Internet Marketing Clinic

The digital marketing landscape is perpetually evolving, with SEO at the forefront of this transformation. As we approach 2025, it becomes imperative for marketers and business owners to understand and adapt to the latest SEO trends to maintain and enhance their online visibility. This post delves into the significant shifts expected in the SEO realm, offering actionable strategies to help you stay ahead in a competitive digital world.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly influencing how search engines operate and how content is ranked. AI-driven algorithms are becoming more sophisticated in understanding and processing user queries, making it crucial for SEO strategies to align with these advancements. AI doesn’t just affect search outcomes; it’s also reshaping how SEO should be approached. For instance, AI can analyze user behavior, predict trends, and personalize content, making it essential for businesses to leverage AI in optimizing their SEO practices.

While Google remains the titan of search engines, new players like ChatGPT are emerging, challenging the status quo. These platforms are developing their own ecosystems and driving significant traffic to compliant websites. This shift underscores the necessity of optimizing content for multiple search platforms, not just Google. Ensuring that your SEO strategy is adaptable and broad enough to encompass these new platforms will be crucial in tapping into diverse traffic sources and expanding your digital footprint.

Content is king – a mantra that continues to hold true into 2025. The demand for high-quality, authoritative, and engaging content is higher than ever. Search engines are favoring content that provides real value to users, incorporating metrics that measure user engagement and satisfaction. This means businesses must focus on creating content that is not only informative and relevant but also tailored to meet the specific needs and interests of their target audience.

The significance of link building remains, but the focus has shifted towards the quality of links rather than sheer quantity. High-quality backlinks from reputable and relevant sources are critical in boosting a site’s authority and ranking. Effective link-building strategies now require a more thoughtful approach, where links from industry leaders, chambers of commerce, and influential publications can dramatically enhance your SEO performance.

Search engines are placing a greater emphasis on authenticity and verification. Google, for example, has introduced video verification for business locations to ensure that listed businesses are legitimate and accurately represented. This move is likely to affect local SEO significantly, making compliance with these verification processes a critical factor in maintaining or improving search rankings.

As search algorithms become more complex, the technical aspects of SEO cannot be ignored. This includes site architecture, mobile optimization, page speed, and structured data. Websites that quickly adapt to technical SEO requirements will perform better in search rankings. Ensuring that your website is technically optimized for both desktop and mobile users is more crucial than ever.

The proliferation of voice-activated devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) has introduced new SEO challenges and opportunities. Optimizing for voice search requires understanding natural language queries and focusing on long-tail keywords. Additionally, as more devices become interconnected, there will be new avenues for optimizing content across different platforms and devices, further complicating the SEO landscape.

As consumers become more environmentally and ethically conscious, they expect the same from the brands they interact with online. Sustainable practices and ethical SEO strategies will become factors in brand preference and loyalty. This includes transparent marketing practices, sustainable digital operations, and ethical use of AI and data.

SEO is not static; continuous learning and adaptation are required to stay relevant. The digital marketing field is fast-paced, with frequent updates to algorithms and best practices. Staying informed through credible SEO resources, ongoing training, and industry conferences will help you keep up with the latest trends and techniques.

Looking ahead to 2025, SEO is set to become more integrated with AI, more diversified across new search platforms, and more dependent on high-quality content and ethical practices. By understanding these trends and preparing with effective strategies, businesses can not only adapt to these changes but also thrive in the evolving digital landscape. Implementing these forward-thinking SEO strategies will ensure that your online presence is robust, resilient, and ready to meet the future head-on.

Whether you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur, or digital marketer, understanding the fundamentals of SEO can help you gain visibility, attract leads, and grow your business.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the practice of improving a website’s visibility on search engines like Google. The goal is to rank higher in search results, making it easier for potential customers to find your business.

If you’re relying solely on social media or paid ads, you’re missing out on a powerful organic traffic source that can continuously drive potential customers to your site. SEO has been around since the early 2000s. While the digital landscape has evolved, it fundamentally remains the same: helping search engines understand and rank websites based on relevance and quality.

A well-optimized website is more than just an online brochure—it’s your best salesperson, working 24/7 to attract new leads and customers.

Beth Guide shared her personal experience with SEO:

This is an example of how ranking higher on Google can dramatically increase traffic, sales, but most importantly, business growth.

Your website platform plays a crucial role in SEO success. Beth strongly recommends using WordPress.org over WordPress.com.

✅ Full Control – Unlike WordPress.com, which limits customization, WordPress.org allows complete website control.

Because you need maximum control, WordPress.org is the way to go.  Vertical Web offers WordPress hosting plans that are prebuilt with the right tools that lead to SEO success.

Many businesses fail to rank because they don’t provide enough quality content for Google to take them seriously.

Many businesses struggle with SEO because they unknowingly make critical mistakes that prevent them from ranking higher.

🚫 Poor Website Structure – Confusing navigation and lack of internal linking can harm rankings.

If you’re investing in SEO, make sure you’re doing it the right way to see actual results.

With the rise of AI-generated content, many wonder: Is AI good for SEO?

🔹 Google accepts AI-generated content IF it provides new and valuable insights.

