New Website? Here’s A Quick SEO Checklist

 Optimizing your site for search engines will help crawlers identify and understand the nature of your site and what information it contains. This enables your site to appear on relevant search results and determines how it will rank. Let’s just say this, the better optimized your site is and the better quality of content and links your site contains, the better opportunity your site will be ranked on organic search engine results.

Now if you are launching a new site, you have a number of things to take into account to rank above your competitors. If you pay attention to the following items on this checklist, your site has a better chance of climbing the ranks even if it is fairly new.

The All Important Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist

The following SEO checklist will greatly improve your search results ranking. It will put you on the right path, and coupled with consistent inbound marketing best practices, you can dominate your competition in no time.

A. Site Speed 

Does your site load quickly? Google and other search engines give precedence to sites that load quickly over sites that are slow to load. Sites that load too slowly are more likely to experience high bounce rates from users. If you want your audience to stay on your site, commit to an action and get value, you have to think of User Experience. Sufficed to say, if it loads too slow, your leads won’t grow.

B. Mobile Optimization

A growing number of people are turning to their mobile phones to conduct activities online. And why not? Smartphones are far more easily accessible and ubiquitous than desktops these days. This is precisely why search engines are taking notice and including mobile optimization as an important factor when it comes to search rankings.

If your site is not optimized for mobile devices, users will have a difficult time navigating through your site. Is the text big enough to read on mobile? Is the navigation clear and easily accessible? Is the content cut out to be digested easily and to the point? Are the calls-to-action clear, big and positioned well? Are the forms fillable? Are buttons big enough for mobile devices?

Your site must not simply exist on the internet for mobile users. It has be designed for mobile interaction with your users. You have two options here — design a mobile version of your site or optimize your site dynamically for mobile devices.

C. Keyword Optimization 

Keywords and keyword phrases help users find your site. Make sure that your website is optimized for your industry-specific keyword phrases. Place keywords strategically on page titles and throughout your site naturally. A good way to do this is to analyze what keyword phrases are being used in your industry to search for the service or products you offer. Pay attention to keyword trends and find out what phrases are being used by your competitors.

Be mindful of using keywords, though. Do not resort to keyword stuffing. The most important piece of your site is quality content. If your audience stumble upon unnaturally occurring keywords throughout your site, they will be turned off completely. Not to mention this is also something that search engine crawlers are mindful of.

D. Content Quality  

Your website content should have the following characteristics:

• Well-written and intuitively formatted so readers can digest the information well.
• Content can not be duplicated throughout the site or found on other websites.
• Internal links that lead the readers to other parts of your site and high quality and relevant external links can improve the credibility of your content.

E. Indexed Pages 

Your website needs to be indexed with the various search engines. Indexed pages are pages that search engine robots have crawled. Using Google Webmaster tools, you can also add the sitemap to your indexed pages. Google recently announced that a site map will help their bots to more accurately crawl and index your website, which in turn can result in better search engine rankings. For example, is the home page the most important page or should the contact page gain preference within search results?

F. Algorithm Overlay

Is your website optimized for the latest search engine algorithms? This is a question that should be answered early-on within your web development process. If your website doesn’t meet the latest algorithm standards, then your inbound marketing efforts can suffer. In other words, a search engine’s algorithm is the series of steps that it uses to populate website results within a user’s keyword search. Understanding the latest algorithms can help you to build a site with better search result performance.

G. Redirects

Make sure that any broken or old links are properly redirected. Creating unique, keyword driven 404 error redirect pages can also help boost your SEO by keeping your audience from hopping onto another site if they arrive on a broken page or a page that no longer exists.

H. Internal Linking

Internal linking helps search engines and users better understand your website and navigate through the pages within. It also helps give greater preference to the most important pages. With this in mind, internal linking should help to reduce the number of times that a reader has to click throughout a site. For example, if a user has just read an interesting blog post, there should be an internal link that directs them to a) other similar posts or b) the contact page (if a call to action was used within the blog post).

