be happy to help!

Marketing Tip Monday: The Difference Between Image Alt and Title Tag – SEO

Posted October 4, 2016 by Christopher Long

There are a lot of SEO mark-ups out there and any that you are missing out on can potentially give the competition an edge over your site’s rankings. Today we are going to cover the importance and difference between an image alt and title tag and how they relate to SEO.

Let’s start off with the image alt tag.

Image Alt Tags

The image alt tag is a useful tool to give information about an image in case it doesn’t load properly, is blocked from loading, or in case it is on a page being visited by someone with visual disabilities. It should always describe the image. Since Google places importance for SEO on the image alt tag it is important to try to also include keyword information if applicable. Remember, keyword stuffing is keyword stuffing, even on image alt tags so don’t force keywords in there unless they serve a purpose.

Let’s take the image below for example:

That good looking fella happens to be me. A good image alt tag might be “Capisco staff pic of Christopher Long.” Now, since we are an SEO company, I might try to include some of that information to make the alt tag a bit more SEO friendly and go with: SEO manager Christopher Long. Not too shabby. Ok, so we have alt tags covered, lets move onto image title tags.

Image Title Tags

Text for an image title tags often will pop-up on a mouse hover-over. For that reason your title tag should aim to identify an image and give more information or context about it. Since it is not as important of an SEO mark-up, I wouldn’t place as much emphasis on trying to fit in keywords.

Lets take the above picture again as an example. Here I would identify the image and try to add more context to it. For example: Capisco staff pic of Christopher Long taken August 2015.

The Main Takeaways

The main takeaways are this:

(1) Alt tags are important for SEO
(2) Alt tags should focus on describing the image and should include keywords if possible and natural
(3) Do not keyword stuff your alt tags
(4) Image title tags are not as important for SEO.
(5) Title tags should identify the image and provide context or more information about the image that the page visitor might be interested in.
We hope that you found this information to be useful. If you have any questions, you can email them to team@capiscomarketing.com and we will be happy to assist. Thanks for reading!

Improve Your Web Positioning by Improving Your Web Content

Posted November 1, 2013 by Christopher Long

By improving the quality of your website’s content, you will also improve your website’s positioning. Google desires active websites, regularly updated with fresh, unique and engaging content. The larger your website is, the more updates necessary.

Here are 10 tips to assist you in keeping your website up to date with fresh and relevant content:

Relate to your audience – Align the content of your website to the tastes and preferences of your customers. Use content and design that draws in viewers whose interests correspond with what your business has to offer. Make sure that your message is clear and attractive. Appeal to them in a variety of ways, intellectually through great copy, visually through striking imagery, creatively through clever effects or new technology.

FAQs – Create a section on your webpage for Frequently Asked Questions. Customers will appreciate this assistance and Google will value the quality of your answers.

Share your knowledge – Create guides, articles, infographics, and other tools that will help the user to better understand your message.

Pictures and videos – Use them! Adding graphics to a website is an easy way to hold the attention of your audience. Images and videos are a helpful way to convey your message in a more entertaining way.

Clear expectations – Make it obvious to your audience what they should expect when investing in your product or services. They should not have to wonder and should never be confused! Your advertisements should have a straightforward message, showcasing all of the benefits your business has to offer.

Tip lists – List quick and useful information that easily conveys your message. Share your knowledge and get it out on the Web to increase exposure.

Headline recent news – Highlight current events developing within the company. Frequent updates will encourage traffic to your website and keep things interesting for potential customers.

Reflect seasonal changes – Your webpage should be current with the time of year, this helps make information more relatable.

Advertise your milestones and accomplishments – Broadcast the successes of your business! Nothing boosts a potential client’s confidence in you more than stories of your acheivements.

Interaction – In addition to sharing your product and abilities with your audience, give the viewer the opportunity to communicate with you. Make the information exchange a two-way street. Create a conversation. Allow the consumer to ask questions, comment, and connect with you online.

We hope you have enjoyed these tips and can take advantage of the information we have provided. If you need assistance with your website or with online marketing, give us a call and let’s chat. Always be sure to return for updates.

SEO vs SEM

Posted October 18, 2013 by Christopher Long

Contrary to what one might assume given the title of this article, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are not opposing marketing systems. When skill fully deployed, they often help to work together and reinforce each other.

What is SEM?
SEM is the ability to create pay per click ad campaigns (PPC) through ad platforms managed by major search engine companies, such as Yahoo or Google. With SEM you can immediately increase traffic to your website.

What is SEO?
SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website. It consists ofpreparing a website to maximize its rank on search engines for targeted keyword phrases.

The practices of search engine optimization and SEM are perfectly compatible. An SEO campaign should almost always be supported by a PPC campaign (Pay per click), but you need to understand when this combination is most opportune or when it is best to focus your efforts individually.

SEO helps to place a website in the top search results for a series of specified keywords based upon the product or service being marketed. This is called natural positioning or organic. If you do it right, SEO will give long-term results and an acceptable web visibility.

Where SEO takes time to build steam, SEM offers immediate traffic relief for your business.Companies using SEM will get the customers looking for something related to what the company is announcing at that moment.

The most important difference between SEO and SEM is time and results. With SEO work is done to get results in the long term. SEM gets results immediately.

Whether your business is best poised to benefit from SEO, SEM or both, you will enjoy increased levels of search traffic, the highest quality traffic available.

Google+ Beginners Guide

Posted August 16, 2013 by Christopher Long

This young social network was born in 2011 and has over come the number of Twitter users. Has over 360 million users, but most of them do not take advantage of this channel to 100%.

This is why below we will give you the necessary guidelines to get out the most of it:

1. Create an account: Just with this you can use all the products of this great social network. Keeping a simple name people can easily find and remember you.

2. Add users to your circle: As in other social networks add people that you know is the basic of creating connections and interest.

3. Make friends: In this network besides adding people you know you canal some inteteresting people looking for them by category or popularity. There are different ways to decide whether to add a stranger or not, as for example, if the user has profile picture or not (if not indicated that is a new user who does not use the account or which may be a spammer), TheNumber of people added to their circles, not necessarily a lot of followers means that he is a good user to follow, becaus eif he does not use the account there is nothing that interest you, but a good sign would be that the user comments and share. If you use Google Chrome you can also know just by mousing over the name of the user how many publications and shares he did.

4. Buttons: These buttons allow you to navigate the social network:

a) Home: Here you will find the updates of people you follow.

b) Profile: You will see your posts and comments.

c) Interesting Topics: The most popular items.

d) Events: You can invite users to events as parties, meetings, conferences.

e) Photos: You will find photo collections that have been published, coming from you and from the other users.

f) Circles: Your circles and those who interact with you.

g) Local: Recommendations for local restaurants, stores, etc.. That are close to you besides scores and opinions.

h) Games: find different games that you can share with your circles.

i) Hangouts: video conference sessions with up to 9 people simultaneously and with the ability to share live on your You tube channel. It also lets youa dd tabs that take you to pages created by you. A must if you use this social network for your company.

5. Browse: You can explore other ways to find users, like keywords that identify your interests, and also Google+ can suggest people to you with similar tastes so you can add them to your circles to follow their publications.

6. Profile photo: This is a very important point because it is the first impression that users will have from you, and the cover photo is large so you can add a photo of high quality and great detail.

We hope this helps you !

CAPISCO marketing agency

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