8 Types Of Businesses That Can Benefit From SEO In Houston
Part 2
5. Real Estate Professionals
The real estate industry focuses on buying and selling homes, businesses, and land. Depending on the property, these sales may involve any naturally occurring resources located on the land such as water or minerals. In some cases, it also may include a home, business, or other structure.
The world of real estate not only involves the buying and selling of properties like these but also activities like renting or constructing housing or commercial businesses. People who are in the market for a new home or apartment spent a lot of time searching online. That is why SEO is so important for professionals working in the real estate industry. From large real estate companies all the way down to independent realtors, anyone who sells real estate can benefit from optimizing their website.
This is one area where local SEO really shines. Professionals can optimize their websites to target cities, counties, or ZIP Codes. They also can target people who are looking for specific types of properties through both organic and paid marketing.
6. Businesses With More Than One Location
Companies that have more than one location can target specific customers through the use of local SEO. By designing a search engine optimization campaign that allows them to optimize their site for each individual location, they can connect with customers who are looking for exactly what they have to offer. For instance, if a company is holding a sale at one of their locations, they can optimize their site to target customers in those locations, helping to draw more people in.
7. Food Service Businesses
Restaurants, cafés, coffee shops, and other companies that serve food can use SEO to bring in more business. When people decide to go out to eat, they often search online for nearby restaurants. Through the use of SEO, a food service business can get their website in front of customers who are actively searching for that specific type of cuisine. This not only can bring in more customers but can also result in more reviews, helping your website become even more visible on the Internet.
8. Pet Service Providers
Companies that cater to pets and their owners can see a significant increase in business by using local SEO techniques. When looking for services like boarding, grooming, pet sitting, and dog walking, people almost always start their search online. Businesses that provide services like these can optimize their site, allowing them to beat out their competition so that they can get more business.
All eight of these industries can greatly benefit from local SEO. There are also many other industries where SEO can have a big impact on a company’s bottom line. By combining website optimization with other marketing techniques like blogging, getting listed in local directories, and posting on social media, you can start getting more attention for your business online.
When choosing an SEO agency, look for a provider that is capable of creating a comprehensive online marketing strategy for your business. We work hard behind the scenes to make sure that your site performs well, freeing you up to pay attention to other aspects of your business. Don’t wait to take action – otherwise, your competitors may beat you to the punch. It is well worth making this investment in your business.
If you are ready to start improving the performance of your website today, reach out to us right away to talk about your project. You can learn more on our blog about how companies in Houston can use SEO to get noticed. Click here for the first article in this series.
8 Types Of Businesses That Can Benefit From SEO In Houston
Part 1
No matter what products you sell or services you provide, there are customers out there waiting to do business with you. Whether you target other businesses or sell directly to individual consumers, you should do everything you can to make it as easy as possible for people to find you. One of the best ways to accomplish that is through SEO. By putting together a solid search engine optimization plan, you can connect with customers who are actively searching for keywords and phrases that are related to your business.
Although every business can benefit from SEO, businesses in some industries stand to gain more by optimizing their sites than others. In these particular industries, developing a marketing strategy that includes SEO is extremely important.
The eight industries that can realize the greatest benefit from SEO are listed below.
1. Professional Service Providers
On the Internet, your website is the first introduction that most people have to your business. According to researchers, as many as 80% of people conduct research on the Internet before hiring a company or investing their money. When people visit your website, they are interested in learning more about your services. This not only includes researching what you do but also figuring out whether or not you provide high-quality services. If your site isn’t listed at the top of the search results on major search engines like Google, your business may never be discovered by these potential customers.
Professional service providers in industries like financial planning, accounting, and Internet technology can use SEO to connect with people in their own local communities. Local searches are on the rise, with more people than ever checking online before hiring businesses in their own communities. Through the use of SEO, businesses that provide professional services can connect with consumers who are interested in working with them.
2. Home Improvement
Home improvement projects usually involve remodeling, renovating, or adding on to an existing space. These projects sometimes take place inside the home. For instance, a homeowner may put in a new plumbing or electrical system. Other times, the work involves the exterior of the home. Homeowners may choose to pour concrete, install new siding, put on a new roof, or tackle other outdoor projects. Landscaping projects also fall into this category.
