Category Archives: Mobile

How to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing?

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How to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

Google offers GMB or Google My Business as a free tool, one that entrepreneurs can use to control and manage how and what information their customers see online. GMB helps business owners manage their location on Google maps, provides a knowledge graph and makes it easy for users to post reviews. If you run a local business, learn how to make the most out of your GMB with Google local optimization assistance. Here are ideas you’ll want to check out.

Set Up Your Listing

If you have yet to set up a Google My Business Listing, now is the best time to do so. If you don’t know how and don’t have the time to learn as you have your hands full running the day-to-day operations of the business, hire pros. Look for an SEO agency that offers GMB listing assistance.

Consider the Category

When you hire a credible SEO firm, you can trust the judgment of the company’s representative to pick the right category for your business. It must be specific and relevant enough to help Google determine which searches your listing will belong in. If none of the categories available describes what your business is about, pick a more general category. You can’t create your own. Your SEO expert should know that, too.

Use High Res Photos

Provide your clients with a glimpse into your products, processes, or services by using high-resolution materials. When your SEO expert requests for images, make sure you send hi-res photos. Blurry images don’t do anything to draw in potential customers. Talk to your SEO agency consultant to learn more about the kind of images you should use when you promote your online business.

Ensure Accuracy and Correctness

If you’re too busy running a business, you might forget about changes to your contact information, email or phone number. Keep in mind that all those details need to be updated regularly on all your marketing materials and pages. That includes your website and GMB listing. Having an SEO expert to help manage or take care of your GMB listing, though, means you can leave that task to someone else.

Also, if there are any mistakes in your contact information, that could be one of the reasons why you have such poor site traffic. Ensure online visibility by ensuring that your information everywhere matches. Hire an SEO expert to update your information so you won’t lose potential leads or customers.

Avoid Penalties

Getting penalized by Google isn’t the end of the world. But you could prevent them in the first place when you have someone to ensure that your business listing complies with the latest changes Google continuously rolls out. That’s why hiring an SEO agency helps. They stay on top of these things, so your search engine optimization expert knows what to do and what techniques to use to prevent penalties and ensure that your listings are optimized to the fullest. If you want to stay on the right side of Google, seek out professional help. Hire an SEO agency, so you can focus on your business.

The Key to Using Keywords in SEO

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Keywords are a notorious buzz phrase for SEO, but it can feel nearly impossible to find specific instruction on what they are, how to use them properly, and why they are important.

When google crawls your website pages, it picks up on which words you use frequently in a specific piece of content in order to place it correctly in front of an audience who would most likely be interested. These are keywords—the words that you are consciously (or unconsciously) working into your content in order to communicate to Google what your content is about.

Keywords should represent your content accurately, specifically, and consistently. So how exactly do you ensure that your website is utilizing keywords correctly? Continue reading

A voice search on phone

Is It Worth Optimizing for Voice Searches In 2019?

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Google launched its first voice search App in 2008, and it wasn’t long after that similar voice recognition devices were released, including Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Echo (Alexa), and Google’s refined Google Assistant.

Voice assistant software has continued to increase in popularity up until 2019, where it seems to have decreased slightly. In 2017, 13% of all households in the United States owned a smart speaker, and in 2018, 72% of people who own voice-activated speakers said that their devices were used as part of their daily routines.

But how popular is voice search in 2019, and is it worth targeting specifically with SEO?

Is Voice Search as Popular as We Once Thought?

Most people who use voice assistant software currently use it for voice commands, such as making phone calls, sending texts, or setting alarms, which don’t require an internet search. Voice search is just one aspect of voice assistant software, but it’s the one that can be capitalized on most for marketing. Unfortunately, the statistics of one are often conflated with the other, so it’s hard to pin down just how popular voice search really is.

For example, a popular statistic that floats around online is the forecast that in five years’ time (which would be in 2020) 50% of all searches will be done by voice.

This statistic likely came from a misquoting of Braidu’s former Chief Data Scientist, Andrew Bg, in a 2014 Fast Company Interview. Baidu is a Chinese search engine, so this quote was speaking from data based in China which could be drastically different from the U.S. for several reasons.

