Fall is upon us, which means the holidays are soon to follow. For business owners, this time of the year is filled with opportunity - opportunities to develop your brand and capture a new wave of customers in the process.

Of course, the competition is fierce during the holidays, especially as we near Black Friday and Christmas. That means SMB owners and online retailers must be ready to optimize their web presence to the extent they can. By strengthening your website, ad marketing, e-mail marketing and social media marketing channels, you’ll give your business a fighting chance to rise above the holiday noise this year.

Here, we’ll address how to do just that.

First, start by optimizing your Google Business Profile and integrating analytics

Whether your business operates globally or locally, optimizing your Google Business Profile (GBP) is a strong - and simple - first step. For local SMBs, it’s unavoidable - your company needs a locally optimized GBP to garner traction with Google.

Start by making sure your company’s name and address are accurate. Put up a photo of your company’s building. Fill out as much of your profile as you can - posts, reviews, events - all of these signals add up to let Google know where your business is located. And ensuring your business is properly geolocated by Google is a must-do to achieve any degree of local SEO success. Use geo-specific keywords in your company’s description and posts. Publish photos and videos (that you or someone within the company has taken) regularly. Just make sure that the company’s profile is active and frequently updated.

Take a few minutes and integrate Google Analytics (widely termed GA4) into the website, too. It’s quick and easy to do so, and it provides valuable insight into how your site is performing from a traffic and lead-capturing standpoint. Users, sessions, page views, conversions, bounce rate, engagement time - there’s a lot of data here, but you don’t need to be a digital marketing expert to extract value out of it.

Create more customer touch points through e-mail and social media

As the holiday season approaches, consumers start gearing up to buy. That means it’s time to get your brand in front of them. With so much online noise competing for our attention these days, consistent (but not obnoxious) touch points are needed to drive leads to your company.

A proven way to do this is with e-mail marketing - Mailchimp is our preferred tech for automating many e-mail marketing functions, but you’ll need to provide the content.

Ideally, this content will provide valuable information that’s designed to “hook” the user toward your website. At the least, taking a spot in their inbox will bring your brand to the front of their mind - the first step toward making a conversion.

Don’t be afraid to regularly send out these e-mail blasts - a couple times a week is considered optimal - and make an effort to capture user e-mails when they visit your site or make a purchase through your business. It’s easier to sell to current customers than new ones, and that means you’ll need an updated e-mail list.

E-mail marketing can also be used to pick up additional customer reviews

Customer reviews are weighted heavily by Google for SEO purposes. They are, therefore, a high-value target for brands. E-mail marketing can also support this goal by (politely) reminding users to leave a review. Many buyers have no problem doing this, they just need to be asked.

Don’t overthink it. A week after a customer buys something from your site, automate your e-mail marketing platform to send out a review request/reminder. It’s a no-risk, high-reward approach to building your brand’s reputation.

The Google Display Network provides a brand awareness boost for pennies on the dollar

Chances are, you’ve seen plenty of small ads served through Google’s Display Network (GDN). The GDN is one of Google’s many, and often confusing, advertising platforms that allow companies to reach customers wherever they go. You’ll find GDN ads everywhere - on search engine results pages, e-commerce pages, forums, blogs and so on.

Brands have some control over where their GDN ads are published, but the real advantage here is the sheer volume of impressions companies can capture through GDN ads. There are millions of websites participating in the network, so your ads could potentially be seen by many, many people. It’s also inexpensive for the potential return, so for SMBs that need to drum up some quick brand awareness, it’s a no-brainer for the holiday season.

Act like an expert and write like an expert - with a little help from AI

Let’s introduce artificial intelligence into this conversation. AI writing tools - ChatGPT best known among them - have added another dimension to content creation. At first glance, AI looks like a perfect way to quickly develop a ton of content, saving business owners the time and challenge that often comes with writing.

But while AI can help support better and more efficient writing, it’s no replacement for a true, human expert.

That’s because Google wants unique, expert level content, not just keyword-rich and topic-relevant content. AI can generate a ton of words, but those words are “scraped” from the internet. Put another way, AI writes by pulling from existing content all over the web. It’s fast and achieves a base level of competence, but AI cannot insert unique experiences or bits of expert insight that only an industry veteran can offer.

Unfortunately, Google is adept at tracking this, so it can identify websites filled with AI content. And though the search engine juggernaut’s opinion on AI content is still in flux - Google is developing its own AI search assistant, after all - sites that depend on AI are being penalized on the SERPs.

Here’s how to make AI work for your content writing

The best approach for business owners is to take on a subject matter expert (SME) role within their industry. If you own a business in the field, you’re an expert in the field. And as an industry expert, you are capable of bringing that uniqueness to your site’s content.

Currently, we draw the AI writing line at blogs and permanent website content (landing page stuff, mainly). These should be heavily human-written given their critical importance to the site’s SEO and user experience. Product pages, sales letters, social media posts - these are better suited to ChatGPT and similar tools.

If you’re starting off on a blog or piece of site content, here’s one way to bring in ChatGPT as your AI assistant:

Generate a list of relevant keywords - Keywords are terms that Google uses to understand what the surrounding content is about. These terms are typically search queries themselves or encapsulated inside a search query. Though Google’s crawlers have become much more sophisticated in their ability to understand content, keywords still play an important role. ChatGPT, if asked, can provide a list of keyword terms to include in your writing. Doing so will help Google interpret and categorize your content for better SERP placement.

Develop a list of content angles - You can also ask ChatGPT to provide a list of ideas for your particular topic. If prompted, AI will generate a list of suggestions that could go in your blog. Not all of them will be a fit for your blog, but you may find an idea or two that you hadn’t considered and would make a good addition. This may also help with creating follow-up content and a longer term strategy for tackling the topic.

Form the general structure of the page - ChatGPT can tweak its output by length, tone, target audience and more, as long as you ask it to. If you’re writing a blog and aiming for 1,500 words and targeted toward younger consumers, ask it to include those filters and you’ll get a slightly different piece of content. This can be used as a kind of bird’s eye view of how the content should read and how it should be structured.

At this point, you’ve got the skeleton of a page, content ideas that you can use to help develop it further and a list of high-value terms that will help Google understand what the content is about. As the SME, you’ll need to ensure the content’s accuracy (AI will confidently generate the occasional error), “humanize” it with unique turns of phrase and sentence structure, and add important pieces of industry expertise to charge it with value.

With the holidays upon us, tis the season to boost your digital marketing

 

We’re mere weeks away from peak purchasing season among consumers, so it’s time for business owners to tighten up their online marketing. If you have a website, but don’t know where to begin with optimizing it for search engines, the above steps will give your brand an extra push - and some extra customers, likely. If you'd like to further your impact, contracting a firm experienced in digital marketing can be the best decision for your business success.

Auditing Website Basics: The Rules Every Business Website Should Follow

Developing a business website is difficult work. To be frank, it’s a job that most small business owners aren’t prepared to handle on their own. The job is only getting tougher, too, as Google is constantly raising the bar on what constitutes a high quality, trustworthy site. And every business owner should want a website that Google considers trustworthy because those are the sites that secure top ranking spots.

If your site isn’t performing as well as it should, the problem (or problems) may be basic. With so many elements to optimize on modern websites, it’s practically impossible for small business owners to catch everything. That’s why we’ve put together this quick guide to business site basics. Follow these rules, and your site will be off to a good start.

