Search Engine Optimization Archives

October 22,2021

6 Reasons You Should Invest in a Quality SEO Strategy

The digital world is now the main playing field. However, with the saturation of the platform, your business needs to stand out and get those clicks in a matter of seconds. The best way to address this dilemma is to maximize Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

The use of SEO in all forms of content is at an all-time high right now. So, if you’re still one of those traditional companies who still do not believe in its power, then this article is for you. We’ll explore the various reasons why SEO matters and why investing in it is a pivotal marketing strategy.

1.) SEO Provides Higher Website Traffic

You don’t need the Yellow Book or Encyclopedia to find the answers to your problems. Things are easier nowadays with the presence of various search engines.

If you’re looking for the best gift for your loved one, you’d scroll the internet. If you’re searching for the best plumber in your town, you’d pull up your favorite browser and read reviews online. If you want to book a resort for your next vacation, more than likely, you’re grabbing your smart phone. Search engines, such as Google, are our intelligent friend who guides us in our everyday concerns.

As a business that does not invest much in SEO, there’s a huge possibility that Google won’t know that you exist. With this, your target audience won’t be able to find you as well.

Should you find that sweet spot and deliver the right techniques, you’ll definitely climb up the ladder and eventually land the first page of Google Search. If you’re lucky, you might even reach that top spot. In addition, employing this technique is less costly than doing any social media or traditional advertising.

2.) SEO Deeply Understands Consumer Voice and Behavior

Surveys and focus group discussions may give us a glimpse of what our consumers need and want. However, it may take too much time, energy, and money to explore just one topic in general. What’s good about SEO is that it tells us the latest market shifts and consumer behavior changes in granular detail without going through the usual process.

One way to go about this is through the use of keywords. SEO builds its foundation with search keywords that usually mirror where our consumer stands now. Add to this its additional functions such as AI insights, SERP analysis, and Search Query Data.

Keep in mind that all of the information you get from this does not limit your customer’s online behavior. However, it is also reflective of their offline journey, which you can further use to solidify your on-ground business strategies.

3.) SEO Provides Improved User Experience

SEO is not all about your customers visiting your website. Its primary purpose is to ensure that these potential customers will have a value-adding user experience that will definitely convert these one-time visitors to loyal ones. You’re not only there to sell, but your business is there to inspire, guide, and educate your consumers with whatever they need help on.

Optimized content is the best way to go about this. Don’t just stuff keywords here and there. Instead, ensure that it will satisfy the visitors with their intention by understanding what they really need. At the end of the day, it’s more costly to keep acquiring new customers than retain a few loyal ones.

4.) SEO Enables You to Understand (and Beat) Your Competitors

Knowing that your competitor is ahead of the game might be a little depressing. There are times when you’ll search the internet, and the first thing that pops out on the web page is your competitor’s website. That’s not new, but it does not mean that all is hopeless. Now, more than ever is the perfect opportunity to strike.

Believe it or not, there’s this tendency to feel a little lax if you’re on top. There’s this feeling of pride that no one can knock you out of where you are now. So if you feel like your competitor is in this scenario, then go for it.

Competitive SEO is the perfect way to uncover what their tactics are. You’ll be able to deep dive here into what your competitor is doing correctly and where the opportunities lie. Once you have enough data and information, make sure to craft a strategy that will address all of your findings. Do it quietly and as sneaky as possible. They’ll be surprised that your website will eventually receive more clicks (and conversions, hopefully!) and snatch the ranking throne from them.

5.) SEO is Passive PR

Unlike spearheading advertisements and digital postings, SEO is much easier to use. All you have to do is satisfy all SEO rules, and you’re good to go. This passive PR strategy will definitely increase your brand awareness and empower your message.

Although the market will evolve, your website content won’t drastically change. With this, SEO is a strategy that will last long term with little effort needed to sustain.

6.) SEO Employs High Return on Investment

SEO is a technique that provides a high return on investment (ROI) for businesses. For example, Search Engine Journal conducted a study in 2021, and they found out that half of the businesses surveyed responded that organic search had the highest ROI for them. This was followed by the 20 percent of the respondents who said that it was paid search.

Given that its effects are perpetual, SEO builds higher ROI as time passes by. This is proven when sales are still steady even after the disappearance of your PPC advert.

Learning SEO takes time. You have to learn and understand many technicalities before you can fully apply them to your digital strategy. Our suggestion is to seek the help of experts to jumpstart this business investment, and this is where Salt Rank will come in through their Kansas City SEO Services. Our group of experts will guide you through your SEO journey and ensure that your investment here will be the best decision you’ll ever make.

September 15,2021

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What Is Evergreen Content And How To Create It

Are you looking to immortalize your content? Then creating evergreen content should be part of your content marketing plan. Written and visual content pieces should be made fresh, sustainable, timeless, and relevant to pull in leads organically. Hiring the best SEO services can sprinkle the right magic dust for your content.

Regularly putting out content might not be enough, so a mix of time-sensitive and evergreen content can provide generous link juice and leads to your business. Evergreen content alone can give you value that compounds and remains consistent over time.

What Is Evergreen Content?

Anyone can benefit from creating evergreen content. If you are a blogger, influencer, coach, small business, or entrepreneur, creating high-quality evergreen content with the best SEO services keeps you on top of mind.

Evergreen content has a value that remains over time. It’s not time-bound or seasonal. In fact, with the right marketing strategy in place, having evergreen content will help you gain leverage or traction in your business. You are bound to draw in more leads into your business for months or years to come.

Evergreen content topics aren’t time-dependent. More so, the content of this type is expected to be so superior in quality that it becomes a resource or benchmark for related types of content.