I. Image Tags

Don’t forget about the importance of labeling your images (and we’re not talking about a simple caption). Search engines categorize images based on image tags. These tags will tell the search engine robots exactly what the image holds. For example, you might have a nifty infographic on you services page that engages users and succinctly showcases your company’s strengths. The image tags for this infographic should tell the search engine what services you are describing using keywords and keyword phrases. In short, no matter how big or small, each image should have at least one relevant image tag.

Takeaways

By following the SEO tips above you can improve your chances of ranking higher on search engines. Just keep in mind that ranking isn’t a one and done activity though. You will have to have an SEO strategy in place that takes into account new algorithm changes, keyword positions, and even SCHEMA. Inbound marketing activities can help you rank consistently and rise above your competitors. If you want to get found no matter how new your site may be, you should pay attention to the items above.

Source : business2community

How to Use Search Engine Optimization For Your Nonprofit

Say you're launching a new non-profit organization (here's some tips on launching a new non-profit online BTW). What's the first way people will try to find you? They'll usually go to their trusty search engine (most often Google with about 2/3 of the market, Bing being #2) and type in your name.

It's critical that your official website shows up in the first page of results, in the top few choices above the fold if possible.
 
How do you make that magic happen? Here's some search engine optimization tips that will help you land at the top of the heap.

To step back a bit, Moz has a great in-depth guide to how search engines work and how to optimize your results, and SearchEngineLand has a great guide to seo as well. This post is a much more abbreviated work.
Search engines use several factors to determine the ranking of results, but these are the main factors you can control:

• Use keywords in your URL(s)
• Use keywords on your pages (both the page title and in headers, as well as content)
• Get as many quality links to your site as possible
• Tell Google about your site, so that it is completely indexed

Also remember that search engine optimization is a process. There is no magic bullet that will capture you the #1 slot in a day-- or ever, on some hot terms. For better placement, you're going to need to spend some $ on Google AdWords to get in front of your audience.

Google Adwords is a great idea for some non-profits, but especially if your search results are not where you want them to be. If you have a 501 c(3) non-profit, Google ad spending may even be free! More about Google Grants.

Your URL
The most important thing you can do at the start is secure a good URL. An ounce of search engine preventative work will save you a pound of trouble later (and keeping your URL out of the hands of your opponents!). Read my previous post on how to successfully launch your organization online, there's lots of tips in there about securing good URLs.

Use keywords in your URL if possible - i.e. your organization name (if it isn't too long) as opposed to just your acronym. It's unclear how heavily Google or Bing weigh this factor, but it certainly can't hurt. More importantly, it will help people find your site when they just try typing in the name + .com rather than searching. It may be worth buying the long form of your organization name and also the acronym .com and .org, and making them all point to the same place.

Secure good URLs using your name or keywords at Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and Google+ etc. (if relevant) -- because these sites will usually have a very good search engine ranking without you needing to do much work. Don't forget to set the username for your Facebook page, to make the URL shorter and cleaner!

The reason for this is because quality inbound links are such a key factor in search ranking. And which sites have the most inbound links on the web? Sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, New York Times, Politico etc.. Also this is one of the reasons why Rick Santorum is never going to be able to shake his particular unfortunate results.

And finally, make sure you are using permalinks on your site with keywords in them, i.e. your posts look like joesmith.com/why-i-oppose-keystone-xl instead of joesmith.com/?q=27 This is another opportunity to get keywords into the URL itself of pages.

Your Content
Make sure your content is as search engine optimized as possible. There's a fantastic free plugin for WordPress that we swear by. It makes it easy to determine how your site and individual pages will look to search engines (and when shared via Facebook), by letting you configure the meta description and title for the page. It also lets you solve the common CMS problem of your content showing up with many different urls thanks to categories, tags, and date archives. Google may penalize you for that. Use the LunaMetrics guide for SEOing your WordPress site for more tips. If your site is built in NationBuilder, be sure to configure the SEO settings for each page and for the site as a whole. Here's a guide for NationBuilder and SEO. Here's a guide for how to search engine optimize for Drupal, and here's a guide for Joomla and SEO.
Keep in mind that you want the title, meta description for each page AND the content on the page itself to match up with what people are searching for. So use keywords in the title of the page, and on the page itself (you can even put keywords into alt tags for images), but in a way that makes sense. Everybody's seen websites that are so keyword heavy that the sentences aren't even readable anymore. Google is starting to crack down on that kind of blatant keyword packaging, and overdoing can hurt you.