First, a word of caution about website builder platforms

Before diving into those rules, though, we need to address a question that comes up all the time:

“Can I build a business site with Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, etc.?”

The answer is yes, you could, but business owners should avoid doing so at all costs. Site builder platforms are easy to use and inexpensive, but the website they crank out are impossible to market and optimize. That’s a deal breaker for any business owner that plans on using their site as a lead and sales generator.

Websites build on one of the above platforms are essentially invisible to Google. They spit out bloated code that Google has trouble recognizing and interpreting. They give site owners insufficient latitude to make major technical changes. They do not allow site owners to choose their own host and you’re trapped inside the platform’s ecosystem. If the platform goes under, so does your website, permanently.

Given all of this, we cannot in good conscious recommend site builders. What we do recommend is WordPress - the standalone version, not WP’s own platform and hosting service. WordPress remains the gold standard for marketability, customizability and performance, so every business owner’s first choice should be WordPress.

That out of the way, on to the rules:

Rule 1 - Make sure your title tag and headers are formatted properly

Every page should be paired with a title tag - it’s the single most important element in helping Google understand what the page’s content is about. This title is identified using a title tag - something you may hear referred to as an H1. H1 (or H2, H3, H4 and so on) tags are designated in the page’s HTML code and are used to identify a title or header. Titles and header are important for Google and users, and generally for the same reason - they help the reader understand what the page’s content is about. This is obviously important for users, as their decision to consume the content or move on has to do with the content’s title.

It’s also crucial for SEO purposes because Google isn’t going to rank a page that it doesn’t understand or isn’t properly titled. Properly-formatted and written headers help Google with this. Proper format means using the right H tag - only one title tag (H1) per page, and headers should be organized in a hierarchical format. That means using an H1 with the top header, H2s for content section headers, H3s for subheads inside those content sections and so on down the line. 

Rule 2 - Feature your services and products in high-importance navigation elements

If Google doesn’t know what your business sells, it will probably not rank the page. At best, your site will be improperly categorized in the wrong product or service area. The result of this? Users ending up on your site after searching for something completely unrelated to your business. That’s exactly the kind of traffic business owners don’t want.

To ensure Google places your site in the right category and serves it to the right users, reinforce what your company does in the site’s most important navigation elements. Specifically, this means placing your top-level product and service categories up in the top nav menu. One of the first elements Google checks when crawling a page is the navigation. Put your product and service categories up here - don’t be afraid to get rid of generic nav entries like “about us” - and your site is far more likely to be served to the right users.

Rule 3 - Make sure your content helps Google understand what your business is about

For Google to properly categorize and locate your company - important for local businesses - the search engine will use content clues to determine where to place you. For obvious reasons, it’s important that Google identify what your business does and where it’s located as precisely as possible. If search engines have this information, they’ll be more likely to list your website on local search results pages relevant to your area. In other words, it will be easier for potential customers in your service area to find your business.

Again, content clues are key here. The writing and photos on your website should address what your business does and where it operates, as directly as possible. Google has difficulty discerning between certain terms (a painter, for example, could be a house painter or an artist - Google can confuse them), so don’t be clever or coy with what your business does. No long-winded personal story about what inspired you, the business owner, to start the company. No personal anecdotes or attempts at humor. Just keep it direct and professional.

This approach extends to the use of location-specific keywords.

Rule 4 - Find and fix anything that would make your brand look amateurish or untrustworthy

Depending on its size and function, your website may have hundreds or thousands of pages and URLs - with thousands of links connecting all of it together. That’s a lot of online infrastructure to maintain, and it’s common for the occasional technical issue to emerge - like a broken link, a bad redirect, a missing piece of content, a duplicate page and so on.

Each of these issues has the potential to damage your brand online. It’s like walking into a brick-and-mortar business and finding out the restroom is out of order. While it may not have a direct impact on the business’s operation, it’s a bad look all the same.

The same is true online. If users click on a product page but are instead taken to a generic 404 page, there’s a good chance they’ll leave the site altogether - removing your chances of converting them into a customer and dinging your user experience metrics in the process.

The goal, then, is to identify and resolve the myriad, minor technical glitches that can impact how users respond to your site. You may need to bring in a web development or digital marketing expert to address this, as it may involve running various technical audits (targeting indexing errors, duplicate pages and the like), diagnosing the offending issues and correcting them.

Nailing down the basics is the first step to website success

Every business website is a custom-built, complex piece of software that serves multiple purposes. It’s a lead generator, a 24/7 salesperson, a brand ambassador and a showcase for your company’s knowledge and expertise.

That’s several important roles your website must fill for it to be an effective investment. And with online competition as fierce as ever, there’s no room for basic mistakes.

Hopefully, this guide revealed some of the most common, fundamental problems that small business owners run into with their sites. If any of the above apply to your site, an experienced web development and digital marketing firm can help correct them and get your site back on the right track.

Wordpress is one of the internet's most powerful engines, as something like 40 percent of all sites run on WP. Millions of those sites are professional or e-commerce in nature, and from the get-go, they must be configured properly to succeed.

That means integrating the right tools into Wordpress during and following the initial WP install. If you're partnered with a reputable web hosting company, these tools may be included with your install package - a major convenience for site owners who don't know where to begin.

Here, we've got a list of every important tool to consider for site owners just getting started with WordPress, along with some helpful information about WP management fundamentals.

For SEO purposes, it's Wordpress or bust - stay away from site building platforms

If you haven't launched a site yet, build it in WordPress. If you've already launched a site that's not in WordPress, prepare to move it to WP. And if you've already launched a WordPress site, congratulations - you're on the right track.

The truth is, there's no good reason whatsoever for business owners to pick anything other than Wordpress for their online presence. WP is the gold standard for several reasons, including:

Google prefers WordPress websites (better SEO) - The downside with site builder platforms is that they're built using bloated code that search engines cannot interpret well. Wix, Weebly, Squarespace and other drag-and-drop builders may be easy to use, but that simplicity means sloppy code on the backend. If you're serious about ranking on Google, this bloated code is a fatal problem.

WP is well-supported by an active, open source community - WP is an open-source engine, so anyone can access the codebase and contribute to it. The benefit of an open source engine is that it's constantly being improved upon by the community, so WordPress users are always coming up with new and better tools.

There are hundreds of thousands of plugins that can expand WP's functionality - Speaking of tools, there's an endless list of additional features and plugins to choose from. Each one adds to the site's capabilities, so if there's something that your site needs to do, but currently can't, there's a good chance that a solution already exists. It just needs to be installed on the site.

Wordpress allows people to maintain ownership of their domain and assets - If the site is created through a standalone installation (Wordpress.org), you'll have complete ownership over all the site's assets and domain. With site builders like Wix and others, the site is contained inside the builder's ecosystem. That means if the platform goes down, so does your site. Further, if you want to move or make major changes to the site, that may be impossible if it's hosted on a platform.

In short, WP's feature-rich, SEO-compatible code makes it the undisputed leader among site creation engines.

