SEO and its Role in Your Business

According to SmallBizGenius, 93% of all online activities start with a search engine. Moreover, 75% of searchers never click past the first page of results.

Those are impressive stats that indicate how important Search is in a consumer’s path to purchase. It also shows how SEO continues to be essential to any brand’s marketing strategy, just as much as traditional ad campaigns. 

These new stats shouldn’t be too surprising. In the omnichannel world that we live in, Search continues to be at the center of how we research a product before we buy.  

At the very least, these trends also should reveal how important SEO is within the marketing mix. And what’s more, many companies still diminish the impact that SEO brings. 

These stats are only the latest in a slew of data that says any marketer should be utilizing SEO as a powerful tool within your marketing toolbox. Here’s why:

Search Experience Optimization

At its core, SEO is about optimizing all aspects of the searcher’s experience, aiding their journey to find answers.

While some will consider SEO a temporary solution (or at worst snake oil), it's really the process in which a website’s health, performance, and visibility are improved. 

SEO, when done well, is focused on establishing a foundation that includes designing an effective user experience, writing great content, and providing a clear path to conversion. From there, more technical SEO tactics can help improve performance and provide a faster, more responsive experience for the user.

E-A-T for Results

Today, SEO is a blend of art and science. It’s also more about the quality of content and UX  than anything else. But it can be summed up by one acronym—EAT. 

E-A-T stands for: Expertise, Authority, and Trust.

Google's algorithm is ultimately searching for content with these attributes. It shows preference for and ranks sites that achieve it. 

Sites that rank well for competitive keywords are those that show expertise in a related field, prove themselves to be an authoritative source of information, and demonstrate they could be trustworthy. 

For many websites that demonstrate expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, organic search quickly becomes one of their top performing channels for traffic. The bonus is that it’s free traffic; you don’t have to pay for each visitor!

Sure, there’s also the ability to run ads in search, and paid results can be easy wins that are also important to an overall marketing strategy. But it’s an organic search strategy that leads to a brand’s ability to really saturate the first page of results for a query in Google. 

Your Brand and SEO

SEO takes time, which isn’t always a luxury that all brands have. 

Perhaps you have a new content content management system (CMS) that isn’t SEO-friendly. Or worse, you have a homegrown or proprietary CMS that doesn’t allow certain SEO elements. 

This is a common challenge, as many brands have a CMS that isn’t built with canonical tags, no-index tags, or schema. Moreover, some e-commerce CMS options help brands sell directly to consumers, but won’t necessarily have the URL structure to accommodate custom queries, or navigation to support natural SEO queries. 

If this sounds familiar at all, it is worth looking into how to upgrade your CMS. Finding workarounds to basic SEO challenges are essential, but also finding helpful SEO professionals to fine tune the content you have already might be worth investing in as well.

Help Customers Find You

As mentioned, SEO takes time. It isn’t a flash in the pan, or guaranteed quick fix. But it is part of a long-term strategy that certainly drives return. And more than likely, it’s something your competitors are already employing. 

SEO principles won’t just help you keep pace with your competitors, it will help you build stronger relationships with new customers actively looking for your product. The key is remembering the EAT concept, and to consistently create pages that are credible sources of information about a specific topic that provide real value for users.

I Rediscovered Feedly and Can't Believe What I've Been Missing

There's no shortage of apps to help aggregate and serve up news and information on important topics. A decade or so ago, this might have been more of a challenge. But today, it’s easily done through a host of services, and even some features baked right into our smartphones.

One of my favorite places to catch up on news and articles related to my interests is Google Discover. It’s only a swipe away from the homescreen on my TCL 20 Pro 5G. Discover gives me all the important stories that are relevant to me.

Discover is amazing. It’s a highly personalized feed of articles based on topics I care about, which Google determines from the sites I’m visiting and the queries I’m searching for. In most cases, my Discover feed is pretty spot on. Plus, I can easily control what I’m seeing just by tapping on the icons that can show me more or less content on any topic.

What I love most about Discover is it’s simplicity:

• It’s just a swipe away on my Android phone. No extra app or login is needed.

• It’s always up-to-date, surfacing content that’s related to what I’m interested in that week or that same day.

My other source for quick access to news on the go is Twitter. I don’t have time to visit individual publications I’m a fan of, so I subscribe to these outlets’ Twitter feeds to keep a pulse on their latest stories.