Remember that search engine optimization will bring people to your house. You still want them to come inside, and not scare them away with a wall of unintelligible keyword spam text. So your meta description and text snippets, social media sharing text, should be written in a way that it encourages people to click through to your site. But if it's misleading or false, people will bounce quickly off your page and Google will penalize you. Make your page descriptions attractive, but accurate.

Quality Links
One of the reasons why I emphasized having your landing page ready when you launch so heavily in my previous post is this: when you launch, it's the one time that newspapers, blogs etc. may link to your site. You need that search engine juice badly in order to do well in search -- as previously mentioned, quality inbound links are key.

But say you missed the boat for whatever reason, you launched with no url or a different URL. Then you'll need to do the hard work of getting as many sites out there as possible to link to you. See if you can get other friendly sites to link to you. Also don't forget if you have an old URL, to redirect it to the new one. You can tell Google (via Webmaster Tools) that your site has moved as well, or when you first launch tell Google to come crawl it (more later on this).

Don't forget about the "quality" part to achieving links. If you get a lot of search engine spam-type emails, these are the folks that use black hat techniques like spamming the content section of websites (or even hacking websites) and packing in paid-for URLs. Google can and will delist you entirely if you use black hat techniques. So, just like buying a questionable email list, DON'T DO IT.

Finally, pay attention to the "anchor text" -- the text you use to describe the link on a page. For example <a href="link">this is anchor text.</a> You want to make sure the anchor text for the quality inbound links matches up with how you want the search engines to think about the link itself. This is a good place to utilize keywords you want to rank for. <a href="link">my website</a> is not as good as <a href="link">friends of the planet website</a>. You have limited control over what other sites use for anchor text, but make sure every link you create has the best possible anchor text. This is critical for how you'll rate for some keywords.

Tell Google
One of the first things you should do as you launch your site (after you have set up an SEO plugin and/or made the appropriate SEO adjustments to your pages) is to tell Google to come crawl it. There are a few different ways to do this.

Make sure you're set up in Webmaster Tools. Did you know Google thinks of www.joesmith.com and joesmith.com as two separate sites? You can tell Google in webmaster tools which is the preferred version to use (also make sure your CMS allows you to set one as the canonical version). You can link webmaster tools to Google analytics for the same site, for an even fuller picture of traffic to your site, what search terms are driving people etc. Under the Search Traffic tab, you can also tell which sites link to you (and see what's missing). Under the Crawl tab (Fetch as Google), you can tell Google to go index your site right now. You can also submit a sitemap to make sure every page is indexed, which can be important if your site design does not easily allow access to every page. Make sure that sitemap is listed in your robots.txt file too.
Just because you're telling Google to crawl your site, doesn't mean you'll show up in search results. Be sure to check your robots.txt file, to make sure you are allowing search engines to crawl your site! Read more about robots.txt files.

Google takes into account your site speed in determining your ranking, and also whether the site is mobile optimized (i.e. Mobilegeddon happened in April, where Google started paying attention to this). If you want to keep your supporters happy and engaged, make sure your site loads fast and looks great on mobile devices. If you want to do well in search, that applies just as much. If your site is slow, setting up caching may help. Or it may be time to look at a full website redesign, especially if your site is not achieving your goals and/or is not mobile optimized.
Source : huffingtonpost

The Content Structure & Link Valuation Guide to On-Page SEO

In the same way that a good written document (like a report, or newspaper article) should be arranged in a certain way to make it more accessible to readers, it’s a good idea to structure your webpages so they are easy for Google and the other search engines to crawl and understand.

