Mobile marketers are currently focused on advertising formats such as banner ads, rich media, video, or a publisher’s native. Rightfully so, since those channels have performed well in the mobile ecosystem. However, marketers tend to forget about mobile SEO, which is a mistake. Mobile search on a smartphone is surprisingly popular among users. As consumers now are about to fully embrace mobile shopping, mobile SEO will become increasingly important. When looking at your mobile SEO you should keep some of these simple tips in mind:
Ensure Your Website is Responsive
A responsive designed site, will adjust the layout automatically to alter the text, images, content to fit the device that site is being displayed on. This should include iPhone/iPad, Android devices, and even desktop versions. While having a mobile specific HTML site is helpful and Google does recognize it, Google does prefer responsive designs over mobile HTML sites. Lastly, a website that has a responsive design is much easier to maintain since you are managing one website rather than multiple websites for different devices. Below is a great example of a website with responsive design:
Have a Single URL for your Site Whether its Mobile or Desktop
Having the same URL for both your mobile and desktop site helps with SEO rank. Paring a single URL with a responsive design allows users to easily share your content, through social media or through their own blogs. More importantly with a single site, all the links back point to one URL, which greatly increases their value in Google overall. Social sharing also helps with your organic search rank, but there is still a large debate on how much. Having a single URL can also be faster, since it doesn’t require a redirect per device, which slows down the user experience. The slower things are on mobile, the worse the user experience. Load times are very important when connecting over a cellular network.
Take Advantage of Local Search
While not technically SEO, the local search features of Google AdWords is very powerful, it provides users with results relevant to their location and is one of the big drivers in the increased use of search on smartphone. Many use local search to find a store location, call a store directly from the search result, or even do research online, which increases purchase intent on another device or directly in the store to buy. It’s important to align your users search intent with content and ensure you take into account the small screen size of mobile devices. Below is a great example:
Don’t Rely on Desktop Keyword Research for Mobile Keyword Research
Since the mobile experience is so different from the desktop, the terms that users search on their smartphones can be significantly different. It’s possible to view mobile keyword data in Google Analytics by selecting “Operating System” as the second dimension in your Organic Keyword report and filter out the desktop operating systems. Doing this will enable you to see what keywords work for driving users to your mobile site, which allows you to optimize those further and look for new keywords to optimize for. This will enable you to see what keywords to bid for and specifically how you handle bids based on organic rankings.
How to Increase YouTube Rankings
If you are not using YouTube to generate web traffic to your business, it’s about time that you start because there is some great potential to build publicity for your business and your brand using YouTube. YouTube is world’s second largest search engine so it’s well worth your time learning about how you can use this tool to help generate traffic for your business.
One of the great things about YouTube is that you can optimise your video content so it ranks well in search engines. In this article I’m going to show you how you can use YouTube to generate even more search traffic than what you could get with Yahoo and Bing.
You need to start with a video
It is easier than ever to create a video that you can put on YouTube. You can use the camera on your phone, or a proper video recorder to record your videos. The main thing to remember is that your content is valid.
It is very easy to use and YouTube is such a great source of traffic. Here are some of the key reasons why you should be using this platform:
- There are over 1 billion people using this service
- There were over a trillion YouTube views in 2011
- There are 4 billion views on the service every day
- There are over 100 hours of video added to YouTube added every minute
- There are 1 billion average YouTube mobile video views per day
- 40% of YouTube traffic comes from mobile sources
- YouTube has experienced growth of traffic of 52.86% since 2013
There are plenty of statistics you could point to as proof as to why you should use YouTube to increase your web traffic. The bottom line is that YouTube is a massive source of traffic you should be using.
How SEO and YouTube Works
There are two specific categories that YouTube ranks content for. These are Video Content and User Engagement and these are the two areas that should be your focus when it comes to using SEO with YouTube. However, it is very important to remember that SEO for YouTube doesn’t work in quite the same way as SEO for Google.
It should be noted that the search query in YouTube does not have the ability to tell if a video is relevant to a users search query. If you know how YouTube ranks content you will know how you can optimise your video for YouTube’s SEO.
