Ranking

Inbound Links: A Primer

While SEO best practices change regularly, inbound links are still one of the most significant ranking factors. Whether you call them hyperlinks, backlinks, or plain old inbound links, they all refer to a link from someone else’s online property to your own. These links may not be fancy, but they are integral to SEO, and if that isn’t important to you, it should be. If you’re not quite where you need to be regarding inbound links, however, never fear – this primer and a digital marketing specialist can help you get there.

You Deserve More from Your Google My Business Listing

Google My Business is an effective tool that allows many, many companies to garner views from the vast throngs of online viewers. GMB, however, is only as powerful as you allow it to be. When you invest the time and effort it takes to optimize your GMB profile, you exponentially increase your chances of unleashing the power of GMB at full throttle. Because the devil’s in the details, invest some time and forethought in the creation of your profile and watch your world expand from there. Yes, GMB is powerful, but without your well-crafted input, it remains unplugged.

What’s New In SEO For 2020

Believe it or not, we’re nearly halfway through 2020, and it’s been a bumpy ride, to say the least. In light of the recent crises, SEO has become more important than ever, as social distancing has made SERP rankings more important than a physical location for many businesses.

Customer Feedback That Gives Back

When it comes to your online business, stellar customer reviews are the gold standard. If you don’t have firsthand knowledge of a company’s wares and services and you don’t personally know anyone who’s already taken the plunge, there’s no better way to assess what a company has to offer than to read up on what their customers have to say. Because it’s gotten to the point that many of us go online for everything from toothpaste to legal services, savvy shoppers are in the habit of regularly perusing customer reviews when they’re in the market for just about everything.

Mobile-First Indexing Will Be Up and Running for All Sites Within A Year

Google has spoken, and the message is loud and clear – the online goliath is gearing up to apply mobile-first indexing to all websites within the next 6 to 12 months. Mobile-first hit the scene back in November of 2016, and by the end of 2018, half of all Google’s search results were generated by this mobile-first approach. Google is obviously moving forward with dispatch, and this could have important implications for your business’s website. Mobile-First Indexing? Mobile-first indexing isn’t as complicated as it may sound – it’s simply a Google-y way of saying that it will be indexing and ranking your site from the perspective of a mobile browser. This means that your website needs to be mobile-ready if you want to compete (and you do want to compete). Google Gives Notice In order to keep this effort moving forward as smoothly as possible, Google is issuing notices that … Continued

Fight Back Against Rank Creep

If your site is experiencing a slow decline in traffic, you may be quick to blame your content and links, but Google’s John Mueller says the reasons are probably far more nuanced. Better understanding the backstory can help you break out of this downward trend and keep your site moving forward. In the Webmaster Hangout, Mueller answers specific questions about traffic declines, and his answers are illuminating.

Should I Be Targeting My Competitors’ Keywords?

When it comes to SEO, strategizing is key, and this includes keywords. While it’s likely that you aren’t looking to rank on all of your competitors’ keywords, there’s likely some overlap. It can be difficult to decipher which competitors you should be watching and which of their keywords you should be targeting. Fortunately, the digital marketing team at The Web Guys has answers. Use Basic Tools Many businesses utilize online tools that help them get a feel for their competitors’ ranking keywords. These can include SEMrush, KeywordSpy, Ahrefs, Spyfu, and the like. While this is a great place to start, there’s more to it than simply identifying the keywords that are working for your competitors. Knowing what to do with this information is the next step. Where Do I Go from Here? You’ve cracked the code and have your competitors keywords in front of you, but now what? Which of … Continued

Google Patent Application Provides Insights to New Ranking Signals

Google, as you know, is always coming up with something clever, and our digital marketing specialists at The Web Guys want to help you keep up. Google recently published a patent application entitled Website Representation Vector to Generate Search Results and Classify Website, and it’s complicated. Fortunately, we’re here to break it down and discuss how it may affect your rankings.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Customer Reviews

You know that customer reviews matter in some capacity, but how much do they matter and why? For content marketers, search performance is king, but do customer reviews really have much influence? The fact is that yes, they certainly do. Google itself confirms that positive, credible customer reviews lead to both enhanced visibility and higher conversion rates. To better understand what customer reviews mean to your business, it’s important to distinguish between the objective and subjective responses your potential customers encounter during their search queries. Objective Responses When a potential customer goes online to inquire about a business, they encounter objective information that you generally control. You are the master of your own marketing content, and no one is better qualified for the position. Objective information generally includes information about: The products and/or services that you offer Your company’s history Your team Contact information While this represents the nuts and … Continued

Google Search and the BERT Algorithm

Google’s primary focus is to understand better what it is that searchers are actually searching for, and in the process, it’s rolled out the BERT algorithm. When Google describes BERT as “one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of Search,” they say they are making a significant claim. The underlying goal is to bolster Search’s ability to organically discern which information a user is seeking and to parlay that into results that make sense from the user’s perspective Google shares that, with the implementation of BERT, about 1 in 10 Google Searches will reap greater user rewards based on its capabilities, which can help you enhance your brand right out of the gate. While this currently applies only to those searches made in English in the United States, more countries and languages will be included over time. BERT: What’s It All About? BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations … Continued