The content isn’t specific to a niche or industry. The topic contains evergreen information or steps or could have improvements over time with new technologies and trends, but the basics remain the same.

Benefits of Creating Evergreen Content

Increase in Traffic and Leads

Evergreen content provides you seamless and consistent traffic that could even increase over time. With an evergreen content strategy, you create layering to generate new and ongoing traffic and leads. While time-sensitive content would have peaks or a sudden gush of views or traffic, it could wane or die down over time. With that being said, evergreen content is a priority, especially if you are looking to grow your visibility, engagement, and sales on a long-term basis.

Longer Shelf Life

One of the apparent benefits of evergreen content is that it has a longer shelf life than time-sensitive content topics. This is because the topics are regarding fundamentals that do not or change very little over time. With immortalized subjects, there is no need to create content out of these topics constantly. All you have to do now is repurpose content to different social media channels. Most of your target audience would be beginners to medium users who would always go back to your content or website because you have helped them learn the basics.

SEO-Friendly

Perhaps the best benefit of using evergreen content is the fact that it is suitable for SEO. The goal of every business is to rank on top of the first page of Google. With evergreen content, other websites would link back to you, and your content would generate more traffic, making you a trusted site. Google loves to reward trusted sites, and thus, you get to be on top of SERPs.

How to Create Evergreen Content

1. Choose Evergreen Topics

To create evergreen content, you need to focus on evergreen topics. When researching topics, you need to focus on what your target market or audience would need from your business. What information are your buyers looking for? What are the pressing problems or needs of your consumers?

When you try to look into the pain point of your target market, you will see a long list of problems that you can solve. These evergreen topics comprise the basics such as “How to Ease Joint Pain in Seniors” or “How to Bake a Strawberry Cake.”

Of course, topics should be aligned with your niche or your business. It’s also important to inject unique ideas and also recent statistics into your blogs. When looking for topics, you can get ideas from the most popular articles or trends and create blogs about the basics.

2. Create the Best Version Available Online

When creating blogs focused on evergreen content, you need to identify the topics that other websites have not explored or discussed. If you can’t find one, you can create a much better version than what is on top of Google rankings.

To have better positioning of your brand, you have to create the best version available online. With that in mind, you need to be in a position of power or create blogs with relevant and complete information that your target audience would find golden or valuable.

Create content that is top-notch in quality that other websites can link to. To do this, you need to be excellent in research; having references and citations will position your brand to be the best and an expert resource or solution. You can also include personal opinions, which would be great with your branding.

3. Align Your Content With Your Brand

Your brand voice should be seen and felt with your content. Evergreen content helps you attract more leads or customers to your business, plus it also helps you reach more fans that will improve brand recall for your business. This is precisely why you need to get top-of-the-line SEO services for your business.

Great content will always attract your target market, especially if it’s designed to be aligned with your brand. Write with the audience in mind. This is how you create a memorable brand.

4. Update Your Content When New Information is Available

Suppose your evergreen content has included statistics or data that have become old or irrelevant. In that case, you should constantly update content to become fresh and valuable for current and future readers.

Create Immortalized Content

The best, cheapest, and most effective way to do marketing is to focus on content marketing. Content marketing has always fueled visibility, awareness, and engagement for many brands.

Big and small brands benefit from content marketing, especially now that businesses have shifted to the digital space. This is what SEO services can do for your business.

With evergreen content, you get to grow brand awareness, increase your reach organically over time, and boost ROI. Evergreen content allows you to immortalize your brand with content that never goes obsolete or gets old. If you want to immortalize your content, you can now do that by implementing the evergreen content strategy in your business.

August 25,2021

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How We Help Senior Living Communities Stand Out Online

In today’s day and age, almost everyone uses the internet to help handle their daily needs, most especially older adults. In fact, surveys revealed that seniors spend 57% of their daily time online, scouting for discounts and looking at articles about retirement and senior life.

This means that there’s really a huge chance that seniors or their family members will first do an online search for possible senior living communities for themselves or their loved ones, right? So if you’re not investing in the best digital marketing services to make your senior living website stand out, then what are you doing?

Luckily, it’s never too late to amp up your marketing strategies and turn to the digital side to improve your business. One such company that can help you navigate the whirlwind industry of digital marketing is Salt Rank.

Whether yours is an assisted living community, independent living, memory care, or retirement facility, Salt Rank is your go-to company for all your digital services needs, and here’s why!

Why Digital Marketing Matters to Senior Care Communities

It’s hard enough to build a business and maintain its day-to-day operations without piling in the tedious job of marketing your services. And we all know how important the marketing aspect is to a business.

Businesses grow and expand with the right advertising techniques created by an expert marketing team or agency. One such strategy that you should not ignore if you want a successful business in the 21st century is digital marketing.

Digital marketing strategies can help your senior living community get its much-needed presence online to advertise the community itself and the services it provides.

Furthermore, digital marketing is the best modern way to reach a wider audience and showcase how you can help seniors get the highest quality of life they deserve. Some of the important reasons why your senior care facility needs the best digital marketing services include:

To grow your sales and revenue
To start marketing to the right audience
To establish your brand and message to the online community
To build credibility
To market your products and services properly
To track the performance of your marketing strategies and see what works for your business.
To achieve your business goals in a short time and implement the best techniques to see the best results.

Lastly, digital marketing is one of the surest ways to bring in a good ROI so your business can continue serving the lovely seniors in your community.

Digital Marketing Services for Senior Living Communities

There are tons of different digital marketing techniques that exist, from lead generation to PPC marketing strategies. So, of course, there’s a different course of action for each business. After all, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to marketing.

But with the assistance of a digital marketing team with expertise in the senior living industry, then you can rest assured that every advertising tactic implemented will yield the best results for your business.

