Browsing Tag

Google Ranking

Three Reasons Why Ranking Well On Google Is Important

Posted on July 5, 2018

You don’t have to be a search engine optimization expert to understand the importance of using quality SEO practices.

The name of the game is all about getting your website high in Google’s ranking system and propelling your site onto the first-page of the SERP. Having a first-page ranking is absolutely essential as the vast majority of people never look past the first-page results.

75% of users never get past first page search results #Google #FirstPage #SEO Click To Tweet

In the digital world, you want to develop a digital marketing strategy that drives leads to your website or brick-and-mortar store. In order to do that, however, you need to rank well on Google. Don’t worry, though, you have my help – an expert digital marketing consultant – to get you there.

In today’s post, we’re looking at why exactly why ranking in Google is so important.

1. Visibility

It’s no secret that Google is widely popular. In fact, it is the No. 1 search engine in the U.S., handling over 12 billion searches per month. And this isn’t just a couple thousand or even hundreds of thousands of users. We’re talking nearly 1.17 billion unique individuals that use Google every month.

If you think that is impressive, just wait. Google generates 63.5% of all core search queries in the United States. For mobile search, Google dominates with 93% market share. This is extremely important as 93% of all buying decisions start with an online search.

What does that all mean? Billions of people are using their mobile devices to conduct Google searches for items, products, or services they would like to purchase.

If your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, isn’t optimized for voice search, and/or isn’t properly optimized through other standard SEO practices, your ranking will tank. Don’t let diminishing visibility make you lose out on potential customers.

2. Indexing

In a nutshell, the higher page ranking you have in Google, the faster your content is going to get indexed.

What exactly does that mean? Well, indexing is when Google collects, analyzes, and stores data so that it can pull up accurate information at a rapid pace when a relevant topic is searched for in Google Search.

Indexing isn’t only limited to Google. For instance, Bing also works in a similar manner. Search engines release little bots called web crawlers. In Google’s instance, their web crawling bots are called “spiders”. These spiders do the brunt of the collecting, analyzing, and storing of new pages so that they can be added into the Google Index.

Naturally, if you are ranked higher with Google, these little critters will be able to index your business site more quickly than if you had a lower rank. Faster indexing allows searchers to find your web page faster.

As they say in the world of business – “Time is money.”

3. Authority and Credibility

This one is a big one. If done right, your high Google ranking can establish you as a trusted source of information, products, or services. If you are considered a trusted source, it is more likely that you will appear on the first SERP.

Search engines evaluate a ton of factors in order to determine whether or not your web page can be considered legitimate:

Out-links – Links that are present in your content that link out to credible sources. But if it leads back to a website that is no longer relevant or simply outdated, your ranking can take a hit.
In-links (a.k.a. backlinks) – These links are from credible sources that are linking to your web page. This is one of the most – if not the most – effective ways of raising your rank. It goes without saying, the more credible and trustworthy the site, the better your ranking will be.
Traffic – In essence, the more traffic you attract, the more relevant you are to people searching for content in your niche.
Error-free site – Clean up all of those missing links and images, spelling errors, and 404 errors.
User-friendly navigation – Ensure that your visitors can easily navigate through your website to get to the information they are seeking. Complicated pathing in a website can cause your visitors to leave, increasing your bounce rate and lowering your ranking since the search engine will recognize that your site wasn’t a good match for their search inquiry.
XML sitemap – On the other side of the spectrum, your site needs to be easy for spiders to traverse. XML sitemaps act like a roadmap for web crawlers that leads them through your site, either by a text-based list of pages contained throughout your website or a .xml file.

While these aren’t the end-all-be-all factors that contribute to a higher ranking in Google, they are strong factors that can get you started.

Of course, if you need more in-depth assistance setting up your website to rank high with Google, all you need to do is contact a digital marketing consultant like me, Mauricio Pina, at (956) 566-4998 today.

Local SEO: Getting Down to Local Business

Posted on June 29, 2018

Yes…I know I harp a lot about how big SEO is. But it really does bear repeating. There are a plenty of meaningful SEO tactics and strategies that one can be used to improve your website’s Google ranking.

But I know what you’re thinking. “Moe, I’m a small business owner. How can I compete when my market is dominated by a national chain?”

Easy. Local search engine optimization.