Wordpress.com or Wordpress.org? Here's the difference

The first hurdle business owners may run into when getting started with WordPress is whether to publish through Wordpress.com or Wordpress.org. We strongly recommend going with Wordpress.org, but here's a quick guide to both:

com - Wordpress.com is WP's version of the site builder. While it utilizes the same WP dashboard and publishing process, the site itself is hosted on WP's own servers and is therefore functionally identical to sticking the site on another self-contained platform. Further, by opting for WP's own platform, site owners may be responsible for additional fees related to "premium plugins" and other features.

org - Wordpress.org is the standalone version of WP that we recommend. With wordpress.org, site owners have access to all of the software's base files and user-friendly dashboard. In addition, owners have complete freedom to host the site with the hosting company of their choosing, and may make any changes they wish without interference.

​Now that the site's installation is underway, it's time to establish its layout and general design.

Once the site's install is complete, the first thing to do is pick a theme

With a fresh WP installation in place, site owners have the equivalent of a blank canvas to work with. From here, the first step is to select a theme, as this will set the course for the site's design and layout.

Themes are available through the WP dashboard, along with thousands of other plugins and tools. There are plenty of themes to pick from, but we recommend (and include) Astra for every new install. Astra is a versatile, lightweight option that provides a superior combination of usability and performance.

Whether it's Astra or another theme, users can customize the theme's universal settings (such as typeface and top image) to quickly establish a consistent style across all pages.

Next, pick a design template to work from

Ah, but we're not done selecting the top-level design details. Inside every theme are dozens, sometimes hundreds of design templates to choose from. Each one is like a pre-built website with the layout and blocks (text and image elements) already placed.

We recommend picking a template that's close to what you're looking for design-wise and working from there. Most have filler text and images already included, and these can be easily switched out for your own content. Don't be afraid to experiment and see which one inspires.

Wordpress pages and posts - what site owners need to know about both

Wordpress was originally developed to be a blogging platform, and so the distinction between "pages" and "posts" remains. When publishing a new piece of content, users can choose to publish it as a page or post. Here's the difference:

Pages - Pages are like the "evergreen" content on a website. They're the permanent pages on the site that aren't date or category-defined. They still require proper SEO practices to perform well, however, so relevant keywords, internal links, navigation elements are a must.

Posts - Posts go on the site's blog, so this content is categorized by date and topic. As a blog's primary feature is timeliness, all posts are eventually cycled out and replaced with fresh content. This content must be SEO optimized to output the right signals to Google - help Google better crawl and index the site, in other words.Every business or professional website should have an active blog, if only to remain relevant to Google and other search engines. A well-written, regularly updated blog, though, can establish a voice for the brand and build trust in potential customers - a powerful advantage when attempting to earn conversions.

Ready to build a page? Elementor provides everything people need to create a page quickly and with best SEO practices

WordPress makes it pretty simple to start building a new page, and Elementor makes the actual designing even simpler. Over the years, multiple WP page builders have had their time in the sun. For example, WP Bakery was a popular page layout plugin for a long time, but when Google pushed over its Core Vitals update about 18 months ago - a performance-based update - sites built in WP Bakery were no longer fast enough for Google.

Elementor is the new king of WordPress page design, partly because it works well with Google, partly because it creates pages that perform quickly, and partly because it's easy to use.

It's also a block-based, drag-and-drop builder that requires no coding knowledge to fully utilize. Users can start from scratch or from their chosen template. And in both cases, Elementor allows people to make detailed, quick adjustments, so they can nail that perfect look without spending hours on a single page.

20 more plugins that your web host should be providing with your Wordpress install

Some site owners think of web hosting like it's a commodity, but it's absolutely not. A reputable web host works hard to remain in good standing with search engines. Further, the quality of your web host will influence the site's reliability and performance, so choose wisely.

And if your web hosting service has experience with business clients, they may assist with installing WordPress and providing a "starter kit" with important plugins included. This head start can save site owners a lot of time and confusion.

What should a site starter kit include? Here's 20 plugins your web host should include in their hosting packages:

Advanced Editor Tools

The default page and post editing box on WordPress's backend is threadbare and lacks some of the common features we've all come to expect from a word processing function.

The Advanced Editor Tools plugin corrects this and adds in the standard word processing features (text attributes, formatting, etc.) that you would find in a Word-like piece of software.

Akismet Anti-Spam: Spam Protection

Without some form of spam protection on your website, it won't be long before random spam comments start piling up. Akismet Anti-Spam protects against this, as it can detect spam comments as they are submitted and block them.

It wasn't too long ago that sites benefitted from any activity - including spam comments - on their pages and posts. Unsurprisingly, the internet took advantage of this and spawned an army of spambots. Now, those spam comments will damage a site's ranking, so an anti-spam plugin is recommended.

BackupBuddy

BackupBuddy makes it simple for site owners to back up their site's content and quickly restore everything should something disastrous happen. Ideally, your site is backed up in multiple locations (another advantage to picking a reputable web host), including a physical backup on your computer. If the site isn't backed up and it's lost, you'll have to build it all over again.

BackupBuddy prevents this from happening and is extremely user friendly, as well.

Better Search Replace

Every now and then, you'll need to update or replace a term on the site....

How to Write a Better Blog

Blogging, it’s not why most people get into business, but written communication remains an important part of customer acquisition. And online, that means writing high quality blogs, articles and landing page content to help send the signals to Google that will equal long term SEO success.

With today’s tech-based, always-online economy, the value of good writing may not be obvious. That’s where we’ll start before addressing how to write a more effective piece of website content.

A 24/7 Salesman: The value of an expert blog

Without a website, companies are passing up on 30 percent of their potential business. Even when no one is at the office or manning the phones, the company’s website is there representing the brand. In this way, an effective website is like a salesman who never takes a break. Publishing high quality content is like giving that salesman the best possible sales pitch - with it, they’ll represent your company well and earn more customers as a result.

In the end, as the company’s owner and resident expert, you have complete control over your brand’s messaging through the power of blogging.

Every business owner is an expert, so put that expertise to good use

The first hurdle for business owners to get over is a psychological one. “I can’t write,” said just about every business owner ever, but as an expert in your industry, your insight has value to Google and to users. That’s true even if you can’t write like Shakespeare.

If you’re willing to practice writing and get better, you’ll eventually develop your spoken voice into an effective written voice. For many niche subjects, all that’s needed is clear, direct writing with some expert insight or examples sprinkled in.

One easy way to come up with blog topics - listen to the customer

Looking for a good blog angle? Pay attention to what customers are concerned about. These could be your customers or a competitor’s customers, wherever they provide feedback. This could be a question asked in an e-mail, a comment in a product review or a complaint on social media. Whatever it is, there’s probably a blog angle in there somewhere, as long as you’re looking for it.

Google wants original, expert ideas, so be careful with AI writers like ChatGPT

Although some of the ChatGPT mania has died down, there is still plenty of conversation regarding what it, and other AI writers, can do for website owners.

ChatGPT can help with some writing-related tasks, but it cannot replace the expertise needed for the content writing itself. It’s not a cut-and-paste job. You’ll have to do some extra work to get the page to a publishable level.

Google is on the record saying that it’s okay with some AI content as long as it meets the search engine’s quality standards. Unfortunately, AI content doesn’t. When AI “writes,” it’s actually scraping content from tons of existing pages, pulling out information and reordering it to create the semblance of an original article.