YouTube’s SEO
There are some key things to remember with YouTube’s SEO:
- Title
- Description
- Tags used
- Transcription
- Your channel authority
- Delivery of your content
This is the basic way in which YouTube distributes and ranks video content based on its search engine function. One great thing with YouTube’s search engine is that you can control it as a publisher, meaning if you optimise your content properly you’ll have few problems in getting it ranked highly.
Another great thing to note with YouTube and SEO is that you don’t need a high level of User Engagement to rank highly for your videos. Instead, it’s about how well you understand YouTube’s SEO.
The Importance of the Title
The title is one of the most important aspects of YouTube’s SEO. There is going to be a lot of content out there that is similar to yours so you need to stand out and the easiest way you can do this is with a clear and unique title.
The title is where you optimise your video for SEO and is arguably the most important component. The reason this is so important is because it influences your CTR (click through rate).
Just like with Google you need to make sure your content is high quality and relevant to the audience. You shouldn’t sacrifice the quality of your content just to rank highly. Be sure to include the keywords in the title tag and make sure it relates to the video itself.
The Importance of the Description
The video description box is your one real chance where you can really describe and define your video. This will be most beneficial for users who look for your video content primarily through YouTube rather than Google.
The point of this information is to increase the CTR and provide users with some basic information about what they are going to get when they access your content. Show users in your description that your video will be beneficial for them.
Summary
YouTube is such a great way to increase publicity for your business and your brand that you’d be crazy not to use it. It is very simple to make a video and they are a great way to sum up a lot of content in a short period of time. It is very easy to rank highly for videos that are relevant to your business and this is something you should be using if you want to generate some extra web traffic outside of the usual channels.
Say Farewell To These 5 Web Design Trends
Trends come and go, especially in the fast-paced world of web design. Yet sometimes we hold onto old trends for too long when we should really be letting go and moving on.
As technology evolves, it’s easy to fall into the trap of repeating old patterns. The web design industry is constantly moving forward. Holding on to old trends can only weigh you down, putting you behind the competition.
I found one interesting Article by Ilya Pozin, here are five design trends it’s time to bid adieu and the new design elements taking their place:
Goodbye: Mobile Versions of Websites
Instead of building mobile-switched sites (i.e. m.websitename.com), many innovative designers and developers are now focusing on responsive design. It’s not enough to detect devices and switch users anymore. Mobile users are looking for a more fully integrated experience.
With 75% of Internet usage in the Australia coming through mobile devices, the best shops are doing mobile-first design and treating desktop and laptop design as secondary. Responsive design allows the layout to adjust based on the contextual experience of users. This means site designs need to be built so they respond to the width of the device, regardless of the gadget type. In more extreme cases, functionality itself can even switch, providing an even more contextually optimized experience.
In fact, Google GOOGL -1.61% is even encouraging responsive design to improve the SEO for your site, as it reduces the necessity for multiple subdomains and duplicated content. Mobile versions of websites are a trend of the past; now, you’d be foolish not to design with mobile in mind from the start.
Goodbye: Text-Heavy Sites
As visual media increases in importance all over the Internet, there has been an unsurprising decrease in text-heavy websites. Instead of telling your story in a paragraph or block of text, the trend now is to invest in more visual storytelling. Text has been cut down to the essentials, while visuals are increasingly employed to impart important information.
This isn’t only true for the design of websites. The increasing reliance on visuals has also crept into the biggest social media spheres. With the rapid rise of visual-focused social channel Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter TWTR +0.83% have both taken steps to increase the prominence and integration of visual media into their platforms.
For sites more text-based by nature, there is a trend towards richer content experiences — text integrated with pictures, video, and interactive functionality. Now, websites are better integrating text with visual components to give users a more immersive and interactive experience. Combining content and visuals to tell a story can help hold the attention of even the Internet’s most impatient users.
Goodbye: SEO Copywriting
For years, SEO copywriting has been a large part of web design and promotion. But Google’s changing search algorithms have made it increasingly hard to keep up with the new SEO guidelines. Keyword stuffing and focusing copy from a keyword perspective is the wrong approach to modern SEO, and will only get you penalized under the new guidelines.