Not only that, but it was a forecasted from 2014 and was in reference to speech and image searches. Statistics are often misquoted and repeated out of context to the point that they become inaccurate or untraceable altogether. Voice search is certainly nothing to ignore, but it’s growing at a much slower rate than we once thought it would.

So Why Is Voice Search on the Decline?

Aside from the overly zealous prediction that voice search will make up half of all searches by 2020, there was a consensus among experts that it would take off much quicker than it has.

One of the reasons may be that the technology is still being perfected—users may avoid opting into voice search if it takes multiple attempts to get the information that they could’ve found in one attempt on a manual search.

But this could soon be corrected. According to Google, voice recognition accuracy has increased to 95% since 2013. But it may still take time for many people to give voice technology a chance.

Chart on google machine learning

According to a study from Stone Temple released in March of this year, voice search has actually lagged from third to fourth place in how people use their phones to find information.

Chart on top 3 choices for performing searches

What was interesting about this study, though, is that it also suggested that those who did use voice search considered it their top choice. This means that there are many people who just have not tried the new technology, had a bad experience with it in the past, or do not have a voice technology assistant for financial or personal reasons, who may eventually prefer voice search.

This decline in voice searches may also be due in part to privacy concerns that have been mounting in the past few years. Before Bloomberg reported that Amazon was reviewing the spoken commands given to Alexa, many people were not aware that all major voice assistant data is reviewed by human personal.  But this should come as no surprise—technology companies review frequent commands and searches made and how their technology responds to them in order to increase accuracy.

As technology improves and more people invest in voice technology assistants, voice search can be expected to grow—even if it doesn’t grow as fast as we’d once thought.

What’s Unique About Voice Search Technology?

According to Google, people often use their voice technology because it can help them multitask, making their daily routine easier and faster. Voice searches, specifically, allow them to instantly get answers and information without having to type and weed through more irrelevant information.

Voice search is convenient for hands free searching, which likely occurs most in the car. People may use it to ask for directions or recommendations for restaurants, businesses, or treatment centers when they’re on a time constraint. And with many states cracking down on texting and touching phones while driving, voice search allows people continued access to information in a much safer way.

Businesses like treatment centers should be especially conscious of voice search SEO, as addicts as well as friends and family of addicts may search for a drug rehab facility on the go or in a time sensitive situation.

Finally, voice search has immense potential for increasing ADA accessibility on the web. Rather than having to type, whether on a phone or desktop computer, a user can simply speak an action phrase such as “ok Google” followed by a query. And rather than having to visually and mentally comb through a multitude of results, a user will be read aloud the most relevant answer to their query.

For individuals with physical, visual, and mental disabilities, voice search could level the playing field and allow easier access to information online.

While voice search will probably never monopolize online searches, it’s absolutely worth accounting for in your SEO strategy.

How to Optimize SEO for Voice Search

The best strategy to optimize for voice search is do so when developing content from the beginning—that’s why you should work it into your SEO and content strategies now.

One major difference between voice and manual search is that voice search is much more conversational. Whereas someone might Google “drug rehab treatment centers in Los Angeles no insurance”, they might voice search “where can I go for drug rehab without insurance?”

People who know how to search efficiently will naturally pack their inquiries with keywords and relevant information like locations and stipulations, but voice search is unique in that it is meant to be treated like a (human) personal assistant.

So, you may need to fill in some of the gaps in your content. While packing in keywords may do some good for manual SEO, voice searches tend to pull from conversational content that happens to have relevant words in it. And since everyone speaks differently, you’ll have to consider the many different variations of questions people may ask and try to phrase your content to fit as many of them as possible.

The good news is, there are countless SEO tools to help you do this! For example, there is a tool called Answer the Public that will give you a map and list of commonly asked questions related to the keywords you type in. Google even has their own tool called “People Also Asked” that can give you related questions to any that you input.