For instance, Salt Rank has already handled and helped a considerable amount of senior living communities to gain traction in the online world.

Moreover, we have ample experience in marketing all kinds of senior living facilities一from memory care to rehabilitative services for elderlies. As a result, Salt Rank already knows what works for your specific audience and what methods can effectively boost the right traffic and turn it into sales.

Some of the digital marketing services Salt Rank currently implements into the senior living communities we work with include:

- Website Design and Development – This includes website design and optimizing it to gain online traffic, like SEO (search engine optimization) implementation, making technical adjustments, and conversion tracking.
- Content Marketing – This refers to creating different content and pages for your website to advertise, inform, and educate your audience. This also includes optimizing each piece of content, so it will appear on the search results page of Google when a user searches for a specific keyword or phrase.
- Social Media Marketing and Management – Build your brand using one of the most powerful platforms today一social media! Salt Rank performs social media marketing services to build brand awareness, increase customer engagement, and improve lead generation.
- Pay Per Content Marketing – Advertise your business using the right Google Ad campaigns and optimize them to target the right audience. Convert each click into leads and ultimately turn those into customers by trusting the best digital marketing team.

- Local SEO – Target the right crowd by investing in local SEO through Google listings, local link building, and keyword research.

Of course, it goes without saying that all these services come with foolproof long-term strategies and management to keep the digital traffic going.

Why Choose Salt Rank?

Many adults turn 65 each day and search “assisted living near me” or “independent living in Kansas City.” Each day is a golden opportunity to gain traffic and customers, so make sure to get your hands on the best team of marketers to handle your digital marketing service needs.

Choosing a dedicated marketing agency is of vital importance. With hundreds out there, here’s what makes Salt Rank unique and trustworthy.

1. Expertise in the Senior Living Industry

We operate based on the decades of experience we have gained from working with numerous senior living facilities. So it’s safe to say that we know what works and what doesn’t for your target audience.

2. Experienced Team

Our team consists of the most reliable and dedicated web developers, SEO strategists, content writers, and marketers.

3. Enterprise Level Quality

Whether you are a start-up or an SMB, we will deliver an enterprise-level solution to your digital marketing problems and needs.

4. Results Driven Work

Our team strives to actually make things happen. We are driven by solid leads and improved ROI, as well as seeing your senior community grow both online and offline.

5. Cost-Efficient Without Sacrificing the Quality

We were once an up-and-coming business as well, so we know the struggle. That’s why we provide quality services at an affordable price.

Stand above your competition by getting the best digital marketing services from the best team in Kansas City!

August 16,2021

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What are Connected TV Commercials and How Can They Help Your Business

With the constant development in technology, there ought to be a continuous evolution in the world of digital advertising as well. Marketers, as well as every SEO company in Kansas City should be on the lookout for the best traditional and digital marketing techniques to reach their very diverse audience.

With the “new normal” still in effect, a new way of advertising has risen in the form of connected TV commercials. This technique is now the current hype in the business and digital marketing world due to its convenience and advertising capabilities.

Granted, the tech behind connected TV has been with us for many years now, but it is not until later that many businesses discovered its power of advertising.

Get into the bandwagon and discover why your company needs CTVs (Connected TV Commercials) as a marketing tool. Here is everything you need to know about connected TV commercials and how they can help your business grow and thrive.

What is Connected TV?

Connected TV or CTV simply refers to a television that has the ability to connect to the internet to support video content streaming. This includes your flat-screen smart TVs, Apple TVs, Xbox, and Playstation.

Now when CTV is in play, then the acronym OTT is just around the corner. OTT or Over-The-Top refers to the delivery of any content from the internet to the connected TV.

There’s no need for users to subscribe to a traditional cable system or satellite provider when there’s OTT. Instead, users can easily stream and watch content via the internet, which is usually more affordable and often free.

Some examples of OTT content that you probably already encountered and even use includes movies and tv shows you stream from Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.

Another excellent example of OTT but in the form of a message application is WhatsApp. It utilizes the internet for users to send messages with one another instead of a mobile texting plan.

How Does It Work as an Advertising Tool?

So how does CTV and OTT technology have anything to do with advertising? Well, it kind of works the same way as with traditional TV commercials, where after a few minutes of watching a specific drama show, a bunch of commercials and advertisements will stream on your tv.

The same thing happens with connected TV advertising, but the stark difference is users watch this content via the internet. So connected TV advertising works the same way as watching Youtube content and having a sponsored advertisement pop up mid-watch, then getting back on your video after a few seconds.

How Does it Differ from the Traditional TV Commercial?

Besides the delivery method, CTV commercials are much, much more effective than traditional TV commercials for many reasons. Here are just some of them.

1. Everybody Uses CTV Now

As of 2019, marketing studies revealed that 60% of households in the US own a CTV and enjoy content delivered by OTT services, like Netflix. The percentage of CTV owners is expected to reach 75 to 80% this year, which leaves only a few people viewing ads through paid TV cable, antenna, and satellite providers.

Additionally, Millennials are reported to be the biggest fans of CTV and OTT content, especially those made by Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. So if your primary target audience is Millennials, then it’s time for you to invest in an SEO company in Kansas City and try out CTV ads now!

2. CTV Ads are Targeted

Connected TV advertisements can target a specific audience, thus allowing your ads to be viewed by the right users and increasing your ROI.

For example, if your target is sports-related users, then you can pay for major sports networks, like ESPN, to run your ad during a live sporting event that they’re televising. This ensures that your ad will definitely reach its target audience, plus you will know how many viewers actually viewed the ad and let it run its course or skipped it.