But nothing in the AI page is original - just an amalgamation of the pages it pulled from. Google doesn’t like that because users don’t like that. Users don’t want an internet full of same-sounding, no-value junk, and so Google doesn’t want to fill its SERPs with same-sounding, no-value junk.

As such, search engines will penalize sites that rely too much on AI for their blogging and website content. And yes, Google can easily detect AI writing.

There’s room for AI to fill a role, though, so here’s how to use it

To summarize so far - don’t take what the AI writer gives you, then turn around and publish it on your website. That’s a no-can-do, but what can you do with ChatGPT and similar AI generators?

Generate a pool of subject-relevant keywords - Every blog should be optimized with high-value, subject-relevant keywords. These provide Google with the signals it needs to understand the page’s content and properly categorize it for its search results pages.

And you can ask ChatGPT to provide those keywords. Writing a page about what to look for during a home inspection?

“Hey ChatGPT, give me a set of keywords for an article about home inspections.”

And the AI will immediately spit out the terms to include in your page, for SEO purposes. Simple.

Create a quick list of potential blog topics - Not sure what to write about? What AI does well is generate a ton of low-resolution, high-level topics related to anything you prompt it with. Run a sports equipment shop?

“Hey ChatGPT, give me 10 article ideas related to choosing or maintaining sports equipment.”

That’s just one example, but no matter what the overarching topic is, if you ask for blog ideas for it, ChatGPT will provide several potential starting spots. Many won’t be good enough to make the first cut, but they can at least provide inspiration to get going.

Develop an outline for a blog post - Once you have your blog topic settled on, ChatGPT can provide an outline for that topic. Let’s say you’ve decided to write about the most important features to look for in a family vehicle.

“Hey ChatGPT, what should be included in a blog about important family vehicle features?”

This can be used with any topic idea and will give you an idea about what to cover in your blog post. It’s likely that ChatGPT will list out its suggestions - each one can serve as a subsection on your page, so using this approach, writers can flesh out a proper outline that descends in hierarchy as each section is expanded on.

If you need to go deeper into a particular section, you can ask ChatGPT to expand on its “thinking.” For example, ChatGPT may list additional airbags as an important safety feature for family vehicles. In response, you could ask ChatGPT to list the kinds of airbags that might be included in a family vehicle. This information can be included in a section dedicated to “airbags” or “safety features.”

As this example illustrates, there’s no limit to how deep you can go with an outline using ChatGPT in this way.

Generate a (very) rough draft to get started - At this point, the only thing left to do is write the blog. It’s the hardest step, of course, but ChatGPT can provide a rough first pass at the page.

“ChatGPT, write a blog about how to prepare a home for the winter. It should be about 2,000 words long and include tips on how to reduce heating costs.”

Again, just another example, but any topic and important details can be included in your prompt.

Again, you cannot take this rough draft and publish it as original content. If you do, Google will eventually penalize your site. Instead, take the draft, ensure it is factually correct, add in relevant expertise and examples, remove any unusual transitions or turns of phrase (AI parrots a lot of cliches and unprofessional sounding language in its copy) and format it so that it reads well for users. Now, and only now, is the blog worth considering for publication.

Google is constantly raising the content bar, so site owners need better blogs to compete online

Any successful business owner knows that communication is key to winning new customers. Online, that communication is managed through blogs, articles and other forms of written content.

And the better that written content, the more effective your website will be at earning better search engine rankings and more customers. ChatGPT and similar AI writers can be of assistance here, but they cannot replace a human writer entirely - especially one with expert-level insight and experience.

That means site owners now need to write better blogs (which can be done with ChatGPT’s help) or, at the least, bring in someone who can write to Google’s increasing content quality standards.

If you’ve just launched a business website - or are about to launch one - your work is just beginning as the site’s owner. With millions of e-commerce and professional sites already online, it’s a real fight to get new websites noticed. In fact, it’s impossible to gain traction online without an effective SEO plan in place. That’s because search engines are picky when determining which pages to rank - those with better SEO fundamentals are much more likely to snag those coveted top spots.

https://youtu.be/w7Bdz9JOqVg

But that only raises another question - how can business owners get started with effective SEO? That’s what we’re addressing this time. With these following tips, any business owner in any industry can get a competitive start with SEO and build a steady stream of traffic.

The right engine means everything when starting a website, and that means WordPress

If you already have a website, it is hopefully built in WordPress. If it’s not, we’ve got some bad news - you’ll likely need to migrate it to WP. That includes sites built in Squarespace, Wix, Weebly and other stripped-down website builders. If you haven’t built a site yet, WordPress is the engine of choice.

Why? Compared to site building platforms, WP’s backend is far more compatible with Google’s site discovery and indexing process. In other words, Google understands WordPress sites better than others, so it’s more likely to fully crawl, index and properly categorize a website. In general, the more confused Google’s spiders are when crawling a website, the less likely that site will rank. WP ensures minimal confusion between the website and Google.

Make your title tag count - with high impact keywords

Every page on your website has to explain itself to Google, and title tags and headers are an important part of that mission. Each page gets one title tag (an H1), and you should treat it like a proper title - it should explain the content’s primary focus. And for Google, every title tag should also include relevant keywords that send the right content signals to search engines. These keywords are essentially clues that tell Google how to judge, locate and categorize the content.

It is extremely important to locate the most relevant keywords (i.e., the product you’re selling) as high up on each page as possible. This will maximize the chances that Google’s spiders will find them.

Additional headers are used with content subsections, and they act just like title tags. Each section header should describe what’s in the following section while including high-relevance keywords for Google.

Localize your headers, copy and images for your business’s service area

Most small businesses have a tight service area that’s near their operating facilities. It’s this area that your SEO should be targeted toward.

Local SEO is the branch of digital marketing focused on targeting users in a particular service area, and it’s a slightly different game than general, national SEO. When users punch in a local search query (“Houston Mexican restaurants,” for example), Google returns a local SERP in response. This local SERP includes additional high-value spots like the map pack, so engaging local SEO comes with additional rewards.

But local SEO also takes a slightly different approach. One part of this approach is to localize the content on your site’s pages, so Google understands where your business is located and what areas it serves.

In practice, that means mentioning where the company is located in titles, headers and inside the body copy. The city it’s located in, the neighborhoods or regions it services, the names of nearby landmarks and major roads - these are all useful clues for Google.

It goes further than that, too. Every image published on your website has metadata associated with it. This metadata includes where the photo was taken, so consider taking your own photos and publishing them with that metadata intact. It will be yet another signal for Google to utilize.

Silo and support your main content pages with secondary feeder pages

How your site’s content is organized is also of interest to Google, and therefore an SEO consideration. Ideally, it’s organized in a hierarchical fashion, with major content sections coming off the home page, and content subsections coming off of those, all the way down to your individual product pages. If you were to visualize this structure, it would like a cascade flow chart, with the home page at the top and the product pages at the bottom.

Each one of these content sections can act like a standalone site within your primary website. For example, if your site sells clothing, then each content section could be dedicated to “winter clothing,” “summer clothing,” “shoes,” “accessories” and so on. Each of these sections has a top level content page that links right off the home page and includes links to all of the subsections that are categorized below it.