By using best practices that make your webpages more accessible to search engines and searchers alike, you can increase both the value and visibility of your content.

The best way to envision search-friendly content structure, and a big-picture sense, is to imagine the inverted pyramid preferred by journalists around the world. At the top, you have the most important ideas and keywords, with additional details being added as the content goes along.

This means that you’ll almost always want big ideas, and key phrases associated with them, to be found at or near the top of your page. So, your prospects' most common search phrases should be incorporated into page titles, H1 (main heading) tags, and subheadings (and URLs if possible). Then you can structure your content in a way that makes it easy to read and understand as you add more thoughts to the piece.
As you develop and refine your content (static pages and blog posts included), you should pay particular attention to:

1 Optimizing your page title with your most important search phrase – Google pays a lot of attention to your page titles, just as you would the title of the document. Make sure that your titles are descriptive, and that they include any important search phrasing that you’re topically focusing on.

2 Including a meta-description that invites readers to click through to your content – although search engines won’t pay attention to your meta-descriptions, they will display them within search results (note: Google may opt to insert other text from your page). That gives you an opportunity to prompt readers to click through.

3 Limiting H1 headlines to a single item on the page – your H1 headline is like the title of a magazine. You only get one to use. It should be search-friendly, and irresistible to your core prospects.
4 Introducing key ideas very early on – don’t forget the inverted pyramid. Google pays more attention to content at the top of the page or article, so your most important idea should be found here.

5 Including an image (with topical, search-friendly alt text) behind the image – images are indexed by search engines, but more importantly, as visuals, they can work very well to attract readers. Choose a photo or image that’s relevant to your message, add branding if necessary, and be sure to use search-friendly alt text. (Tip: view your image as a thumbnail... it should be recognizable even at a tiny size. Solid, simple colours work well.)

6 Using bullet points within your content – these help you highlight or recap main points, break up the flow of text on a page, and signal to Google and the other search engines that you have something important to point out. Use them lightly to highlight special points, not as the default paragraph formatting.
7 Making sure that each article is accompanied by a call to action – always give readers something new (or next) to do when they reach the end of your piece. The links you add to your pages matter (see below), and it’s important for you to lead searchers in the right direction.

8 Following good page file-naming conventions – strong file names include keywords being used in a natural, straightforward way. Use dashes to separate words in a phrase as opposed to all as one word in your page titles, and stay away from generic numbers or special characters that obscure the topic.

Link Valuation, User Experience, and Calls to Action (CTAs)

Include hyperlinks with varying anchor text (the text you select and link) – very important for search optimization of your content. That’s because Google can follow the links and infer meaning from the phrases you use to guide a reader from one page to another.

However, while you should certainly link between different pieces of content, you shouldn’t do it too often. That’s because Google and the other search engines will essentially divide the power of each link (or, Juice) by the number of links on a page.

For example, if you have two links within your content, each will get 50% of the “juice” available to pass onto the linked page(s). If you have 10 links, on the other hand, each link only gets 10% of the available authority (note that Google generally overlooks navigation elements in these determinations - just remember you will want to favour a positive user experience over dumping a long list of links on sidebars or footers). It’s also good to remember that links placed higher on a page get slightly more weight, so you should try including the most important link in the first couple of paragraphs if possible.

Of course, the best links aren’t put into place solely for search engine optimization purposes, but to encourage a visitor to read and learn more on their way to contacting you. For that reason, they should be placed within the body of a paragraph at a point that feels natural, so someone who is reading your content can act on an opportunity to learn even more.

In addition to making your site more relevant and useful for humans, this also helps your search positioning. When Google sees that users are taking time to go through multiple pages on your site, following one link to another, it sends a positive signal that you are a relevant and authoritative source of information.

One special reminder should be given about links in the form of graphical calls to action, which should accompany all of your blog content (at the bottom of the article) and on pages where appropriate to be helpful. These are important not just for the purposes of search structure, but to generate conversions on your website.