Companies that specialize in services related to home improvement can benefit from using SEO to reach a local market. By optimizing their websites, they can get more leads. When people need work done on their homes, they typically turn to the Internet to find local contractors. By creating a targeted local SEO campaign, companies can tap into this large online market.
3. Medical Providers
Doctors, dentists, and other professionals in the field of medicine also cater to a local audience. People sometimes search for new providers when they become sick. Other times, they may change insurance plans only to find that their old doctor no longer takes their insurance. In cases like these, they almost always go online to find doctors in their area. Medical providers who use local SEO are more likely to get discovered by these patients than providers who don’t.
4. Internet-Based Businesses
SEO is mandatory for companies that conduct their business online. Without a physical store for customers to visit, their online presence is the only way that people can find them. Getting noticed on the Internet requires a combination of both outbound and inbound marketing techniques. SEO is an excellent way to gain more exposure. Along with that, companies like these also need to optimize their websites for mobile users, actively participate in social media, and grow their sites through the use of content that is generated by their users. When done correctly, SEO can result in more leads, helping these companies grow over time.
If you are ready to start improving the performance of your website today, reach out to us right away to talk about your project. You can learn more on our blog about how companies in Houston can use SEO to get noticed. Click here for the second article in this series.
Houston small businesses are often reliant on foot traffic and word-of-mouth advertising, which begs the question, is local search engine optimization necessary? Unfortunately, not thinking ahead to the myriad of marketing tactics available does negatively impact your business in more ways than one.
Business owners, like yourself, often find themselves preoccupied with other important parts of their business such as inventory, customer service, ordering products, and dealing with employees directly. This often means that SEO may be lacking, which is why we can help!
Why Is A Local Online Presence Important?
Today’s market is fickle, and whether you’re a local business or a national one, you need to cater to the needs of potential customers. Most of the people looking to purchase your products or services will perform a simple online search to find more information about your company.
Modern consumers want to know that they are making an informed purchasing decision, which is why a local SEO presence is so important. Companies that rank well for the desired keywords are more likely to get new and repeat business than those that ignore SEO altogether.
No SEO Equals Failure
Most business owners rarely equate failure to a lack of SEO, but it’s a fact. Your company is undoubtedly missing a vast majority of your potential market if you don’t appear in localized search results. You may not have any knowledge of online marketing, but investing in SEO services is a worthy cause with a good return.
Why Outsource SEO?
You may think that you’re equipped to handle all of your SEO needs in-house, but unless you have the experience to deal with constant changes, outsourcing is your best option. The wrong strategy can often lead to penalties in search results, which is why the right kind of help is instrumental in your success!
Proper SEO tactics can produce the desired results and achieve a number of benefits such as higher search rankings, especially if you cater to a niche market. Your rankings will also translate to more calls and inquiries from potential customers and better traffic to your website. SEO helps reel in more loyal customers and offers a higher retention rate for interested parties. And, most importantly, you’ll be well known in your community.
Beat The Struggle!
The struggle is very real for most small business owners, especially in such a corporate market-driven community. Getting to the top of local search results is what every business owner should strive to achieve. Many small businesses that fail and don’t retain loyal consumers do so simply because of their unwillingness to go with the times.
The right SEO strategy, with the help of a professional company, can help your business get ahead of competitors. Getting started today ensures that there’s plenty of time for your business to rank well and cater to the people that search for it the most.
Important Information About The Lead Generation Process
Lead Generation Basics
There is so much to know and learn about the lead generation process. Basically, it is a kind of marketing process to energize and capture interest for a specific product or service and leverage those to develop a sales pipeline. Various digital channels are essential for generating leads, as well as the techniques that get applied to all of the changes that continue to evolve over time. These days, we have modern online and social techniques that are also available. The development of the “self-directed buyer” who is able to thrive on all of the information that can be found online these days is one of the most notable developments. We now have modern online and social techniques. Those new techniques help with creating and evaluating prospective leads before they convert into sales.
Why Lead Generation Is So Essential
The new face of the buying process requires marketers to come with up new and fresh ways to get their messages across to their prospective buyers. Email blasts and mass advertisements up to this point were the acceptable advertising methods. Marketers now need to do more to stay on the radar screen and work on increasing their chances on a daily basis for customers to find them. Once a business is discovered it must work on developing close relationships with its customers.