Essentially, I’m using Twitter as a modern RSS reader to get the latest posts from the publishers I love.

Relying mostly on these two services have served me well. However, on a recent vacation this summer I experienced something unusual. I had something that I hadn’t experienced in quite a while—downtime.

It was bliss, thanks to limited TV, cutting off work notifications, and having time to catch up on everything that’s important to me.

What I found was that the two primary sources I’ve come to rely on for keeping a pulse on the world around me just didn’t cut it.

Google Discover didn’t provide the volume of content that would help me feel caught up on all the things I’m passionate about. Rather it was really good at providing me with a somewhat limited window into recent info or what I had only recently researched online.

Twitter presented the opposite problem with way too much information. Constant tweets and that firehose of content means it’s never quite able to serve up the stories I want, when I want them. There are simply too many tweets for Twitter to make sense of and deliver in a focused way. It’s fine for killing time while waiting in line at a coffee house, but less useful when you’re dedicating more time to staying informed.

There are great topics and groups I subscribe to on Twitter. The Marketing topic, for example, is great and introduces me to new marketing folks. But the content of the posts have no real consistency, and they’re rarely enriching. Lately, it seems like there’s more marketing inspiration and quotes rather than anything really actionable.

In that moment of disconnectedness on vacation, I turned to an app on my phone I had not touched in many, many years: Feedly. I had used Feedly in the heyday of Feedburner and other tools that helped manage RSS feeds.

What I found was that Feedly was alive and well, and vastly improved. Still powered by the magic of RSS, Feedly was able to keep me up to date with the topics and trends I really cared about, without the limited or overwhelming presentation I found on Google Discover or Twitter, respectively.

Publications can be easily organized into groups. From there, I was able to see all the latest stories from those groupings and individual topics.

Feedly was perfect for my vacation mindset; it was efficient, it was current, it was actually enjoyable. From Marketing news, to Design & UX inspiration, to ideas on the best meals to cook when I got back home, Feedly allowed me to get easily immersed in all the stuff I love.

The information age is great and all, but sometimes there’s just too much information (or disinformation) to track. Feedly was useful in helping me keep a pulse on the topics that I cared about the most when I first used it back in 2008. I’m glad to see that it’s still around and doing exactly what it does best: making it easy to organize, read, and share information.

If you haven’t tried Feedly, I highly recommend giving it a spin.

5 SEO Myths You Shouldn’t Follow

SEO was really my gateway into digital marketing. Learning SEO in the early days of my career years ago served as my introduction to marketing on the Web. It’s what opened me up to a new world that included analytics, HTML, user experience, and so much more.

It’s an incredible feeling to build a fantastic website, create great content, to see people find it, and ultimately have those visitors convert. In a nutshell, that’s what made me fall in love with digital marketing in the first place. The outcomes, feedback, learning, and constant refinement is addicting.

Today, this practice blends art and science, and being successful is more about the quality of content and UX than anything else. Unfortunately, SEO has gotten a bad wrap and myths continue to be perpetuated.

Here are just a handful of my favorite myths, in no particular order:

1. SEO Myth: Google Only Ranks ‘Fresh’ Content

Google wants to provide users with the most relevant content for any search query. That’s often been interpreted to mean that to have content rank it must be fresh, new and timely. In other words, the most recently published content has the best chance of near-term success, while older content is bound to decline in organic traffic.

‘Freshness’ is indeed an important signal, but it’s also query-dependent. That means that how fresh a piece of content is likely depends on the query. For sites operating in fast-paced news, fresh content may be key. But for the majority of websites, freshness is less of a factor. Consider the topic that you’re targeting. If it’s one that’s constantly evolving, then it could be important to refresh and/or republish that content regularly to ensure Google doesn't consider it stale.

2. SEO Myth: You Don’t Need Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are the snippets of content that can be found under a website’s title tag in the search engine results page. They are basically a short summary of the web page that gives users an idea of what they are potentially clicking into. In many cases, Google will develop one automatically based on the page content.

It’s true that meta descriptions by themselves are no longer directly influencing rankings. However, they play a huge role in the searcher’s behavior and in driving engagement with your page’s SERP listing, click-through, and on-site conversion. If users don’t find what they’re looking for in the meta description, or it doesn’t accurately describe the page, they’ll probably move on to a competitor’s listing.

