Want to know what Google thinks of your site? Request a free SEO review from Duct Tape Marketing.

The video above is a replay of a recent live webinar I conducted. Combined with the text below you should have a pretty good feel for the steps necessary for small business SEO.

If you’re looking for a highly technical post on search engine optimization (SEO), this is not the content for you, and honestly, that’s because I don’t believe SEO is that technical (unless you have an e-commerce site, in which case it can be). There are elements you have to understand, but you mainly have to apply the right tactics on a consistent basis.

So, without further ado, here are the five steps that I would recommend for small businesses as they dive into their SEO efforts.

1. Strategy First

Back in the day, people would get a website built, they’d get somebody to put content in the website, and then they’d find somebody to “SEO the site,” but you can’t approach SEO that way today because every aspect of your total online presence is so highly integrated (see image below), that you really have to think about all of the components at the same time.

This is why I put such a strong emphasis on focusing on strategy first.

When focusing on your strategy, start by developing a list of problems that your target audience is experiencing that you can help them solve. Conduct keyword research around this list of core themes and identify the top five or so topics that you’ll produce content around. So, instead of writing about your products and services, you’ll write about, in detail, the problems your audience is facing and how to fix them.

Content is such a big part of SEO these days. You must create content that your audience will want to read and find useful, which allows you to make a connection to the solutions that you sell. That’s how you think strategically about search engine optimization.

The key is to hone in on four or five core topics and start producing content around those. Your website structure and content need to revolve around these few themes which will make your content development easier and more focused.

To develop these themes, I brainstorm a bunch of topics, and then there are a few tools I use to narrow them down:

Google Keyword Planner

This is a free tool from Google that is a part of Google Ads and is often used by advertisers to figure out what search terms and keywords they should bid on, but it’s also a great tool for giving you data on what search terms are being searched for.

In addition to monthly search volume and competition, Google Keyword Planner also gives you a suggested bid for the term, and while you aren’t using this for advertising purposes per se, it can help you see which word may generate more conversions or sales because people are willing to pay more for it in their advertising, which is a good clue it could be a good word for you to target with your content. Decent volume and a higher suggested bid could be good indicators that those are good themes you should go after.

Keywordtool.io

This tool gives you questions that people are asking which often show high intent (questions are great for voice search SEO as well).

Answer the Public

When you type in a search term, this site will give you a bunch of variations and questions people are asking related to that term.

Google Auto-Complete

If you just start typing a keyword into the search box on Google, it will start to suggest what terms they think you’re after or related common searches (there are also related searches at the bottom of the search page). These related terms are often ones that have high volume.

Keywords Everywhere (Chrome Extension)

When you type in a search term in Google, this extension will provide a sidebar on the right side of search engine results pages that shows you related keywords and other things that people have been searching for, as well as volume and cost per click.

Once you have the handful of themes that you’d like to move forward with, I’d recommend creating what I call hub pages that have a lot of related links driving back to them, including block posts related content that you produce over a year or so. From a structural standpoint, I’d make these hub pages prominent tabs on your main site navigation (more on the hub content later).

2. Google My Business

Once your strategy is in place, you have to essentially bow down to Google, especially if you’re a local business. For local businesses, Google My Business has become one of your most important search engine optimization assets.

Google My Business is also how you get into Google Maps that show up above the organic listings. To determine who shows up in this 3-pack, Google factors in the proximity of where you currently are, but it also factors in if your Google My Business listing is properly optimized. To optimize your listing:

• Make sure it’s claimed
• Make sure there aren’t any duplicates of the listing
• Add a specific and relevant category
• Include your company’s name, address, local phone number, and website (these should match the information on your website)
• Add photos and videos
• Add positive reviews (these are a huge ranking factor on their own) – Be sure to respond to all reviews, both positive and negative.
• Publish Google Posts

To be effective with your SEO, small businesses need to not only take advantage of Google My Business, but the entire Google Universe as well, including Google My Business, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Ads, because they all integrate together to help you get the results you desire.