The Abundance of Information & Attention Economics
With the rise of the internet, information has become more abundant. Although it is a good thing having so much information available, there are challenges that come with it. Having an abundant amount of information results in having to secure attention. It is one of the basic principles that attention economics is associated with. Herbert Simon, a social scientist and leading pioneer of attention economics, says that information, in the economic sense, consumes the attention of its recipients. It has also changed the buying process. Buyers now have so much information available to them, and in trying to not be influenced by it, buyers continue to reject or ignore most of the messages. Instead, they rely on their own research to learn about a subject that they are interested in.
The New Purchasing Process
In the past, during the information scarcity age, marketing was involved in the lead generation process, which involved finding the name of potential buyers and converting this information into sales. At that time buyers relied on sales agents to help them make their decision. The sales agent, on the other hand, may lack the knowledge that is necessary for convincing uneducated, early-stage buyers.
By contrast, the new purchasing process involves buyer doing their own online research where they look for resources that can help them make a good decision. They rely on social media, search engines, as well as other online channels to get information on a specific product or service. They are more prepared than ever before to interact with salespeople.
This is why business must ensure they have a good digital presence. The new purchasing process places the vendor on the very end of the consumer’s buying journey since they have received the information that they would have received from the seller in the past. So they are more of their very own experts now.
Any business with a well-developed lead generation strategy can stand a lot better chance to earn the prospective buyer’s complete trust and spark their interest before they reach the last stage where they meet with the vendor. That also saves on wasting time and stress for a sales team that has a reduce to have to cold call. When your sales time has solid leads it is a much easier process, and ultimately you will get higher and faster conversions of leads into revenue.
Owned Attention & Rented Attention
The purchasing process is currently shifting away from “renter attention” to “owned attention” due to attention scarcity. The common practice before now was applying a marketing strategy based on rental attention, or attention built by other people. For example, buying an ad in a magazine or renting a booth at a tradeshow. They are less expensive these days, because of information overload. More has to be done in order to capture the attention of the buyer, perhaps a combination of owned attention and refined attention – to achieve results from your lead generation efforts.
To gain attention for yourself, these days you have to establish yourself with prospective buyers as a trusted advisor. That can be done from constantly creating valuable content and disseminating thought leadership. When done properly, it helps to increase the chance that your lead generation efforts will succeed rather than being part of a very complex purchasing environment that we are all in today.
Leading Prospects Down The Sales Funnel
It is essential that you understand that the process currently demands you to do more than just convert new leads into sales. Businesses need to go beyond just marketing from the Top of the Sales Funnel. If you realize that not every new lead will buy something at that exact moment, then you will understand there is a new to retain leads so they do not get snatched by the competition or get lost or ignored.
In order to succeed with lead generation, a business needs to be willing to invest in nurturing leads and make use of the Middle of Funnel (MOFU) methods. MOFU techniques are designed to help nurture relationships that are already established and to grow and develop trust by offering engaging, high-quality content. It is important for the techniques to guide the lead gently into buying.
Recently, in order to succeed in lead generation, you need to effectively combine MOFU and TOFU approaches and techniques into an overall holistic marketing philosophy. You can only then convert your leads efficiently into paying clients or customers.
Lead GenerationResearch
An important aspect of lead generation is lead generation techniques. Companies are increasingly spending good amounts of money on diversifying their creative efforts for capturing the attention of their audience despite all of the noise in today’s environment.
Recently we have seen an increase in net spending by marketers on lead generation. Typically, money is spent on social media, website optimization, and SEO.
Lead Generation Focus of CMO’s
CMO’s and senior-level marketing executives are increasingly prioritizing obtaining measure ROI from all of their marketing efforts. They are also prioritizing optimization of the sales funnel and marketing over their lead generation efforts. Therefore, CMOs are focusing on locating viable methods to improve the quality of the leads that they generate from their investments and marketing efforts.
Today’s Top Challenges For Lead Generation
As previously mentioned, the top priority across the board for marketing executives is lead quality. However, the quality of leads is a major challenge for marketers. And IDG study showed that 61% of marketers that were part of the study found that it was a huge challenge to generate high-quality leads.