3. SEO Myth: Google Will Penalize a Website for Duplicate Content

It’s widely believed that duplicate content is a website’s kryptonite, paralyzing it from visibility in search engine results. While it can influence what organic results Google shows, duplicate content doesn't necessarily bring ranking doom.

Instead, Google will just ignore the duplicate content altogether. Keep in mind: if you have instances of duplicate content on your website, those pages may be ignored by search engines, which won’t help or hurt your organic rankings. Luckily, there are some tools out there that can help identify duplicate content on a website, such as Copyscape, but know that some duplicate is not completely unusual.

4. SEO Myth: An SEO Agency is the Best Way to Get Fast Rankings

Always be weary of any promise from agencies of rankings or fast results. If you have the budget, there can certainly be good reasons to hire an SEO agency to help with a host of activities, particularly if you’re short on internal resources or want a fresh perspective on how to improve your search traffic. However, SEO needs to be considered an ongoing effort, not a one-time project or something to get a quick win. It’s driven by data and planned, periodic spurts of increased activity scheduled ahead of time.

Google handles over 100 billion searches per month, so no SEO can predict how or what people are going to search tomorrow, or be able to make any guarantee of fast search rankings. SEO is a long-term practice that’s impacted by the age and history of domain names, authority links, and in-depth, high-quality content, among many other factors. There are many websites out there that check these boxes, but still struggle to rank well. Know that playing the long game is what it takes to not only get to the top of results, but to stay there.

5. SEO Myth: SEO is Dead

Last but not least. Google is more sophisticated than ever and makes it more challenging for SEOs to crack the formula to higher rankings. Moreover, search engine results pages look much different now than they did a decade or more ago. Increasingly, Google is serving up its own answers to searchers’ queries, before they reach traditional website listings. Even voice searches are becoming the norm in our smart homes.

However, the truth is that as long as search engines still exist and show organic results for users hungry for answers—answers that can be influenced in some fashion—SEO isn’t dead. At its core, SEO is about finding ways to satisfy user needs, answer their questions, and it’s about tailoring a website’s architecture or content to meet a searcher’s expectations. That’s something that will continue to be an essential practice.

Stay Nimble, Marketers

As 2020 comes to a close, I can’t help but think about how consumer behavior has changed this year and how businesses of all shapes and sizes are still trying to adapt.

The ancient Greek proverb that “the only constant in life is change” has never been more true as we piece together learnings from 2020 and look to apply to our digital marketing efforts in 2021.

The most successful brands and marketers have always been those who could quickly adapt to a changing environment and new technology. But that’s never been as crucial as it is right now, in the midst of a global pandemic, the likes of which may affect our lives forever.

As COVID-19 spread and made its impact felt on individuals and the wider economy alike, it became clear that the single most important trait that marketers can embody is the ability to stay nimble. If your marketing plans, workflows, or infrastructure isn't able to pivot on a dime, you’ll continue to fight an uphill battle and you certainly won’t be able to meet demands in the next catastrophe.

Marketers must be able to guide their teams and respond in a moment, while of course staying consistent with big picture goals. The overarching strategy behind your marketing plan shouldn’t be thrown out in the midst of adversity, but you should be able to make big changes in near-term ideas that won’t completely obliterate long-term objectives.

As important as it is to move quickly, take the time to get a clear, unbiased grasp of the situation. Your competition is likely grappling with the same changes. However, remember that an immediate reaction or shift doesn’t necessarily pay off.

Customers and partners look for leaders in volatile situations, putting pressure on marketers to deliver messaging that’s simple, factual and empathetic. No one wants to see rushed out brand content that’s overly self-serving, void of the brand's own core values, in an attempt to take advantage of an unusual situation.

Staying nimble these days is also about reinforcing your marketing technology. Now is certainly the time for organizations to take a digital-first approach, leveraging technology to be as efficient and agile as possible, while also delivering messaging that can simplify processes, scales easily, and adjusts to individual customer needs.

For most marketers, the last several months have been about figuring things out as they go. However, the time is perfect to experiment more and learn quickly, to find strategies that will help their brand’s growth within a volatile climate. Honing the ability to test, fail, and repeat again until you decipher the right formula is crucial. And of course whenever there’s a crisis, brands that stay nimble are the ones that will emerge stronger when the dust settles.