This approach offers two major advantages to site owners. One, it helps Google interpret the site’s structure and navigation, so it can better understand where to place each page - and your site in general. Two, by reinforcing the primary content pages in each section, Google is more likely to rank those pages for relevant queries. When a user clicks on one of those listings, instead of being taken to your home page (which may be too far away from where the user wants to be), they’re linked directly to the right sections on your website. It’s far easier to convert users into customers if they don’t have to push through your website to find what they’re looking for.

Establish a blog on your site that’s regularly updated

Every business, no matter its industry or size, should have a blog on its website. Blogs are a primary means of publishing fresh content, and Google will look at what’s published on your blog (and how often) as part of its crawling and indexing process.

As an irreplaceable content marketing tool, your blog cannot be neglected. It should link right off the home page, should be featured in the top navigation menu and should be updated at least once every couple weeks, though once a week is better.

To optimize your site’s success, you’ll need to optimize it for search engines

Gone are the days of launching a website and waiting for customers to roll in. That just doesn’t happen in today’s hyper competitive world of e-commerce. The most successful online businesses tend to be the ones most invested in their digital marketing initiatives, but doesn’t always mean capital investment.

Time is also a valuable resource in this regard. The more time you spend on creating high quality content and organizing the site’s structure, the better your site’s SEO impact will be. And that’s the not-so-secret secret to online success - the more effort you put into digital marketing and content creation, the more visibility your site is likely to attain.

For anyone who has been around the Internet Marketing Clinic for a while, knows we always try to stay ahead of where the road goes. AI tools have turned 2023 on its ear, and it is not even March. In this episode of the IMCH, we are taking an in-depth look at how to balance AI tools like ChatGPT and your website, content or SEO efforts. There is a lot  of very dangerous misguided implementations ideas so we wanted try and stay ahead of it and let you know what we think you should be doing and how to used this very powerful tool, but do it in a manner that you don't blow yourself up.

Do not copy AI-generated content and paste it into a website

 Before you run off to ChatGPT and generate your entire website from scratch - stop. In our practice, we’ve already seen business owners attempt this with disastrous results. And that is what I keep seeing and hearing. It feels like, right or wrong everyone things they found the secret to creating mass pages to place on their website and that is just not true.

Google has upped the useful content penalty possibly taking aim at cut-and-paste AI-generated content, and the search engine is getting better and better at detecting it. There are hundreds of AI writers out there, but it’s unlikely that any of them could evade Google’s AI detection for long.

Why is Google seeking and destroying AI-generated pages? Because AI can’t produce a page that’s as well-written, organized and detailed as a human expert-created page. At least for now, human experts provide more value with their writing than ChatGPT or other AI tools.

This is because AI content generators work by scraping and distilling what’s already on the internet. Google doesn’t want a web full of copycat content - it wants originality. And it wants original thinking because that’s what users want. From Google’s perspective, AI content generators have the potential to pollute the internet with identical pages and damage the user experience.

On the other hand Google also is okay with AI content if they add to the web. If there is solid new information it more than likely won't get dinged. But you have to committed to making sure the information is not just spun and put out on the website.

There are a few more problems with AI content generation, that you need to be aware of to avoid a penalty.

Superficial reasoning and knowledgebase - ChatGPT and AI writers can spit out tons of information with every prompt, but because this information is sourced from thousands of sites - many of them low quality - the information tends to be superficial. This problem is more pronounced for niche topics and industries, where there are fewer inputs for AI to work with. 

Confusing conceptual linking and writing flow - AI also has trouble determining which pieces of information link together and how they should link together. Us humans do this naturally when we speak, because our communication is predicated on exchanging and responding to information provided by other people.That’s why AI writers tend to go off-track with topics or repeat themselves throughout an article. You won’t find an AI linking an insightful first-hand experience with the topic at hand. That kind of web-like conceptual thinking is still beyond the reach of AI.

 

Difficulty with proper punctuation and grammar - Curiously, AI writers also seem to have the occasional issue with word order, sentence structure or punctuation. The longer the content, the more likely these mistakes are to emerge in a piece of AI content.

 It may not be long before these kinks are hammered out, but for now, the above should give business owners pause before they go all-in on AI. Doing so could wipe out your traffic now or in the future, when Google retroactively applies penalties for AI content-generation methods.

All of this is subject to change as Google implements GoogleBard, its own AI Tool

 

Everything in this article could become obsolete overnight - thus is the nature of AI development. The technology is evolving extremely fast and no one (not even industry experts) knows how Google intends to leverage AI for search ranking purposes.

What we do know is that Google has its own AI in development named Bard, and it’s planned for release “soon.” In Google parlance, “soon” could mean months from now or minutes from now. When it is released, it will likely shake up the digital marketing industry even more.

What can AI tools like ChatGPT  paired with Jasper AI and then paired with a Human do for content marketing?

 

Okay, now that we’ve laid out the risks of AI content, we’ll address how to minimize those risks and make the technology work for business owners. After all, while Google doesn’t want AI cut-and-paste jobs, it has admitted that it’s okay with AI content, as long as it provides value and meets the search engine’s content standards.

Getting AI content up to that standard, though, that’s the trick.

We’ve experimented a bit with ChatGPT and AI content writers like Jasper, and there’s an opportunity here to create high quality, expert level content using both. Specifically, ChatGPT can be used to develop outlines for your content pages, while Jasper can do some of the actual writing. The emphasis is on the word “some,” however. At this point, we recommend an 80/20 mix between human-created and AI-created writing on any particular page.

A recommended step-by-step guide on using AI to generate content for your website 

 

So there’s room for AI in your content generation processes, but you’ll need to be careful. First, we’ll create an article outline in ChatGPT. Here’s how to do that:

Go to the OpenAI website, where ChatGPT is the featured piece of software.

Create a free account - there is a premium account option, but it only provides faster answers from the chat bot.

Now, you should be in the chat app and ready to provide ChatGPT with a prompt. First, ask it to list the keyword you’ll need for your page. For example, “tell me the keywords I need for a page about small business accounting services.” ChatGPT will instantly spit out the high value words to place in your content.

You’ve got the keywords, now you need the outline. Ask ChatGPT what topics should be included in your article. For example “what should be included in an article about small business accounting services?” ChatGPT will list the high-level ideas that should be addressed in your article.

You can continue this process to go further in depth. Once ChatGPT suggests the high-level topics that should be in your article, you can ask follow-up questions to dive deeper into those ideas. For example “compare accrual accounting and cash-based accounting for small businesses.” By asking more and more detailed questions, you’ll be able to create a more focused, thorough outline.

Once you have this outline in hand, you can stop here with the AI and start writing your page. For many, the outline is the tough part, and just getting that worked out can speed things along. However, if you want, you can take this outline and develop it into content.=

You’ll need a high quality AI writing tool to begin with. We recommend Jasper because it’s the best we’ve found, but it can be expensive for small business owners. If you do invest in Jasper, you can use it like ChatGPT by entering a prompt.

Using the example from above, you could enter “write about the differences between accrual account and cash-based accounting.” Jasper will immediately generate an answer, which could be several paragraphs long.

Don’t take this copy and paste it into your website!