Tip: Use AI to streamline research and outlines, but always add unique insights and expertise!

A common question is whether paying for Google Ads helps with organic rankings. I am one of the few people that has always said the two are intertwined. Although Google vehemently denies they are related, there has always been some benefit.

💰 Google claims ads don’t influence rankings, but…

SEO is a long-term strategy, while ads provide short-term visibility. A combination of both can yield the best results.

SEO pricing varies based on competition, industry and location.

💲 Local SEO: Starts at $500/month for small businesses.

Without the right keywords, your SEO efforts may fall flat.  Remember to watch our Video on Keywords if you need more help on the topic

🔹 Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs.

Tip: Use a mix of high-volume and niche keywords for a balanced SEO strategy!

SEO is an ongoing process, but by following these best practices, you can increase rankings, drive traffic, and grow your business.

✔ SEO is essential for long-term business success.

Ready to improve your website’s SEO? Visit VerticalWeb.com for expert SEO services and training!

📢 Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more SEO insights! 🚀 And sign up for our Internet Marketing Clinic newsletter to receive our monthly class schedule and notifications of when we release new videos.

#SEO #DigitalMarketing #BethGuide #VerticalWeb #SearchEngineOptimization #WordPressSEO #GoogleRanking #SmallBusinessSEO

Keywords have been at the core of search engine optimization (SEO) since the early days of the Internet. Despite evolving algorithms, they remain crucial for ranking on Google. This guide explores the history, best practices, and strategies for using keywords effectively in 2024.

In the late 1990s, search engines like Lycos, AltaVista, and AOL used simple Boolean searches. Web pages were ranked based on keyword frequency, leading to the rise of keyword stuffing. Websites repeated targeted phrases excessively, sometimes even hiding them in the background by matching the text color to the page’s background. These manipulative tactics initially worked but soon led to poor search results.

As search engines evolved, Google implemented more intelligent algorithms that penalized keyword stuffing and rewarded content with natural language and contextual relevance. Instead of focusing on exact matches, Google now looks for keyword variations and related terms to determine page relevance. Updates such as Google Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird refined how keywords were evaluated, emphasizing content quality over manipulation.

Despite algorithm changes, keywords remain essential. However, they must be used strategically with supporting context. Simply repeating a phrase like “Houston movers” is not enough—Google expects additional context, such as “packing services” or “moving company reviews.” Using a natural language approach that aligns with user intent is now the key to effective keyword optimization.

One of the most crucial steps in SEO is identifying the right keywords for your content. A good exercise is to create a list of 50 relevant words related to your business and organize them into groups. This helps structure content efficiently and target multiple search queries.

This browser extension helps users

Google’s free keyword tool offers insights into search volume, competition, and related search terms. It allows businesses to refine their keyword strategy based on search trends and user behavior.

Organizing keywords in an Excel spreadsheet allows for better analysis and strategy development. Keywords should be grouped logically to improve content structuring. Website owners can tailor content by categorizing terms based on intent—informational, navigational, or transactional—accordingly.

Google’s algorithm considers more than just keyword frequency. Proper header placement (H1 to H6), meta descriptions, and body text are critical. The ideal page length for ranking well is around 1,700 words, ensuring the content is comprehensive and informative.

Google assesses content using an interrelation of words. Instead of focusing solely on a single keyword, including related terms helps improve page relevance and search visibility. For example, a page targeting “home health care services” should also incorporate phrases like “senior home care,” “skilled nursing,” and “in-home medical care.”

Header tags (H1, H2, H3) should logically contain keywords and structure content. Breaking content into readable sections improves user experience and search engine crawling. Google prioritizes well-structured content with precise topic segmentation.

Websites without a phone number, address, or precise business details can appear less credible to users and search engines. Contact information signals legitimacy and improves local SEO rankings.

Targeting general terms like “shoes” is ineffective due to high competition. Instead, focus on more specific keywords that reflect user intent, such as “best running shoes for flat feet.” This approach reduces competition and increases conversion rates.

Thin content with insufficient keyword coverage fails to rank well. Each page should provide detailed information that comprehensively answers user queries. Adding FAQ sections, bullet points, and related topics enhances content value.

A well-structured blog post or landing page should include keyword-rich headings, FAQs, and a natural writing style. Content should be informative and address user needs rather than simply inserting keywords. Google values pages that provide actual value over those that try to rank for specific phrases.

For businesses like home health care services, an article titled “Essential Home Care for Seniors: Tips for Living Comfortably” can rank well by incorporating related keywords like “in-home nursing,” “senior care,” and “skilled nursing facilities.” Structuring content around commonly searched questions improves visibility and user engagement.

Internal linking helps distribute page authority and improves site navigation. Linking to relevant blog posts or service pages enhances keyword relevance and keeps users engaged on the website longer. For example, linking a blog post about “home health care services” to a service page detailing in-home care offerings strengthens keyword associations.

Schema markup provides additional context to search engines, helping pages appear in rich snippets. Adding structured data for services, reviews, and business details increases search visibility and click-through rates.