That said, marketing executives must deal with having inadequate resources. That includes needing to operate with inadequate data (both quantity and quality-wise), staffing, and resources while still attempting to generate quality leads in the process.
Most Efficient & Effective Lead Generation Techniques
Another IDG survey on B2B Lead Generation showed that conferences, tradeshows, corporate websites, and email marketing are the most popular and effective lead generation techniques that are being used currently. On the other hand, print advertising and direct mail have been identified to be the least effective forms of lead generation methods.
Lead Generation Fundamentals
In order to get lead generation fundamentals right, you must appreciate the fact that defining leads is highly subjective. Everything depends on the specific company that is involved. Definition of a lead will typically depend on the sales cycle of the company. However, the general definition of a lead is a qualified prospective buyer who shows a certain level of interest in purchasing your services or goods. It is very important to note that each lead that supplies their details to you should get something in exchange; that could be a convincing offer or additional information on your products.
In generally there are two major kinds of lead generation – outbound and inbound. However, the basic principles of customer retention, nurturing, and recognizing are always a part and integral to the comprehensive strategy of a business.
Inbound Marketing
This involves helping prospective clients or customers learn about or find your company, usually before they consider buying from you. Doing this will help you convert your early audience into developing a preference for your brand, and that will turn them eventually into a lead and a sale.
In a market with customers being greatly empowered by having plenty of choices available to them, marketers cannot rely on cold calling, advertisements, tradeshows and other types of outbound marketing methods only. Consumers today are knowledgeable and educated, and therefore need a lot of information. Marketers must find creative and innovative ways to stand out in a crowd and catch the attention of their audience. To do that you need to have a very good handle on inbound marketing.
This is achieved by providing a mix of entertaining, relevant, and informative content. The goal here is to develop a relationship with your audience who are your potential clients as well. However, it is not enough to simply create content. You must make your content available to your audience on the specific channels that are used by your prospective customers.
We will take a look at some of the most effective forms of inbound lead generation strategies:
Content & SEO
All of the inbound marketing efforts you make will run into a brick wall quickly if you don’t create and use the right type of content. Therefore, content marketing is the cornerstone of inbound leads generation. At its core content marketing is all about creating and distributing useful and in-depth content in order to capture the attention of a specific target audience and then engage with this audience. The end goal is to help the audience take customer actions that are profitable.
Social media marketing, email marketing, and other kinds of marketing all thrive on content. When you have the right content it can get you in front of the right buyers and help you win their trust.
Learn About The SEO Risks That You Should Avoid And Those You Can Take Part II
SEO Risks That Should Be Avoided
It is worth taking certain SEO risks; however, there are other types of risk that you should not take since they can damage your bottom line and your business. Let’s review the risks that should be avoided.
1. Doorway Pages
It is easy to make doorway pages that are used for certain keyword phrases or keywords. Usually, SEO experts do not use doorway pages since Google doesn’t like them and will often penalize a website that has doorway pages on them. For that reason, you should avoid using any doorway pages on your website.
The only time a doorway page is not penalized by Google is when it provides valuable, unique, and clear content or information for its visitors. This kind of doorway is similar to other content on your website and viewed that way by Google.
Since Google has a negative opinion of doorway pages, you should avoid using them on your site.
2. Neutral Backlinks
Getting high-quality backlinks for your website is something you want, but poor-quality backlinks are something that you want to avoid as much as possible. However, what about having neutral backlinks? These are links that don’t hurt or help your site’s page rankings. Neutral backlinks don’t provide your website with a boost; however, Google is not penalizing your website for having neutral backlinks any longer.
With Google’s latest Penguin update, it was determined by the search engine that websites frequently cannot control which sites link to their website. That is beneficial for website owners since they are no longer being punished for backlinks since they don’t necessarily have control over the links pointing back to their site.
The only way you can tell if there are bad backlinks pointing to your website is if they are spammy and low-quality. Google might take action against those backlinks and manually remove them off of your website.
If no action is taken by Google, then you can assume those backlinks on your website are safe, even when they are not those high-quality backlinks that increase your page rankings in the search results.
Although certain backlinks can be disallowed, you need to be careful. If neutral backlinks are disallowed on your site, you might risk blocking sites that can help with improving your page ranks.