Your job, as the subject matter expert, is to review the content and do the following:

Identify and correct any errors - and there will likely be some

Update any outdated information - and there will likely be some

“Humanize” the content and add your own original experiences and insights

Reorder and link the content sections, if necessary

Fix any grammatical or punctuation errors and there will be plenty

My page on Google Penalty Repair is a great example of how to mix the balance or mix mentioned above, and we recommend starting and ending the page with from-scratch content that you write. In effect, you’re “massaging” the content so that it doesn’t read like an AI wrote it, or flow like an AI thought it up. Your voice as the writer and expert should still clearly come through. The article I produced was 80/20 in favor of human touch despite using AI to build the entire page.

 AI will be the focus for digital marketers in 2023, so stay up to date here on any developments   

All of this is still developing in real time, and it’s possible that this article will be completely off the mark by the end of the year. For now, though, the above practices are what we consider to be the best practices for using AI in your content marketing.

If the AI picture changes, and boy will it, we’ll record our findings and report them here. Check in with us throughout the year to ensure your content remains in lockstep with Google’s standards.

Buckle up 2023 is going to be one for the ages. Every year brings a new set of challenges for the digital marketing industry, but 2023 may bring more upheaval than normal. Multiple content-related updates in late 2022 appear to be targeted at identifying and deranking pages with low quality (potentially AI) content. Google has also made recent updates to its Search Rater Quality Guidelines - with added emphasis on communicating expertise and experience in content.

Additionally both Google and Bing are rolling out chat modules for search that have the potential to upend digital marketing, especially for small businesses. Over this year as this rolls out we will address and work to find strategies that will work inside that framework. It may be a big deal. It may be a fad, no one knows yet. It's in part why I have been running these classes since 2007.

Google is clearly raising the bar on what constitutes a high-ranking website. Quality content, quality performance, quality navigation and linking - there’s no more cutting corners for business website owners.

That’s why we’re focusing on cleanup this week. The little things matter more than ever for digital marketing, and so we’re addressing some of the little things you can do to improve your standing on Google.

Optimize your online presence with the right platform, plugins and patches 

First, if your site isn’t on WordPress, move it to the WP ecosystem. More than 40 percent of the internet is built on WordPress, so Google thoroughly understands it - and prefers it. If your site is built on any other platform - Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, etc. - then you’re at a major SEO disadvantage from the start.

Assuming your site is built on WP, there is a plenty of plugin available. Many of these are useful for optimization purposes, whether performance or search engine optimization.

A favorite of ours is Rank Math. Rank Math is an SEO plugin for WordPress that provides broad functionality. It offers deep insights, like tracking your position history for a particular keyword. It also integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics 4 and offers centralized control over many SEO functions, like configuring headers or metadata.

And if you’re wondering just how entangled Google and WordPress are - Google has an official WP plugin called Google Site Kit. With Site Kit, your Google Analytics are available through your WP backend and through a single dashboard.

Verify that your business is properly listed online 

 Google uses your company’s location for local SEO purposes, which can be a problem if your actual location doesn’t match Google’s own data. It’s a problem that a lot of businesses have.

If your company’s address or phone number have ever changed, there’s a good chance that your older addresses or numbers are listed somewhere on the internet. If there are many such outdated NAP citations out there, Google may place your business in a different market.

The goal is to monitor your NAP citations and correct any that are inaccurate. Our clients have a tool to make these easy - one available through Yext. With Yext’s Optimize Location tool, business owners can get a status update on all of their NAP citations scattered around the web. This includes Google itself, along with Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Bing, Yelp and a score of directory sites. If there are any NAP inaccuracies, it’s made obvious here, so website owners can correct the citation.

To do that, you’ll need access to the account associated with the citing website. Businesses are in a constant state of flux, so it’s common for brands to lose control of certain accounts as employees are turned over and changes are made. If you do lose access to a citing account, you may able to correct the citation by submitting your company’s information to a major data aggregator like Acxiom or Localeze.

 Set up Google Analytics 4 so there’s no interruption in data tracking 

Google is overhauling its analytics platform and releasing a new version in July. Termed Google Analytics 4 - or GA4 - the new platform will use AI to provide advanced reporting. For example, GA4 will notice when certain products are in greater demand, or predict when a customer is likely to churn. This is another example of Google’s reliance on machine learning. Over time, the platform will “learn” customer behavior based on previous actions.

That’s a major departure from the current system, which will be sunset in July. If you haven’t migrated to GA4 or integrated it into your website, now is the time. We recommend you run Google Universal Analytics until it’s discontinued, but bring on GA4 now so you can start building data for your website. If you wait until Universal is shut down, you’ll have zero recent historical data to make digital marketing decisions from. You’ll be in the dark for months regarding your site’s performance.

 Get to know your online competitors, so you can produce better content than them 

Before your site can grow in a productive direction, you’ll first need your bearings. In other words, how does your company compare with its competitors online? This is a critical piece of information, because if you target the right competitors, you can leapfrog them with better content. If you target the wrong competitors, you’ll either grow your business slower or not at all.

One way to do this is through Semrush. Semrush has a deep digital marketing toolkit, including a helpful organic research tool that can be used to analyze potential competitors. Using Semrush’s organic research tool, you can reference a company’s website and get a list of all the keywords they rank for and where they rank.

You can use this tool to determine which of your competitors are positioned better on Google. The ones that are just ahead of you in important keywords - those are your targets. Once you have your competitors sized up, you can visit their content pages and determine how you could make a better version of what they’ve produced.

That doesn’t mean copying and pasting. It means taking their blog topic and writing it in your own words, using your own expertise. Write longer on the subject, with additional examples and discussion that reveals your authority on the matter. This is what Google is looking for with its push for helpful content - an internet that’s constantly producing (better and better) answers to every possible query. If you take on this mission by producing content in your own niche, Google will be more likely to rank your site higher for more valuable keywords.

Business owners are in for a wild ride this year, so ensure your fundamentals are in place 

There are a lot of digital marketing unknowns as we head deeper into 2023. To what extent will Google roll out additional AI functionality? Just how high is the content bar going to go this year? How will business owners prepare for the changes to come?

We’re have answers soon enough, but one thing that business owners can do now is lock down their site’s fundamentals. NAP citations, updating WordPress, integrating useful plugins and getting ready for GA4 - all of these little things add up to a more effective online presence.

Google has always prioritized content in its rankings, but in the second half of 2022 and into 2023, the search engine giant has gone all-in on content updates. In the past several months, Google has pushed over at least three significant content updates, and its latest includes major work to its search engine content guidelines.

We’ll take a closer look at this latest update and what website owners will need to do in response.

 A few notable changes in Google’s newest content update 

The bulk of the newest update concerns Google’s E-E-A-T (formerly E-A-T) standard. Before we dive into that, though, here’s a couple other notable changes from the update:

Google is placing additional emphasis on the content’s author - One of the changes was to Section 2.5, a section that concerns the website’s operator and content creator. This change is actually an addition - a guide that helps quality raters determine a web page’s author. Why is this important to website owners? Because Google is clearly factoring in the content creator’s credibility for ranking purposes. That means business owners will need to invest in building this credibility. That’s where quality content and other page elements - like an author box and bio - come into play.

YMYL pages are going to get scrutinized extra hard - Google has also added to Section 3.0, a section dedicated to defining quality content. One of the additions asks quality raters to assess whether a page concerns a Your-Money-or-Your-Life (YMYL) subject. YMYL subjects include medical, legal and accounting - subjects where wrong information or advice could do a great deal of harm to the reader. The content quality standards on these pages are higher, given the stakes involved. If you operate in a YMYL industry, it’s extra important that you develop expert-level content that conveys your expertise. It’s also important to remain on top and avoid introducing any topics outside of your field.