Additionally, CTV can target viewers the same way as websites and social media platforms do. You can target specific audiences by using the data of the OTT apps they use and the content they view.

3. Users Don’t Mind CTV Advertisements

One of the best advantages of CTV ads compared to linear TV is that viewers don’t mind the video advertisements in their CTVs because they’re more invested in the content they’re watching.

Studies revealed that a considerable percentage of people don’t mind sitting through a video ad to continue watching their show, no matter where the ads start rolling (pre-roll or mid-roll advertising).

Furthermore, studies found that many people feel that “these ads are a fair price in exchange for the free and low-cost content in CTVs.”

4. Interactive and Various Ad Formats

Lastly, CTV advertisements have more interactive video ad formats than traditional tv commercials. For example, users have the option to skip it, not view, or click a link that would direct them to the business’s landing page if they liked what they saw in the ad. Some format examples of CTV ads include:

- In-stream video advertisements refer to unskippable video ads that last for 15 to 30 seconds. It can play before or during a show or content.

- Home screen placement ads pertain to a short video or image ad just sitting on your home screen and containing a call-to-action.

- Interactive pre-roll ads are just like in-stream video ads, but this one rolls at the start of the content and has a clickable feature to redirect you to a specific landing page.

5. CTV Ads Have Real-Time Metrics

Lastly, CTVs commercials feature real-time performance tracking. Unlike its traditional counterpart, CTV ad metrics can actually tell you how much traction and engagement your ad gathered, not just how many times it was loaded.

Moreover, it allows marketers to view user insights valuable to their future ad campaigns, such as user geography, demographic, and devices connection.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that connected TV commercials can play a massive role in the success of your brand awareness campaigns, user conversions, and growth of your business.

Salt Rank is a trusted SEO company in Kansas City. If you’re ready to start discussing CTV commercials as a potential marketing strategy for your business, get in touch with us today!

July 15,2021

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How to Effectively Optimize Your Video Content for SEO

Video SEO isn’t quite the same as website SEO. For example, you might be struggling to create videos. Making quality videos isn’t easy – they are difficult to produce, edit, plan out, and cost time and money to create. But when it’s all said and done, your video isn’t ranking up. What’s happening?

First of all, there is definitely a difference between normal SEO and video SEO. Video SEO changes quickly, so having an ongoing SEO services package covering video SEO would be a smart idea for any small business.

Let’s first define Video SEO and then talk about the changes that have occurred recently.

Video SEO Defined

Video SEO works similarly to regular SEO, but they aren’t exactly the same. With video SEO, you must optimize your video to get indexed and rank on search results pages for relevant keyword searches. Luckily there are plenty of strategies for optimization to give your videos the best chance of ranking higher.

Recent Video SEO Changes

Recently in the past few years, video marketing has exploded in popularity with small businesses. After DSLR cameras became more available in the late 2000s and YouTube became mainstream, it was much easier to get high-quality videos online.

Now everywhere you go online, you see videos. We all carry smartphones in our pockets that let us capture high-quality video anytime, anywhere. However, with the boom in popularity for online videos, ranking higher in search results has become more difficult.

Here are some optimization strategies that might be helpful for you.

1. Selecting a Video Hosting Platform

When selecting the best video hosting platform, think about your motivation behind ranking your videos. Is it to bring in new traffic and leads? Or does it have more to do with creating brand awareness and controlling a narrative?

If you care more about promoting brand awareness, then Vimeo and YouTube are excellent platforms to consider. The key thing to know about platforms like YouTube is that most of the traffic going to their videos stays on their site and not yours. That could potentially lead to your target audience jumping to your competitors. For example, after they click a suggested video that plays when yours finishes.

2. Create Transcripts for Your Videos

When you scroll through the Facebook feed, you will probably spot many videos that have captions. These captions allow you to view the video without disturbing anyone else (it can also be viewed by the hearing impaired). That text playing alongside the video is called a video transcript.

These transcripts will allow your video content to be accessed by more people, including search bots because these bots look for pages that have additional text.

3. Create an Engaging Thumbnail

Your video thumbnail is what a person sees after they search and find your video. So, it will play a major role in getting people to click on your video. Consider it like you would a book cover or a website’s homepage. It should be attractive, compelling, and relevant to the video’s content and title.

Pro tip: Videos with human thumbnails usually get more plays than those without.

4. Put Thought Into Your Video Title and Description

Like with blog posts, titles and meta descriptions play a key part in getting your videos to rank higher. Therefore, you’ll want to take the time to craft a good title for your video along with a decent video description. Just like with meta descriptions, you also need to include keywords in your video description. You can get these keywords using the same methods: through keyword research, you’ll find the terms that people actually search for.

5. Make the Rest of the Page Relevant

It’s not only about video optimization when it comes to getting placed in SERPs. It’s also about page optimization as well. That’s because if the page isn’t optimized for SEO, a search engine won’t even try to crawl it, to begin with.

While it can be difficult to rank your site organically, creating good content and following SEO fundamentals will help. And finally, ensure that your video is relevant to the website/page that it’s embedded on.

6. Make the Page Focus on the Video

Too often, a video is located beneath the fold, which makes people have to scroll down a lot before landing on the video. This obviously results in a low number of plays since people don’t want to spend that much time looking for a video. The search crawlers are also unlikely to try and index a video that’s hidden.

Therefore, the best way to make your video easier to crawl is to put it front and center on the page.

7. Don’t Embed a Video All Over the Place

Embedding a video on multiple different pages will force you to compete with yourself. Remember never to do this because it’s pointless and can hurt your efforts.

The short explanation is that if you’re trying to rank a page and video that are both relevant to each other, there’s no point in embedding the video elsewhere on your site. You’d basically be competing with yourself, which doesn’t make any sense.