3. Removing Entire Pages From Your Website Or Deleting or Condensing Content From Your site
You might want to remove or delete entire pages from your website about a discontinued product or service. However, once you delete the page, the keywords that were helping your rank your website are not there any longer. The page URL, including the page-specific keyword phrases and keywords, disappear.
Instead of your page rankings taking a hit, you might want to keep these web pages, even if they are for discontinued products or services. Place a message on the page to inform your visitors that there is a similar service or product that is available and supply a redirect link for it.
If you are going to be merging or condensing several pages into one page, make sure to include 301 redirects so that the traffic and links continue.
4. Avoid Using Exact Match Keywords Too Much In Your Anchor Text.
Maybe you think it is a good idea to include your targeted keywords in your anchor text for your site. You are wanting your website to rank for those targeted keyword phrases or keywords.
In the past, this was a very popular practice and SEO experts were following this logic. Unfortunately, technique started to be extensively used by black hat SEO professionals where exact matching keywords were used heavily for their websites. These links were also not coming from high-quality sites.
Since then Google has cracked down on the practice of using exact match keywords in anchor text. On pages and sites where this technique is used, they will be penalized and hurt their page rankings. Therefore, this technique should be avoided. Instead, search for natural ways of creating a diverse backlink portfolio and high-quality websites to link to your site.
5. Avoid Making Numerous Small Changes To Your Website
In general, updating the content on your website is a good idea and Google likes fresh and updated content. However, when you are constantly changing the appearance or content on your website, it can have a negative impact on your page rankings and visitors to your website may be uncomfortable with the constant changes.
Making changes too frequently or making lots of them at the same time may flag your website as being suspicious. Quite often Google penalizes websites that make frequent changes or many changes at once. Therefore, it is better to limit how many changes are made to your website.
Regular site visitors also will notice changes you make to your website, particularly if those changes are made for improving page rankings instead of providing your visitors with more high-quality content. Those changes can also make it hard to navigate your website and make visitors feel suspicious of your site.
Balancing Risk and Reward
Expert SEO needs to be performed to ensure the success of your business. However, there are numerous risky practices that might damage your page rankings. There are also certain risks that may help to improve your page rankings. You need t to learn which SEO risks should be avoided and which ones can be taken.
Although SEO does have certain risks that are associated with, the riskiest thing that you can possibly do is to not perform search engine optimization.
Learn About The Houston SEO Risks That You Should Avoid And Those You Can Take Part I
Many people in the business world appear to have a hard time recognizing the value offered by search engine optimization. There is a lot of information and also misinformation about SEO, and that can make things more difficult for some people. Those who are unfamiliar with SEO may not be able to wrap their heads around the specific techniques that are involved, and this is admittedly compounded by the fact that numerous SEO campaigns may need several months of positive results in order to prove the effectiveness of their strategy. However, after they do, of course, they make significant improvements to a company’s online exposure, in addition to its revenue. However, many businesses are wary of the idea of trying something out that is strange and new to them, and all business decisions do carry some element of risk. There are some risks that can be avoided, while others could result in continuous growth. The question that needs to be asked is what specific SEO risk are great ideas and which ones should you avoid.
However, before we cover all of that, you need to know there is an SEO risk that a business can take that is the worst move possible over all others. That is to not use SEO at all, to begin with. Now that you are aware of that, continue reading to learn the different SEO risks that are out there and the way they break down into avoidable mistakes and acceptable risks.
Search Engine Optimization Risks You Should Consider
1. Making Changes, Both Large And Small, And Then Testing Them
When it comes to search engine optimization, the ultimate goal is getting traffic for your website, followed by transactions coming from the traffic. If nobody visits your website either one those things will happen; although it may feel really good to rank high for specific keywords, what if no one actually uses those links? There may be various reasons behind it, and it may take some time to focus in on the specific reason you are not getting the performance levels that you need or want. Quite often, the only way this can get done is to use A/B testing. You need to go through every element, one at a time, whether that is meta descriptions, content, titles, and more, and test each of them against new variations that you have.