It’s time to say goodbye to SEO copywriting and start developing keyword informed and user-centric content instead. Just like in marketing 101, you need to develop easily understood copy with which your target market will emotionally connect. It’s also important to keep your content on message and use copywriting to build up your brand, instead of focusing on SEO exclusively. Essentially, when it comes to copywriting, you should be embracing a back-to-basics approach.
Goodbye: Old School Pay-Per-Click
Pay-per-click advertising is changing rapidly. New technology helps us better target ads at more and more specific subsections of consumers. The old style pay-per-click is practically obsolete, since tools utilizing new mediums and new targeting capabilities can help you find your exact consumer. Instead of focusing entirely on pay-per-click, the range has expanded to include contextual advertising, online video, and highly-targeted product ads.
For instance, it’s now possible to target people who watch certain television shows in certain geographical areas. It’s possible to target ads to exact age ranges, favorite clothing brands, and even target based on Facebook relationship status. There’s now a wealth of information consumers are self-supplying on the Internet, and this information can help you to pinpoint with more specificity and offer a more tailored advertising experience for your market.
Goodbye: Embracing Flat Design and Moving Beyond 200 ppi
Visually, web design is changing. Apple AAPL -0.49% and Android mobile devices are increasingly adopting retina displays. Unless you bump up the resolution of your design, the quality will be poor on these new displays. The days of designs below 200ppi are gone; retina displays have changed the game for designers.
The embrace of higher resolution isn’t the only way design is changing, though. It’s no secret Apple is a huge driver of technological changes and design trends. When Apple released iOS7, the company ditched skeuomorphism in favor of a flat user interface.
Instead of using gradients and shadows for a more three-dimensional look, most design is now adopting a flat user interface. Flat UIs were already the direction the industry had been heading, with Windows 8 completely embracing the flat aesthetic. It’s time to ditch the gradient and embrace a more clean and simplified design palate.
It’s time to say goodbye to design trends which have rightfully gone out of fashion. Web design is always changing, and if you cling to old trends, you’ll soon find your shop left in the dust.
What are some web design trends you’ve ditched? Share in the comments!
Plug in SEO – Online Rank Modifier
Plug in SEO – Online Rank Modifier
What is it?
Plug in SEO is a web app that recommends profitable measures in search engine optimizations, implements those measures and quantifies traffic and conversion benefits of them. This software analyzes and keeps a track on keywords, conversions, inbound links, URLs, content, and other SEO factors regarding the customers’ and the competitors’ website. The software does not automate SEO. Rather, it is a consistent stream of brief and specific guidance for such users who have no prior knowledge of SEO.
How does it work?
Plug in SEO identifies the problem issues those are worth fixing. One needs only to sign up and install the app. It analyzes one’s website through integrated results from Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools. Once the course of analysis gets completed one receives some simple instructions about how to fix a problem. Once this is done, the rest is quite automatic a process. A regular checking takes place to one’s website and necessary measures are advised.
What is the benefit to my business?
Plug in SEO can be truly helpful for online business owners. Any online business depends a lot on how many online visitors pay visit to its website and what sort of activities they are about in the context of that website. Taking effective measures with its regular SEO improvements, an online store owner or businessman helps increasing the trade’s visibility to more number of people every time. The more number of visitors he can reach through attractive ranking in the search engine results, the better possibility he would get to gain prospective customers. With automatic implementations associated with the tool, users get the suggestions and proper execution of a strategy for the betterment of their rank in popular search engine result pages. The increased improvement in search engine result rank gradually earns him more sales and more profit thereby.
How much does it cost?
For full-fledged package of Plug in SEO, one needs to bear an expense of $180 approximately.
SEO Meta Manager – Online Status Builder
SEO Meta Manager – Online Status Builder
What is it?
SEO Meta Manager is the downloadable software app that helps improve viability of any business in most reputed search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo etc.
How does it work?
It controls how one’s products are shown on result pages of search engines. Doing so, it drives traffic to the user’s shop with improved descriptions and product titles. It takes the process of SEO on one’s store to a better level, and lets the owner enjoy full control on how he likes his products, collections to be displayed in the results made by search engines. Naturally, with more attractive results, better product descriptions and titles, more people are drawn to the store’s site, resulting in increased sales.
What is the benefit to my business?