As far as developing voice search friendly content, FAQ pages are incredibly effective at answering common voice search queries in a conversational tone about how-to’s, locations, and product and service information.

Additionally, it’s important to note that a vast amount of voice searches are made on mobile phones, meaning that having a mobile-friendly website is key. For example, page speed is a huge mobile ranking factor, and that comes through in voice searches. According to Backlino, voice search results load 52 percent faster than average pages.

Optimizing your site for local search results will also benefit your voice search SEO, so be sure to claim your business listing through Google My Business if you haven’t already done so and ensure all this information is accurate. You can then make content on your site that answers location and services-based questions in an accessible, voice search friendly tone.

So, the more you can do to optimize your site and content for local search results, the better optimized you’ll be for both kinds of queries. Claiming your business listing through Google My Business is the first step. Then you can develop content that easily answers location-based questions.

Securing your website with an HTTPS website domain may also boost your voice search SEO. According to Backlinko, 70.4% of Google Home result pages are secured with HTTPS.

Don’t wait until voice search actually makes up half of all online searches, start optimizing for it today! If you have questions about voice search or general SEO tactics, get in touch with us.

SeoTuners is well-versed in SEO and can help craft a custom, affordable solution for your business to increase exposure and SERP rankings. With affordable SEO solutions that include web design, social media, custom link building, SEO penalty recovery, and more, we’re confident we have a solution for all your marketing needs. Contact us today to learn about how we can boost your Google rankings.

Choosing a Web Design Company: 5 Things to Consider

Finding someone to build your site is easy. Finding the right person for the job, though, that one takes a bit more time. While there are quite a lot of options out there, you’ll want to be careful when you hire a web design company in Ventura. If you want a bit of help in choosing a site design partner service, then make sure you look for these five things.

Credentials

What are the firm’s qualifications? What does the firm and its team bring to the table? It’s essential to find someone with the technical skills to help you out. That’s why asking about experience and training is a must. However, credentials are only one consideration out of the five. You’ll need to factor in the rest before you pick a firm that’s loaded with qualifications.

Portfolio

A website design firm that has a slew of credentials will no doubt have a portfolio ready for your review. Take a look, the Small Business Trends says. Do you like what you see? Which works represent the elements or style that you want to see in your own site? Does the portfolio show you the range of services that you can ask for if you hire the firm? These are just a few of the considerations you’ll want to

Customer service

When you pick a web design company in Ventura, get a sense of its customer service. Call and ask for a consult. Or email them about it. How fast did the firm reply? Were they attentive to your questions? Do you feel like they tried their best to provide you with answers that can help you make the ideal choice for your business? Or did you feel like they were rushing to get you off the phone? That should be enough warning for you.

Alignment

Choose a website design firm with goals that are aligned with yours. For instance, some companies offer a maintenance package. That means you can leave the maintenance and monitoring as well as upgrades of the site to an online digital marketing firm. That gives you more time to focus on the core needs of your business, so your operations don’t suffer a slump or hiccup. When you find a company that has aligned its goals and processes with your organization to provide you with the help and support you need, choose that firm. They’re ideal for long-term business partnerships.

Cost

How much is the cost of the firm’s services? Look for a service provider that offers website design assistance at a price you can afford. That doesn’t mean you should always choose companies that offer the lowest rates or prices possible. After all, if anything is too good to be true, then it probably is. You’ll want to reconcile cost with value before you decide.

Conclusion

Use these considerations to help you make a smart and sound hiring decision. With excellent website design, you can attract and win over more clients to your pages, increasing your sales and returns.

Seven Steps we must follow On Mobile-First Indexing

This entry was posted in Mobile, SEO on by .

Optimizing your website for mobile is more important than ever. More than half of all visitors to most websites are using some sort of mobile device. If your website has a mobile URL, Google deems these more relevant and most important in most cases. If you are considering working with white hat SEO services to help with mobile indexing, here are seven steps to follow.

Some experts predict that all sites will eventually go to mobile-first indexing, even if they are desktop sites or not mobile-friendly. So, this is a major issue to pay attention to. Some of these types of websites have already been moved to mobile-first indexing.