Leave it to an expert digital marketing consultant like me, Mauricio Pina, to give you a little bit of insight on Local SEO and how it can improve your lead generation and business.

What is Local SEO?

SEO can encompass a lot of different things. But in this instance, local SEO deals specifically with search engine tactics that focus on helping you reach customers based on location.

Sounds simple, right? While it’s an easy concept to understand, it’s a little harder to put in practice. When implemented correctly, however, it can help your small business outrank larger competitors. Plus, with the Internet going through a mobile revolution, it is a tactic you are going to want to master.

How does Local SEO work?

Millions of potential customers are combing through the Internet at any given moment, searching for that perfect product, service, restaurant, etc.

This is where local SEO comes in.

Local SEO is comprised of several components that allow you to be found online when customers are searching in your area or city. Some of the most important steps to improve your local SEO include:

1. Web Localization – When it comes to localizing your web page, you are going to want to pepper in your city, county, or region name naturally throughout your site. You don’t have to saturate your site with said information because if Google detects that you are trying to exploit its algorithm, it could penalize you.
  Rather, sprinkle it throughout your content and blogs. You can also use a footer on your site to include your local information (address, phone number, hours of operation, etc.).
2. Citation Building – Your business – whether it is a brick-and-mortar shop or e-business- needs to be featured in online business directories and citation sites. This helps your local SEO two-fold:
  1. Helps customers find your business.
  2. Having your business on citation sites and online business directories improves your search rankings.
3. Acquiring Quality Backlinks – Backlinks from authoritative sites like local newspapers, business associations, bloggers, and citations help build your site’s credibility, helping search engines acknowledge your website as a trusted page full of quality information.
4. Managing Your Reviews and Ratings – Honest ratings and reviews are valuable for numerous reasons. They give potential customers a glimpse of how well of a service or product you provide. They also signal to search engines that the site and product/service you provide are both useful and trustworthy. Important factors about reviews and ratings that help improve your rankings include:
  1. The number of reviews you’ve received.
  2. The general quality of the reviews and ratings.
  3. The authority that the review or rating sites carry.
5. Google My Business Listings – This is a key step in improving your website’s visibility – especially with Google. Google My Business helps you display important business information on Local Search, Google +, and Maps. Take ownership of these online directories right away.
Does your business need a Local SEO rework? Contact the digital consultant extraordinaire, Mauricio Pina, to find out more.

Properly implementing Local SEO strategies can help you to equalize the market, giving your business the ability to compete with larger competitors. When done right, Local SEO optimization can net you a lot of revenue for your business.

If you need help, enlist the aid of a digital marketing consultant like me to help build your website’s presence. Contact me today at (956) 566-4998 to learn more about how I can help you increase your profit.

Google Ranking SEO

5 Reasons Your WebSite Is Not Ranking

Posted on June 6, 2018

As a business owner, it’s not only important for you to have a website, but to have it ranking high on Google as well (preferably on the first page). If you’re wondering why, then consider this.

Studies show that 90% of people never go beyond the first page of Google’s search results, and the first 10 positions account for 94% of all clicks. Suffice to say that a first page ranking on Google can bring in lots of visitors and potential sales.

But there are a number of obstacles that can get in the way of your website earning that valuable high ranking. As a digital marketing consultant, I’ve seen my fair share of SEO, website design, and digital marketing issues that can greatly affect ranking – and the opportunities it brings.

If you’re wondering why your site is not ranking well on Google, then the following information is precisely what you need to know.

Why Your Site Might Not Be Ranking

1. It’s a new website.

If you aren’t too familiar with the digital world, it can be easy to expect that your brand new website will be at the top of every search engine as soon as you launch. But, unfortunately, that’s not the way things work.

There is plenty of work that needs to get done including back-end SEO, link building, content building, and more. All of this takes time to implement and then Google might recognize your site and start moving you up the ranking.

Again, this all takes time and it can be anywhere from a few months to a year before you see some noticeable results.

1. Digital competition can be fierce.

As mentioned before, there’s plenty of back-end work that goes into developing your website and building up your reputation. One of those important factors is going to be your targeted keywords. These are the words you want your business’s website to be known for (e.g. dentist, doctor, restaurant, jewelry, etc.); essentially the product or services that you offer.