SEO Isn’t the Only Way to Promote Videos

While SEO is definitely important, it’s not the end all be all way to promote your videos. It also isn’t 100% reliable. Google will always be making changes to its algorithms. As a result, video marketing constantly changes as well. And, of course, hoping that search bots will rank your videos higher isn’t a great strategy either.

Consider Paid Advertising

In short, SEO is difficult to control and always changing. That’s why paid advertising can complement SEO in getting more eyes and clicks on your videos.

Plenty of places online offer video advertising opportunities – Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, just to name a few. There are also non-paid strategies that you can consider, such as having influencers promote your video content. If you ever decide to consolidate your video content into a YouTube channel, be sure to make an excellent YouTube channel trailer.

June 14,2021

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10 Tips To Boost Your Rank on Google Maps

A Google maps listing is essential for marketing your small business. It will help your business get seen by more people, differentiate itself from competitors, and bring new customers in through your door. And the best part is that it costs you nothing! However, you can only properly reap the benefits of Google maps if your listing is set up properly. Just because your business is listed doesn’t mean Google will automatically rank it.

Proximity is just one of several factors that Google Maps considers when creating rankings for listings. There are 10 things that you need to know to get your Google Maps listing to rank higher.

1. Claim Your Listing on Google Maps

After you’ve created your listing, which you can do by following a few simple steps, you must also claim it. What does this mean? In the process of creating the listing, you only provided a few details – location, name, category. But after you claim it, you’ll be able to provide much more information describing your business. The more info that your listing has, the more likely it’ll rank high. Besides, nothing else listed below will work if you don’t claim your listing first.

In order to claim your listing, you must already have a Google My Business account (it’s free!). With an account set up, you can just bring up your listing and then choose the appropriate option. Then, just follow the steps provided by Google.

As this is helping with your Google ranking, this is SEO. You can always hire an SEO services provider to help you in getting things set up and running efficiently.

2. Provide the Necessary Info in Your Listing

Once you’ve got a Google Maps listing along with a linked Google My Business (GMB) account, you are prepared to start optimizing for better ranking results. The first thing you should do to optimize is to include more information in your listing.

In your GMB account, check the “info” tab. You’ll see different things, including description, services, website, special hours/hours, attributes, products, phone number, service area (if it applies), category, and address. There are many ways to optimize these account sections to make your listing rank higher.

3. Get Some Reviews!

Keeping in mind that Google likes what consumers like, you shouldn’t be surprised that Google boosts the ranking of business listings that have great reviews. So what’s the best way to get more reviews?

When you add a new listing, it will become open to new reviews automatically.

However, that doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get reviews. You must be proactive and ask your customers to leave reviews. For even better ranking potential, you should also respond to these reviews.

4. Provide a Local Number

Google doesn’t like toll-free numbers (877 and 800) since they’re often used for spamming. Get yourself a local phone number that has the same area code as your business’s location. That way, your listing will rank higher, and it will show users that your store is indeed located where you said it is.

5. List Your Store Hours

A Google Maps listing can inform visitors if your store is closed, open, will close soon, or will open soon. This information also becomes more relevant during this pandemic, as businesses can put “temporarily closed,” which is also important for SEO purposes. It’s important because Google will know you are still active and thus trustworthy, which will help to boost your rank. Keeping this information updated can also reduce the amount of people trying to visit your store during the wrong times (which could provoke negative reviews that can hurt your Google Maps ranking). This is another reason why outsourcing your SEO services to an SEO expert team could help you as they will stay on top of these issues to help your business grow.

6. Use Your Address and Name Consistently

If Google Maps doesn’t trust your business, then it won’t get ranked. What does this mean? It means that you’ll have to prove your trustworthiness. One way that you can do that is to make the info describing your store across the internet consistent. For instance, you want to make sure that the name of your business in the GMB dashboard matches the actual name of your business, with no variation. This name should also be the same on your other accounts on the web – including Facebook, Yelp, and other social media accounts. The same must be true for your address information (e.g., use either “st” or “street” for every address listing).

7. Add a Description for Your Listing

A business description should give a big picture overview to help visitors get acquainted with you. It should also include unique attributes that can work to compel visitors. The tone should also align with your branding to foster a stronger connection. Ensure that you add keywords as well since this will also help with ranking higher for searches containing your store name, services, and products.

8. Categorize Your Store Properly

When it comes to ranking, your listed business category is actually really important. First, you must choose the primary category. This should be the category that represents the main product or service offered by your business. You should then select any other categories that apply as secondary categories.

Remember that you can’t use custom categories. However, if you start to type your main product or service in the box, you will notice other category options appear showing the different categories that you can choose from.

9. Include Photos in Your Listing

Google likes it when people include photos in their listings. Firstly because it shows that your listing is active and worthy of getting ranked higher in search. Secondly, because Google has become better at recognizing photos and then including them in local search results. And finally, the general rule is that Google likes what the people like. People like photos. And if your listing includes no photo at all, people will instead see a boring map image next to your business listing. Not good!

10. Use High-Quality Photos

Therefore, to boost your rank on Google Maps, you’ll want to use the highest quality and most compelling pictures at your disposal. They should really capture what the typical shopping experience is in your store. If possible, you should try to add one new picture every day.

If keeping up with your Google Maps and Google My Business account seems like too much, consider hiring an SEO services provider like Salt Rank. Our SEO team can help to build your GMB profile and keep it regularly updated. Contact us today to learn more.

May 28,2021

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Top Engagement Strategies to Grow Your Business Online

There are many engagement strategies and online marketing services to help you grow your business online. Two of the best strategies for engaging with potential customers involve blogging and social media. In this blog post, we’ll take a deep dive into these two methods and how you can utilize them effectively.

