Search Engine Optimization Archives

April 13,2022

10 Must-Read SEO Tips Perfect for Beginners

SEO is a marketer’s best friend. With over 30% of the world’s population on the internet today, it can sometimes be difficult to get your blog posts on Google or any other search engine. This is where SEO comes in. If you want to get your blog posts seen by millions of people, it’s a crucial component to use SEO wisely.

However, SEO is not an easy thing to master; there are several algorithms that search engines like Google use to determine which results appear at the top of their search engine. Below are some basic tips courtesy of our Kansas City SEO services.

1.) Write Quality Content

This is one of the most important aspects of SEO. To have your posts seen by millions, you have to write quality content. Simply placing the right keywords in random places will not get you very far. Instead, write content that is both informative and interesting. Write blog posts that do not only serve a purpose but are also entertaining and fun to read. If you make your readers feel like they wasted their time reading your post, they will most likely not return to your blog again.

2.) Use Keywords in Your Titles, Tags, and Urls

As you are probably aware by now, Google and other search engines look at certain keywords when they determine which posts appear on their search engine. Using these words as part of your title will help to get your post seen. However, if you want Google to show more of your posts with the same word, separate each word by a plus (+). For example, if you were writing a title about SEO techniques using the word “expert,” it would look like this: SEO for Experts (+SEO for Beginners).

3.) Check Your Grammar and Spelling

It is no surprise that Google and other search engines are looking at the content of your post before deciding whether or not it should appear on their search engine. Therefore, you want to make sure that your post is well written and easy to read. If you find that your post is missing a keyword or two, leave it out. After all, you don’t want to give Google the impression that your post is filled with misspellings.

4.) Use Keywords as Often as Possible

As I mentioned earlier, it is easy for Google and other search engines to determine what keywords are in your post by looking at the content. However, it is sometimes impossible to make posts containing certain words without using them at least once within the body of the article.

Therefore, you should use these words whenever possible so that Google can determine whether or not they are in your post. For example, you could write a post with the words SEO tips without using the word “tips” because it isn’t in the body of your article; however, you would have to use it at least once somewhere within the body of the article.

5.) Use Short and Descriptive URLs

To get your posts seen, you are going to have to include the URL in your blog post. However, it is often forgotten just how important it is for your URL to be short and descriptive. Instead of using a long URL that does not describe what your article is about, use a short and descriptive one. For example, “tips-for-beginners” describes exactly what the article is about; therefore, it is easy to remember and share with others.

6.) Make Your Blog Look Attractive

A well-designed blog is an attractive one. You must make your blog look as professional as possible. After all, if visitors are not attracted to the blog, they are likely not going to spend time on it or come back for more. Therefore, use simple and elegant images or designs for your blog posts. You can also use a font that is clear and easy to read, such as Arial or Calibri, for a more professional appearance in the content of your articles.

7.) Generate Backlinks

Backlinks are essential to SEO and can often raise the search engine ranking of your blog posts. However, they are difficult to obtain if you do not want to wait months or even years until you see a change in your rankings. To generate backlinks, make sure that every post you publish on your blog contains a backlink somewhere within it.

8.) Write Natural Language

Finally, you must write in natural language when writing posts on your blog. Instead of using vocabulary that is too complicated, it is better to use words that are simple and easy to understand. If you want your posts to be seen by as many people as possible, write in an approachable way so that they can immediately understand what your post is about.

9.) Use Both Internal and External Links

Internal

You should use internal linking whenever possible. For example, instead of having a blog post on your website that contains the word “tips,” you can include a link to your article in another one that already has the word “tips” mentioned. However, make sure that the links are not only easy to read but also easy to see at a glance so that visitors understand what they are supposed to do with this information.

External

Use external links whenever possible. If you want to get your blog posts seen on a search engine, it is not enough to use internal links. You need to make sure that your backlinks are both easy to read and visible. Therefore, it is better to use an external link instead of a generic one that does not describe what the article is about.

10.) Optimize Your Graphics

The graphics that you include on your website are also important when it comes to SEO. For example, if you want more people to see your posts on a search engine, use keywords in your image file names and write clear, descriptive URLs for them.