Depending on the level of competition on your keyword, getting your ranking up is going to require some SEO expertise, plenty of hard work, and time. Don’t expect to catch up to your competitors in only a few short months. If they are well recognized, it’s going to be a challenge to overcome them.

That’s why when you are developing your SEO strategy, you need to do plenty of research on your targeted keywords to get a solid understanding of where you stand and what you will need to do. Tools like Moz can help you get a better view of the road ahead.

1. Your content just isn’t up to par.

The content on your website plays a major role in Google’s indexing process and ranking standards. Content also affects your SEO strategy, the value of your site to visitors, and backlinking validation (when another site shares your content).

It’s important to recognize that content issues is a multi-faceted problem.

For starters, you need to have high-quality content on your website. Content comes in many different shapes and forms including images, video, and text. If you don’t have much on your site, then Google isn’t going to be able to rank you at all, but having a bunch of nonsensical, keyword stuffed pages isn’t going to help either. Quality is key here, and content should:

1. - Be helpful to your audience
  - Be written in a way that includes targeted keywords while meeting customer needs
  - Be shareable
  - Feature images
  - Be shared on your social profiles

The next thing to consider when it comes to your content is optimization. Page headings, image file names, alt-text, internal and external links, markups, URL structures, and overall design all need to be factored in. Perfecting these aspects of your content will definitely help with ranking.

1. You are under negative SEO attack!

While this might be a little more rare, it’s important to accept that the world wide web can be a dangerous place with plenty of competitors and outright malicious hackers willing to sabotage all your hard work by using negative SEO tactics against you.

There might not be any rhyme or reason to the attack on your website. It’s just something that occasionally occurs (but Google will try to help you out…or at least notify you).

1. You p!$$&d Google off.

Ok…so Google doesn’t actually get mad per se, but there are some behaviors that can lower your ranking and get you penalized. A few of the more noticeable website mistakes and issues that can hurt your ranking include:

- A bad domain history, constantly being penalized, or using black hat SEO tactics can quickly put you in the doghouse with Google. Don’t risk it. Google has gotten pretty smart about these behaviors.
- Page speed is going to become a major ranking factor in July 2018. Make sure that your site is up to par.
- Keyword stuffed pages, valueless content, spammy links, and tricky redirects will ultimately work against you in the long run.
- You’re focused only on one aspect of digital marketing; Google is getting better at taking into account your business’s entire online profile. And really it just makes sense. When your social media profiles and YouTube videos are driving visitors back to your site who engage with your content, then you’ll build a bigger community, and Google will take note of that.
- You accidently blocked Google from crawling your website.Yes, this can really happen and can be fixed in your robots.txt file.

Moving Up Google Rankings: Never Give Up

Does it seem like there’s a lot to do to get your website where you want it to be? If it does, then you are finally starting to see the big picture.

Digital marketing is a lot more than just a pretty website. There’s plenty that goes into making your business’s site shine and get all the attention that it deserves.

But don’t worry. The sooner you get started, the sooner you can start reaping the benefits of a meaningful digital marketing strategy.

And if you need a little bit of help getting to that top ranking spot on Google search, then contact me today at 956-566-4998. I have the experience and technical know-how to get your website ranked and visitors converted into sales.

Featured Google Ranking SEO

Seven Reasons Why Your Google Ranking Stinks

Posted on April 27, 2018

It is an age-old question that has been pondered by many a digital marketer since Al Gore “created” the Internet:

Why isn’t my website popping up on the 1st page of Google’s results?

I know it can be pretty frustrating when you think you’ve got your SEO game down pat, or when you’ve directed traffic to your website from social media, but sometimes it may just take a little finesse.

When you’re a digital marketing consultant, you begin to see all of the little intricacies that can either make or break your site’s visibility, and you pass on that knowledge on to others that need to get their product or service noticed.

So grab a notepad, take a seat, and let’s get started.

1. Your site is brand new.

You can’t really expect quick results when you are establishing a website. It takes time for Google to index a website; it’s generally a two to three-week process before your website makes it into Google’s search results. On top of that, you won’t be ranked very high right off the back.

Let’s not forget that your SEO has to be sound.

2. Your on-page SEO needs work.

Sometimes it is difficult to keep up with the changes that SEO undergoes because of changes to Google’s algorithm. But the truth is that in order to survive in the digital marketing world, you need to be able to thrive in SEO.

