Digital Marketing!

SocialSEO is an enterprise online marketing service providing SEO, Social Media management, Pay Per Click advertising, and Content creation.

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SocialSEO is Proud to Be a Premier Google Partner

At SocialSEO, we’re walking with a new swagger. We’ve been awarded a Premier Google Partner badge, which means that the team at SocialSEO has consistently shown to Google that we increase product performance and expertise in basic and advanced concepts in several areas. All of us are committed to positive results for our customers, backing it up with our continual high-quality work. Check out our Google Premier Partners listing.

SocialSEO Specializes in:

·         Search Advertising

·         Mobile Advertising

·         Display Advertising

·         Shopping Advertising

Our Team Members are Certified in:

·         Search Advertising

·         Mobile Advertising

·         Video Ads

·         Display Advertising

·         Shopping

·         Google Analytics

We display this badge with pride. We love Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC), and Social Media and we appreciate this acknowledgment from the high standards of Google. We’re honored, yet remain humble in our efforts make our client’s websites excellent.

This also means that we hold a close relationship with Google, the number one search engine out there! Our team had an in-house training with Google yesterday and we are excited to host a Google event in beautiful Colorado Springs next Thursday.

If you are looking for help with online advertising with PPC, SEO, and/or social media, we’d love to partner with your business. Call us at [phone] to get started.

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Extension Crazy!

Advertisers continue to ask themselves, “what can I do to improve my Pay-Per-Click ads?” The answer is simple: Look at your ad extensions. Ad Extensions are one of the main components of an ad that is more likely to rank at the top of a search results page. Ad extensions have had a positive effect on click-through-rate, ad relevance, and even cost-per-click. So why not take those extra characters that extensions provide and make something great happen?

Our favorite extensions include sitelinks, callouts, call extensions, and location extensions. Each of these provide more insight into the unique attributes of your business and enhances your ability to reach the target customer at the right level of their purchase journey.

Got these extensions setup? Great, you’ve just enhanced your position in Google Search! Ready to do more? Google has provided us even more extensions that can increase click-through-rate and conversion potential. Here’s a brief rundown of all extensions we recommend using:

Sitelink Extensions: Determine four pages in your site that users historically visit prior to making a purchase or taking an action. You can use Google Analytics to look at user history and find these pages or choose pages that represent important aspects of your business.

A good tip: Always add a direct link to your “Contact Us” as this allows users who are ready to convert the option to take a faster path.

Callout Extensions: Use these to highlight unique selling points of your business as they allow you to stand out among your competitors when searchers see your ads.  

A good tip: Utilize these to highlight current specials or deals.

Call Extensions: Most businesses want prospects calling, above any other conversion, so adding your phone number to your ads only makes sense as it helps searchers who prefer to call and are ready to convert.

A good tip: copy your phone number exactly as it’s shown on your site, otherwise Google may disapprove your call extensions.

Location Extensions: Generally only useful if you have a brick-and-mortar store, utilizing this extension will help people find your store and make an in-store purchase. You can build this extension with two methods, using the manual location extensions in your AdWords Shared Library, or linking to your Google My Business Page.

A good tip: linking to your Google My Business Page will also help get your ads to show in Google Maps.

Structured Snippets: These highlight four or more features of your business, such as products, services, or neighborhoods that your company services.

Price Extensions: Much like Google Shopping, these allow you to provide pricing on your ads for products or services. Showing prices might cancel out customers looking for products outside of your price range, but it also prevents them from clicking on your ad and costing you money. 

Messaging Extensions: This is a brand new extension type which lets a user text message your business. 33% of Americans prefer texting to calling so this extension is a great benefit to picking up those mobile users who don’t want to call and don’t have time to fill out a form online. 

So there you have it, 7 different extensions you can utilize to boost your PPC ads and your overall performance in Google AdWords. Have any questions, feel free to ask us!

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Where should I do business on Social Media?