Believe it or not, there's a bit of psychology to the placement of links vs. graphical CTAs. Consider for a moment that a hyperlink and a graphical CTA reside in close proximity to one another on a page. A reader who is interested in clicking the CTA (being large and colourful with an obvious prompt like the example at the bottom of this article) would understand that they are not simply navigating to another page to read, but going to an actionable item. Whereas, the reader clicking the hyperlink is likely still in reading or discovery move, not yet at a point of taking action. In a nutshell, clicking one or the other is indicative of intent (and by extension, of interest or commitment).

Structuring your pages correctly is a huge component of successful search engine optimization and lead generation. Although the process of including key phrases, refining content, and setting up internal links can seem tedious at first, it’s a skill that becomes second nature over time… and more powerful as you optimize your content again and again.

Notes from David Amerland. One thing you may want to address is that Google has stopped updating external PageRank (PR) which they said was always intended to help searchers – they are probably still using internal PR but that is deprecated and there is the additional layer of links adding semantic value to a page (i.e. including links to high authority sites as additional reference or citing sources) and linking, internally, to pages that are complementary rather than simply suggestions to visit other content (a practice that seems to be all the more rare now).

As a matter of fact it is helpful to think of both internal and external linking practices as a means of building a link tree where everything is related and all the links, taken together, become something way greater than the article would have been on its own. Then the linking strategy begins to acquire specific SEO value in the eyes of Google and the page that is associated with it, also benefits.

Great reminder from David about contextual menus:
You know, those 4 or 5 links along the right sidebar on desktop where you link to highly focussed and related content that helps the visitor dig deeper or act on your content. If you have all the same sidebar links on many pages, you're missing an exciting opportunity to offer up additional related resources to a visitor who has already expressed an interest in your topic.

And, while we're on the topic of SEO, links and search engine optimization, you may want to pick up our Local SEO checklist download. It's free.
Source : linkedin

How To Generate Website Traffic Through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How To Generate Website Traffic Through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Web-traffic, every website needs it; every webmaster wants more of it.
We are all looking for that one secret traffic trick that will turn our site around.
There is tons of website out there on internet.
Competition is fierce to entice the visitors. But the real thing is that among the heap of Web pages out there, only a countable percentage of these web-pages actually able to succeed a steady readership, also only these same Web pages actually bring advertisers.
In order to fight the battle, you first need to develop and execute a Web site advertising strategy.
There is no quick fix; web-owner must need to stay patient, dynamic and consistent.
There are several ways to encourage traffic to your site.
 
In this post, I will provide and discuss the strategies that have long-lasted and have been proven to their core.

Generate website Traffic through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the technique of promoting a website in order to improve its rankings so that a site receives maximum number of visitors organically from search engines. Search Engine Ranking is essential to generate traffic because user generally clicked on the search results that are listed on the first page.

Clearly there’s a big advantage for any web-owner, if they can rank their website high in the search engine results.

Google and others search engines ranks website according to relevancy, value and user experience. If you can improve your website for these three aspects, you can stay at the top for long time.
Each search engine has its own distinctive ranking criteria and uses their ingenious algorithm which weighs each criterion accordingly.

KEYWORD FUNDAMENTALS

This is the most important factor in the organic search engine optimization. The fact is webmasters have to select the precise keywords for their business, products/services and their target market. Owner must keep in mind that they need to identify with their targeting audience and then build their search engine optimization strategy around that audience.

Basically keywords are the requisites and phrases that the target audience uses when searching for the particular products and services that the owner of the website is offering. Then according to the ranking of the website on the major search engines and directories it will be shown on that page.

The owner of the site must choose keyword phrases that will bring constant targeted traffic consisting of potential customers. It becomes important to research and validate the keywords for the search queries.
Following the basic fundamentals of the Keyword Placement:

Keyword prominence – As the name suggest, it is essential to place the keywords in the text is at the top of each webpage, essentially the main page. For better search hits it is important to place the keywords at the start of the page or at the beginning of a sentence which is the prominent area. A Search engine algorithm uses this concept to search the relevant data for the user. Here is general case how search engines analyze the web page.
Keyword prominence is to place keyword near tags.

