Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

When you think about improving your SEO, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

Maybe you think of rewriting your web copy to rank better for certain keywords, churning out new posts for your blog, or making sure your website is structured in a logical way.

All of these are important aspects of ranking well in search engines, but they aren’t the only ways you can optimize your web presence.

If you want to rank better and get more traffic, you need to improve your off-page SEO, too. This guide will help you get started....

I put out a HARO query to see what tactics other SEO specialists and agencies used as quick wins when they took on a new project. I got back some great, solid responses from SEO experts across the country and wanted to share their advice.

Most of the answers I received fell into one of five basic categories: digital asset consolidation; link reclamation; long-form content creation; identification of low-hanging fruit keywords; and internationalization. I’ve picked what I felt was the best advice for each of these categories because I’ve personally seen results from these actions on my own client sites:...

Search engine optimization is a big puzzle with many moving parts. Every little thing has an impact on your site’s performance in search engines. For that reason, it is important to learn how to do an SEO audit of your WordPress website.

Auditing your site means looking at its most important SEO markers to make sure it’s up to snuff. That way, you are able to find weak spots might be hurting your performance. By fixing them, you can then improve your standings, even dramatically so in some cases.

Since SEO audits are something that should be done on a regular basis, it’s a good idea to learn how to do it yourself. Strap on your SEO helmet and let’s get cracking....

Social contents are more readily indexed nowadays. This is because Google has deals in place with Facebook and Twitter already—search for a news item, and you’ll probably see a tweet or two appear in your mobile search results.

In 2016, more platforms will become more heavily indexed in the vaults available to Google and other search engines. Social posts will carry a value and a consideration similar to any independent web page, and the separation of “web” and “social media” will begin to blur even further from an SEO perspective.

Here’s an infographic from Caliber Interactive Dubai that highlights the benefits of social content and mobile optimization along with the 7 other key trends in the SEO industry that will help you up the game in the digital world.

We’ve managed to outrank competitors in Google that have $9+ million in outside funding with our little self-funded, 40-person content creation agency, by an immense 3 percent. We rank organically for more than 11,000 key terms, with organic search visibility worth $57,000+ monthly.

And we haven’t paid a penny in ads — across six years — to gain the majority of our leads and clientele. They’ve come straight from these rankings.

How well do they convert? Very well.

After optimizing my strategy and increasing my content investment, we had the best sales month we’ve ever had and now my agency is on track to break our first seven figure year.

99 percent of our leads come through organic content marketing. I’ve never invested a single dollar in PPC....

“The content marketing industry will be a $300 billion industry by 2019, and SEO is forecasted to be an $80 billion industry by 2020,” said Betts.

SEO is the voice of the consumer and it delivers marketers powerful insights, according to Betts. But unless it’s paired with content, marketers won’t realize its full potential.“SEO, alone, is not enough to guarantee success.

Content marketing, alone, is not enough to guarantee success,” said Betts. “Together, they build a better customer experience. There’s a massive opportunity for people who are connecting the dots.”

Here are the group’s top takeaways for doing so....

Imagine  a world without search engines. It’s easy if you try.

No more surprise Google updates. No more worrying about XML sitemaps, robots.txt, and content analysis and optimization.

And perhaps most importantly, no more keyword research.

That last one means you’re going to have to go old-school to figure out the language of your audience to reflect it back to them. It’s going to take a lot more work....

Only 17% of small business owners will invest in search engine optimization (SEO) in 2017, 26% admit to having a Web site with only one page, and 43% say they have no plans to change or improve their online presence this year.

A joint study between David Ricketts, innovation fellow in the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard University found that only 54% of small business owners report that they are confident their company's online presence performs well, despite the small number of owners who are embracing online marketing.

Web.com Small Business Digital Trends Report surveyed 300 small business owners to learn how they use online channels to grow their businesses -- from dentistry to contractors, and artists to welders or dry cleaners, and retailers with ecommerce sites.

Although SEO can help businesses rise to the top of search engine query results, most small business owners do not cite the search media as a priority. Only 17% say they plan to add SEO to their online marketing strategy in 2017, and only 5% consider SEO a top priority for the year....

To write smart copy that attracts more eyeballs, find more keywords related to your topic. Here are eight tools to help.

“Write for the user, not the search engines,” continues to be a mantra of content marketing. In reality, smart content creators write for both.

Quality content is interesting, informative, original, AND it includes keywords, ultimately leading to more visits and helping you achieve your why. Quality content naturally builds links, which improves the site authority, which in turn boosts rankings, and gets more eyeballs on your content.

Integrating SEO with your content is the first step. But to really write smart copy, you should look at terms related to what you are targeting and how Google associates those terms. Then incorporate those terms into your content. Or you can use those findings to identify related topics you may want to write about down the road....

On-page SEO is all about how well your website responds to Google ranking factors. And by your website, we mean exclusively your website – everything from your URL and your metadata, to your content, keywords and images.

What's beautiful about good on-page SEO is that's what's good for users tend to also be really good for search engines.

Before reading on, know that these aren’t magical tricks that will catapult your site to the first search positions. They’re good practices that will, in time, help your website rank high for a particular keyword, if the website is, indeed, relevant....