Keywords are still fundamental in SEO, but their usage has evolved. To rank effectively in 2024, website owners must focus on keyword relevance, strategic placement, and high-quality content. Businesses can improve their search engine rankings and drive more organic traffic by utilizing keyword research tools, structuring content logically, and avoiding common mistakes. With a strong keyword strategy, SEO success is within reach.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

 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.

 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 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-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.

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.

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.

If you’re running an e-commerce website, then you’ve got competition. At last count, there were more than 20 million e-commerce sites in operation around the globe. Every one of those websites has the same goal – stand out, attract traffic and pick up conversions in the process.

With millions of sites crowding the online picture, it’s never been more important to pursue best e-commerce practices when developing and marketing a website. That’s what we’re going to go over, along with some tips to help Google find and rank your e-commerce site.

We’re going to be talking about e-commerce websites here, so let’s get the definition straight. Fortunately, it’s an easy concept to understand. E-commerce sites are those focused on selling a product or service to clients (other businesses or consumers), using a set of tools that make the process as simple and efficient as possible.

An e-commerce website should provide the following functionality:

• Allow users to select and add products to their shopping cart.
• Securely process orders and payments.
• Manage shipping and provide shipping details to the user.
• Provide customer service to users.

There are additional functions that e-commerce sites can perform. For example, an e-commerce site may allow people to create a profile, save previous order details for one-click ordering or let buyers redeem discount codes.

In general, though, if your website sells a product or service, and it allows users to do this using a shopping cart and payment portal – you’ve got an e-commerce site.

Now that we’ve defined e-commerce, what does an effective e-commerce site look like? It looks like one built on WordPress. Anything else will hold your site back.

There are tons of website creation platforms out there for business owners. Pretty much all of them make money by convincing business owners to use their platform. That means they’ll make big proclamations about how SEO “friendly” their site is or how easy it is to get started.

Here’s the problem: Almost every single site creation platform out there is poorly optimized for Google-centric SEO. If you’re using Shopify, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace or any other popular site creation platform, your site is already facing serious SEO headwinds.

WordPress sites now blanket more than a third of the internet, and it’s the leading platform for e-commerce websites, too. Because WordPress is so ubiquitous, Google works hard to understand how WordPress websites are built and designed. Google’s familiarity with WordPress gives WordPress sites a major crawling and indexing advantage, which means better overall ranking potential.

In summary, Google prefers WordPress sites because it can understand them better. If you’re using any other platform, you’re making it that much harder for Google to figure out what your business does and what it sells.

So search engines understand and rank WordPress websites better. So what? Adwords work with Wix or Shopify sites and you can get traffic that way.

It’s true that Adwords can pull additional traffic toward sites built in most platforms, but you’re paying for that traffic. And if your site is operating in a competitive space with competitive keywords to fight for, your ad costs can be eye-popping. We’re talking thousands of dollars every month to sustain traffic flow to your site. Even worse, your pay-per-click (PPC) expenses can, and likely will, change from month to month depending on how your ads do. It’s difficult to budget for this.

That’s why digital marketing professionals prioritize organic search traffic for their clients.

Organic traffic is traffic that arrives to your site without clicking an ad. You don’t pay to attract them, in other words. Organic listings sit under the paid spots on Google’s SERPs, and top organic listings occupy some of the most valuable digital real estate on the web.

In practice, generating organic traffic means building and maintaining a website according to best SEO practices. Producing strong content and maximizing page upload speeds are two examples.

Here’s why you want organic traffic to be at the forefront of your digital marketing strategy:

• Again, it’s free – Organic traffic is free traffic. Sure, you have to spend time on producing content and optimizing your site, or pay someone to do that. However, once you’re ranking well, you don’t have to spend extra for the traffic that clicks on one of your links featured on a Google SERP. If your excellent ranking earns you an extra 10,000 visits a month, you’ll pay the same as if you were getting only an extra 10 visits a month. That’s a big difference compared to PPC and Adwords campaigns.
  
  
• It’s also durable – The great thing about organic listings is that once you’re in a top spot, you’re in a top spot as long as you maintain your SEO efforts. You don’t have to worry about other sites outcompeting you for valuable keyword phrases. You don’t have to worry about budget-tightening shutting off your traffic.
  
  Organic listings are far more durable than ad-fueled SEO for these reasons, so even if your business does go through a downturn, you can still lean on your organic traffic.
  
  
• It builds credibility – We’ve all been using search engines long enough to know the drill. Google and others place the paid spots first and the organic listings next. Knowing this, a lot of users skip right past the paid spots and go straight to the organic listings. Why?
  
  People know that just because a company can pay for a top spot, that doesn’t mean that company deserves that top spot. But a business that’s landed a top organic listing? People know that there’s a good reason for that, and that means a credibility bonus.

Organic traffic is the best kind of traffic, then, but how can your e-commerce site earn more of it? By adopting the same digital marketing and SEO tactics that work for most other websites. Of course, there’s no such thing as a simple digital marketing playbook, but if you’re trying to make an immediate impact on your site’s traffic, then these four strategies will improve your chances:

1. Organize your category, subcategory and product pages into a directory format on your home page –
   When designing an e-commerce site, the first thing to do is visualize your product and service offerings as a hierarchy. In other words, can you group your products or services into certain categories? For example, an apparel company may categorize their products into “winter wear” and “summer wear” categories. A plumber may categorize their services into residential and commercial buckets. Each of these categories gets its own page that you’re linking to from a directory-like main page.
   