3. On-site ranking factors

If you’re trying to optimize a page for a keyword phrase, you get to set the:

• URL of the page
• Page title (meta)
• Header tags – H1 and H2
• Alt image attribute
• Page content

Take a look at these elements on the page you’re reading now – you’ll see SEO tips and strategies for small business in a number of places because that’s what this page is optimized for.

So, include the keyword in those areas! Now, this is not to say you should keyword stuff because you shouldn’t. You still want to write for humans, but be sure to take the opportunity to get your most important keywords in these areas. The page title, meta description, and URL also influence the snippet that shows up in search engine results pages (meta description isn’t an actual ranking factor, but it is a click-through factor, kind of like an ad for somebody to click).

I use the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, which is a free plugin that helps me optimize this metadata. I highly recommend using it!

To supplement these on page efforts, you must control your Google Search Console as well. This is where you tell Google what’s on your website. To do this effectively:

• Claim and verify your profile
• Add your sitemap
• Check your messages
• Integrate it with Google Analytics

4. Content Hubs

I spoke about this briefly earlier in the post but thought I’d dive a little deeper. Content is no longer just a tactic; it’s like the air that’s necessary for your marketing efforts, which is why these hubs are so important because this content becomes such an important asset over time.

If you were working with an HVAC contractor, for example, this is what a hub page (Guide to Air Conditioning Repair) with its various sections may look like:

On these pages, you’d include links to all of the content you’re writing about these topics as well curated content from other websites that are related, creating a link building structure that shows Google all of this content is related. It essentially shows Google that you have useful content for your audience. Remember, the guide itself will be in your main site navigation.

If you create 4-5 hub pages over the course of the year and just keep building upon them, they will be huge assets for your business.

Here’ an example of a hub page we’ve put together for Duct Tape Marketing: The Ultimate Guide to Local Marketing.

5. Off-site ranking factors

These are things that you do have some control over, but they’re not on your website (although typically point back to your site). These are other factors that tell Google what your site’s about, what people think about it, that it’s important, etc.

Clean data

Make sure all listing and directories are accurate across the web. This is especially important if your business has moved. Your data needs to be consistent. There are a few tools that can help to ensure your data is clean including Yext and MozLocal (both offer free scans to see where you stand and can help you fix them).

Links from other sites

If people link to posts on your site (a backlink), this tells Google that people think you have great content on your site. It acts as a popularity vote. Good places to look to add links to your site include:

• Alumni sites
• Strategic partners and suppliers
• Local events
• Media
• Chamber of Commerce

Reviews

When people write about your business and type in what a business does well, Google recognizes this. The following are areas to add reviews:

• Google
• Facebook
• Yelp
• Industry-related review sites

Social signals

When people talk about you on social media, Google pays attention to those mentions.

Domain authority

You have less to do with this, but it’s a huge ranking factor. This factors into how many links back to your site are from important sites, how long the domain has been around, and so on.

To recap the information above, you must have a plan; you must take advantage of the Googleverse, you must optimize and pay attention to on and off-page ranking factors, and you need to build content hubs.

Need more tips on search engine optimization? Check out our entire Guide to Small Business SEO.

Want to know what Google thinks of your site? Request a free SEO review from Duct Tape Marketing.

The video above is a replay of a recent live webinar I conducted. Combined with the text below you should have a pretty good feel for how to use Google for small businesses.

While Google has a lot of different products and services, to me, the following are what truly make up Google’s Small Business Universe for marketers and small business owners:

• Google My Business
• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Google Ads (formerly AdWords)

These are all great tools to help you grow your small business, so I thought I’d dive into each of them to give you a better understanding of how to use them and how they can benefit you.

Google My Business

This tool is critical for local businesses. This is one of the top ways, if not the way, businesses are getting found in their local community, which is why I spend so much time talking and writing about this topic.