Blogging

Blogging is not only a great way to create engagement with your target audience, but it’s also great for your website’s SEO.

As most of us know, SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it’s all about getting the best results from organic search terms relating to your website.

But if you’re new to internet marketing, then you may not be aware of the different ways of how blogging helps your website’s SEO.

It’s important to know the basics, so let’s go over them now.

1. Blogging Helps Keep Your Website Current

Maintaining a website that’s current and up to date is essential for SEO. Why is that the case?

Well, think about it from Google’s point of view.

Google is the most used and popular search engine in the world, and there’s a good reason for that; Google has some of the highest standards for how websites are ranked in the search engines.

This means that they will only rank your website on page one if they feel that it would provide a good experience to visitors.

A website without content is a website that can’t be trusted. There could be various reasons why a website isn’t updated with new content. It could have gone out of business, or the information could’ve been proven false and then retracted.

But whatever the case may be, Google isn’t going to rank a website highly without a blog, nor will it rank a website highly with a blog that isn’t updated regularly.

2. Blogging Keeps Eyeballs On Your Website Longer

How does the time visitors spend on your website affect your SEO? Well again, let’s look at this question from Google’s perspective.

The longer someone stays on your page, the more this signals to Google that your website is helpful.

But suppose someone leaves the page quickly (aka a bounce). In that case, this sends the opposite signal – that your website is either of low quality or that it doesn’t properly address the searcher’s concern.

3. Blogging Is Your Key To Unlocking The Potential Of Long Tail Keywords

Did you know that half of all searches are long-tail keywords?

If you don’t already know, long-tail keywords are simply keywords that are longer – about four words or more.

Compared to more competitive and shorter keywords (for example, “microwave oven”), long-tail keywords (such as “how does a microwave oven work”) have the advantage for most businesses.

Since most businesses don’t have the SEO authority that big brand name websites do, they should try and rank for long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are often best suited for targeting more serious buyers anyway.

So how does blogging help your website’s SEO when it comes to long-tail keywords? Well, blogging is the best way to use long-tail keywords on your website.

For instance, it’s difficult to incorporate long-tail keywords on a product page. But a blog, on the other hand, can give you the ability to target any long-tail keyword that you choose.

In short: with long-tail keywords, who you want to target to bring to your website is all up to you! And that will be a much better engagement strategy for you to grow your business.

Social Media

Social Media is the king of online engagement and ultimate online marketing services. In the past 15 years or so, we have seen a rise in social media platforms. We can do so many things with social media, including promotions of businesses. What can social media do to benefit your small business?

1. Builds Your Brand

Your brand is key when it comes to your business. Who are you? What is your business? What do you do? What can you offer your customers?

It’s good to communicate all of these in your social media channels, so potential customers know who you are and what your business actually does.

2. Builds Relationships

Since social media is interactive, this is a great way to build relationships with your customers. This is a great platform for customers to easily communicate if they have issues they need to talk to you about or suggestions for your business. (Maybe even some compliments!) You can easily reply to your audience’s comments or Tweets within seconds, which brings people back for more.

3. Creates Loyal Customers

Staying engaged with customers on your social media channels can really make a difference in your business. Suppose someone is angry with your service and posts an angry comment on your social media posts. In that case, you can reply to it immediately and resolve the issue.

It’s better to confront the issues and solve them rather than ignore your customers’ problems. According to research done by Harvard Business Review, customers who receive quick responses to their comments or Tweets are more willing to spend more money with the said company later on, especially if the company responds in five minutes or less.

4. Boosts Sales

No matter what you’re selling, social media can help you sell it. It’s easier to promote your business. You can have your friends share your posts to their personal social media, and it’s a great way to show off your products or services. Being able to communicate across platforms, share posts quickly and share to a large audience really benefits small businesses when it comes to sales.

5. Cost-Effective Marketing

It’s free and easy to sign up for social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. These sites have features where you can purchase sponsored content to help promote your business even more. Although, you can easily promote your social media accounts and business for free with some extra work, such as word of mouth or contests to share your business.

Advertising is usually relatively cheap on each of these social media platforms, so you can purchase the advertising and marketing you need within your budget.

So what can social media marketing do for increasing engagement? It can increase brand awareness, create new customers and promote your small business to audiences worldwide!

April 30,2021

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What Are Core Web Vitals and Why Are They Important?

Google is one of the leading companies in internet technology and innovation. The company also hosts one of the most reliable search engines on the internet. Many websites rely on their search engine rankings to gain more visitors, popularity, and visibility on the internet. To increase these rankings, website developers use different marketing techniques such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) to gain better rankings in keyword search results and show up more often on search engine results.

Some website owners even hire expert SEO services to manage their website optimization. Even if this move costs them some money, this will increase their chances of making more profits due to improved search engine rankings. Having an optimized website and showing up at the top of keyword searches is a good way to make the most out of your resources.

Recently, Google announced a new project that will help website owners promote their websites by showing a high score in the user website experience. Today, the page experience of a website may be evaluated based on several factors such as usage of HTTPS, the effectiveness of the mobile version of the website, number of pop-up ads, and safety in web browsing.

Google now plans to add a new factor named “Core Web Vitals” in determining a website’s page experience. Google also stated that they are giving time for websites to learn more about this new factor, and they will be giving out the tools needed for improving these vitals. Before worrying too much about improving your website vitals, let us first break down these Core Web Vitals and understand each contributing factor.

Breaking Down the Core Web Vitals

The Core Web Vitals may be classified into three different factors: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). These factors represent different characteristics of a website, and each of these can greatly affect user experience. Each of these factors is discussed below:

1. LCP

Largest Contentful Paint refers to the time it takes for a website to load a whole new page upon clicking a link to another website. A user’s satisfaction may be greatly affected by loading times since a website that takes too long to display its entire content causes impatience for the user, disrupting their attention span.