Social Media is constantly changing and growing. It has even become a significant business tool in our lives. Facebook currently has over 1.7 billion active users a month. That being said, Social Media is clearly a great tool businesses can use to reach their customers.

With over 90 Social Media platforms worldwide, which platform or platforms should you pick?

In order to effectively solve this problem you must ask yourself the following questions about your business.

1. Who am I?

2. What do I have to offer?

3. Who is my audience?

4. Where is my audience?

5. Is my website prepared?

This first question is essential. Who are you? Your brand and voice needs to be clear and consistent across all platforms. That is the only way to build awareness, loyalty, and recognition.

Question two is very important. What do you have to offer? Your product/service needs to be socially tangible. This means that your product/service needs to be understood through text, images, and video. That is the only way to make Social Media relevant to your business. Social Media is very visual!

Who is your audience and where are they? This is critical. You must know your customer in order to make a sale. You must have a defined audience in order to see success on Social Media. This will help you spend your advertising budget effectively and essential decide whether or not you are showing your product to the right audience. The one that will make a purchase!

Is your website prepared? Nearly 80% of social media time is spent on mobile devices. This means that you have to make sure your website is mobile friendly. 

Were you able to answer these questions with clear and complete answers? If so, your business has a place on Social Media. Visit SocialSEO.com for the assistance you need when finding the right place for you business.

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Minding the Gap in the Workplace

If you’re into reading self-help books like I am, chances are you’ve picked up Brene Brown’s best-selling book - ‘Daring Greatly’.  While most self-help books usually apply to my personal life, I applied this book much more to my professional life.

Brene Brown focuses an entire chapter on ‘minding the gap’ and how it affects the workplace. Before I go further, let’s talk about what this means. The gap refers to the area between your values, goals, mission of a company and how company acts on a daily basis. When you allow yourself the grace of understanding that we will fall short of our values and goals and do our best to remain true to what we set for ourselves but allow for an area of constant growth and improvement – we will then be ‘minding the gap’. A great example of this is a company that preaches having an open culture yet scold employees when they try to speak up about ways to improve productivity. Minding the gap in this instance would be appreciating their desire to help and create innovative ideas, but set guidelines and requirements for how and when to present these ideas.

Here are SocialSEO, we are very aware and constantly ‘minding the gap’. We have a very open culture but understand the limitations and how easy it can be to fall short of this. It’s when we allow ourselves to be human that we can really create open work spaces.

This is not only something we choose to implement for our employees but our clients as well. When it comes to SEO, Social Media and PPC, we find a surprising number of clients coming with a ‘bad taste in their moth’ about our services because of mistreatment from other companies. At SocialSEO, we pride ourselves on being completely transparent with our clients, even if it means letting our clients know about negative results in their campaign. When we create open communication lines with our clients, we allow them to begin to trust our work and the integrity of our company.

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A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

SEO experts want every page of your site to have a good amount of text. Ideally, the pages on your site have text that is the answer to what people are typing into the Google search bar. Now, as people, we like pretty things. We like visually appealing websites that answer our questions. Sometimes, the answer is a picture. People can see and interpret pictures AND words. Google can easily read and understand WORDS. For example, words tell Google that the SocialSEO website is about our SEO company and the services that we offer to keep our customers happy.

So, Google reads the text. What about our fun and informative pictures? For instance, consider the picture below of the SocialSEO volleyball team. It isn’t text. Google can’t READ that. Or can it? I put this image into one of Google’s Image readers and here’s what it READ:

Google can see that this is a photo that is 93% likely to be of, “sports”, 81%, “Volleyball”, and thanks to the sand, “79% Beach Volleyball”. It thinks it could be soccer, but hey I’m quite impressed with what it did interpret about this photo.

So, not only this, but Google is reading words in the photos. Below you can see that it read the words on the volleyball nets’, “Corona Extra” and our name, SocialSEO, under our logo.

Why do we care?