A powerful app, SEO Meta Manager helps one’s content getting listed in the results shown by search engine. Using the most exciting titles and product description for SEO, one ensures better prospects for his business. The app requires making slight modifications to one’s existing site’s theme. It involves written walk-through on the process and video tutorial, apart from usage tutorials. In case the user feels to get assistance at any point of time, he can seek help from the app’s tech support team. Installing the app, one gets Google Search Result Simulator, as a bonus tool, with which one can always simulate what his listings will look like at the time he updates his Meta information.
How much does it cost?
One needs to bear a onetime expense ranging from $30 to $50 to get his SEO Meta Manager.
How we can help?
SEO Meta Manager can prove to be very beneficial for an online store owner. Ensuring proper listing with the expert techniques of this app, an online store owner augments the visibility of his online store to more online visitors, which increases his opportunity to turn those visitors into potential customers more in numbers, by convincing online status of his store.
Meta Tagger – Online Visibility Enhancer
Meta Tagger – Online Visibility Enhancer
What is it?
Meta Tagger is a fantastic app that places an online shop owner to enjoy prominence and visibility by the unique search engine optimization with which his shop can be at the forefront of visibility to the online visitors.
How does it work?
Meta Tagger is an interwoven app platform that automatically creates metadata from any text-based content. Based on the information of categorizing content, extracted keywords and automatically-generated short information, metadata takes shape. This app makes it easy to manage keywords, descriptions and SEO titles. Usually it handles SEO through content-pulling from one’s existing resource descriptions. It is compatible with Google Shopping Support app, and provides import/export for one’s SEO in bulk amount. Arranging everything necessary, it impacts on products, collections, pages and blogs , the factors subject to be carefully crafted to hold the attention of shoppers.
What is the benefit to my business?
As an online store owner one has much to get from this app tool. Managing SEO for a website is a critical job and in most cases, instead of improving online status, SEO professionals end up in damaging even the existing strength of the site. With this app, one can safely but effectively shape his search engine optimization with most updated process.
How much does it cost?
One needs to bear a monthly expense of $6.00 for Meat Tagger app.
How can we help?
With the help of this App, successfully executing the easy process, and ensures greater visibility any shop to more visitors who can be turned into potential customers, resulting in increased sales and thereby, more amount of profit.
Simple SEO – The Best Website Optimizer
Simple SEO – The Best Website Optimizer
If you are looking forward to optimize your website in reputed search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc, Simple SEO will help you meet this purpose with ease. Besides, it will help you to regulate your products and pages in such a manner that they can attain maximum visibility in top search engines. In fact, you will have all your meta tags customized and this would let visitors access your site with sheer ease and convenience. Furthermore, the organic search engine traffic will rise which would consequently heighten the sales figures.
On your website, the meta tags remain hidden almost in every page. These meta tags are utilized by Google in order to determine as what descriptions and titles should be displayed in the search engine results. So, Simple SEO in this respect plays a key role by letting you gain complete control over these meta tags. This allows your site to appear in the search results for the targeted keywords. The installation process moreover is not complex since it just requires a single click.
By adding Simple SEO to the online store, you will be able to allure digital marketing professionals who will therefore find an easy solution to enhance their website rankings in top search engines. After installing it, they will be able to enjoy a good number of benefits. For instance, they will be able to:
- Make site maps
- Use descriptions for images
- Use technology as well as social media
- Create URLs that would be search-engine friendly
- Find out where the keywords are heading to
To avail the services of Simple SEO, you need to install and hence a one-time payment of $20 is required. Once paid, you would not be required to pay anymore monthly charges and thereafter you can keep enjoy its services for free.
Ultra SEO – Boosts Website Ranking
what is Ultra SEO - Boosts Website Ranking?
Outsourcing has become the favourite business model of most internet marketers. From start-ups to established businesses, everyone feels the need of outsourcing various types of services. Literally, you can outsource anything and everything, but when it is about online businesses, Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO,is the best thing to outsource. Now, you really need to ponder upon, whom to outsource. You could find thousands of SEO services, or applications, on the internet but choose the one that provides real results in building the search engine rankings of your website. Ultra SEO solutions offer you assurance in regard to moving your websites up in the search engine rankings. The best thing about Ultra SEO is that it is extremely cost effective and do not compromise on quality. They offer plenty of link building services, including forum profile submission, link building through article marketing, automatic/manual blog commenting, high PR link building, online reputation management, and combo SEO packages.