LCP also considers how quickly the user can interact with the website upon loading. There are several tools available online in measuring LCP, such as Google Pagespeed Insight, and Google also produced guidelines regarding LCP.

For a website with “good” LCP, it only takes 2 seconds to load a new page, while a website taking 4 seconds is classified as “needs improvement,” and taking 6 seconds or more means the website has “bad” LCP. Basically, a website needs to load a new page in less than two seconds to satisfy the users.

2. FID

First Input Delay refers to the time it takes for a website to respond when a user clicks a link, a button, or types characters in a word box. Basically, this means that this is the time it takes for the website to interact with the user, and it is usually measured in milliseconds.

Google also provides a guideline for measuring FID. A “good” FID is usually measured at 100 milliseconds while “needs improvement” and “poor” measures at 300 milliseconds and 500 milliseconds, respectively.

FID should only measure in milliseconds because if the reaction time of a website per action takes a second or more, it will surely receive bad reviews from users.

For websites that contain articles and blogs, FID is not something to worry about too much since most of the FID occurs when scrolling through the webpage. But for websites that have a lot of menus, extra pages, fill-in dialog boxes, buttons, and other elements that require user input, FID will be an important factor in determining the user’s experience. After all, they will interact with these sites a lot more compared to the previous example.

There are some ways to reduce the delays between the user and website interaction and improve FID for a website. One method is by removing third-party scripts that are non-essential to your website. These additional scripts add to the website’s processing time and can be removed to improve FID.

Another way is to minimize your JavaScript and use browser cache. By reducing the JavaScript, it takes less time to load a new page and lets the user interact with the new page immediately upon loading. Adding a browsing cache also helps speed up this process.

3. CLS

Cumulative Layout Shift refers to the stability of the elements of your website as a new page load. If the elements in your website get rearranged or misplaced during loading times, then your website has “high” CLS. This causes inconvenience for users because objects may sometimes overlap each other and cause them to click other links and buttons. CLS must be minimal so that the website elements will remain in place while the page is loading the rest of its contents.

To minimize the CLS, you must set the size attribute dimension of the objects on the website, such as images, videos, and other media. This sets a certain amount of space allocation for each object, so the website will know how much space each object will take up every time the website loads.

Also, allocate enough space for advertisements to have enough space to be displayed properly. Otherwise, the website may miscalculate the space allocation and the advertisements may cover other objects and elements of the website.

Core Web Vitals will surely make a difference in a website’s ratings, and search engine rankings once implemented in the upcoming months. Even if your website has expert SEO, these factors will now be a standard for website developers and may even dictate how much your website can profit.

April 14,2021

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5 Best WordPress SEO Tips for Beginners

Today, online visibility is very important for a company that is just starting out. Having a website for your company is very useful in dealing with customers and promoting your services and products. It also shows that the company is capable of growth and is knowledgeable in expanding their business online, thus showing potential to be bigger in the future.

A company that has its own website is also ahead when it comes to managing assets and work. It enables the company to store and process data online and delegate their work remotely to their employees.

The Importance of a CMS

Having a Content Management System (CMS) is one of the most efficient ways of managing your company’s website. A CMS helps users build and create their own websites without the need for coding or in-depth knowledge in programming languages. It can be used as a tool for editing and creating content to be displayed on your websites.

A popular content management system these days is WordPress. It began as a blogging website when it was founded way back in 2003, but it has quickly evolved into a tool that helps users create their own websites.

Websites such as BBC America and Time.com are all managed and created using WordPress. WordPress also has a community that helps each other out with different website-creating problems in this open-source platform.

This shows that WordPress is indeed a powerful and useful tool that can create different types of websites aimed at different types of ventures.

The Importance of SEO

Another important factor in managing your websites is knowledge in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is basically the different practices and techniques done during the optimization process. These techniques match a search engines’ algorithm on keyword searches.

Matching these algorithms helps increase your website’s incoming traffic and views by ensuring that your website will be prioritized during keyword searches in search engines.

Websites that are shown first during keyword searches are most likely fully optimized websites using SEO techniques.

Even if WordPress allows you to create a great website for your company, there is still a need to optimize the website using SEO to make the most out of your website. The strength of a website lies in its online visibility and ability to manage incoming and outgoing traffic. To make your website a big hit on the internet, you can look for an SEO services company to help you get started on your website.

If you are a beginner in search engine optimization and website creation, here are some tips that will greatly increase your WordPress website using SEO.

1. Secure a Good Internet Provider

A good internet connection is one of the essentials in getting high network traffic for your website. Having a faster upload speed has a direct impact on the SEO performance of your website.

If your site does not immediately accept incoming traffic, it may affect your visibility in search engine results, and the incoming visitors will decrease over time. Always choose the provider that offers a higher upload speed, even if it will cost you a bit more money since it will pay off in the long run.

2. Use a WordPress SEO Plugin

An SEO plugin is also helpful when creating your website on WordPress and optimizing it. The plugin will not necessarily make your website more optimized, but it will help you make the process of optimizing your website a lot easier. It will be a helpful tool that will guide you when optimizing your website on WordPress.

These plugins are safe from viruses and do not consume too much memory, so it is okay to download them onto your website. There are many free plugins available, and it is easy to install them right through WordPress. You can also consult an SEO services company to know more about this.

3. Choose a WordPress Theme Suited For SEO

WordPress lets you choose a theme for your website from its default choices. You can choose any of them for your website but take note that some themes contain scripts that actually slow down the response of your website to incoming traffic.