Right now, SEO specialists add labels, alt image tags, to photos to tell search engines what is in a photo. We could post a photo of a balloon and say it’s a piano. However, as you can see from the examples above, Google can now tell the difference. Google no longer needs us to define what is in a photo. So, the question is - are the photos on your site relevant to your business services and products? The more integrity your site has with words and photos, the easier it’s going to be for the search engines to read the content. And the search engines are where your customers go to find information. A picture is worth 1,000 words. What do the photos on your business website say?

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Content is King!

Do you think your website is doing fine without content? Well Google sure doesn’t. In fact Google loves to see rich and informative content on a page. We all know in the SEO world that we must keep Google happy and this is a great way to do that.

Some key points are:

- Describe what you offer in detail. People want to know  what you offer and why they should choose you over a competitor.

- You want a minimum of 300 words of content on each page of your website. YES, even you contact us page! 

- Write Quality information and not just random words. 

- Add fresh content (blogs) on a regular basis.

In 1996, Bill Gates wrote a report explaining that content is king and even now almost 20 years later its still true. Content is the answer to the search . You want to make sure that when a person searches a specific keyword phrase your content and page is the best answer in Google’s eyes. 

https://www.socialseo.com/pittsburgh-seo/ 

https://www.socialseo.com/chicago-seo/

https://www.socialseo.com 

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Rethinking Holiday Time Off

Tis the season of pumpkin spice lattes and holiday vacations! But how do you as a business keep producing results while keeping your employees happy? According to an article by The Telegraph on Netflix, it’s simple. Don’t track hours and let employees take as much time off as possible.

My initial thoughts were this would be a total and complete disaster, but it was surprisingly the opposite. According to the article, salaried employees were already answering emails on the weekends and working late hours. This allowed them to take time off when they needed it while keeping them responsible for managing their own time to provide the results expected of them. ‘The idea is that freedom and responsibility, long considered fundamentally incompatible, actually go together quite well.’

Note however, we can’t apply this to everyone. Those in the white collar industry would not benefit from a plan like this because of the requirement to finish tasks on a certain schedule and with the requirement of being physically present. However, companies similar to us here at SocialSEO could easily adapt a plan like this.

The important thing to note here is the personal responsibility aspect. In every article I’ve ever read focused on flexibility requires a sense of ownership and personal dedication to the company and their work. This is usually created when a company shows that they value their employees. But is this another ‘chicken in the egg’ argument? How do we know which comes first? Truth is, I think it can go either way. But when you accompany both, you have increased productivity and great employee retention.

Interested in learning more about SocialSEO? Find more information here!

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Reviews in the Knowledge Graph

Today, when someone types your business name into Google, they are going to get an easy-to-read box of information on the top right of the screen. This is the Knowledge Graph and it has the answers to common queries. (See the example below.) This useful information saves the searcher some clicks and some time. With this, please realize that it means fewer people visiting your site since they are getting their information in their first 

Knowledge graphs will display some or all of these 

Your Business Name

Address

Hours of Operation

Link to Your Website

Social Profiles

Customer Reviews from Different Sources

What benefits your business visibility in the Knowledge Graph?

Claiming your business on every site that lists it.

On many online directories, your business is already listed. You just need to claim it. Yes, this takes time, yet, aren’t you are the most qualified person to ensure your business information is correct and valuable to your customers?

Take the time to make sure the address, phone number, and hours are correct. Make sure that the photos are the best look into your business’s products and services.

Claim your business on a directory site not only to ensure that your information is what you want to be seen but to also be notified when a customer leaves a review on that site.

Staying on top of customer reviews.

This is Google’s knowledge graph, so Google reviews do show here. You’ll also see reviews from other sites that have business directories, such as Facebook, Yelp, YP, Zomato, and many, many more. So, if you have great reviews on Facebook, but bad reviews on yp.com, it’s _possible _that the rating will show here. You cannot control which review data pulls into the knowledge graph. Therefore, check your businesses knowledge graph regularly.