   Ideally, under each of these categories you would have several subcategories that you can also link to, so you’re essentially building a hierarchy here. For instance, that apparel company may have “winter jackets” and “winter shoes” as subcategories under the “winter wear” category. That plumber could list “commercial plumbing installation” and “commercial plumbing inspections” as subcategories under the top commercial services category.
   
   You can then build you product pages off of the subcategory pages, or off the main category pages if you’re only going one layer deep with your hierarchy.
   
   Why this directory-like and hierarchical format? First, this approach is easy for users to understand and it gets them to where they want to go quickly. Second, this approach makes it much easier for Google to understand how your website is organized. If Google understands your website, it will be more likely to rank it.
   
   
2. Ensure there is keyword-rich content on each of these pages –
   At every level of your hierarchy, whether it’s a category, subcategory or product page, there should be keyword-rich content there to greet the user. The more content, the better, as long as it’s written well and not duplicated across multiple pages. Google hates duplicated content.
   
   If your content is of good quality and if it’s keyword-rich, this will also provide Google with important clues about what your site is about. Even better, if the content on your category, subcategory and product pages is good enough, Google may rank those pages for relevant queries.
   
   Back to the apparel company example. If the content on its “winter wear” category page is strong enough, then when users search for “winter wear” on Google, they may see that category page come up instead of the company’s home page. You’re getting the user exactly where they’re most likely to make a purchase.
   
   
3. Build nav menus for both the user and Google –
   Google uses your navigation menus as another hint as to what your website offers. However, what Google wants to see in your nav and what users want to see in your nav may be two different things. So, why not both? Give users their product menu and Google something else.
   
   There’s no harm in creating a secondary nav on your site’s pages, one that links to the content on your website. Now, users may not care about this menu – they’re likely here for the products, after all – but Google will find this second nav menu and use it to better crawl and index your website. It’s essential that Google’s spiders don’t get “trapped” while crawling through your site. Offering those spiders a navigational path to your site’s content ensures those pages are discovered and reinforcing your content signals to Google.
   
   
4. Add alt text to your images to land on Google’s image search –
   When you add images to your website, you can easily change the file’s name and put some information in about the image. It only takes a few minutes, and it’s worth it.
   
   That’s because Google uses that information, the alt text, to understand what the image is about. Remember, Google’s spiders don’t have eyes. They don’t process images visually like we do – at least not yet. They need that alt text to make sense of an image.
   
   And if you do add in alt text, Google may feature that image on its image search, which provides another avenue for organic traffic to reach your site.
   
   
5. Broken links are unacceptable, so redirect or promote a similar product instead – Broken links will put a big dent in your company’s trustworthiness. If potential customers hit a dead end on your website, they may wonder about your company’s attention to detail or professionalism. A lot of these broken links are due to product pages that are no longer relevant, because the product is no longer offered.
   
   You don’t want broken links hanging out there, though, so tie up those dead ends with at least a 301 redirect. Even better, if you have a product page for a product no longer available, state that on the intact product page and link to a similar product offering. That way, you avoid issues with dead links and you send that user over to a product they’re likely to be interested in. It keeps the conversion funnel going.
   
   
6. Minimize user choice with your product listings – The more choices you give a customer, the harder it will be for them to make a choice. The psychological research into this behavior is conclusive.
   
   If you want to prevent users from getting overwhelmed, confused and therefore hesitant about making a purchase, don’t hit them with too many choices. At each level of your site’s hierarchy, users shouldn’t have more than three or four choices on how to proceed.
   
   
7. If you haven’t developed a strategy for picking up customer reviews, do that now – Google is putting increasing emphasis on customer reviews because users really want to see those. More than 90 percent of online shoppers will check reviews before making a purchase, so users want them. Google considers recent customer reviews a good sign for freshness and credibility, so search engines want them too.
   
   That means your e-commerce website needs a way to pick up customer reviews. There are strategies here, including tools that can be used to request reviews from users. You could also incentivize users into leaving a review, such as offering a future discount.
   
   However you plan on doing it, you need to plan on doing it.

There are many more things you can do to your e-commerce website to improve its ability to pull in traffic and convert. This list is a good start, though, that every business owner should aim for if they’re also aiming for online success.

Each month I sit down to pick topics that are most relevant to the Digital Marketing landscape. Or, I am asked questions from clients that really can be a strong class topic. That is exactly what happened here. I had two different clients ask us to help them understand an SEO report. 

So out of that, this topic was born.

The reality is I used at least 2 and sometimes as high as 4 types of reporting daily for websites. The elephant of the room is Google Analytics and I decided to talk through the parts of it that I use.

Really the information in GA is outstanding and helps you understand how to make better decisions on your website if you know how to interpret the data. When you look at analytics it helps you understand active pages, demographics, and the customer journey.