Remember that SEO is a way to gain more views and visitors to your blog. However, if you don’t have quality content available for these people, they will not return to your blog again. Therefore, make sure that you provide valuable and interesting content for your readers. Also, try to be original and don’t simply reuse someone else’s blog post.

Conclusion

SEO is not easy for everyone; however, with these SEO tips, you can be successful and make money from blogging. If you are in the midwest and you need a website, contact Kansas City SEO services here at Salt Rank. We have been creating websites and doing Search Engine Optimization for many years, helping businesses grow and thrive. Our Kansas City SEO services also work within your budget to get you on the first page of Google not just locally, but all over the U.S.!

March 17,2022

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6 Writing Tips You Should Know When Creating a Business Blog

Creating an introduction for a blog post isn’t easy. There are tons of blogs out there, 600 million+ to be precise, and many of them are competing for the same audience that you have. So how can you set yourself apart?

SEO expert services can come in handy here, but if you’re on your own, this list will help you get off to a good start with content creation.

You must be able to create an engaging, well-written, compelling, and reader-oriented introduction. If you do it right, it will lift up your entire post and, as a result, generate more traffic.

It’s simpler than you realize. It only takes a few things:

- - Get their attention
  - Highlight their main pain points
  - Let the reader know exactly what they should expect from your post

However, there is one caveat – you must understand your target audience in order to write a decent blog post intro. So, you’ll want to do your research first!

1.) The Opening Sentence

An opening sentence, while a small part of the overall blog post, has a lot going on with it. It should be interesting, concise, and provide a snapshot of the overall appeal and tone of the rest of the blog post. People, on average, only spend around 37 seconds skimming an entire post these days. So, getting their attention at the beginning of the post is essential.

If you can get this right, you won’t have any issue getting your readers hooked enough to stick with it until the end.

Here are some ways you can make your first sentence more interesting:

- - Begin with a quote
  - Start with a statistic
  - Use metaphors or comparisons
  - Begin with a question
  - Lay down the groundwork for future pacing
  - Make a controversial or bold statement
  - Begin with a story
  - Mention a problem (this is called the PAS method: problem, agitate, solution)

2.) Use Statistics

The reason that people are reading your blog is to learn new things or find solutions to their problems.

So, begin by introducing your post with an illustration showing them that you know their pain and can help them find a remedy. The easiest way to do that is to state the problem and then validate their concerns with numbers and statistics. That’s because statistics are considered an objective way of providing proof to support your statements.

When you establish some common ground early on, it will be much easier for people to put their trust in you and remain engaged while reading your blog post.

3.) Make Them Feel Emotions

If you are able to make readers feel emotions from the get-go, then your readers will more likely remember it.

But what kind of emotions should you be striving to evoke? The most effective for digital marketing purposes is FOMO (fear of missing out), frustration, empathy, and excitement.

To do it properly, you’ll need to know your audience’s most common concerns. But what if you don’t know what those are? A good way to find out is to create a survey form for your website. The answers will be helpful not only for your blog post intros but also for your overall marketing strategy.

4.) Make a Promise

First impressions are critical in blog posts. After all, you only have a precious few seconds to capture their attention while the post is loading. If they don’t see the value in your post right away, they’ll exit.

You want them to see that if they stick with reading your post, it will be worth their time. Make them believe it’s worth it by promising them something that they want. It can be as simple as showing a list of everything that you will cover in the post, the potential results they can achieve, and what they can learn from it all.

5.) Consider Using the 5 Ws

The 5 Ws of marketing are timeless and will never go out of fashion. They are: who, what, when, where, and why. These can be incorporated into the intro of your blog post if you just think about the topic in question. For instance, let’s say that you’re writing a blog post about building computers.

Your 5 Ws might look like:

1. 1. Who is this post for?
  2. What are the main obstacles or challenges that people face when building a computer for the first time?
  3. When is it a good time to build your own computer?
  4. Where can people find the parts they need to build a computer at an affordable price?
  5. Why would someone want to build their own computer (advantages vs. store-bought PCs)?