Respond to those customer reviews, especially the negative ones.

When a customer walks into your business with a complaint, how do you handle it? Respond to your online reviews the same way. A negative customer review with a response from the business will bode much better for your business reputation.

Keeping up with your day-to-day tasks probably keeps your plate full. While you keep your storefront and showroom tidy and current, be sure to do the same with your online storefront.

For more great SEO tips, follow this blog. All of us at SocialSEO love to make local businesses look good online.

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Title tags and meta descriptions

Why are title tags and meta descriptions so important? 

That is a common question in the SEO realm and we have the answer! Title tags and meta descriptions are the first interaction Google and the consumer has with your site. The title tags give them an idea and understanding of what the site or page is about. Staying focused on SEO optimization allows Google to understand the exact purpose of that page and its relevance to the query.The point is to take your page specific keywords and place them in a semantic form to designate purpose to the page. 

As for meta descriptions, these are viewed more towards an elevator pitch as to why your page contains the best answer to the query.  Also taking you keywords and semantically placing them in a few short sentences to pull in the consumer and to give Google a even further understanding of what the page is about, its purpose. 

To learn more about title tags and meta descriptions and the roles they play in your SEO campaigns visit one of our sites today!

https://www.socialseo.com/austin-seo-company/ 

https://www.socialseo.com/las-vegas-seo

https://www.socialseo.com/seo-boise-idaho/

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Flex Time: Does it Help or Hurt Employee Productivity?

Businesses have harped on us for decades the importance of employee productivity and the standard 40-hour work week. Despite the consistent pressure to conform to this standardized ideal, we continue to see research that praises a more liberal work schedule, allowing for increases in paid time off, and flexible work hours. SocialSEO, a company founded on the promise of continuous optimization and innovation, decided to move away from tradition and implement flexible work weeks to better understand the parallels between employees’ desires and resulting work performance.

On a monthly basis, employees are allowed to flex their work hours to work a four-day work week instead of a five-day work week. This allows employees to enjoy the relaxation benefits of a long weekend without using up all of their PTO. From the company’s stand point, their employees are able to complete a full 40-hour work week and take time off without costing the company any extra money.

Beyond the convenience for both parties involved, there are also benefits to implementing a flex time policy, including increased employee productivity and retention. According to an article written by Inc.com, “When the employer’s focus is on the work being done, the employees can focus on meeting deadlines and producing good work - not on watching the clock tick the seconds until it’s time to go home. “This just goes to show by allowing more flexibility to the work week, you increase autonomy and thus productivity.

The most important factor in looking at flexible work week schedules is what impact it has on the client. In our case, it can absolutely be a positive one. By allowing flexibility of working longer hours or off hours on certain days, we can increase that extra customer service by being more available to customers outside of the work day if needed. For many clients, work days are filled with just that, work and it can be difficult to schedule in meetings or phone calls dealing with SEO related topics. It also allows for us to have eyes on websites in case of any hacks or spam issues while other companies may end their day around 4 or 5.

Overall, SocialSEO has seen a positive impact with the implementation of this new policy. With the increased productivity, improved morale and better customer service, flexible work weeks have really been a no-brainer.

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Online Presence

I just returned from a vacation with my husband and my parents. We went to a new place –the beautiful and unique state of Hawaii. On one hand, we had two glorious, carefree weeks. On the other, I had two short weeks to fill with the best activities and meals possible. Why spend half of a day driving to and experiencing a destination that a. no longer exists, or b. that hasn’t provided a good customer experience in months?

We planned this trip six months in advance. For me, that meant six months of daydreaming and researching the islands. I searched Google, created Pinterest boards, and asked my friends for recommendations (on Facebook, of course).

We checked in to our hotel. I knew the fish market was an eight-minute walk away and they serve fresh delicious ahi tuna plates. I knew that people liked to jump off of the end of the little island just outside the hotel. I had seen photos of both.