Now, long-ago Google Removed Keywords from those reports, because as I’ve come to understand now, you cannot provide a good customer experience if we are writing on just a keyword. Rather you should be topic-centered. This is a theme you will find in most of our classes and blogs. However, I still want to know what keywords my website is drawing so I can make sure that I am meeting the needs and that the website is being used as I intended.

If I look at Vertical Web in total, there are four distinct topics and audiences I wish to draw with it.  Truly it all comes down to small business owners that need digital marketing services. But I have the web hosting component, the web design component and the SEO, including local SEO or digital marketing component. And then I have our SEO classes that are live and on-demand. I have to account for each audience and client need on this website so the Keyword data helps me to understand what we’ve done well and what needs more attention to keep this all in balance. So keywords are important to help pick topics but not writing pages to the keyword.

The second type of SEO report we use here is SEM Rush which allows us to pull through multiple different aspects of Google, including Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google Business profiles.  This is also the report we give clients to see their overall progress for the most part. 

In addition, we encourage clients to look back at the previous year for their data rather than the previous month. The reason behind that is that all businesses are cyclical in nature. Retail may do more during Christmas and Back to School than it does 4th of July or St. Patrick’s Day unless you’re an Irish Pub.

Looking at the aggregated data helps clients understand the progress that has been made on the website. Although some SEO companies talk about how many terms they have in the top 10, we often find that what is missing in that analysis is are they money terms. If I look at Vertical Web, we have several thousand words in the top 10 and do 1.5 Million impressions per month through organic traffic. But, we need to look at how many of them have the probability to create a conversion. For us the page that talks about how to set up DNS for a Square Space domain, something we put up for a registration customer, does not really net us anything. So although it garners a lot of terms for use and that page ranks on well over 300 variants, it does not put one dollar in our company. Conversely, a term like Houston SEO or Web Design Houston is far more advantageous for us. Therefore, we need to nurture those terms. So don’t buy the line that your SEO company is doing anything for you just because you have a list of terms. Review those terms and make sure those terms support the goals of your business.

The next tool we use, and we’ve seen reports is Ahrefs. I often see people ask which one is better SEMRush vs Ahrefs. And to me, it’s like asking which is better water or food. You need both to sustain yourself. And I think the answer here is the same. AHrefs, does a far better job at reporting the backlink profile. Although we track keywords and positions in it, I don’t think it gives as nice of a report for the clients. So, therefore, to check link profiles we use this vs. SEMRush which provides a much better overall comprehensive reporting package IMO.  Maybe it’s better to say it this way, Ahrefs provides the webmaster with better tools whereas SEM Rush accounts for both the webmaster and the client.  But we still need both.

Last but not least we use this frequently on clients whereas it gives an interpretation of the raw data without interference or extrapolation. Google Analytics often extrapolates the data and throws out the things it thinks is irrelevant. I find this useful in analysis because we can take each client individually and track each page visit and the path they took through the website. The data says with the user this way and doesn’t get put in different places.

Overall it can give clients a day-to-day vision of their website, and what their potential clients thought was important that day. It allows the spotting of trends easier for sure. And it allows making a better overall view of the website without having to plod through the different google screens.

We still have the old log parsing software like Webalizer, but they often don’t tell a true story.

The bottom line is learning to understand the SEO report is a way to understand what your SEO service is doing for you. It also gives you the vision to make better decisions about your website and how to better market it.

Digital marketing is a huge field, encompassing several fields of study and changing all the time. And like with any technically-heavy field, digital marketing comes with its own lingo that’s used among industry members. Here we’ll start delving into those terms and what they mean to digital marketing professionals. That way, when someone starts spitting out SEO slang, you’ll know what they’re talking about.

Here’s the terms covered in the A-D Videos Above

 On a website, anything above the fold is sitting high enough on a page that you don’t need to scroll down to see it. This is what your site’s visitors are going to see first, so anything that’s important to that page’s purpose (making a sale, getting a visitor’s contact information, etc.) should be above the fold.

The term is derived from newspapers (remember those?), because when a newspaper is folded in half, you can only see the most important headlines and content up top.

Every algorithm is a set of mathematical rules that a computer must follow to solve a particular problem. For digital marketing experts, there is only one algorithm that matters – Google’s search algorithm.

Its search algorithm is what Google uses to determine where to rank a particular page or site. It includes hundreds of factors, all weighted differently to prioritize important site elements. For example, quality backlinks and quality content are major factors in Google’s search algorithm, so they are weighed heavily relative to less important factors.

An Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) is a page served up to mobile devices, and specific AMPs can be built for a variety of mobile devices. The idea behind AMPs is that they’re better optimized for mobile devices and so they load faster. However, it’s important to serve the same content for your desktop users and AMPs, to avoid issues with multiple page versions.

AMPs are not the same thing as pages that use responsive design. Such pages alter their layout as the size of the browser window changes, while AMPs do not.

When seo experts talk analytics, they’re usually referring to Google Analytics, though there are other analytics-based plugins that can serve the same purpose.

With analytics, site owners can monitor the amount of traffic their site is seeing and where that traffic is going. This information can be used to improve underperforming parts of the site. 

