1. When Making Major Changes To Your Site

Search Engine Optimization strategy should always be taken into consideration when adding, changing, or removing anything from your website. Even if you are just doing some basic URL changes or a CMS change, you can severely damage your rankings and cut off traffic to your site.

Neil Patel, the co-founder of KISSmetrics, Crazy Egg and Quick Sprout, recommends hiring an SEO expert when doing any of the following tasks:

• Crawling your site
• Provide SEO recommendations on early-stage design mockups or wireframes
• Conduct development site reviews
• Consult with developers on the use of Java
• Conduct an inbound link analysis
• Create a 301 redirect map
• Provide page title recommendations
• Provide H1 recommendations
• Perform a content audit
• Monitor response codes post launch

2. When Working Through A Penalty

Google is still slamming people with manual and algorithmic penalties – probably hundreds of people a day. Since Google still rules the search world, sites must adapt to its demands.
If and when a manual penalty comes down the pipe, the damage can be devastating. Depending on what got you into the penalty box, Google can and will completely remove your site from some – or even all search results.

Recovering from a penalty can be a hugely daunting task for someone has has never been there before. Although it is possible to get a manual penalty lifted while working from your kitchen table, your efforts may either take forever, or be totally ineffective. In the end, you might save more time and money by actually hiring a professional to get your business… back in business.

3. When Starting A Digital Marketing Campaign

Leveraging a website as a part of a digital marketing campaign is not as simple as “if you build it, they will come.” There needs to be more than just four walls and a roof. Like a house, a website built for conversions is made up of many small and very important pieces. A house is not a home without a staircase to the second floor, a hot water heater, or light switches. To keep with the same line of thinking, a website is not an effective marketing tool without an SEO’s tasklist, and they can be completely foreign to business owners and even some web-developers.

4. When You’re a Local Business

Without local listings – you don’t exist.

There are plenty of statistics out there proving that local listings and Local SEO are well worth the investment. BUT, according to Neil Patel, “Few local business owners, especially small business owners, have the time to implement all the local SEO best practices on their own. To do it [themselves], and do it right, requires a level of time and effort that few business owners can afford.” These are a few small details that under certain circumstances can quickly squash Local SEO mojo:

• Variations in abbreviations of punctuations
• Changing your phone number
• Any inconsistencies across profiles
• Failing to classify your business correctly

Conclusion

I think it’s fair to say that you wouldn’t hire the guy down the street to build a house for your family and you wouldn’t pay someone you found on craigslist for business advice.

Don’t do the same for your digital marketing strategy. Just winging it, or giving the keys to all your digital assets to a novice is a sure fire way to destroy an online business. If you are looking for online marketing advice, contact Clix. We like tough questions!

The post When Do You Need an SEO Pro? appeared first on Clix.

And since reviews are linked to Google+ (which is linked to search), the more positive reviews you collect on your business’ Google+ page the better. This is not simply because positive reviews are great to have for others to view, but also because Google uses your review ratings as one of their many ranking factors.

Google uses the quality and quantity of reviews as a way to mathematically measure a business’ reputation. Google also takes reviews into account that are posted on other well-known websites such as Yelp, MerchantCircle, Yellow Pages, Angie’s List, etc. Naturally, if you mostly have reviews with 5-star quality ratings, then Google will strongly take that into account when they are providing results, whether they appear in the organic section, the Google local carousel, or Google Maps.

Reviews don’t make up the only aspect of Google+ that helps determine search rankings. In fact, all activity on Google+ is taken into account. Just like activity on social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, Google sees updates on Google+ as another way to measure whether your business is active and is providing fresh content. (To a search engine, this makes you look like a better resource.) And since Google+ is Google’s own social media network, it gets more influence in Google’s search than all other social media channels according to industry research.

How to approach reviews

Every business claims to be the best. Consumers know this. So are they going to trust you when you say it? Most likely not. They want some type of proof, and a form of proof is others’ experiences with your business. The following infographic from “Marketers Guide to Customer Reviews” by Jon Hall shows us how much consumers trust online reviews:

As you would expect, great business practices will result in great online reviews. A study done by Cone Communications shows that 4 out of 5 consumers reverse their purchasing decision based on negative online reviews. If you do get a negative review, it is important to comment on the review to try to resolve the issue. In turn, this will show others that you care about your business and want to fix any bad experience that may have occurred. In the same way, it is also important to comment on the positive reviews thanking your customers for their business and the positive review.

What makes a good review?

The more detailed of a description earned from a reviewer the better. When someone goes to search for reviews they want to see a descriptive review to better understand why that review was earned.

For example, lets say I searched for, “best spaghetti in St. Louis” and one restaurant had a couple non-descriptive reviews like this:

“Great spaghetti.”

While another restaurant had a handful of descriptive reviews like this:

“The spaghetti at this restaurant is delicious. Friendly service. Their spaghetti sauce is made fresh daily! This spaghetti has led my taste buds to come back again and again for more.”

I don’t know about you, but I would definitely choose the spaghetti joint with the more descriptive review! Ultimately, your goal is to obtain reviews that show potential customers your product and/or service is a fit for them.