When you can answer the above questions in an interesting way, then the tone will be set for the remainder of your blog post, and readers will be engaged from the very beginning.

Remember to keep the Ws short, though, if you’re going to use them in your introduction. Each “W” should be no more than 2-3 sentences in length. Otherwise, your intro will likely be too long.

Keeping content short and concise is harder than it sounds. Many people cannot write in this manner, which makes SEO expert services invaluable.

6.) Start Off With a Question

Starting with a question right off the bat is an excellent way to get the reader engaged. However, the question should be creative, well-formed, and crafted in a way that captures the reader’s interest. It should also lead to more questions.

Additionally, a question is a great way to humanize your brand. From the reader’s perspective, it will be as if you’re inviting them on a journey of discovery for the answers that they’re looking for. It’s an easy way to establish a friendly tone for your post right away too.

Basically, it will encourage readers to continue reading to get the answers they seek.

Some ways that questions can be formed are:

- - Simple yes/no questions (have you ever experienced X?)
  - Open-ended question (for instance, asking the reader about their current situation)
  - Rhetorical questions

Also, if the question is relevant to the topic at hand, you should answer it in the body of your blog post as well as summarize it in your conclusion.

Conclusion

Your blog post intro plays a vital role in persuading your readers to hang around until the end, so be sure that you perfect it as much as possible.

This blog post covered 6 ways to create a good blog post introduction, but there are other strategies as well that we might cover in a future part 2. Also, it is not necessary to use every single strategy in this list. Feel free to stick with one type or mix and match as desired.

Just remember to keep your intros short and sweet, provoking the reader’s curiosity, and inform them on what they’ll learn and how they’ll benefit from reading the blog post.

If you’re in need of SEO expert services, connect with Salt Rank today!

December 22,2021

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5 Key Reasons Why You Should Invest in Utilizing SEO for Your Business

Your company may be thinking a lot lately about whether SEO is worth the investment. The great news for everyone is that we have all the information you need. So what’s the use of putting money into search engine optimization? Can SEO help your business flourish? To answer that query, we first need to understand what SEO is.

How Is SEO Determined and Is It a Good Investment?

Your site’s ranking in search engine results, like Google and Bing, may improve via search engine optimization (SEO). With various approaches and strategies, you may enhance your website’s search engine optimization to rank on the search engine results page, thus drawing a larger audience.

Search engines utilize a variety of elements to select which pages and websites appear at the top of a user’s search results. According to the best SEO company in Kansas City, there are 200 ranking indicators used by Google. From these, there are several strategies to improve your website’s search engine rankings.

Your online content should be optimized to appear at the beginning of the search results. To help someone in need discover you quickly and easily, consider it as placing a small yellow-bookmark-sized bookmark in the Yellow Pages. However, SEO covers more than just showing up in search results. For any business, a well-executed SEO plan is a complex approach that may help you promote, sell, and develop your brand.

SEO is a worthwhile investment for many reasons:

1.) SEO Increases Website Traffic

The greatest referrers you’ll ever employ are search engines. Google is the most used and sought-after search engine globally, accounting for more than 90% of the market share. The best way to find an artisan is to search for them on Google. You turn to Google when you’re in the market for a new television. You go to Google if you need to find a department store.

For the majority of our day-to-day issues, we rely on Google for aid. Google might not know that your company exists if you don’t engage in SEO. This means that prospective clients cannot discover you. As the second most used search engine, YouTube opens a plethora of optimization opportunities. If you merely submit a video and leave it at that, you won’t go very far in the search engines. On the other hand, you may attract more visitors by using video content alongside solid SEO foundations and a well-thought-out distribution plan.

By using proper SEO techniques, Google will introduce potential customers to your website without costly advertising.

2.) SEO Delivers the Best Quality Traffic

As a result of its complicated algorithms, Google serves as a matchmaker. Its goal is to connect buyers and sellers. A solid SEO plan is a big part of this process.

Optimizing for search engines isn’t a matter of manipulating them to show your site. Instead, your content should constantly be optimized to reach your target audience – individuals searching for companies like yours. Then, your probability of selling your product to those already interested is much higher.