The high quality SEO services offered by Ultra SEO make sure of high search engine ranking of your website to benefit you in terms of conversion rates and PPC advertising. They employ all the necessary tactics and skills to deliver exemplary results by improving the traffic on your website and boosting your Return on Investment (ROI).
With the help of the Ultra SEO services, you have the option to resurrect your website ranking and catch up on the lost businesses due to poor ranking of your website in the past.
All the SEO packages offered by Ultra SEO are well constructed on the guaranteed methods of taking your website to higher ranking in the major search engines and help you attain your business goals. For that, they charge you according to the leading rate in the market. You can now ask for the app at the price of $10.00 per month.
Does your business really need to be on the first page of Google?
The short answer is ‘Yes’. This is definitely the case if you operate an exclusively online business. Many of you will know the reason…. how many of you look at the search results on pages 3,4,5 or further back? Most of us don’t. Sure some us will go to the second page but only if the first page yields poor results.
It’s critical for websites to appear on Page 1 of Google, especially in one of the top three organic positions, as these spots receive 58.4 percent of all clicks from users, according to a new study from Optify. Let’s take a look at the percentage of clicks for each of the 10 first page positions based on a study by Optify.
Websites ranked number one received an average click-through rate (CTR) of 36.4 percent; number two had a CTR of 12.5 percent; and number three had a CTR of 9.5 percent. Being number one in Google, according to Optify, is the equivalent of all the traffic going to the sites appearing in the second through fifth positions.
Here’s Optify’s look at CTRs on the top 20 sites:
Now lets look at the 2nd page results. As you can see from the chart below the average percentage of clicks on the second page are between 1-2%.
The following chart shows the relationship between position and clicks visually. This chart highlights the dramatic difference between the 1st and 2nd pages of Google.
Source: We have collated the data from all known studies on the number of clicks per page position to display in this graph. Note results will vary by industry.
As you can see from these average results most businesses need to be getting more than 1.2% of the clicks to successful. What do I mean by this? For example if your most important keyword has a monthly search result of 100,000 searches per month – and you are getting 1.2% of the clicks then you are getting 1,2000 visit to your website each month. If your average conversion rate is 5% then you are getting 60 orders per month. If you average conversion rate is 1.5% (like most websites) then you are getting 18 orders a month. Is this enough given your average order size? If not then you need to considering some Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to get you onto the first page or at least higher up the rankings.
From our experience running our own online store – cornflowerblue – we found that moving to the first page meant our sales tripled in the space of a few short months.
Boutique Business Consulting has a great tool – Online Viability Analysis that looks at the online profitability of your business given its Google ratings, average conversion rate and average order size. Our tool shows the impact of improving your Google rating and shows how the investment in SEO can improve your business. Contact us now for more information.
If you are considering launching an online business then this tool can help show you your earning potential. This tool will estimate how your sales volume will grow over time as your rankings improve, your conversion improves and your average order size improves.
It is not a total mystery what revenue you can make online. Chat to us today.
SEO - What not to do!
Search Engine Optimisation is all about making sure that your website appears on the first page of Google. If you have a website already then make sure you are not using any of these tactics as your site will be penalised.
Read this article by Smart Company
Tricking Google is getting a lot harder. With an algorithm update coming nearly every day, it’s simply not as easy to trick the search giant into boosting your website to the top of the page.
Search engine optimisation experts have told SmartCompany something unexpected: Google and other search engines are cracking down so much on blackhat SEO, there aren’t too many tactics left that make sense to use anymore.
Not that it stops people from trying.
“As long as something works, people are going to do it,” says Switched On Media head of SEO Daniel Bailey.
“Google is getting smarter about these things. They don’t want these tactics to work. However, ultimately, some are going to work.”
But that doesn’t mean you should be using them, even if they provide a benefit. Google is getter better, and better and finding dodgy SEO techniques and cracking down.
Here are 10 SEO methods you need to be aware of – and why shouldn’t be using them anymore. Read the rest here…..