Keyword = IT SOLUTIONS

The best in the town our IT SOLUTIONs Company offers various packages.

Now, owner thinks this is the best job with the keyword “IT SOLUTIONS “at the top of page. A search engine, however, sees your page this way:

The best in the town our IT SOLUTIONS Company offers various packages. This doesn’t provide any chance of high results, so to avoid it place keyword-rich text at the very top of your page.

Keyword Proximity:
A Search engine uses the concept of “keyword proximity” in their ranking algorithm. As suggested by the name, “keyword proximity” means the how close keywords are to each other. Then it becomes essential to place the keywords as close together as possible and make sure your sentences are clear.
Take an example:
We have been selling Hair gain products for over five years.
We have been selling products for hair gain for over five years.

Navigation
It is essential to have optimized navigation structure of the website because it is all the way through the navigation that the search engine spiders are able to access all of your web site’s content. If the site has less number of pages owner should have every page of their site linked to every other page of the site. This can be achieved by having a left/right side menu or by putting a link to every other page on the bottom of your page. For sites which have many pages it is suitable to include in directories the pages that are content related. For example, if you sell 10 different types of IT services and you also give training on networking clothes it is obvious not to link the various IT services page with the networking-page, but rather from the services page itself.

TWEAKING THE WEBSITE

The search engines are always modifying and enhancing their algorithm, that’s why it becomes essential to tweak or tune-up your web- accordingly. Search engines always tries to give relevant results for any search item so for them a relevant site must be the one who has build the content around the relevant keyword phrase. So for the code page optimization following description tags about the web-page must be taken care of to generate traffic:- Title Tag

For achieving the highest search rank the title tag is one of the essential factors.
A title tag is basically a HTML code that produces the words that appear in the top bar of the Web browser. Generally, the Title Tag is the first element in the area of the website, followed by the Meta Description and the Meta Keywords Tags. Following are the basic rules that must be followed when optimizing the web-page title tag:

1. At the best there must be maximum of three keyword phrases and hundred characters in the Tite
2. Avoid the use of the words like “a, and, or”.
3. Always take care that same keyword is not repeated in the title more than twice, because it is spam.

Meta Description tag

This tag illustrates the content of the web-page, which provides the search engines’ spiders an exact outline filled with multiple keywords. The search engines uses this Meta description tag to describe the tag ,in order to make sure that no keyword phrases are repeated for maximum three times but also makes sure that the real representation of the page that the visitor will be viewing.
Following are the basic rules that must be followed when optimizing the Meta description tag: This Tag must contain many keywords prearranged in a coherent sentence.  It must be noted that the keywords phrase must be placed at the beginning of the description in order to get the best possible ranking. The description this tag must be under 255 characters.

The Meta Keywords Tag
The Meta keywords tag provides an extra text for crawler-based search engines to index alongside with the body copy. What makes it useful? Because Meta keywords tag are used in a way to support the terms that are essential for the crawlers that used it. For example, if the webpage is about making money– AND this word is placed at various places in the body copy — then the description of the words “making money” in the Meta keywords tag enhances the chance of search hit a bit higher for those words.
The Meta keyword tag is also occasionally functional as a way to boost the page rank for synonyms or unusual words that don’t appear on the page itself. For example, let’s say the webpage is about the earning money, but the user doesn’t mention the word “TIPS” on this page. But having the word in the Meta keywords tag, might increase the odds of coming up if user searched for “TIPS TO EARN MONEY”. Obviously there is more chance of hitting the odds if the word “TIPS” is used in the body copy of the page itself. Here is an case of what a plain basic header should look like:
your page title here
There are a few times when extra code is needed in the page header, for instance, when using JAVA scripts or CSS (cascade style sheet); in this case it is essential to use external files for java and css with extensions .js and .css.
To call the JavaScript simply scratch the JavaScript from the header and save in a file called java.js and call it using this line of code:
Similarly to call your css from and ext file use this line of code:
It must be remembered that the header is the invisible part of the webpage.