There has also been a considerable increase in mobile browser searches, as 78% of individuals possess smartphones. To help small businesses thrive, Google has made it a lot simpler for people to locate businesses in their region. They will be competitive with bigger companies if they are doing SEO correctly.

A good Google My Business profile, local reviews, and high-quality backlinks are essential to be identified on a local level (town, city, or region). On the other hand, search engines make it easier to identify local companies.

3.) SEO Enhances User Experience

Making your content readable by both search engines and human readers (i.e., prospective customers) is a delicate balancing act in SEO. You can’t market your company if you’re constantly sprinkling keywords everywhere. “Content is king,” like Bill Gates famously said in 1996, and strong SEO is all about creating high-quality, relevant material. As a result, your website should feature optimized content that reads well as well as provides the inspiration, education, and knowledge they need to take them through the purchase process.

Finally, this material must be displayed in a well-designed site that looks fantastic, simple to browse, fast to load, and works on mobile devices while also easy for search engines to list and crawl. Improve your search engine results by including high-quality blog entries and optimized videos for search engines.

A consumer who has had a pleasant experience on your website is far more inclined to purchase from you in the long run.

4.) SEO Boosts Your Digital Marketing ROI (ROI)

An effective digital marketing plan is all about getting the highest return on your investment (ROI). The best part is that SEO (search engine optimization) may help. SEO and other digital marketing methods, such as content marketing and online advertising, go hand-in-hand. Using SEO techniques may guarantee that your marketing initiatives, such as freshly developed content, are found online by potential customers.

Search engine optimization is a cost-efficient way to advertise your business. In addition, many businesses have found that it provides the best ROI.

Most polled companies indicated that the best ROI came from organic search, while fewer than 20 percent said that sponsored search had the biggest impact. When used with other digital marketing methods, SEO may help enhance their effectiveness and bring in more customers through the internet. Profits will rise as a consequence, and you’ll be able to boost your return on digital marketing investment.

5.) SEO Helps with Content Marketing

Original content and SEO go hand in hand; your site will rank higher in search results by producing useful material for users, such as text, photographs, and videos. However, SEO may help your content marketing efforts as well. Make sure your material is of excellent quality and optimized for the keywords you want to rank for, and since search engines enjoy the freshness, keep your content updated frequently.

Finally, you should understand that SEO is a long-term investment. But, with the right advice from Salt Rank, the finest SEO company in Kansas City, you can create the foundation for long-term success in digital marketing and business growth.

November 19,2021

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9 Ways to Create Mobile-Friendly Content for Your Website

Reading on a mobile device differs from reading on a desktop computer. A desktop reader, for example, is supposed to be drawn to material displayed on a site’s top-left portion (the golden triangle or the F-shaped reading pattern).

However, while using a mobile device, the same reader may not necessarily focus on the left-side material. They will glance to the left, although their focus will be slightly scattered. So, in essence, there is no “most critical” region to improve first. All of the material has to be optimized.

Let’s look at a few techniques for making your material easier to read, grasp, and recall for mobile users.

Image and Video Optimization

As seen in the chunked content samples, images are an excellent method to make your information more ‘readable’ on mobile devices. Screenshots, images, memes, and other visual elements offer a graphic punch to your information, keeping people interested. But there’s a catch: your photographs must be mobile-optimized. Otherwise, they may occupy too much space or become unreadable.

Design Optimization – Don’t Use Sidebars

Responsive design should be implemented on all platforms. For example, it implies that if screen sizes change, your content will adjust to fit them.

Sidebars may be a terrific method to improve the user experience and expedite the buyer’s journey on the desktop. They are, however, only a distraction on mobile devices. As a result, it is frequently relegated to the bottom of the page and is rarely utilized.

Use Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMPs

Using Accelerated Mobile Pages may help you get ahead of the mobile marketing curve, even though they haven’t been extensively tested or generally accepted (yet). Google and its partner businesses created these HTML pages in a specified manner. For specific searches, these pages are prioritized in mobile search results.