This might be obvious to some people, and be all well and good. So what about all of it is a risk actually? It will probably involve some trial and error to get the right combination of layout and wording that brings your website the most traffic as well as transactions. During this time, most likely you will find combinations that do not work out very well, and therefore you may suffering temporary reductions in traffic. However, the risk is definitely worth it, since you will find the optimum results eventually, and you can focus from there on that specific element to drive more traffic and achieve better returns.
2. High-Quality Backlinks: Giving And Getting Them
Why would a business want to put a link to another company’s website up when it poses the risk that their own users will leave their website? Backlinks have long been the backbone of SEO, and a majority of businesslike to get as many of them as they can. They help with increasing rankings and establishing website authority. However, it isn’t simply a matter of having the most links. At times you will need to return the favor or pay it forward. So although you may bleed some online visitors for links that you post to other good websites, and it will show Google that your website is referencing established authority websites for your own. Just be careful to link only to high-caliber, reputable websites. Websites are known sources of low-caliber links, spammy, malicious or content that is penalized by Google, so make sure you are not one of them, and don’t point a lot of links to these, or get a lot of links from these kinds of websites.
3. Improve Your Website’s Structure
In the perfect world, your main homepage’s URL will be sweet and short. It should, in fact, be your business name, such as “www.yourbusiness.com”. Make sure it is short and sweet, and is concise and easily recalled by anybody who learns your name. On subsequent pages, you can have content that is more specific that features targeted keywords. Even in those cases, it is better to avoid your URLs from spiraling out of control. When they get too long or overly descriptive, the search engines will truncate what is displayed with (….) at a certain cut-off point. So it may be time to change a couple of URLs through overhauling your website structure. When making changes there is always an inherent risk that it will have an impact on your rankings. Whenever you change older URLs and begin to do 301 redirects for your traffic toward new ones, so you most likely will see a couple of dips in traffic and rankings. However, whenever you are doing things right, it should result in you having a new streamlined structure that will do wonders for the search engines and online users.
4. Overhaul Your Entire Website
Every once in a while, all websites need to have a redesign to update them. That always is a risk, and it may be an expensive one. So even though it may be time-consuming, eventually you will need to provide your site with a fresh facelift. It may be simply a matter that over time your old website starts to look outdated. It might also be possible that your website was optimized well for the search engine,s but then you find that human users are having a difficult time to navigate it. There could be several reasons why you should look at the side and consider reconstructing it from the ground up. Those types of changes are similar to altering URL structures, since you may see changes to your rankings while Google is re-evaluating your site. Also, you may risk alienating users and consumers that were comfortable with the way your website was. However, although a majority of your users and Google will understand that most websites have to overhauled occasionally, meaning your rankings will bounce back. You will simply have to be patient. What is really good is most likely your updated website will bring many new clients in addition to the ones you retain.
5. Purchasing Expired Or Available Domains
For many reasons, a lot of website owners do not renew their domains, and that make them available for others to purchase them. Purchasing domains that have a history and redirecting them to your website is a potentially simple and fast way to boost how many backlinks your website has and also enjoy some added link juice. However, there are significant risks that are carried with this technique, so you should only do if you really know what you are doing. For instance, the domains need to be related to the type of business you do. They also need to be professional, since when domains get rankings and traffic and send visitors via redirection to your website, nothing will make them angry more than coming to a website that doesn’t have anything to do with what their search was. Also, many expired domains were full of spammy content and links, which will transfer to your website, and risk Google penalties and drops in rankings. However, this specific traffic is quite affordable and may drive a good deal of traffic to your website if you follow best practices.
Houston SEO And Link Building: What You Really Need To Know
Over time, SEO strategies continue to change, but there is one constant that remains. This constant is how important high-quality inbound link building is for increasing higher search engine rankings and brand recognition. If you head a startup up own your own small business, your Houston SEO efforts need to have inbound link building includes as part of the overall marketing plan for your company.
What Is Inbound Link Building?
Inbound links, in their most basic form, are links that are on external sites that link back to your own website. They may link to a specific page or blog post on your website.
As part of Google’s ranking algorithm, several factors are evaluated by Google including the inbound links of your website in order to determine where your website should rank. However, Google goes beyond that. It also evaluates the authority and relevance of the external website that links back to yours. Is it an authoritative website? Does the site have relevance and a trustworthy history in its industry? So, does that website linking back to your site needs to have a high-quality reputation in order to have a positive influence on your Houston SEO?