Body text
The Body text is what visible to the visitors, when they actually land on the webpage. The placement of keywords in the text of the webpage is not simple. Mainly search engines index the complete text of each page, so it’s essential to place keywords throughout the text of the webpage. However, different search engine uses different ranking algorithms.
These are various rules to be followed when putting the text:-
The Main page must have the main keywords because it has the maximum chance of getting indexed.
The Keywords inside the H1, H2…H6 tags are given gravity against the other tags so the relevant text must be integrated in them.
Source : business2community

4 Ways Social Media Helps SEO

Imagine if your business appeared high up on the first page of Google’s search results whenever someone typed in a relevant search term — without your having to spend a single cent on ads. How amazing would that be? Are you drooling yet? Did you know that social media helps SEO, i.e. search engine optimization?
With over 1 billion people on Facebook, and over 900 million combined on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest, you would be crazy to not have a presence on the social media networks where your customers hang out. But did you know that these networks are also giving smart businesses an edge over their competitors when it comes to search engine rankings and SEO? Raise your hands if you’d like some more love from Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and other search engines…and read on.

1. Social media helps SEO on Google — directly.

Google and Twitter have announced that Google’s search results will now include tweets and Twitter accounts that match the search term. People searching on mobile — which actually represents the majority of all Google searches done in the U.S. — will be the first to see this change. They’ll see it when they’re doing a Google search in their mobile browser, or in Google’s iOS or Android apps. But soon anyone using Google.com on a desktop or laptop will also see the change.
Now when the two companies first announced this change, they used a few popular, media-friendly, search terms like Taylor Swift and NASA to explain this new feature. But unless you’re a huge Taylor Swift fan (and who isn’t?) the most interesting question is, what will results look like for less glamorous searches, like “best real estate agent in Dallas” or “small business consultant in Kansas City”? And how can you get your Twitter account to the top of the heap?
As is usually the case when it comes to unpacking the mysterious, voodo-wrapped black box known as SEO, this calls for a bit of speculation.

If you were Google and Twitter, which Twitter accounts would you put at the top of those results? I’m willing to bet that the Twitter accounts that make it to the top of Google’s search results will have at least 4 things:

• The right search terms in their Twitter bio
• A sizable number of followers, providing social proof of their right to represent this search term
• A sizable number of other people actively talking about this Twitter account, and
• Having people who are not just talking about this Twitter account, but mentioning it in conjunction with that search term.

 So are you going to wait until your competitors own this? Or would you rather start prepping now? Here are the steps you should start taking today to get ready for this brave new world.

• First, use Google’s keyword planner to figure out the search terms with which you want to be associated and make sure these are in your Twitter bio. (And also the bios of all your other social media networks while you’re at it.) Ryan Cruz has a great post that explains how this planner works (and also shows you a few other nifty ways to use it.)
• Then, make sure you are building up a steady stream of new followers by tweeting frequently and consistently. Don’t just broadcast, but engage with your followers and potential followers to get people talking to and about your Twitter account.
• Finally, when you do talk about your brand on Twitter (which should only be about 20-25% of the time) make sure you’re using the key search terms you want to own. With luck and skill you’ll get followers echoing the sentiment, building a trail for Google to follow.

2. Your social media profiles are already appearing in search results.

As Chloe Mason Gray points out, the results of a search for your brand’s name are likely to include your social media profiles today, anyway. So, whether you are aware of it or not, your social media may be already helping to direct people to your business when they type in a certain search term. A look at your Google Analytics stats can tell you, particularly if you use a tracking URL to help detect this. (Here’s a free, easy-to-use tool from Google to create one.) If you’re General Electric you can worry less about your brand being misunderstood, but if you’re a lesser known entity who wants to stake its claim to fame it will definitely benefit you to put the keyword terms you want right upfront in your social media profiles to help your SEO and, more broadly, to help you establish the reputation you want.