Recommendations

Since Google+ is becoming so important and reviews are so visible and accessible, we highly recommend that if you have a client who loves your service(s) and/or products that you ask them to post a positive review on your Google+ page. You could even send an email to some of your best clients with a link to your business Google+ page to leave a review. (The easier you make it, the more likely a customer will leave a review for you.)

If a customer/client of yours has any questions on how to write a review on Google+, they can follow these simple steps provided by Google.

And if you have any questions about Google+ or other search influencers, feel free to contact us at Clix!

The post Google Plus Reviews Have More Influence Than You May Think appeared first on Clix.

Carousel? What’s that?

Instead of appearing in a list, many searches for local business categories now appear in a kind of slide show at the top of the page.

Let’s look at an example. Type, say, “donuts in Chicago” into Google. Notice how all of the local results now appear at the top of the page, while sites that would normally rank higher than local businesses–such as Yelp and Urbanspoon–now appear in a list below. (If you don’t get a carousel when you search, here’s what it looks like.)

Now, try mousing over a result in the carousel. See how the result is highlighted on the map below? You can use this small map to zoom in or move to another area, which will then affect the carousel’s results. Try zooming in a couple clicks or clicking and dragging the map to see how the results change. Cool, right?

Next, click on a carousel result. This will take you to the search page for that specific business where more details are listed, such as reviews, price range, contact info, etc.

Clicking on a carousel result alters the entire search

You said this is still in testing. What’s wrong with it?

Honestly, a lot.

1. For starters, the carousel doesn’t seem to appear on all browsers and device types yet. You may have noticed this when you tried the above example.

2. It’s currently unclear how the carousel results are ranked. It seems like the businesses with the higher rating score on a 0-30 scale (the same one Zagat uses) are clustered more towards the left, but this isn’t always the case. And on that note, the Zagat score seems to be based on Google reviews alone unless it says “Zagat” next to the score (another way in which Google is pushing Google+), so it’s possible that reviews from other places or more traditional ranking factors are also at play.

3. Not all business categories or locations have a carousel, at least not right now. For example, the search “donuts in Chicago” that we used above has a carousel while “swimming pools in Chicago” and “donuts in Columbia, MO” do not.

4. That Zagat rating score a is confusing to some users, and is inconsistent with Google’s current map search, which shows ratings on a 5-star scale. It’s unclear whether the Zagat scale or the star scale will be used on the carousel (and on Maps and Google+) once the new Google Maps is rolled out for everyone.

5. It takes at least two clicks from the carousel to get to the business’s website. Instead of being listed in the box to the right when the carousel image is clicked, the website appears on the list to the left. In the old search, an address and a phone number appeared with the result, without the need for an extra click.

What does this mean for my business?

—The carousel could potentially have significant effects. Even with its kinks, the carousel greatly increases visibility for local searches, even for businesses which may not have ranked well before.

—Since they are front-and-center, reviews are going to be even more important.

—Because the review numbers Google is using (at least for now) are based on Google+ reviews, Google+ presence just became even more crucial.

The post What will Google’s ‘carousel’ mean for local search? appeared first on Clix.

Organic search driven by a series of algorithms, which are then driven by another series of algorithms. It’s both complicated and simple at the same time. The complicated aspect involves every single little factor that Google takes into account when ranking a website organically. From title tags and crawlability to reach and backlinks, Google measures your site from header to footer. The simple aspect is text. Text brings everything together and it is how Google provides results. Imagine only having a site with images or videos without text associated with the images or videos. Your site would not rank. Those videos and images may reveal the secret to life, but your site won’t be shown to someone who is searching for the “secret to life.”

Perks:

• Traditionally, optimizing for organic search is prone to pay off for most product/service companies
• More than 80% of people perform research online prior to purchasing a product. Being found in organic search increase your chances of closing a sale

Cons:

• Rankings are subject to the search engine
• A long-term strategy (6 + months)

Local search is important to Google and it’s not going away. Google Maps pages are gone and it’s now Google + local that you need to use. Local search is driven by local search algorithms that we can assume run in conjunction with organic search in some way, shape or form. This resource displays a pretty in-depth article regarding how to rank for local search. Although it is a bit dated, some of the principles still apply today.

Perks:

• Highly relevant for the local searcher
• Integrates with Google +
• Customers can leave reviews on Google + profile

Cons:

• Rankings are subject to the search engine
• Relevancy is objective in regards to the search. Your actual location makes a difference
• A long-term strategy

Paid search is front and center. Commonly referred to as “pay-to-play”, Google’s paid search algorithm (CPC) runs completely independent of organic and local search. For all intensive purposes, it is an online auction for best placement within the ads sections of Google and its search partners. One of the chief benefits of paid search is instant pay-off. Once your campaigns are live, they are live. No waiting around for organic and local search results to climb the ranks. Competition is fierce but paying for the best placement for the most relevant visitor to your site may mean the difference between small and large ROI.

Perks:

• Instantly get placement
• Target specific keywords that are most relevant to your product/service
• Drive targeted visitors to your website
• Rankings are subject to your campaign settings

Cons:

• Must pay for a click or impression
• Search engine users generally search organic results more so than paid search results

The post Pros & Cons of Organic, Local & Paid Search appeared first on Clix.