What Benefits are Provided by an Effective Inbound Link Strategy?
When you use link building effectively as part of your Houston SEO strategy, what occurs?
Benefits offered by external link building include:
Improved brand visibility: Links coming from external websites that use the brand name of your company help to improve the brand recognition of your business.
Higher search rankings: Backlinks coming from authoritative external websites increase rankings and boost the domain authority of your site.
Long-term value: Over time the impact that external links have to continue to strengthen, providing you with long-term advantages for many months into the future.
Inbound Link Building Facts
Inbound link-building definitely plays an essential role in all search engine marketing plans. However, link building is frequently confusing and difficult. Link building, unlike the fundamental Houston SEO approach of publishing informative content, isn’t a straightforward process.
When it comes to link building, another fact that is somewhat confusing is that it does take some time for you to start seeing positive effects. Not even the most highly effective Houston SEO link building approaches will produce immediate results for you. Inbound links offer great advantages both in helping to build your search engine rankings as well as your site’s domain authority in ways that other SEO strategies cannot. Link building is one of the fundamental components of any successful SEO plan.
Solutions For Inbound Link Building
The quantity of authoritative inbound links impacts search engine rankings directly. A long-term effort is required by link building. If you are searching for an experienced and reputable SEO company that has a prove record of providing inbound link building solutions that are successful, give our professionals a call.
Key Considerations Regarding Voice Searching And SEO In Houston
Though formerly dismissed by many, the concept of voice-activated searching has taken off tremendously of late. The recent growth has taken experts by surprise as well. As such, it is important for everyone to realize that voice searching must be considered by anyone looking to employ an effective Houston SEO and web design plan.
Why Has Voice Searching Become So Popular?
During the advent of voice assistant technology, most people were amazed by the innovation, but inconsistencies plagued the experience. Responses were often garbled and unusable. However, the rise of artificial intelligence allowed for greater accuracy and sophistication overall. A recent study has shown that the accuracy of voice recognition technology reached 95 percent by the time 2017 rolled around.
As better accuracy became achievable, numerous voice-activated consumer applications arrived on the scene, such as Cortana from Microsoft, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant. The ranks of these technologies were also bolstered by the prevalence of mobile devices equipped with voice command capability.
SEO Implications Of Voice Searching
While most folks use voice recognition for commands such as “call home” and the like, the technology is being used more frequently in other ways including for search purposes. It is important to consider how this shift is likely to impact your social media marketing plan in Houston.
Studies have recently shown that requesting directions is among the most frequent commands performed by teenagers and adults alike. Asking for the hours of operation of stores and restaurants is also quite common, it was found.
Research has revealed an uptick in voice searching for things including sales, discounts and other business-centered queries. As a result, voice search optimization must take center stage as you go about crafting your SEO and web design plan in Houston.
How Voice Searching Is Distinctive
The truth of the matter is that Google is always making adjustments to algorithms so that irrelevant results and spam are reduced. Penalties exist to enhance these efforts and to produce results with the highest possible accuracy. Because voice searching is relatively new, refinement of a similar nature is not yet possible.
Users employ voice searching in a different way than they search via text. Those searching via voice usually utilize shorter phrases to make their inquiries than they would in a typed search. Therefore, voice search optimization involves a distinct set of techniques.
Why Time Is Of The Essence Regarding Optimization For Voice Searching
Industry leaders in large numbers are of the belief that searching via voice will take the lead at some time in the future. This may or may not be true, but lots of people are already taking advantage of this capability. The majority of mobile devices are equipped with voice-activated programs and sales via voice assistant have topped $420 million already. The best Houston SEO and web design firms understand that voice search optimization must be part of the services they provide.
Trouble Getting Your Site to Rank? Find Out What Is Wrong By Consulting Our Houston SEO Agency Part III
My Site Won’t Rank & I Want To Know Why
You might treat your site as if it resides in a vacuum, but guess what? Search engine optimization doesn’t live in one because it exists in content. It also exists in other online components such as pay-per-click and social media.
We don’t want to sell your services. We are just pointing out that internet marketing is holistic. In fact, it’s more now than ever before.