Avoid Pop-ups

Pop-ups should be avoided at all costs. Google declared a year ago that mobile websites with intrusive ads would be ranked lower than those with easily accessible content. Your CTAs should not take up the entire screen. Make it as simple as possible for your viewers to get your stuff.

Image Optimization

Load times influence whether or not someone interacts with your material or goes back to the search results. So, your material must reach them as soon as possible. At the same time, visual attraction is a significant element in remaining vs. bouncing. Thus, you must have both a responsive and visually appealing website. To do so, ensure that your photos load quickly and look great:

- Create photos in a format that has been pre-optimized. To produce pictures that are the proper size and resolution for social media and email, use a service like Canva.

- Make use of smart compression. For example, you can compress.jpg files somewhat without sacrificing their look. However, excessive compression results in ugliness.

Text Content Optimization

People still read text messages on their phones. It’s not all films and graphics and virtual-reality rides. They are, however, reading for shorter lengths of time and with a considerable risk of distraction. As a result, a wall of text will be much less effective than on a laptop screen.

Here’s how to keep a reader’s attention while guiding them through your written content:

- Serve the information in bite-sized portions. Consider short lines and paragraphs separated by graphic assets, video, embedded Vine, Instagram, or Snapchat material, or at the very least white space.

- For navigation, use headers. Make sure people can scan the content and understand what you’re talking about.

Make Brief Yet Detailed Headlines

We are all aware that our attention spans are becoming increasingly short. According to a 2015 Microsoft research, we now have an attention span of only eight seconds (down from twelve seconds in 2000). This is reinforced on mobile since your viewers are more likely to be overwhelmed than seated at their PC.

With your title, you must attract the attention of your mobile audience. Keeping it brief will take up less screen real estate and allow readers to study your introductory paragraph more thoroughly. A high click-through rate and a better score might be because 6-word headlines are not shortened even on a smartphone, regardless of screen size. Furthermore, we read each of the six words since it is how we scan texts.

Most people scan headlines and read only the first and last three words. Sticking to 6 words guarantees that most of your headlines will be read by individuals who are only scanning.

Short, crisp paragraphs are best

Short paragraphs are easy to follow since they focus on a single issue, making them particularly appealing to mobile users. Make it a point to write brief paragraphs regularly. You’ll automatically avoid creating massive walls of text that might irritate someone reading on their phone. Short, however, does not mean its dull. You don’t have to sacrifice your writing’s style or rhythm to make it mobile-friendly. In their attempt to produce a brief copy, many authors wind up creating a dull copy.

Break your content into chunks

Reading big walls of text on a mobile device may be a misery due to the limited screen size. The organization of your material is the first thing you should concentrate on to make reading easier for a mobile user. The better your post structure is, the easier it will be to read. Chunking is an excellent way to enhance the form of your article and make it more mobile-friendly.

Chunking content is an excellent method to make it more snackable. Simply described, chunking is the process of grouping together similar material in discrete chunks according to the best SEO company in Kansas City.

It doesn’t have to be challenging to create content for mobile readers. Begin by anticipating their needs and offering the necessary information.

As mobile traffic grows, our obligation as marketers is to stay up with the developments to give an outstanding customer experience regardless of the device they are using. You want your audience to have a great experience reading or watching your material, no matter where they come across it. For highly optimized content, contact Salt Rank, the best SEO company in Kansas City.

Provide them with responsive video content that makes sense even when their headphones are turned off. Make sure that your photos look fantastic, show correctly, and load swiftly. Additionally, ensure that your language is snackable, accessible, and skimmable.

October 28,2021

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6 Elements You Need for an SEO Optimized Blog Post

Search engine optimization, often referred to as SEO, is an important aspect of marketing. If you want your website to rank high, land on the first page of search engines, and be more visible to your target audience, you have to apply the technicalities of SEO. Keep in mind that compelling content is not enough. With more and more competitors taking the internet by storm, you have to optimize your content through SEO.

To help you jumpstart your website improvement, here are some elements you need to employ in your marketing strategy.