How to Stay Productive While Working from Home

The spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) has drastically changed the way we live, work, and play. We will perhaps be forever changed by this unprecedented world we now live in.

In recent years, remote work has become popular and fairly commonplace. But today, as the pandemic continues, working from home has become something entirely different. It has become the only way that work gets done. 

For traditionally office-bound professionals, working from home means taking advantage of the many perks that come with being remote. You’re able to save time and money by avoiding the daily commute to the office. You can create your own work environment and tailor your office space to your needs. No longer are you confined to one desk or one dedicated space; you can work wherever you want so long as it’s at home. 

Despite the convenience, there are certainly challenges of working at home. There are increased distractions from kids and spouses that are also forced into the same shelter-at-home situation. There are no physical boundaries between work life and home life, which means you have to stay focused, even while knowing there’s beer in the fridge and a gaming console in the next room. And, working with colleagues now requires a little more formality without impromptu brainstorming sessions by the water cooler or meeting follow-ups in the hallway.

Although there are certainly challenges to working from home, the benefits of greater autonomy and the promise of more hours in the day have overwhelming upsides. Here are a few tips I’ve come across that make some of the challenges easier to master and help to boost productivity: 

Stick to a Schedule

Just as you’ve done in the past, get up at the same time each day and start your morning routine. Set aside important tasks and goals the day before so that when you sit down in front of your computer you know exactly what you need to address first. 

Take Breaks

Working without breaks can lead to burnout, but admittedly this is something I’m really bad at when I’m at the office. However, working nonstop at home poses an even greater risk of burnout because I don’t have the luxury of “going home” at the end of the day. To avoid burnout, and feeling like I’m chained to my desk, occasional breaks throughout the day are essential. 

Move

Exercise is always something I try to do regularly, but while being cooped up it’s absolutely essential. Getting the heart rate up works wonders for both physical and mental health, especially while in confinement. Without a commute, there’s more time in the day so make use of it! For once I’m actually able to carve more time out of the day for exercise. It’s been such a treat to get up early and break a sweat before hitting the emails. 

Stay connected 

“Self-isolation” doesn’t have to mean you’re always on your own. Use technology, like email, instant messaging, and video conferencing services, to keep up relationships with friends, family, and colleagues. 

Control Communication

Don’t let the technology mentioned above control you. Set specific times to check in with your manager or co-workers so that you don’t get overwhelmed or distracted. When setting meetings, schedule them around the times that make the most sense for the way you work so that they don’t prevent you from other solo tasks that require more focus.

Get Fresh Air

Eat lunch outside, go for a walk, or simply open your window. Sunlight, fresh air, and the sounds of birds chirping can have a powerfully positive effect and prevent cabin fever. 

Use To-Do Lists

Whether you’re at home or at the office, there’s only so much time in a day so you’ve got to prioritize. Keep a running list of your tasks to prevent any distractions from getting in the way. I like to use Google Keep to organize my to-dos. Layout everything you need to achieve before the workday is done so that you know where to pick-up the next day. 

Set Clear Finish Times

In the past, whenever I would work from home I would end up putting in many more hours than I normally would at the office. Now, without ever physically leaving the “office” it’s more important than ever to set boundaries to achieve proper balance.

Digital Marketing Will Evolve in 2019. Here's How.

Keeping up with the latest trends in all areas of digital marketing including search engine optimization, social media marketing, web design, and user experience, is naturally essential for small businesses and large brands alike to reach consumers who are glued to their devices. But just because you’ve conquered digital marketing in 2018 doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re positioned for automatic success this year.

Digital marketing is in a constant state of flux; changing and evolving, shaped by new technologies and the habits of users. With this in mind, marketers need to be masters of adaptation.

By integrating these six strategies into your digital marketing plans this year, you’ll gain optimal traction with your customers while your competitors flounder in your wake.

Prepare for Google’s “micro moments”

We live in a fast-paced environment where we predominantly access digital content through mobile devices in short bursts on the train, waiting in line to get coffee, or (let’s face it) in the bathroom. The changing nature of our interactions with digital content is not making attention spans any longer. Today’s users don’t want, but demand instant gratification. They’re less likely than ever to take the time to scroll deeply or make dozens of clicks to navigate through your content.

