5 SEO TIPS TO MAKE YOUR BLOG A MASSIVE SUCCESS

Blogging is a key component of any digital marketing strategy. A blog can be an extremely powerful way to promote your business’s website, or it can be a business venture all on its own.

Blogging is a powerful way to deliver quality content and establish yourself, your company, or both as a thought leader in your field. Blogs have helped countless online personalities and businesses to garner much success and notoriety.

Here are just a few things you can focus on to give your blog an edge with SEO.

Get Your Own Quality Hosting

Step one in creating your massively popular blog is getting your very own domain name and hosting. If you do a quick search for blog hosting, you’ll come across countless links that promote free hosting. Ignore these.

Free hosting is great for someone looking for an outlet to write about a hobby or post pictures of family outings. However, if you’re serious about using your blog as a marketing tool or even as a business venture of its own, avoid these free hosts.

Imagine you’re reading a blog that is full of decent content but is covered in ads and logos from the free site it’s hosted on. It’s likely you won’t perceive this blog or its writer as an expert in the field it’s discussing.

You’re not alone. Most searchers view these blogs hosted on free domains as lower in quality and authority. Surely, someone that is an expert on a given topic would have his or her own domain. If searchers don’t take your blog on a free domain seriously, you can trust Google will avoid directing traffic your way.

Purchase a branded domain name and secure hosting. You’ll legitimize your blog as a trustworthy source on your topic.

Always Focus on Valuable Content

If you’ve done any amount of reading on SEO, you know that content plays a vital role in gaining site authority. Keep in mind that Google’s main mission on the web is to direct its millions of users toward the most valuable and relevant content.

Your blog’s content should aim to answer questions on your topic and deliver insight relevant to the problems of your target audience. Although blog content is typically a written post, you can also leverage various content types, like:

• Original Videos or Vlogs
• Audio Recordings and Podcasts
• Pictures

As always, original content is key here. Get into the mind of your ideal reader. What questions does he or she have? Use this thought process to develop valuable, original content that the search engines can point users toward.

Produce Regularly

One of the best ways to build a solid blog following is producing quality content consistently and regularly. Posting regularly lets your readers know when they can expect additional content and tells Google that your site is active. Google crawls a site with much less frequency when it believes it to be inactive.

In addition to conditioning your readers to look for your content and letting Google know your site is active, producing regularly is also a fast way to build a library of valuable content. The more quality posts you produce on your blog, the higher your authority in your field will rise.

Use Internal Linking

As you begin to produce high-quality content more often and build up a solid collection of content, you can give context to new posts by linking to previous blog articles. Not only does this add content to your newer posts, it also directs readers to older posts they may have missed but would be interested in reading. These internal links also help build up your authority and boost the SEO of your previous articles.

Utilize SEO Plugins

There are multiple SEO plugins you can leverage to create more optimized blogs posts. These plugins perform an analysis and aid with selecting keywords that you can base your posts on. Most of these plugins will also help ensure that you put keywords in optimal places, write optimized meta descriptions, and proper keyword density and focus.

Optimize Your Headings

Including optimized headings on your blog posts help readers easily navigate your content and gives you an SEO boost. These headings make it easier for search engine bots to understand the major points and topics of your post. This is especially true for longer blog posts.

Blogs can be powerful tools for SEO and digital marketing. Whether you’re blogging to improve the authority of your business’s website or you hope to make the blog itself your new business venture, if you keep these above tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to a successful blog.

Need help with your blog? We have several blog posting packages available that include everything from writing to posting.

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THE BEST WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION AND LEAD GENERATION TECHNIQUES FOR RENOVATION COMPANIES

The renovation business is highly competitive. One way you can get an edge over the competition is through a strong online presence that can effectively capture leads so you can grow your business. To create a web presence, you must first build a strong website and fully utilize your social media accounts so you can attract the audience that can potentially become your leads.

If you don’t have a website, now is the time to get one and integrate clean code, image optimization, keyword optimized title tags, page titles that contain keywords, and meta descriptions that have the relevant search terms. You want a clean design that can be easily followed by visitors. You also want a compelling blog that is updated regularly so you can keep your content fresh and utilize more relevant keywords. Blog posts also give you more shareable content, which is important for engaging and growing your audience.

Key Components of Renovation Website Optimization

Properly optimizing your website also involves experimentation. You will optimize, check the analytics, and make the appropriate changes so the website performs. You will keep measuring results until the changes you make start to make the numbers settle where you want them to be. For instance, your bounce rate may be too high. This indicates that you need to make your homepage more engaging. Perhaps it is too cluttered with videos, pictures, and even text. Too much text on a homepage can cause a person to run away in a heartbeat. Get to the point quickly without sacrificing the SEO, and your chances of having a winning homepage increase.

With a tool like Google Analytics, you can look at individual pages that visitors aren’t clicking through. You can change those pages to alter the results and see what works the best. Compare poorly performing pages with those that perform well, and note the differences so you can integrate the positive differences into the poorly performing pages.

Many times, the changes have to do with the keywords that are being used, content that is too long, or content that isn’t answering the questions that people have when they arrive at the website.