1. Optimize Your Blog Titles

One of the key things that help your searchability is your blog titles. The main tip that you have to keep in mind is to include your primary keyword. It should explicitly be typed as is (if it does not have a dash, don’t put a dash) without exceeding the recommended character count of 160.

Remember, this is the first thing that your readers see. This will make or break whether your visitors will push through with reading the entire article or not. Therefore, it is vital to give them the whole picture of what your blog post is all about. In most writers’ experiences, those titles with numbers on them perform better than those without. If this is not applicable, just make sure it’s concise and attention-grabbing.

2. Apply Keywords

One of the most important aspects of content is keyword research. By performing this task, you get to understand your target audience. You will learn what they want to know and how they search for it in the search engines. This is one of the first steps that you have to consider because your whole content strategy will be based on this.

Some people might feel lost when doing this. For an easier process, you may begin with determining what your overall topic will be. For example, are you going to cover the basics of digital marketing, are you discussing gardening, or are you going to talk about bitcoin? From here, you may use your keyword search tool by using your general topic as the baseline.

If you don’t have enough funds to pay for a keyword search tool, there are also other ways to go about this. One technique is to go to the Google search bar and check the topics on the suggested dropdown. These are also the usual searches on the internet. Another strategy that you can use is to consider the ‘People also ask’ section on the first page of Google upon entering the topic.

Once you’ve determined your keywords, ensure that it’s properly placed on your blog. Add it to your title, primary headers, meta description, first and concluding paragraph, and anywhere in the body. This will give you a higher chance of being found by your audience.

3. Use Headings in Your Content

There will always be Google web crawlers on the internet. However, these crawlers are known for skimming blog content and not really exploring its details. Therefore, it is essential to give them an overview of your topic by using headings.

Your H1s should be your main thoughts. Then, make sure to add some subheadings, whether it’s the H2s, H3s, or H4s, to serve as supporting details to your primary topic. Finally, as mentioned above, don’t forget to integrate your keywords once or twice in your headings for them to be more searchable.

4. Tailor Your Post’s Permalinks

In most cases, the permalink only reflects your article’s title. This is automatically created by WordPress.com every time your website publishes a post. It’s acceptable if your working title is short. However, if you have a lengthy title, your permalink will look too cluttered and unprofessional because of the unwieldy URL.

With the help of Block Editor, you have the option to modify your content’s permalink. All you have to do is open the settings of the post of your choice and search for the Permalink part. Then, change them to something shorter and easier to remember to make them look trustworthy and professional.

5. Rank Higher With Good Meta Descriptions

Another area that you can maximize to make your website SEO-friendly is your meta descriptions. These are at most three-sentence descriptions, which sums up what the article is all about. You can find it underneath the title on the search engine result page.

Listed below are some tips on how to go about your meta descriptions:

- - - - The write-up should be a maximum of 160 characters.
      - Integrate one to two keywords.
      - Use call to action words like ‘read’, ‘check out’, ‘find out’, and more.
      - Make it stand out and be different from the generic meta descriptions of your competitors.

6. Employ Categories and Tags

The internet is not as cluttered as it seems. In fact, WordPress.com has a very organized and robust taxonomy system that groups together similar content. By applying categories and tags when posting your content, your readers will be able to find you more easily should they read a topic similar to yours. This is very critical if you want to stand out from the growing tide of content online.

As a rule of thumb, a category refers to the generic topic your blog falls under. Some examples of these are Finance, Home Improvement, Technology, and more. Then, you may support this by employing tags that will describe the post in more detail. Finally, you may opt to use your keywords as a starter then add some terms that are connected to it. Examples of these are ‘bitcoin’, ‘washing machine’, ‘gluten-free meals’, ‘search engine optimization’, and more.

Applying SEO in your articles may be intimidating at first. There are many technical factors that you have to consider so you can climb the ladder of rankings. However, the more you practice applying these things in your content, the easier it will be in the long run.

If you’re lost on where to start, you may also seek the assistance of SEO services. They will help you establish the basics of your content strategy. With their guidance, rest assured that you’ll get the hang of it eventually and hopefully reap all of the benefits of SEO.

October 22,2021

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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.