 Authority is a big deal to Google, and you can think of it as an analogue to trust in the digital marketing world. Anything with authority, whether it’s your domain, your brand or the author who puts your content together, will gets a ranking boost from Google. That’s because Google considers expert voices to be more relevant to users searching for answers allied to that expert’s field.

 Producing expert content under a particular author’s name is one way to build that author’s authority and give them a ranking advantage when they produce additional content.

 Anchor text are the words used in a clickable link on one of your pages. On a page about winter clothing, for example, there may be a link to page that has winter hats for sale. The text used in this link could be “winter hats” for example, and that would be anchor text for that link.

Anchor text is most relevant for internal linking purposes, and it can be used to establish relevant connections between pages on your site. Ideally, your anchor text will be short and highly relevant to the target page without overdoing it with keywords loading.

Backlinks are a vital element of SEO and one of the most heavily weighed factors in Google’s search algorithm.

Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your site. You can think of them as endorsements for your own site, so every backlink boosts a site’s authority and establishes relevance in its industry. Backlinks vary greatly in their influence. Backlinks from established authorities (chambers of commerce, media agencies, major brands in your industry, etc.) have more positive influence on your site’s SEO.

 Black hat SEO is the term given to SEO tactics designed to exploit aspects of Google’s search algorithm. Leveraging private blog networks for linking purposes is one example. Buying links is another. Keyword stuffing is yet another. Cloaking (serving one version of a page to a human user and another to a crawlbot) is another black hat strategy.

These tactics occasionally win immediate results for a website, but they eventually cause more harm than good. It’s possible to get a site blacklisted for good with extensie black hat SEO usage.

A page’s bounce rate refers to the proportion of site visitors that immediately leave a page upon loading and return to Google. A high bounce rate is a sign that there’s something wrong with a page. It could be a loading speed issue, a navigation issue or a content quality issue – but if a high number of visitors are bouncing off a page, Google assumes something’s wrong.

If breadcrumbs are enabled, every page will have a small navigation aid that helps users know where they are relative to the rest of the site. As users navigate deeper into the site, breadcrumbs show them where they’ve been and allow them to easily jump to a higher domain level.

Google uses a crawlers to discover, explore and analyze new web pages as they are published online. During a crawl, the spider scans any page it can and follows any links on that page. This process allows Google to understand the site’s navigation, structure and content.

It’s extremely important that Google be able to efficiently crawl your website, as this is the only way to get indexed and be considered for ranking purposes.

A 404 error is the universal error for a page that can’t be found. You’ll usually see this in the form of an error message, though some sites have their own custom 404 pages for a better user experience.

Ideally, your site will be free of 404 errors. Using simple 301 redirects can prevent users from seeing 404 errors and bouncing off your site as a result.

Caching is an older online concept, though it’s still relevant to an extent. When a user arrives at a website, some of that site’s data is stored on the user’s end. When that user returns to the site, the site loads much faster as the browser can pull from the cached data instead of making a ton of content requests to the server.

Caching can als be handled through content delivery networks (CDNs). CDNs are geographically networked servers that contain cached data for a website. When a user visits the site, cached data from the nearest CDN is pulled, optimizing loading speed and responsiveness.

Citations are references to your company’s name, address and phone number. Citations are found in a variety of locations online, such as industry directories and chamber of commerce sites. It is critical that your company’s citations are accurate, as Google uses them to verify the business’s information. If there are discrepancies, Google may report inaccurate information or ding your site’s ranking.

A CMS allows for easy creation and modification of content on a website. WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS, but there are others like Joomla and Hubspot.

With a CMS, it’s far easier for site owners to build pages, link them and add content to them without delving into the site’s code.

Comment spam refers to comments placed on blogs, forums and other pages to direct traffic back to the spammer’s website. Comment spam frequently includes backlinks to help with this process, and it’s considered a black hat SEO approach to develop a site’s ranking profile. It’s also potentially harmful for site that’s being spammed, as these low quality backlinks reflect poorly on its link profile.

There are spambot filters, many available for WordPress, designed to block spammers from posting. Site owners can also sandbox their pages to intercept spam before it’s published.

Every page has a conversion purpose. A product page attempts to convert visitors into buyers. An informational page may convert visitors by getting them to submit their e-mail address.

Generating conversions are the point of a business website, and how well you site converts (it’s conversion rate) depends on a lot of factors. The quality of the site’s navigation and content, for example, will influence a visitor’s behavior. If your site is designed and written well, it will convert better.

Google’s Core Vitals are key performance metrics that Google uses as a significant ranking signal. The Core Vitals were established in Summer 2021 and include a page’s loading speed, responsiveness and visual stability.

Optimizing a site’s Core Vitals will improve its position on search engine results pages (SERPs) and the user experience (UX). As Google considers UX to be of utmost importance, it is critical for site owners to consider their Core Vitals.

A website’s crawl budget determines how many and what pages a Google spider will crawl when it arrives at a website. Site owners can define their crawl budget to an extent, but other factors also play in. Those factors include a site’s loading speed and update frequency

 When one of Google’s crawl bots run into problems while scanning a site, they will throw a crawl error. This error can affect a particular page or an entire website, and they’re usually the result of server communication problems or 404 errors. Crawl errors should be fixed as soon as possible, as Google will not index a site that’s producing them.