Many more changes to the content quality guidelines were made, but the above are of relevance to business website owners. And another major update to be aware of is E-E-A-T, which we’ll address next.

 Meet E-E-A-T, Google’s guidelines for creating expert content  

While the above changes are noteworthy, it’s the E-A-T rework that’s getting the most attention. E-A-T has been around for years as a guide for quality content, and there’s an extra E to account for now. What was E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness and trust) is now E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust).

Google developed E-E-A-T to define what end users (the page’s visitors) are looking for when assessing content. As it turns out, users prioritize experience, expertise and authoritativeness when consuming content.

As the website’s owner, it’s your job to ensure your experience, expertise and authoritativeness come through in your site’s content. This is what generates the most important letter in the E-E-A-T acronym - trust.

How can site owners do that? Here’s how Google defines each part of the E-E-A-T formula:

Experience: Does the content creator have direct experience with the subject? 

Experience is the new addition to E-A-T, and at first glance, it’s unclear where the line between experience and expertise exists.

Regarding experience, Google wants to know if the content’s author has first-hand experience with what they’re writing about. For many topics, first-hand experience is the most valuable thing the writer bring to the page. Here are some examples:

A restaurant review: Did the writer eat at the restaurant they’re reviewing?

Comparing laptops: Did the writer try out both laptops they’re comparing?

Offering travel advice: Did the writer travel to the place they’re talking about?

As you can see, there isn’t expertise involved here - these are subjects anyone could write on without special knowledge. What’s important is experience.

Expertise: Does the content creator have education, knowledge or skill regarding the subject? 

Some topics require years of industry experience, education, training or skill to competently discuss. Technical, scientific, legal, medical, financial, industrial - if you need some kind of professional background to speak on it, then expertise is important.

To develop expertise, your content should go deeper than the typical article written on your subject. It should be specific with technical details and definitions. It should offer original context that non-experts wouldn’t include.

Examples of pages that require high levels of expertise include:

Technical how-to articles and videos: Is the author a licensed plumber or electrician, or just a DIYer?

Medical advice columns: Is the author a licensed physician or someone offering their personal experience with an illness or medication?

Selling a house: Is the author a licensed real estate agent or just someone who sold a house?

With the above examples, you can see the division between expertise and experience.

 Authoritativeness: Does the content creator have an established reputation on the subject? 

Authoritativeness is expertise, experience and communication all rolled into one. If the content creator has an established professional reputation in the topic they’re writing about, Google is more likely to consider them an authority.

What are some ways to add authority to your website?

Address expert-level topics on your site

Add deep, original insight into your content

Speak from your personal experiences in the industry, across time

Develop your professional network and become a thought leader in your space

Answer questions that other people in your field aren’t answering

Be upfront with your credentials and spotlight them in an author box/bio

If you stick to the above, you’ll build authority over time, especially if you can earn backlinks to your content. Google considers backlinks as markers of trust. Speaking of which: 

Trust: Is the content creator someone you can do business with? 

Developing trust - from Google and from customers - is a top goal of any business owner. Your content should convince potential customers that your business can be trusted to do what it says.

Google attempts to capture this sentiment by prioritizing certain things on your site. It pays close attention to what’s on your About Us page and any company profile pages. It looks for any evidence on your site that backs your company’s claims (testimonials, case studies, white papers, etc.). The search engine also pays attention to what others are saying about your business, through customer reviews and by assessing your backlink profile.

Why is Google focusing so much on content quality?

With so many content-centric updates and additions, the question is - why? Why is the search engine double and tripling down?

It’s possible that Google is putting in guardrails against AI-generated content. With the emergence of chatbots and AI generated content, there’s a concern that AI users could flood the internet with low quality information. As sophisticated as AI is becoming, it cannot replace an expert human in terms of developing contextually-appropriate content. AI writing has trouble staying on topic, in other words.

Google’s AI-detection methods are superior and the search engine has little trouble flagging AI content when it spots it. You could think of these new content guidelines as a warning, then, against using AI to spin up content pages.

 Google is defining its vision for the future of content - can your site keep up? 

The SEO game has always relied on content first and Google is reinforcing that message with several recent updates. If you’ve already made expert content a priority for your website, you’re on the right track. If you haven’t prioritized content quality, it will become increasingly difficult to get that first page rank on Google

Looking back at 2022 - a year of major Google updates

Another year, another slate of algorithm updates from the world’s leading search engine. Google making changes to its ranking algorithm is nothing new - it’s always going on, actually - but 2022 saw a couple of impactful changes that website owners should be aware of. Ideally, you will have already made some of the necessary adjustments, but if not, we’ve got a quick recap here you can use to get up to speed.

Table of Contents

Add a header to begin generating the table of contents

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmW9-W3fbp0

Technical Performance

 While Google’s 2022 updates would eventually target content guidelines, the search engine started the year by making technical performance the focus. In a way, this was a continuation of Google’s Core Vitals update, which was pushed over during the summer of 2021.

Specifically, Google wants websites to run faster and more reliably than ever. It’s easy to understand why. A site’s user experience (UX) remains a primary consideration for Google, because search engines don’t exist to promote businesses. They exist to connect users (the people entering queries into Google search) with the best possible answer to their search.

A website’s UX describes how user-friendly the experience is on a particular page. If users are leaving the page before it loads or as soon as it loads, that lets Google know that the page is offering a poor UX. Search engines will always send traffic to a site with good UX metrics if given the opportunity. That means your site should also be optimized for UX.

A major part of UX is a page’s technical performance. Does it load important content quickly? Does it respond to user interaction quickly? Does it remain visually stable while loading? These are critical performance metrics roped into Google’s Core Vitals update.

The search engine is still raising the bar in terms of technical performance, so slow, unreliable sites are having added trouble in ranking well.

Stay away from “cookie cutter” website builders 

 If you’re building a website, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Shopify and others offer convenience. They don’t offer anything else, though, including technical performance or improved conversion rates.

In today’s world of digital marketing, nothing beats Wordpress. With unmatched Google integration, unmatched versatility and unmatched support, Wordpress websites are far easier to rank on Google and other search engines. If you’re building a new site, start with Wordpress. If you have a website in a site-builder like Shopify, consider your options in moving the site to Wordpress. 

 Content was always important, but helpful, expert content is now necessary 

 

Content has always been a top ranking factor for Google and other search engines, but what exactly that content should look like has changed over the years. And this year, Google made one of its most meaningful content updates in its history.

Termed the helpful content update, Google is now prioritizing high quality, expert level content that provides value to the user. But what does value mean when it comes to an online blog?

Users go to Google to answer questions. Google returns the best possible answer to their questions. As a site owner, your job is to get Google to pick your answer first. That means you’ll need to generate content that offers the following:

Expertise -

Google places a lot of weight on expertise. It does not want to rank a non-expert highly on any of its SERPs, as this reflects poorly on its own ability to spot valuable information. This is especially true if the question has to do with an expert industry like medicine, legal or accounting.

Expert content answers a relevant query fully, from every angle possible. It may take 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 words to provide a complete answer, but Google prefers longer, more thorough content that short content that offers nothing new.