Now, I’m a planner, obviously. I’m also an extrovert. Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet! My husband and I chatted with a local restaurant manager. She told us where she worked – a taco restaurant near where we were staying. I hadn’t heard of this place, yet after she described it, it sounded good enough to try. Why hadn’t I heard of it? This restaurant either didn’t show up on the handy Google map on my phone or didn’t show up favorably.

I realize that some people, probably most, don’t plan like I do. Some of you throw a dart at a map, throw some flip flops in a bag, then figure it out when you get there. When hungry, that type of traveler will also ask their phone to find nearby restaurants, whether they’re looking to try local food or find their favorite pizza, the same one they can get at home. Let’s be honest, though. Who doesn’t love tacos?

This taco shop is in a well-populated area. I did look them up while writing this. They are not brand new. They do have some 4+ online reviews on a site, yet those aren’t showing on the map on my Android phone. The iPhone map results are less than 4 stars.

Look up your business on your computer and your phone. Look it up on someone else’s phone.

·What is your online reputation?

·What do the photos and reviews say about your business?

·Does what you’re seeing give the same information and feeling as if you met someone and started telling them about your business?

With so many places to check-in and leave reviews these days, please remember that your website isn’t the only place for you to tell your story. One day, I’ll go see moose and bear in Alaska – and I’ll eat the best reindeer (according to the Internet)! One day, I may end up in Boise. I don’t know anything about Boise. I wonder what unique things there are to do there.

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Optimize your Business Website for Voice Search

Voice searches are becoming common. It’s three times faster to search by voice than to type in a query. Google, Siri, Cortana, and Alexa are also ‘listening’ more accurately, near as accurate as a listening person. So, where are people when they are searching for your business? Voice searches are happening when people are driving, when they are out with friends, when they are cooking, and often when they are watching TV. Customer convenience and ease is making this the preferred method for searching.

Let’s take a look at your website. Open up notepad or grab a pen and paper. Look at each page, especially the home page, which is usually the first page people see. Read the text – the headings, the paragraphs, and whatever you have in the footer. Search engines don’t send people to your page because it’s pretty and you have nice photos of your happy customers. They send searchers to your site, because of what it can READ about what you do and what you offer. Of course, pretty pages are important, because PEOPLE like pretty webpages. Google, Bing, and Yahoo care about text content. Now, make two lists:

1.    What would someone TYPE in a search box to get to each page?

2.    What phrases would people use with voice search to find the information on each page? Hint: Voice searches often start with “who”, “what”, “where”, and “how”.

Let’s use a local coffee shop as an example for these questions. What would you type in to Google to find a coffee shop with Wi-Fi in Birmingham, Alabama? ‘coffee shop Birmingham Wi-Fi’. Now, when doing a voice search, how would you phrase the same query? ‘Where is the best Birmingham coffee shop with Wi-Fi?”

Make sure the pages on your business website answer the questions that people are asking about your business. Ask your team for help – especially the customer-facing team members. Spend time on your business webpage and use Google Analytics to see what terms people are already using to find your site. Look at similar businesses. Look at these pages as if you’ve never heard of this type of business before. Update your pages with relevant and useful content, with the questions and answers that you wrote down. The search engines will send customers your way if they can read and understand what you do. If you would like expert help with getting your business website voice search optimized, check out our SEO services or use voice search to tell your phone or browser to, “Call SocialSEO”.

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How to be Excited About Hiring Millennials

First things first, I’m a millennial. And chances are if someone calls you a millennial, the connotation is negative. No one wants to hire them, work with them or admit that they are in fact millennials themselves. Except us. SocialSEO prides themselves on hiring millennials and here’s why that what makes us different.

People often associate millennials as being lazy but in reality the root cause of that is simply the fact that millennials are selfish. Growing up with choice, instant gratification and the ability to say no has made businesses want to rip their hair out when all they know is working until death and pulling yourself up by your boot straps. At this point, we all know this. There are a million articles that will tell you this but SocialSEO wants you to see a different take on it. Let’s talk about why millennials can provide a new perspective to your team and how to find the best millennials for your business.