3. Don’t forget: “search” is more than just Google….

Google may be the big kahuna, but don’t forget the concept of marginal utility: the smaller you are, the more mileage you will get from even the smallest incremental gains. As a small(er) business do you really want to neglect all the other search engines that have long been taking your social profiles into account?
Take Bing. It hosts one out every five searches done on the desktop in the U.S. and has explicitly told Search Engine Land that it looks at your social networks when compiling results:

We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used.

This is backed up by a statement directly from Bing:

Social media plays a role in today’s effort to rank well in search results. The most obvious part it plays is via influence. If you are influential socially, this leads to your followers sharing your information widely, which in turn results in Bing seeing these positive signals. These positive signals can have an impact on how you rank organically in the long run.

And because Bing powers most of Yahoo search its reach is actually greater than its direct market share.

4. Finally, consider how many searches are now being done directly on the social media networks, themselves.

Neil Patel explained just how significant this has become:

• Twitter: handles 19 billion search queries a month (based on 2010 data)
• Facebook: one billion search queries per day (based on a statement it made in 2012)
• YouTube: roughly 3.7 billion search queries a month (as of 2010)

So while you should certainly keep an eye on where your website ranks in Google, Bing and Yahoo results, remember that search is getting more social by the day. Social media helps SEO, so do optimize your profiles, post frequently, and talk to your followers to take advantage of it!
Do you use social media consciously to boost your SEO? What other tactics do you use? Tell us in the comments!
Source : business2community

Super simple SEO secrets most internet businesses don’t know

One of the trendiest things that we can say about digital marketing is that SEO is dead. People cite the constantly-changing landscape of the digital world as proof of the death of search engine optimization. Most believe that SEO doesn’t work anymore and social media holds the power. It is said that the average consumer will not listen to anything or believe in anything unless they are provided social proof, such is the stronghold of social media. However, there is one fact that everyone needs to understand; you cannot use the same stick for measuring all SEO strategies.

Unsophisticated SEO strategies, commonly known as black hat SEO tactics, are essentially the spam of search engines. Page swapping, conspicuous commenting and keyword stuffing are just some of the techniques that can get your website blacklisted. But then, there are also the sophisticated strategies, commonly known as white hat SEO tactics, which enhance the customer experience by providing them the answers they are looking for and fulfilling their needs. This SEO is still alive and all businesses can reap its benefits. Most business owners have a basic understanding of SEO strategies, there is one key technique that can work wonders for your business, even today and it is back linking.

Sophisticated SEO is based on the premise that you don’t need the loudest voice for connecting with your audience. Instead, you need to figure out what they need and create a resource for meeting their need. Basic strategies indicate that customers want to spend the smallest possible amount of time searching for answers they want. The most reliable sites are often determined by search engines according to the number of backlinks they have. Essentially, a backlink is just a link to your website from another webpage. This seems simple at first glance, but most businesses struggle in determining the backlinks that should be targeted.

The inefficient use of backlinks is a defining characteristic of an unsophisticated strategy. Moz conducted a recent study, which showed that higher rankings are strongly associated with links. This means that you will gain an advantage in the digital marketplace if you implement backlinks properly. You have to be highly selective when choosing backlinks as the goal is to provide your audience with tangible value via the links. This means you should opt for a reputable and reliable source, preferably the authorities in your industry. The idea is to put all the information together and save the consumer from this hassle.

Hence, your job is to create a website that accumulates all vital information pertaining to their question that allows them to draw their conclusions. You should focus on developing a content marketing strategy, which attracts backlinks to useful and meaningful information. An excellent way of engaging, educating and entertaining potential customers is via the use of visual content marketing such as videos and infographics. Don’t try to trick people into visiting your website; your goal is to make your customers happy when they do come in order to ensure SEO success. 

Source : examiner