Authority -

Authority is closely related to expertise, obviously, but in an SEO content, authority refers to how well-researched your content is. If you cite respected authorities in answering a query, if you’re linked to by respected authorities or if you have a history of expert content, you’re more likely to be considered an authority on your chosen subject.

Clarity -

Helpful content is easy to read and understand. It should be free of typos, grammatical errors, euphemisms, extended analogies and the like. Be direct and clear with what you’re talking about.

 

All of your site’s content should meet the above guidelines, as fuzzy as they may seem. The point is this - lead with your area of expertise. Answer industry-specific questions in your blog the same way you would if you were having a conversation with a potential client.

 

AI content tools have emerged, but Google is heavily penalizing their usage

 

AI-based content generating tools are the next frontier in black hat content marketing tactics. These tools claim to spin up dozens of pages of content in a short time, using data fed into the content generator. Sounds like a shortcut to success, right?

More likely, it will run your website into a ditch. Google has not trouble spotting AI-generated content, even if the typical user on your site would never know the difference. And because Google considers AI content to be non-expert by definition, it will heavily penalize any site that it catches with AI content. Stay away.

Push your content out through multiple channels to pick up and drive traffic

 

Having trouble coming up with more and more content? Make every content idea pull double, triple or quadruple duty by pushing it out through additional channels. For example, with a single content idea, you could:

Write a blog post or article on the subject

Record a video of you talking about it

Record a podcast discussing the subject

Craft a social media post that links to the content

Put together an image or graphic about the subject

The more ways you can present your content, the more traffic you’ll pick up through all those channels. Google can also associate this content together, so it will be more likely to present your content pages and Youtube videos on the same SERP if you place multiple types of content on your pages.

Here’s the take-home message for 2022: You need to be an expert in your field

We’re at the end of 2022, and in the end, this year was about the value of expertise. Google is no longer promoting websites that aren’t striving to be leaders in their industry. It wants the most knowledgeable, best communicators speaking for every industry. To achieve online success, then, the primary goal is to become a thought leader for your field, and to communicate this insight on your website.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the primary components of digital marketing and is foundational to a successful website. Proper SEO gives your website the best possible chance at securing favorable search engine listings, and those top listings are valuable. In fact, the top 3 organic listings in Google gets an estimated 80 percent of all the clicks on a particular search engine results page (SERP).

As your site moves up the rankings, its ability to attract traffic will also improve. That means more potential customers and, if your website’s effective at converting, more business.

SEO is important, so we’re going back to the basics this week and covering search engine optimization 101.

Table of Contents

Add a header to begin generating the table of contents

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfFB9p8E-w

Understanding Google's Algorithm

At its core, Google is an index, a directory. Google is a list of millions upon millions of websites that users reference when they need to answer a question. That query could be for a piece of information, for product reviews or for a business, but it always starts with a query.

Google’s job as a search engine is to match the best answer to each query. To do this, Google utilizes a mathematical formula - an algorithm - to assess every website and page it comes across. This algorithm weighs hundreds of factors to determine whether a particular page is worth showing for a particular query.

SEO is designed to make a website or page as attractive as possible to Google’s ranking algorithm. This means optimizing many ranking signals that tell Google that “hey, this website is worth considering for that question.”

 Organic vs. Paid Listings 

Organic listings are listings that have earned their spot through effective SEO practices. Websites that land a top organic listing have earned the favor of Google’s algorithm by optimizing factors like content, link building, page speeds, user experience and many others. SEO services provide the work needed to optimize those signals.

Paid listings compete with organic listings for top SERP listings, but do so by paying Google instead of optimizing ranking signals. While traffic can be earned this way, it can be extremely expensive to manage and is considered less effective than winning organic traffic.

 

We have circled the paid ads on the page vs. the organic listings that are encircled.

How Does Google Find New Pages?

Google finds new pages by “spidering” the internet. Google’s spiders explore the internet by navigating from link to link. Those spiders may follow internal links from one part of a site to another, or they may hop on an outbound link to another website.

When spiders “crawl” new pages, they analyze it by looking at various signals and determining what it’s about. If the page is worth saving for future listing purposes, Google indexes the page, which means it stores it in a massive directory for possible future reference.

One of the primary ways Google locates new pages and content is through the use of a sitemap. Sitemaps are documents that provide Google’s spiders with all the information they need to efficiently crawl your website - specifically the URLs contained in your site. This helps spiders build a more complete picture of your site and ensure deeper crawling.

Submit Your Sitemap via Search Console

Sitemaps are XML feeds that are easily generated with an SEO plugin like RankMath and can be submitted directly to Google.  They are generally regarded as a requirement you must complete for your website to be indexed properly in Google.

Fresh Content Always Performs Better

Content includes the most important ranking signals for any page. One of those signals is the “freshness” of your content, and Google has directly confirmed this.

The freshness of your content refers to its timeliness or how recently it has been updated. Content that’s written in relation to a current event, for example, will achieve better freshness scores. Likewise, if you update large parts of an older page, Google will also view it as fresher.

Fresh pages are more likely to be crawled and indexed, so regularly updating your site’s content is a proven way to get more pages indexed.

Choose Standard Web Hosting over Platform-based Web Hosting 

Your web hosting company has a major impact on your website’s SEO viability. With standard shared hosting or dedicated hosting services, your website has its own space on one of your host’s web servers. It’s like owning a home - you have additional room to make changes to your website and you don’t have to share infrastructure with other sites.

With platform-based hosting, it’s like renting an apartment. Your capacity to make changes is limited, and if you have bad neighbors (online businesses doing shady stuff that is sharing your hosting platform), that will attract the wrong kind of attention from Google. For maximum control over your site’s performance, dedicated servers are always recommended.

Why HTTPS is always a Must

It’s important,  that your website has the HTTPS protocol in place. HTTPS is just like standard HTTP, except that all data is encrypted before it is sent. Google has incentivized HTTPS websites over their non https counterparts. Therefore any serious website needs to make sure their website is showing secure

HTTPS should be available through your web host and the best web hosting company, add a free SSL with all accounts.

How to Properly Use Tags (Title, Description & Header)

Every page on your website should come with a primary title tag, that states clearly what the objective of a page is. In addition, use of the header tag system should be used, starting with an H1 tag that directly describes what that page is about. If the page is about accounting services, the H1 should reference accounting services that may be accompanied by local terms like Houston or West Houston, if a business is localized.

From here, additional header tags should descend in importance. So if the page’s H1 is “accounting services in Houston,” then the H2s may be “business accounting services” and “Personal Tax Services.” By adding these signals to a page, it provides Google an overview of what the writer believes is the most important to least important topics on a page by weighting the headers.

Every page can store a meta description that explains what that page is about. This information is presented on Google’s SERPs along with your listing. Through WordPress, every page has a field for a meta description, and you’ve got a few sentences to work with.

Your meta description should be aimed at users primarily. Stuffing keywords in your meta description is ineffective, so write it in a way that compels people to click on your listing.

Why Is SEO Important? 

There are around 20 million e-commerce websites on the internet, with more being added every day. Competing with so many sites is a daunting task, but it’s doable with effective SEO in place. With the above concepts and tips, you can get started on implementing that SEO and giving your business a better chance of online success.