Additional designs, images, and other digital content may add to your website’s image but always consider if your website can still handle the added effects along with processing incoming and outgoing data.

These scripts may take too much time to be processed and affect the upload speed of your website. There are ways to check if the theme you are using slows down your upload speeds, so be sure to look into this when selecting your theme.

4. Set Up a Custom URL for Your Website

A website’s URL may also affect the visibility of your website on search engine results. For websites made on WordPress, there is an option that allows you to edit the URL to your preference. Remember to make the URL as unique as possible and include the main keywords related to your website’s content so that it will match the algorithms of different search engines, thus increasing the chances of your website showing up first on search engine results.

5. Optimize Your Title Tags & Meta Descriptions and Make Them Unique

The title tags and the meta descriptions are also important SEO factors. These are the words usually seen first by users, and it gives them an idea about the content of your website. This means that you must optimize these statements so that they will help in matching the algorithm of the search engines.

It helps to add keywords in the title tags and the meta description and make them as engaging as possible. This will attract curious users and will take them directly to your websites and earn you more visitors.

Optimizing a website on your first try is not as difficult as it sounds. All you need is WordPress, some SEO techniques, and a creative approach to making your very own optimized website.

Just remember that SEO takes time. You will not see an immediate improvement. So long as you continue to build on your SEO strategy and keep up with it, you will see your efforts pay off over time.

March 31,2021

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How to Choose a Digital Marketing Company

There are plenty of digital marketing companies out there, but how do you go about choosing the best digital marketing company? Here are some of the most important factors to consider.

How Does Their Office Look?

Consider the overall atmosphere of the office. Do the employees seem happy, or do they seem cranky? This is important to consider because an unhappy employee is more likely to abandon your project, and you’d have to hope that they have a replacement who is just as skilled.

Are They Being Transparent With You?

Pay attention to how they answer your questions and if they ever give you suggestions about how to accomplish your goals. Are they just saying “yes, we can do that” to all of your questions, or are they presenting you with different options for success? A team that doesn’t just answer yes to everything will likely be able to help you discover better ways of reaching your goals.

How Long Have They Been Around?

This is an important question to consider for many reasons. One, the digital marketing industry is always changing. Many of the latest bleeding-edge strategies are still relatively new concepts, or the ideas have been built upon extensively in recent years.

During your search for the best digital marketing company, you may find that many companies haven’t been around for very long. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s still important to know how to differentiate the rubies from the duds. One way to do this is to look more closely at the people running the show – the company’s key personnel. How long have they worked in the industry, what do they specialize in within the digital marketing industry? Most importantly, do they have the background knowledge and skill needed to execute your project successfully?

Have They Worked With Clients in Your Industry?

Ask them if they’ve worked with clients who are in your industry. You should not necessarily expect the clients’ names from them, but you should be able to get some work samples. And if nothing else, they can share their stories of successful marketing campaigns with you. If they do have clients in your industry already, then that’s a good sign that they have knowledge about your line of work. Another good question to ask is if they’ve worked for any major companies. If so, that’s another good sign, as it shows that some of the big players trusted them enough to handle their marketing strategy.

You are free to ask any questions you like about their past work, but don’t feel put off if they can’t reveal certain details about past projects – they’re likely just protecting their clients or adhering to an NDA.

How is Their Work Quality?

Speaking of the company’s work, let’s talk about quality more specifically. Their low prices might initially attract you, but what’s behind those rosy prices? Are they indeed a knight in shining armor, or just another bandit out for a quick buck? The point here is that the quality of their work is the most important thing to consider. Look at their website, look them up on Google, and check out their social media pages. Looking at the company’s self-promotional marketing materials is a fine thing to do, but what’s more important is to see a portfolio of the work they’ve done for their clients.

How Do They Speak With You?

How they interact with you is important to consider since you’ll also be building a relationship with the digital marketing company you choose to go with. Are they using a lot of technical jargon to try and make themselves sound smarter than they really are? Or are they going with the common sense approach of explaining technical words so that a prospective client can understand them? A digital marketing company that takes their time with you to explain everything will be much nicer to work with.

Where Are They Located?

This is one of the biggest determining factors for how much their services will end up costing you, so it’s an important factor to consider. Prices can go higher or lower depending on location. For instance, an agency on the West or East coast will likely charge more than an agency in the Midwest.

In the end, it’s usually better to work with a local digital marketing company. With a local company, you’ll likely have meetings at least once a month (or at the very least once per quarter). Therefore, the location of the company can be essential to consider in terms of logistics for meetings. Although, it depends on how often you’ll be meeting. If you’d like to have frequent meetings, then take that into consideration so it will be more convenient.

If you’re considering a digital marketing company that isn’t local, then that’s fine too. After all, we now live in a much smaller world thanks to technology connecting us all together. Video calls will be very useful for holding your meetings, and it’s the second-best way of getting to know the people you’ll be working with.

Set up a Timeline of Goals and Milestones

The purpose of doing this is mainly so that everyone’s on the same page and stays focused on the same goals. Furthermore, along the way, they will surely need specific informational assets from you, so the timeline will remind you to provide them with these so that they can meet your deadlines. Also, you can request progress reports that include relevant data showing the current progress of the project.

Conclusion

That just about wraps up all the key points you need to know when searching for the best digital marketing company. In the end, this advice is more relevant if you understand what you require for your digital marketing strategy. You should at least have a budget in mind. Any company worth working with will explain to you what they will be able to do with your budget and whether they can make it work or not.

If you’re comparing digital marketing companies and are curious about how we do things here at Salt Rank, you can contact us on our website anytime or by phone at 816-533-4417. We look forward to hearing from you!