There are many elements that play a role in how a site gets ranked. This includes how many people click through it and how long they stay on your site. The number of times your site is mentioned on social media and the engagement you receive affects it too.
Some things that affect rank are more direct than others. Regardless, all components are crucial. Google looks at many signals when they rank websites.
This doesn’t mean that going on Facebook and posting all the time will help rank a site. We’re saying you need to actually build a community on social media sites and get people to visit your site, read content on your site and click on your links. These are a few things that can help get a better rank.
With that said, there are a few reasons why a site doesn’t get rank, and the most common one is the competition is doing more than you. You might be doing a vacuum too. This is sort of speaking.
SEO is not some secret. In today’s world of marketing, SEO is a necessity. Every time you fail to link to content from your blog posts is another way you’re falling behind the competition. Even if you think you’re doing plenty, someone eventually will show you up.
Maybe you’ve been testing the waters of SEO. If so, your site’s rank should improve over time. Remember, now is the time to jump into SEO because many other companies have gotten the results you are wanting to get.
Keep in mind that use only ethical SEO techniques and that SEO is all about going against your competition. They are the ones you should be focusing on. After all, they are trying to do the same thing you’re doing, and that is beat or continue to beat their own competitors.
Small Changes Can Make A Huge Difference
You’re right in thinking you have a lot of work to do. This is exactly why you need to get the ball rolling now, even if you’re just going to make small changes. Before doing anything, like hiring an SEO agency, you should first make small changes.
It takes time to rank a website. If your website doesn’t eventually rank, then it’s time to make some big changes. Whatever the case is with your site, start off small and focus on making small changes. Doing this can make all the difference in the world.
A good link profile made up of links from a variety of sources is necessary, period. Even though this is true, some links are no good, and may even have a negative effect on ranking. Similarly, buying links is not recommended. Also bad for you are link schemes. To build the right link profile, avoid using strategies that are bound to get you flagged, by adopting a natural approach.
Furthermore, there are bad links of course. These include the following scenarios:
These come about when someone with an ill intent targets your website. This simply refers to the use of unethical tactics on your website by some people.
Actually, there is no reason to do this for such people. They simply choose to inject malicious code on the targeted website. Another approach is to scrap your blog(s) and publishing all the content therein again. Using questionable websites to build links to your site is also a common tactic.
Note that Google can pick up on harmful SEO attacks quite easily. Knowing this, however, you do not want to take chances with your site and the many penalties that may be attributed to such attacks. As such, being vigilant at all times is a wise decision.
Being Penalized By Google
Your website may also rank poorly as a result of Google penalties. Google may slap your website with penalties due to some sort of unprofessionalism. The complete removal of the website from the Google SERPs (search engine result pages) is the most severe penalty action.
Hence, you should know automatically that your website is on the wrong side of Google’s SEO rules if you notice a huge drop, but not complete removal, in the rankings after enjoying a great position on the SERPs. To you, this should mean that you are being penalized because there is something wrong on your website.
To resolve this situation, you should get down to correcting the highlighted problem(s) after checking the Google Manual Action report. You should understand that the Google team, and not robots, will have manually checked your site and uncovered that it does not comply with the search engine’s guidelines, the moment you receive the report.
What are some of the factors behind such measures?
Your website will be penalized by Google if the individual going through it:
Discovers that it has been hacked: Simply means that hackers uploaded or hid hateful information on your website after gaining unauthorized access/control
Discovers the use of User Created Spam: Discovering the use of, on the forum or blog, spam comments
Discovers the use of spammy structured markup: This translates into the use of on-page markups that are not allowed. For instance, the use of content that cannot be seen by website users.
Discovers the use of spammy free hosts: Using spammy service hosted pages
Discovers unnatural links originating from the site: This means the creation of links that are unnatural from your site
Discovers unnatural links linking to your site: The opposite of the above
Discovers the use of low-value content: The information contained in pages must offer value to users
Uncovers the use of Clocking or Sneaky Redirects: Displaying, to Google and users, different pages
Discovers the use of Clocked Images: Trying to increase clicks by using manipulated images
Discovers the use of Hidden Texts and Keyword Stuffing: Google does not entertain the use of these tactics anymore, even though they used to work in the past.