When it comes to on-page SEO, crafting content will generally always stay the same. While keywords and phrases may change in ranking, you’ll still use them in roughly the same way as well.

That means that you will want to:

Have static, keyword-rich URLs – Google ranks static URLs in a fairer manner within the search results page because they are indexed quicker than dynamic URLs. Also, you can’t plant your URL full of keywords when using dynamic URLs, thus making static URLs more SEO friendly.
Optimize title tags, alt image tags, and headings – Alt tags and title tags amplify your content and its keywords to search engine spiders, which in turn grants you better visibility in the results page.
Plant them throughout your content – The old tried and true method of placing strong keywords in a way that sounds natural within your content, along with related long tail keywords and phrases, is another surefire way of properly using your on-page SEO to its fullest potential.

Don’t focus solely on one or two keywords, though, and don’t think of writing content around what your keywords are. Instead, craft content under a general theme or topic.

This encourages your content to sound informative in a casual manner, implementing strong keywords and their related keywords in a much more natural fashion. Doing this will not only increase your ranking on each word, it will read better, improve user experience and attract more inbound links since your polished content will provide more comprehensive, expert-like information on a subject.

3. Your content isn’t up to par.

Crafting content can be a difficult process. Too little information provided within a post and your viewers will disregard it quickly. Too much can overwhelm and confuse them.

That’s why Google answered to the mountains of bad content by implementing its Panda algorithm. The algorithm enforced higher quality search results by punishing websites that produced too much “thin” content.

What is thin content? Well, it is considered in two different types:

Insubstantial, low-value content – This type of content usually garners a manual action—Google’s way of demoting or removing your website as a whole—against your site if it is deemed to offer little information of value or spam.
Zero-value content – This simply means your website offers no value to viewers and website visitors. Usually, there won’t be any manual action taken in this type of thin content, but it will be likely that your website will not be receiving much traffic, shares, mentions, or inbound links from other authors.

One thing to reflect upon, however, is that if your content is bad, it will ultimately set a poor impression on website visitors, meaning you can kiss those conversion rates goodbye.

4. You were hit with a manual action or an algorithmic penalty.

If you were hit with a manual action or algorithmic penalty, believe me, you’ll know it. There would be a severe, sudden drop in your rankings, which in turn would affect your organic search traffic.

That, and you’d receive a manual action notification from Google. As discussed above, this mostly happens when you produce and present thin content.

But an algorithmic penalty is different. It is usually more difficult to identify, and Google is known for updating their algorithm frequently, even up to twice a day. One thing you could do to verify this is to check the date when you suffered a drop in rank and match it to known updates. The easiest way to find that information is here.

After finding out which update caused the penalty, all you would have to do next is fix the specific problem.

5. Your website is lacking inbound links and mentions.

When you want to get your site ranked high in search engine results, you want to have a strong inbound link profile.

A strong inbound link profile consists of:

Links from authoritative, high-quality sites that are relevant to your topic.
A good number of non-linked brand mentions.
A decent number of quality deep links, not just to your homepage, but to internal links as well.
Strong relationships between sites via co-citations.

You just can’t have a high-ranking website without them.

6. Your website isn’t mobile-friendly.

If your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you are missing out on a huge piece of that delicious traffic and high-rank pie.

Fifty-seven percent of all Internet traffic comes from mobile devices like cell phones and tablets. That’s why on April 21, 2015, mobile-usability became a priority in terms of ranking factors in Google’s “Mobilegeddon” algorithm update.

And it may soon switch over to a “mobile-first index,” meaning that Google will prioritize sending search engine spiders, or crawling, mobile sites over desktop sites.

7. You accidentally blocked Google from being able to access your website.

There are plenty of ways that Google can be unintentionally blocked from being able to crawl or index your site. Usually, the error can be found in your robots.txt file.

This happens to the best of us. Some of the main occasions where this can happen are when you are launching a new site or when you are migrating your site from one domain to another.

In order to make sure that Google has full access to your site, you’re going to want to open your robots.txt file and look inside until you see something like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

If you see that, that means you’ve blocked Google from your whole website. You could, however, remove this code from the file to fix it, but I would recommend recruiting an expert to do that just in case.

Speaking of which, if you need any help on getting your website optimized properly, setting up a winning website that will earn you some real money, or digital marketing consultation, contact me today at (956) 566-4998.