Millennials know how to work hard, as long as its engaging to them, the key is how can you take every industry and make it applicable. Now, I know I just made a statement about catering to your subordinates, but hear me out. Millennials have become almost half of our workforce and it continues to grow. While it may be a very different approach, your business will succeed even more. After all, millennials have lots of creativity to share. They just need to be channeled in the right direction.  

Give your millennials power over their own career

In the past six months, I’ve applied for 37 jobs, had seven interviews and received two job offers so while I won’t say I’m an expert in the job hunting arena, I think I can get some street credit and give you some perspective since I am a part of the demographic we’ve all become so critical of. The number one factor in deciding whether or not I wanted to apply for a position was based strictly on how was this going to benefit me and my career? Is there possibility for growth? Am I going to be invested in as an employee? Millennials don’t care to take the time to do the busy work if it’s not going to benefit them.  I chose a position with a lower pay strictly based on career potential. Millennials don’t want to bounce around but if you take away the personal growth aspect, they have no choice than to pick up and leave at the next sighting of promotion or movement in their career.

Let them incorporate their passion into your work

Get to know your employees. What are they passionate about? What do they enjoy pursuing and how can you incorporate that into your business model? Perfect example, this article. I work as an SEO Specialist (which for those who don’t know what that is, I help companies rank higher organically in search engines such as Google or Bing) but I get the opportunity to write once a month about WHATEVER I WANT as long as I can incorporate it into an aspect of our company and culture. It’s a great way to add diversity to my job, keep me engaged and reminded of why I love what I do and the company that I work for.  

Give value to millennial’s input

SocialSEO has an open door policy to allow for employees to speak about ways to increase retention and make us happier to come to work. Whether it’s popping into an executive’s office or writing an idea on our white board, we find ways for all personalities to feel free to share their ideas and thoughts. From that white board, our director of operations finds way to incorporate the best ideas into our everyday routine. When you encourage creativity within a company, you allow for innovative concepts to grow and employees who want to stick around and see the company grow.

Millennials don’t have to be a term we shun nor does it need to be a dreaded working class. Millennials are the future and they have great ideas and a strong work ethic if fostered the right way. Sure it’s a different way of management and requires some flexibility on all accounts but when celebrated, Millennials create brilliant work.

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Twenty questions to get you thinking about local SEO

You’ve gotten your business webpage up and yet, you aren’t hearing that anyone found you online. While the internet is amazing, there’s a bit more to it. Let’s think through this:

1.       How do your customers find you? Your customers are searching for everything online – and more often, right from their phones.

2.       Did you know that 50% of consumers visit a store within a day of their local search? (according to thinkwithgoogle.com)

3.       Do they look you up on their phone to see when your doors open and close?

4.       Do they go to your site to make an appointment?

5.       Can your products or services be found online?

6.       Will they find their answers on your page – about how your product or services work?

7.       Can they see reviews and testimonies from your other customers?

8.       Will they click on your phone number to call you?

9.       Can they click on a map on your site to get directions to your door?

10.   When someone just two miles away searches for your business, does your webpage show in the results or do your competitors?

11.   When someone walks in to your business, how do you introduce yourself, your products, and your services?

12.   Do they get the same feeling and information from your website?

13.   What is SEO? Spelled out, it’s search engine optimization. It’s getting your site easily found by people that are searching for your expertise and your products.

14.   Wouldn’t it be cool if people come to your site, learn about what you do, and what you sell? They build that trust in you, because you answer their questions. Then, they get that product or service from you.

15.   Let’s look at another side of this. Now, this is important. What can search engines, only reading text on your website, tell your customers about your business? Think about that. Google is most often where people are asking their questions. Help Google understand who you are, what you do, how to get to you. This is a bit of what SEO (search engine optimization) is. Making sure that all of these answers are easily readable and available.