Make sure you have social share buttons on your pages and blog posts so visitors can easily share. This is especially useful for people visiting via their mobile devices because it’s not easy for a mobile user to copy a URL and then go to the desired social media site and paste the link in a status update. That’s a lot of work. A social media share button makes sharing a lot easier, which is going to help you get the leads that you want.

Capturing Leads

Once the site is optimized, particularly in the content department, a person may be more likely to provide their contact information. You can gather leads for your renovation company by putting up a subscribe form so you can capture their email addresses. With that email address, you can send out a newsletter, email updates, tips, and more. The more valuable the content, the more you will be trusted. That trust starts with whatever is on the page that makes them want to give you their information. What you are doing is generating an organic interest in what you are offering. If someone is thinking about renovating their kitchen but they aren’t sure that’s what they want to do, you want to put content on your site that can convince them to inquire with you or join your email list.

There is a formula that can help you, and it goes like this:

1. Attract the audience through your keyword optimized content, engaging blog posts, and social media posts.
2. Convert the audience to prospects with engaging landing pages that contain forms and calls to action that encourage the visitors to take the desired step.
3. Close the lead transaction with an email thanking them for joining your list or contacting you.
4. Delight the prospect with great content, surveys, and other engaging elements that build trust.

From there, you can offer coupons and other items that will make your leads want to do business with you. Offers are wonderful tools for getting that person who is thinking about a renovation to take that step. Perhaps money is the issue. If you have a payment plan or financing that they can apply for, letting them know may give them exactly what they’re looking for to finally go through with the renovation of their dreams.

Do It Right and Win

If you correctly optimize your website and create engaging content that will turn visitors into leads, you can have that edge over the competition that you’ve been seeking. As you build your list of leads, you will notice that your customer list will grow as well.

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HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO BOOST SEO FOR YOUR RESTAURANT’S WEBSITE

When on the hunt for a place to sit down for dinner, the majority of restaurant goers will take their initial search online. If you’re a restaurant owner or manager, you’ll definitely want to be seen by these potential customers when they search on the web. To do so, you’ll need to optimize your restaurant’s website to get to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).

Social media is one of the most effective tools you have at your disposal for getting your restaurant found online. While there’s been some debate about how the search engines utilize social media metrics, their web crawlers treat social media sites just like any other. It’s no secret that Google and Bing definitely take notice of your social media presence.

Any solid digital strategy will incorporate social media to obtain its goals. You can leverage the engagement factor of social media to connect with current and potential customers all while boosting your web presence. You’ll notice more visitors coming through your door as you engage your customer base and your site moves up the SERP food chain.

Organically Grow Your Followers

You should focus on establishing a decent following on social media. The size of your follower base on various social media platforms can drastically affect your search rankings. Larger followings help boost your credibility and give you a leg up in search rankings.

Quality followers are important here. Google analyzes your follower list and determines the caliber of your base. This means that purchased followers won’t help you out in the overall rankings. Put your energy into building your followers organically. This means presenting your brand consistently in a way that connects with your desired audience. Post content that you think your ideal customers will want to read or tips that they would find helpful. Engage directly with the followers that you do have. Be responsive and start a conversation with your current followers. Engagement is a small seed that blossoms into a large interactive following quickly. Don’t neglect it.

Optimize Your Tweets

Take the time to optimize your posts on Twitter for SEO. Thanks to a partnership forged between the social platform and Google, your tweets could possibly show up in search results. Include keywords in your tweets that you think customers searching online for restaurants are likely to use. On Twitter, hashtags act as keywords. By including targeted hashtags/keywords in your posts, you’ll improve the searchability of your content. This means those potential customers searching for restaurant-specific keywords in your area are more likely to find your content. Shy away from packing in too many hashtags at the end of your posts, as this may drive down engagement by coming off as spam. Try to stick to no more than three targeted hashtags for each post.

You’ll want to periodically survey your hashtag use and determine which ones get the most engagement in the form of clicks, likes, retweets, and follows. Use this information to tailor your account and incorporate the most popular tags in future content.

All is not lost if your posts still don’t show up in Google search results. By focusing on creating optimized posts with targeted keywords relevant to your restaurant and the industry, you’ll begin to build a reputation as an authority in your field.

Utilize Your Social Profiles to Build Links

In the past, Google’s search results placed a high value on links regardless of the quality of the individual links that you built. As this became common knowledge, people began to manipulate the search rankings by building out low-quality backlinks to their site. In response, Google shifted the focus to reward high-quality links in search results.

By including backlinks throughout your social media accounts, you can leverage the high web authority of sites like Facebook and Twitter. Google will view these links as higher in quality. Be sure to include links back to your restaurant’s website on all of your social profiles, as well as in any content that you post.

Post specific content, like current menu specials or recipe blog posts, across all social platforms to promote sharing. Shares will continue to establish your restaurant’s reputation as an expert in your field as well as capitalize on the web authority of the social platforms that you use. This will increase traffic to your site and give you a bump in search rankings.

The way in which you use your restaurant’s social media can have a huge impact on how your site ranks in search engine results. You’ll definitely want to keep the above in mind as you consider your social media strategy. Focus on developing a solid social presence in conjunction with your other SEO efforts. When properly optimized, your restaurant’s social media will help put your site toward the top of search results and in front of countless customers.

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