 

There has been a cache bug reported where Google displays the 404 error for pages that recently transitioned to the mobile-first indexing. It looks as if this bug does not negatively affect the crawling, indexing or ranking of the websites, which is a good thing.

 

According to most white hat SEO services, Google now shows the mobile websites to users searching on mobile devices and the desktop URL to users searching on a desktop. This only works if the URLs are different. As an example, a mobile URL would be like this: http://m.mycoolwebsite.com.

 

A new and upcoming speed update (how fast your site loads) is not related to the updates in mobile-first indexing. Upload speeds are still very important, but as of now aren’t included in the changes we are covering here.

 

If you pay attention to your site’s crawl rate, you might see a slight increase, but that is likely due to Google reindexing all these sites. Most people will not notice any changes.

 

Most white hat SEO services agree that, in the case of mobile, the key to boosting Google rankings is having a site that is mobile-friendly. Just because there is a shift to mobile-first indexing doesn’t mean your site will move up in the rankings.

 

Don’t be worry about any effect to menus, tabs and expandable menus during this reindexing for mobile. Those areas and features should work as normal.

 

What is the Effect of The Mobile Interstitial Penalty Rolled Out by Google?

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Several months ago, search engine giant Google announced an upcoming feature to the way mobile search engine optimization functions, insofar that websites would have to pay heed to their implementation of mobile interstitials as per Google, or else suffer the consequences of a penalty to their online search rankings.

Mobile interstitials have often been a simple and highly effective, if arguably irritating way to build traffic to a specific product or page, and even rake in sales. Typically, an interstitial takes the form of a large intrusive pop-up with a very small removal icon, sometimes giving the first-glance impression of being on another page, or interstitials that completely block the view of content for no good reason other than advertisement or other promotions.

Google made the decision that these interstitials are counterintuitive to a quality browsing experience, and have instituted rules regarding their usage. However, the crackdown isn’t as far-reaching as some might expect.

Exceptions to the Rule

The three broad types of interstitials that would be largely untouched “if used responsibly” (in a way that did not greatly hinder the browsing experience) include:

  • Interstitials that fulfill a legal requirement, such as an age verification.
  • Interstitials that use a reasonable amount of screen space (mostly unobtrusive) while being easily dismissible.

On top of that, interstitials found deeper within a website (on non-indexed pages, unavailable through Google’s results. As such, if a visitor finds a page not through Google but through the website itself, and is confronted with an interstitial, the use of that interstitial will not be penalized.

The Effects of the Penalty

Google began initiating the penalty as far back as November, but it wasn’t until January that it truly became an official part of Google’s mobile SEO algorithm.

Basically, Google would check through a signal for use of such interstitials on indexed pages, and would implement a penalty to your page’s potential in rankings, to help crack down on their usage.

While apparently the changes have not been immediate, it’s clear that this web design and marketing tactic will require the expertise of a penalty recovery and design expert to correct.

Best Ways to do SEO effectively in 2017

This entry was posted in Advertising, Content, Local, Marketing, Mobile, SEO on by .

As SEO is constantly evolving, the strategies you used even just a few months ago should be updated and changed in order to adapt. It isn’t too late to update your company’s SEO policy for 2017 with the right custom link building services in Los Angeles and Ventura. These are just a few of the best ways:

  1. SEO Audit

The most important initial step is to perform a full audit of your existing SEO to see if anything is outdated or broken. Search Engine Journal says that the recent RankBrain update from Google means that websites now need to optimize their keywords for LSI and contextual clues.

 

  1. Mobile Friendly

Mobile technology has been improving swiftly over the past few years and has now reached the point that it is an essential consideration for any website or business based online. Moz even predicts that Google is gradually making the transition to a ‘mobile only’ online world. This also makes local SEO more important, as people will be looking up local services or locations on their smartphones. Custom link building services in Los Angeles and Ventura should therefore put your mobile site into consideration along with your regular website.