Direct traffic refers to any traffic that arrives to a site without going through Google first. If someone arrives at site by punching in that site’s URL into the browser’s address bar, that’s direct traffic. If someone arrives at a site via a link (like in an e-mail), that’s also direct traffic.

If a website receives a lot of direct traffic, Google will boost that site’s authority. Google assumes that significant direct traffic means a site is popular.

A website’s domain name is like its online address. Search engine users type a site’s domain name in to locate a site, so it should be easy to remember. Most websites include plenty of subdomains under the top level domain, and these subdomains are like branches off of a tree (the tree itself would be the top level domain).

Domain extensions (.com, .net, .org) are placed at the end of a domain name and were once intended to categorize websites by type. There are hundreds of domain extensions available, including extensions with country codes that allow site owners to target visitors in other countries. 

Domain Authority (DA) is a single, all-encompassing metric that measures how likely a website will rank well on Google’s SERPs. It’s represented using a number from 0 to 100, and though it’s not an official Google metric or ranking signal, it is inspired by Google’s PageRank algorithm.

DA can be monitored using an online DA checker through Moz, SEMRush and other digital marketing authorities. The most effective way to boost DA is to secure high quality backlinks, but DA is not equally important for every type of website. A local doctor or CPA, for example, can rank with a lower DA because their market may be less competitive. A digital marketing firm, though, will need a higher DA to rank because the field is highly competitive online.

Errors Errors everywhere and not a person to help.  We see errors everyday. Even sometimes we miss things. But what are critical mistakes that hamper you digital marketing success.

We will start our list of mistakes at the most fundamental genesis. Two of the first decisions a person makes when they decide to start a website are where to host it and how to build it. Often this is the biggest mistake we see, is picking wrong based on your goals.

If you wish to have a website that ranks in Google well. If you want a web hosting company that is geared toward Google success your choices are very limited.  The website needs to be built in WordPress. Now granted there are two ways to approach this, .com and .org. WordPress.com is a platform and should be avoided in our opinion. The right and clear path for a website’s success is WordPress.org.

There are a few reasons for it. First off you can choose where your website is hosted which is an extremely relevant point. This is a very important decision that will impact your website. A web host that has downtime is a problem. A web host that has slow or out-of-date servers and a throttled pipe is also a problem. Additionally, there are platform-based web hosts and they too are issues where you do not have the control over your own website or even if you can have a .htaccess file, a necessary tool in the SEO toolbox.

I am often asked why I started a web hosting company and first and foremost, we needed to host our sites in a manner that best-supported search engines. At the time the only way we could meet the need was to bring hosting in-house. So that is what we did and ended up with a relatively large hosting company.  Google finally came around to my way of thinking which was to include the core vitals as part of the algorithm.

The next thing is how the little things being off can impact your website. Keyword research is paramount to having successful on-site seo success.  The proper implementation of keywords though a page from the title tag to the Headline tags, and the navigation are supremely important signals that if don’t send them you are missing an opportunity. Having on-site SEO dialed in is an easy win and will more often than not move your website from page 2+ to possibly the first page easily. 

There are two sets of issues that emanate from backlinks. One is totally ignoring them or two trying to game them.

New website owners especially, often think put up 5 pages and boom people will find me. Well, the days of if you build it they will come is in the rearview mirror. The reality is that you need to be an authority. You need to be fresh and you need to be a thought leader.

If you are an entrepreneur, this should not be a high bar. After all, if you are bold enough to start out on your own, leadership should not be hard for you.  As a thought leader you should be putting out high-quality contact and in return, you will find people linking to your site creating the link equity needed.

Now there are SEOs that feel link manipulation is the way to go meaning, buying links, PBNs that are hard to track. Spun content. All kinds of schemes that are highly against Google Guidelines. Link manipulation is by far one of the worst errors that can be discussed. Usually, the offenders are egregious in their execution. If you build a quality site, are involved in your community and are a professional organization, more than likely good quality links will come.

So this is a fancy term but what it means for this exercise is things like your domain name and your social media properties.

In the 25 years since I’ve been working in this industry, I’ve seen so many unfortunate business owners come to us to help solve IP issues. They rang from Domains with wrong contact issues, divorce problems and even death.

Understanding the ins and outs of owning a domain are extremely important. But here is the highlight reel.

Know who owns your domain. There is a Registrant, who is ultimate and there is an Admin contact. Billing and Tech no longer matter when it comes to resolving domain issues.

There is a place for domain owners name and the domain corporate owner name. Corporations have rights so make sure you have both there, especially if you are a partnership or corporation. Just because someone dies does not mean the next of kin takes the domain over.  Make sure if you have a highly sellable domain, its named in your will. Makes sure if you have a domain its not held as part of community property so it doesn’t get caught in the crossfire. We have had to have judge’s order spouses to allow the update of a domain so as to not damage the wife’s business. And most of all make sure you keep a valid email address on your domain and make sure you know when it expires.  We recommend all domains always be kept with at least 5 years remaining on them.