Google understands this and its “micro moments” is a mental model for marketing that’s already changing the rules. This model distills user behavior into three distinct micro moments including:

• “I want to go” moments

• “I want to do” moments

• “I want to buy” moments

These are the moments in which a user will now instinctively turn to a device. They will do so out of a desire to “go” and learn something through a specific piece of content, to “do” something like signup or registration, or to make a purchase and “buy” a product or service. These are fleeting but critical moments which are ripe for opportunity. How will you capitalize on them in 2019?

Users have been conditioned to expect brands to deliver exactly what they want when they want it. It’s incumbent upon businesses to be able to meet users’ needs faster with fewer clicks. This means producing more content, prompt and responsive user assistance, real-time communication and a range of options for a more personalized user experience.

Embrace video marketing

It may have killed the radio star, but video can also be a kingmaker. In a time where users’ attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, long form written content still has its place. However, video is fast becoming the preferred medium for the kinds of time-strapped users upon whom you have your sights set. Video communicates ideas quickly, making them more effective than text and even infographics.

Video marketing grows more important with each passing year and it is expected to reach new heights of importance in 2019. Consider this: brands that use video get 41-percent more search engine traffic than their counterparts that don’t. Businesses with a wealth of competitors who need every inch of inside track they can get in terms of SEO are tempting fate if they don’t embrace video marketing.

Content is still king

 It’s as true today as it was when Bill Gates first said it in 1996. However, in a “mobile first” era, it stands to reason that the way in which your users consume said content will be different to how it was when the only way you could access the internet was from a desktop computer with a dial-up modem (go ahead and remember the sound of an old dial-up with fond nostalgia).

Mobile use has been the primary means by which users consume digital content since 2016, and as such it behoves marketers to consider how your content looks, how it feels, and how it is navigated through, on a mobile device.

Sure, this means that your web design will need to be responsive, but you must also consider how your content is laid out, how easy it is to navigate via touchscreen, and how long your content takes to load through a 4G or even a 3G connection. Remember that a page load time of just 7 seconds can increase your bounce rate by over 30-percent! 

What’s more, in the wake of Google’s “mobile-first” index, failing to keep mobile optimization at the heart of your content is SEO kryptonite.

Tell more social stories

In an era where brands are stepping over one another to get the attention of their audiences, a little authenticity goes a long way. Authenticity helps users to establish a personal connection to your brand and allows them to invest in it emotionally. It adds to the value your brand provides and ensures that users will consider you before your competitors.

Let users peek behind the curtain with behind-the-scenes content. Allow them to get to know your employees a little better. Use polls to provide a degree of interactivity and ensure that your users feel that they have a voice. Use instagram stories to give users a flavor of daily life in your business. While it’s understandable that you may want to save time and resources by outsourcing much of your content, make sure that you leave plenty of space for some User Generated Content to give your content marketing strategy the personal touch.

Social stories are quick, fun, and easy to consume, and they also help to add that much-needed human dimension to your brand.

Champion user-centered design

Gone are the days when web design was all about aesthetics. No longer is it enough to merely have a website that looks beautiful and professional. Everyone has that now! In 2019 the future of web design is about User Experience (UX). UX is especially important in the “mobile-first” era as your content must be easy and intuitive to navigate through.

Today’s users are web savvier than they would have been 15, 10 or even 5 years ago. They have been conditioned to expect polished and seamless UX, and failing to provide it could be damaging to your brand. In an era where 55-percent of users spend less than 15 seconds on a website, brands can’t afford to send their bounce rates through the roof with an impenetrable UX.

Think about natural language

Digital assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant continue to evolve, and as they become more sophisticated users are entrusting them more and more. Needless to say this is bound to impact the way in which people seek answers to questions, make purchases, and otherwise interact with brands.

With this in mind it, marketers should think about the natural language used via voice searches and how it differs from a traditional typed search engine query. Today 39 million people in the US alone own a voice operated smart speaker. As they grow more sophisticated and reliable, that number is likely to rise proportionately. With more and more users turning to voice search, it is increasingly considered to be the next SEO frontier.

These machines derive user intent from conversational voice commands as well as previous search queries, and the better you’re able to understand how they work the more luck you’ll have tapping into the vast and growing market of voice search users in 2019.

Closing thoughts

The year ahead offers some exciting opportunities and new challenges for brands of all shapes and sizes. However, when you keep this digital marketing checklist in mind, you’ll be perfectly positioned to respond to user demand in 2019 and beyond.