 

  1. Voice Search

Voice recognition technology has taken great strides and now works much better than it did in the past. Most smartphones now use some kind of voice search function. It does mean that web owners should put it into consideration when putting together their keywords and SEO strategy.

 

  1. Video and Images

Most SEO is focused on written content, as it is easy for search engines to pick up. But video content and images are also a large part of online content and should be utilized as part of SEO as well, alongside the written articles. Many companies are already using this in the form of infographics, on-page videos, and images posted on social media channels.

 

 

If you haven’t begun to jump on board these trends already, it is best to start immediately in order to keep up and adapt your SEO for the present and future. Talk to your SEO firm to find out how they can help you to achieve this and keep a steady stream of visitors coming to your website.

For Mobile Unfriendly Sites: Google Warns Site Owners in Mobile Search Results

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For Mobile Unfriendly Sites: Google Warns Site Owners in Mobile Search Results Back in April 2015, the search engine giant, Google, announced through their Official Webmaster Blog that they would be putting out updates and launching an algorithm that was specific to the mobile search results that users would be getting. Specifically, the company noted that they would be giving preference to those sites that were already optimized so that they were easy to browse on various types of devices. This meant that those that had a mobile-friendly layout and design would rank on top of the list versus those that were difficult to navigate due to their desktop-centric coding. mobile-friendly-bp The Recent Update to the Algorithm If you were lucky enough to already have one that was good to go for smartphones and tablets, then you were probably unaffected by the specific change. But now, starting around April of 2016, the company is sending out warnings to several owners who still have not gotten the memo about tweaking their pages to be viewable beyond just desktop and laptop computers. For those who own pages with outdated designs, you would see a snippet above your meta description when you try to view your domain in the search results. It is a simple warning, as all it says is this: “Your page is not mobile-friendly.” According to an article by Jennifer Slegg on The SEM Post, Google’s very own John Mueller confirmed that these alerts are only visible to those who own websites that have been found not to comply with the new regulations. What This Means for Your Online Presence This all seems simple, or so it may seem. Surely it is just a reminder and not a threat to your online presence’s rankings, as many people would like to think. However, this is actually a polite warning from the corporate giant to start giving your page a face-lift before the next update to the algorithm rolls around. The company has even provided the public with several tools for developers meant to assist you in editing your coding so that it becomes much more suited to the latest lightweight and wireless technology. Some of the great tips that the company outlined in their very own guidelines include the following:

  1. Make it easy for your target audience to use your website for whatever purpose it is meant to serve.
  2. Analyze how effective it is based on how easily your users can carry out certain tasks that they have to do often.
  3. Choose a template or layout that will work on all sorts of devices, regardless of model, maker, or operating system.

When in Doubt, Hire An Expert Still finding it difficult to adjust your code so that it complies with Google’s new requirements? You can get in touch with companies that provide a plethora of affordable seo services in order to help you tune up your website and get it up to date with all of Google’s new requirements, especially when it comes to the mobile side of things.

7 Tips for Doing Great SEO for Your Site

This entry was posted in Advertising, Content, Local, Mobile, SEO on by .

SEO or search engine optimization is easy enough to learn. Here are a few tips to help you get your SEO efforts off to a great start:

Untitled

  1. Publish up-to-date content. Make sure you put out new content regularly. The Entrepreneur says adding new content to your pages helps your site rank for more keywords and improving your chance of getting search-generated traffic. Fresh content also shows your target market that there’s something worth visiting in your site every week, ensuring a steady stream of traffic to your pages.
  2. Be active on social media channels. One way to generate consumer engagement is by being active on social media. Consumers love it when you respond to them quickly. By commenting or posting or liking posts, you can build up a following on your social media pages, one that could boost your traffic even further.
  3. Putting out great content. Great content is content that speaks to your audience and resonates with them. Forbes says Google likes high-quality, well-research content that’s error-free. So do your best to provide that kind of content to your consumers. Stay away from content that’s too vague to be helpful, too outmoded to be accurate and too poorly researched to even be credible. Don’t know how to do this? Hire an effective and affordable website SEO company to help you out.
  4. Avoid duplicate content. Proofread your pages to make sure you don’t have the same content in different pages of your site. If you did that deliberately, though, find another way to convey that message without using the same content, says Business2Community.
  5. Never plagiarize. Some people think lifting sentences straight out of other sites is acceptable practice. It’s not. It doesn’t just put your site at risk from getting penalized; it’s also not a great way to drum up consumer engagement and interest. After all, one way for you to engage consumers is by differentiating yourself from the rest of the competition. You can hardly pull that off if you’re plagiarizing content from other sites. By using unique content that reflects your brand, your service, your product, you can hook your audience and put them right where you want them. Don’t think so? Think about the best brands in the world. They sound like no one else. That’s one of the reasons consumers love them.
  6. Get your site mobile ready. With the growth in mobile Internet use, there’s a whole new market out there. Your target market is now using mobile to go online and that opens up a lot of marketing and advertising possibilities for you to explore. You could develop a shopping app or game, one that allows you to develop an even closer relationship with your audience.
  7. Use images. One way to break up the monotony of long content is to use images. Don’t overdo them, though. Too many images could kill your page ranking and leave you right back to where you started.

So boost your rankings. Improve your traffic. And learn more when you start using search engine optimization to get your pages—and your product/service—to more of your market out there.

YouTube & Mobile Banners

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How do you measure success? The most common response to this question in the business world is ROI (Return on Investment). So how does one measure the success of a banner ad? The answer isn’t as cut and dry as we would like. Banner ads can be displayed across multiple platforms and in different sizes, which can drastically alter the message they carry to consumers. Sometimes the greatest measurable benefit of display banner advertising isn’t in dollars and cents, but in information that is collected during the campaign.

The first banner ads have been around since 1993 and their evolution has skyrocketed ever since. Web banners function the same way as traditional advertisements are intended to, by notifying consumers of the product or service and presenting reasons why the consumer should choose the product or service being presented. With the proliferation of smart phones and tablets, the race for more innovative banner advertising has become hotly contested. “Viewability” – ads that are at least 50% visible on a user’s screen for at least one second – is one of the most important factors and can induce more genuine clicks from buyers.

Brand Exposure

With the use of hand held devices increasing daily, the question for advertisers then becomes how to use the limited digital space effectively. Video is hot right now, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world, and is an excellent vehicle with which to capture the consumer. In Europe, banners with videos and video ads outperform all other banner formats in every metric, including engagement rate, engagement time and CTR. Pre-roll video ads on publisher sites and YouTube were particularly hot in 2013. Youtube has pioneered the use of video banners, which have recently knocked Facebook banners (99×72) off of the list of top ten favorite banner ad formats used by advertisers. The “media as a message” approach by Youtube video banners allows businesses to present themselves in a unique way, when and where it matters most. The limited amount of time these ads have in front of the consumer means that they have to be engaging, use the right message and evoke just the right passions in the consumer. This exercise in advertising alchemy is not for the faint of heart and best left those who live, eat and breathe internet marketing.

The data gleaned from banner advertising can be useful for both brand exposure and performance metrics for more targeted advertising. To ensure that a campaign is generating useful data, banners should be designed to promote specific awareness-raising goals, such as “likes” on Facebook, or downloads of coupons. This data can be used to retarget interested consumers who’ve shown affinity to a particular brand, product or service.

Whether you are focusing on building a brand or performance advertising, mobile is pivotal to reaching your audience. Research shows that 90% of people move between devices to accomplish a goal, so reaching customers on-the-go is more important than ever before. All too often marketers rely on display ad campaigns via laptops and desktops to reach an increasingly mobile audience. This is a mistake. In Europe, parts of Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East, smart phones and tablets are far more important devices. The goal should be to think multi-screen from the beginning, and choose standardized formats that are easy to benchmark. The space being somewhat limited does mean that the right message must be paired with the right creative to produce the desired results. SeoTuners can help you achieve your performance marketing objectives to grow leads, win new customers, and increase conversions.