16.   What can you do about all of this? You can go see if your website answers all of these questions, then you can go figure out how to take care of all of these things.

17.   Isn’t this a nice spot for a shameless plug? Another idea is - You can also focus on what you do best and hire SEO experts. Here at SocialSEO, we love making businesses visible online! It’s all we do. Let us get you found. Let us introduce your business to Google.

18.   Where can you learn more about us and what we offer? Right here! You could also search for us.

19.   How do you know if SEO is working? Decide what you want: More phone calls? More Facebook likes? More online purchases? Tracking can be set up on your website – for everything imaginable. You can track how long someone is on each page, how many visit and sign up for your newsletter, how many people in your area are on your site (no personal information is tracked), the path to an online purchase, and really, so very much more.

20.   Now what? Go take a break. Let this all sink in. Then, get started on making your business website search engine optimized.

What I covered here is a portion of what we do at SocialSEO. Our goal is to make the internet better by helping customers from Seattle, WA to Orlando, FL, and even all over the world.

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The Impact of YouTube on SEO Practices

YouTube gets over 30 million visitors per day. That is a massive traffic source which could significantly help your site’s organic rankings in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), if properly utilized.

In essence, YouTube is search engine. It has its own search algorithm, and it’s reported that three billion searches are conducted on YouTube each month. That’s second behind Google. And, because Google is the parent company of YouTube, it makes sense to take advantage of this largely untapped SEO source. For those companies with a multi-national presence, or those looking to break into foreign markets, users can navigate YouTube in more than 75 different languages. With the masses clearly finding value in watching videos today over the internet, YouTube is definitely one avenue to focus your SEO efforts.

 To get you started, here are five tips to employ in the production of your video to aid you in the greatest chances for effective SEO.

 1.  Video Title Creation

The title of your video needs to express your video’s content. One way to discover the best title to use for your video is by taking advantage of both Google’s and You Tube’s auto-complete function in the search bars. Taking the primary keywords and phrases from your video’s content and inputting them into the search bars will pull up strings related to your keywords giving you an idea of what popular searches pertain to your video. This will help you create a winning title.

2.  Video Description

A well-constructed, short and concise description, approximately two to three sentences, about your video encompassing the clip’s theme will aid visitors in finding you. The key here is, again, keywords.

 3.  Video File Name

After your video is created and edited you need a title that reflects the video’s content. Search engines can’t look inside the video so the filename should also reflect a primary keyword, video_keyword.avi. The filename will tell a search engine algorithm what the video file contains.

 4.  Utilize Closed Caption (CC)

By taking advantage of the closed caption feature on videos you can kill 2 birds with one stone. First, text over video narration aids viewers in understanding your video content theme and points. This also lends credibility to your video with Google rewards due to the video’s universal design and enhanced user experience. Second, and a great SEO tool, is taking that video transcript and inputting it into the video description. As the transcript’s words tell the story of the video, what better way to aid in searching for a subject than a full textual description. This strategy is best used for short-form videos as descriptions are limited to approximately 800 words. For long videos, a truncated transcript, with a link to the full text, can also be an effective SEO tool if constructed properly.

 5.  Do Tagging Research for Video

Another great tool is “tags”. One way to help you find the right tags to use for your video is the YouTube certified TubeBuddy Tag Explorer tool. This helps discover trending tags and long-tail search terms which helps target what people are searching for relating to your video’s content.

 It takes a multi-pronged approach to get good SEO rankings, and utilizing YouTube is another great way to drive traffic to your website. By employing these five tips, you can position your videos so they are found faster and more often. And, with the ability to link to your website from YouTube videos, you only increase your chance for greater traffic opportunities.  To learn more about SEO opportunities and what you can do to get more visitors to your company’s website, check out SocialSEO.