As for social media properties, we feel a coordinated strategy is needed. First never just let your SEO Company or Social Medial company seize control and cut you out. Make sure you retain control at all times. Should you not, you could easily lose that property, just like you could lose  your domain.

This is the second part of our SEO for Beginners podcast. Because this section is vital for the success of any website when it comes to Google, I felt it best to put this section together all on its own.

In SEO for Beginners Part I.  I touched on some of the external decisions you need to make when creating a website that will rank for Google. We spent some time on picking web hosting. I built Vertical Web’s Hosting Infrastructure specifically to accommodate Google. And I did it long before Google even knew it needed to be addressed.

We also talked about choosing the right platform. From my standpoint, WordPress is the only correct solution. I know it sounds a little narrow-minded but, singularly focused with Google as the target, it really is the most viable to do what is needed. And trust me there is a lot needed.

When I look back over the 20 years we have been building websites and ranking websites, there are some fundamental things that have always been present. Sometimes they take a more center stage focus within the Google Algorithm, and other times, they take a backseat. But having career ranking websites, I have found we have to make very little overhauls if you get the fundamental foundations right. I have sites that we have been responsible for the SEO, and although we need to modernize the appearance, the basic foundational issues are always correct.

So what do I mean by fundamentals?  They have become affectionately known as Technical SEO. And as I continue to weigh on-site vs. off-site SEO, I continue to find websites that have strong link profiles and terrible on-site SEO. It is really the opposite of a few years ago because everyone was so singularly focused on links, they took their eye off the on-site part of the process. So today’s podcast starts to look at exactly what this all means and how doing it right on day one saves you money and time, and gains you far more traction. And if you have an existing site, why your site must be brought into alignment.

So although I skipped picking Keywords, and will do this in a different podcast, I had to talk about how you set your website up.

Google looks for signals, which are ranking variables that clue Google into what a page or a website is about. There is a factor of commonality and certain words that trigger Google that helps Google discern user intent. So we must understand those triggers so we can build pages for the outcomes we want.

So the question then should be what are those triggers and how should my website and then my web page address them? They are structure, meaning, how is my website outlined and how is it put together, using the navigation as the roadmap. How am I utilizing headings to make them work to signal Google what the page is about? How do I use anchor text to create signals?

In addition, all these signals will allow Google to produce the right search result for each query. And, best of all, if this is done right the user will be directed to the right page on your website, rather than be forced to land and then figure out where they are supposed to go. If you don’t afford your users this, what will happen is they will simply bounce back to Google. The end user expects to land in the right spot, so this is another reason the outline of the site must be set up correctly.

When these items are put together correctly on a page, Google gets a clear picture of your website and therefore places it where they think it should be in their search result. By handling all these principles properly, your site will more than likely make it into the top 20 with very little effort, depending on how competitive the keyword is. And, once the site is placed, you will be able to fine tune it into the first page.

I encourage everyone that wants to have a ranking website to create a mind map of that site. The reason to start there is twofold. First, by diagramming your website you will be able to visualize how the site should be constructed. There are several types of pages that live on a website and depending on where that page falls in the mind map is how that page is constructed. Is it a topic page? Is it an article that supports the topic? Or is it a blog page?

Each of those page types has different attributes, and in fact, we will also be doing a class the different types of pages.

But not to lose sight of what we are talking about, your mind map should break out an outline of your website. The top-level categories will be topics pages. The article pages may be subtopics or simply stand alone articles. And lastly, although most important in 2022, your blog post. And if your site is as complex as some of them, the mind map helps make sure all the pages get written and integrated properly. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but if this is all set up correctly, it will sustain you for years, and other than adding a new UX/UI element, you are well structured to go the long haul.

It is important to understand your competitor and the websites you compete with to hold a top spot on a keyword. Tools like SEO Minion help you quickly analyze your competitors. You will need to average the total number of words on the page, as well as look to see how many headings they have.  This helps us to understand the attributes of what Google sees as a good page.

There has been a lot of blather on related keywords, but really it boils down to what does Google think your page is about and how can you best reinforce that. In most cases the word counts are well over 1500 words for a quality page ranking on the first page of Google. Even as I type this I’m only at 1071 words, and I will need to expand past this to even have a chance of this page ranking. But the nut shell is you are going to have to evaluate your competition to see exactly what you are needing. If you are way short, chances are you will not rank or get penalized for thin content. Neither of which are beneficial based on goals and effort.

The other delimiter is to make sure you know what category your website and your page belong in, and make sure you stay in that page. There are websites that will help you determine what your category is, and once you do, you need to consistently stay in that category with your content. So as an SEO company I cannot just wake up and decide to write an article on being and MSP. That page would not be deemed relevant and would not help move the ball forward.

So this is probably the biggest mistake I see business owners make. They do not use the H1, H2 tags properly. And poor use of these segments dramatically hurts your rankings. So if you’re a plumber, you need to say something about plumber and location in your H1 tag and only have one of these items. The laser focus on these is imperative for the website to rank properly. Those H tags also have to be clear, concise, and support the text of the page. If they do not, your efforts are not going to work right.

In April we will cover how to write content for each of the page types outlined in this article to complete the SEO for Beginners Series.

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