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Online Marketing Lingo for the Beginner

Essential to the understanding, and eventual mastery, of any craft, profession, or trade is a working knowledge of the lingo, acronyms, and jargon used. The military is a great example of an organization with its own unique language.

“The CO ate my lunch and wants to make me a latrine queen because someone didn’t give the Dope on a Rope MIFWIC the right comics for the DZ and the mission went Tango Uniform.”

Huh?

This sentence, when translated, is a soldier explaining he just got in trouble with the boss (Commanding Officer) who wanted to put him on bathroom cleaning duty because someone didn’t give the Air Assault team leader the right maps for the drop zone they were going to parachute into, causing the mission to be cancelled.

Even if you aren’t familiar with military jargon, most would understand that the translation is about someone getting in trouble because something was done incorrectly.

For the purposes of digital marketing, it too helps to understand the industry’s parlance to become proficient and effective at the job of promoting your website. Below are ten commonly used terms which will help you decipher the meanings and methods unique to online marketing.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – the process of increasing web site traffic (visitors) from “free”, “organic”, “editorial”, or “natural” search results on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

PPC (Pay Per Click) – an advertising strategy where advertisers pay ad agencies (like Google) whenever a user clicks on their advertising. Often a quick way to increase traffic to a web site.

CPC (Cost Per Click) – the rate that is paid per each click on an ad by a Pay Per Click    advertiser.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page) – the page that comes up with a list of results related to the word or phrase you entered into a search bar.

Landing Page – any page a user lands on when they click on a link in a SERP.

Conversion Rate – percentage of users who convert (i.e., sign up for a newsletter, buy something, download an e-book, and related actions taken on a website)

Crawler (bot, spider) – a program which moves through the world wide web or websites by way of link structure to gather data used by search engines to provide the most applicable results to a search query.

Bounce rate – the percentage of users who enter a site and then leave it without viewing any other pages.

White Hat – SEO techniques which conform to best practice guidelines, and do not attempt to unscrupulously “game” or manipulate SERPs.

Authority (trust, link juice, Google juice) – the amount of trust that a site is credited for by a particular search query by a search engine. This is derived, in part, from related incoming links from other trusted websites.

Of course, there are many, many more, but these foundational examples give you a hand in learning a little more about SEO and other online marketing techniques. For more information on how to increase the number of visitors to your website and the site’s conversion rate, check out SocialSEO.

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Factors That Contribute to Organic Traffic Fluctuations

Searchenginland.com’s Stephanie LaVonne recently published 10 Factors That May Be Impacting Your Organic Traffic. The article provides a wealth of information for those that may be seeing major swings in the number of visitors to your website.

LaVonne breaks down her list of factors into three categories: Basic Issues, Advanced Issues, and Uncontrollable Factors. She provides another option to determining declines in traffic and engagement outside of Google Analytics and Google Search Control. Her issue-specific topics address both internal and external factors that may be causing viewership fluctuations. This is the key to her article. By addressing basic SEO fixes and recognizing the forest through the trees, you can step back from the problem a bit getting a more comprehensive picture of what’s going on with your traffic.

Page indexing, bot filters, site updates, and URL confusion comprise the Basic Issues. LaVonne identifies some of the easier problems to address when you are faced with traffic discrepancies. By checking these out these four areas she discusses, you could find remedies to your problems fairly easily.

If that doesn’t do it, she offers three tips in her Advanced Issues section that cover areas of interest such as structured data markup changes, promotional cadence (that is, the frequency your site hosts a sale event), and price point and product focus changes.

LaVonne’s Uncontrollable Factors are a great addition as they touch on issues that, without serious strategic marketing changes, you just can’t necessarily influence. Three topics she addresses that fall under this category include: being outranked by your own resellers and affiliates, new google ad placements (paid ad efforts impacting organic), and industry trends and waning brand interest.

Her holistic approach to diagnosing website traffic issues is sure to help you stay on top of your SEO game by tending to the technical basics and having an understanding of the big picture.