Google My Business and the 3-Pack (above) show up when a person does a search for a term that is clearly for a local business. Getting your business to show up in the maps listing, as seen above, is extremely important and a good goal to achieve for local businesses today. There are a lot of factors that go into this, but the first one to focus on is ensuring your Google My Business listing is accurate and well-optimized. To optimize the listing:

• Claim the listing
• Make sure you don’t have any duplicate listings (this is rather common with the various iterations this tool went through)
• Select a specific category for your business (avoid being too general)
• Ensure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) match the NAP on your website
• Add images and videos
• Put efforts together to help your business increase positive reviews on the listing (reviews are a huge ranking factor)

In addition to the tactics above, there are some things you can do on an ongoing basis to increase your chances of being found in the 3-Pack.

• Respond to all reviews (both positive and negative) – Be sure to turn on notifications so that you are alerted when a new review has been posted so that you can respond promptly.
• Use Google Posts – This is one of the newer features within the Google My Business listing and typically speaking, if Google really starts to pay attention to something, I’d recommend you spend time on it as well as it could imply that it will influence search rankings. This is one of those things. This new feature allows you to essentially showcase mini blog posts within the Google My Business listing that can be educational or promotional. It’s another area to really showcase your business.
• Another thing to check frequently is making sure nobody is suggesting inaccurate edits to your listing, which people have the ability to do by clicking the Suggest an Edit feature in the public listing.
• With the new messaging feature on mobile devices, people can actually text you now from the Google My Business listing (your number will never show publicly). This can be a great tool for businesses who are appointment-focused or need to respond to messages quickly.
• You have the ability to set up your website as a tracking URL (UTM code) in the edit screen of your listing (it will still show as your URL when it’s public-facing). This allows you to clearly see where your marketing efforts are having an impact, where people are coming from, and so on. If you don’t create a tracking URL, and just put in your web address, all of that traffic in Google Analytics will say it came from Direct traffic and won’t segment out that it was from your listing, which I think is important information to have. By adding the UTM code, it will filter under the Organic traffic bucket, which is where it really belongs.

Google Search Console

This is another free tool that has actually been around for a while (formerly Webmaster Tools) and is one of the most important tools for you to use for your SEO efforts. Google has spent a lot of time in recent years to improve it which to me, is a sign it’s not going away anytime soon and is a significant tool for you to use.

This tool is your best source of data about where your traffic is coming from, how pages are ranking, and what people are searching for that actually lead them to your website (we used to be able to get that information in Google Analytics but are no longer able to).

They are currently in the process of releasing a new version of the tool, so right now you’ll spend a bit of time going back and forth between the old version and new, which isn’t a huge deal with how it’s set up, but it’s something to be aware of.

To set everything up, go to Google Search Console and:

• Claim and verify your website (I’d recommend choosing the Google Analytics option in the instructions to do this)
• Add your sitemap (if you use WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin is a great tool to submit a sitemap)
• Check your messages – This is where Google will communicate with you about your website and any issues you’re experiencing (it may take a couple of days for the messages to populate). Google will actually be able to point out page crawl errors, HTML improvements, penalties, and if you’ve been hacked. It will also tell you how to fix all of these issues.
• Integrate Google Search Console with Google Analytics (this will help you track goals and conversions). In Google Analytics, click Admin and then Property settings, you’ll see Search Console and it will give you the ability to add a Search Console.
• Wait a few days (depending on your site, it may take some time for Google to crawl your site and gather the information needed).

This tool is also a great place to track the performance of your content and pages. You can:

• Find keyword search rankings
• Compare performance over time
• Check out click through rate
• Spot ranking opportunities
• Find conversion opportunities

Google Ads

Google has recently changed the name from Google AdWords to Google Ads, and I think there are a couple of reasons why:

• It’s more comprehensive than it used to be (it’s so much more than keywords now)
• Advertising is now more about intent
• Machine learning behavior and bots will dictate how advertising rolls out

How to Link Google Ads to Google Analytics

The screenshot above is located in Google Analytics. Click Admin and scroll over to Property, where you’ll see AdWords linking (you can do this from Google Ads as well). I recommend integrating these tools because you want to know where your traffic is coming from and if it’s converting. It’s a great way to track your goals and get granular with your marketing.

New features in Google Ads

• Local Ads (new campaign type)
  • Access by going to New Campaign
  • Local Campaign is focused on small local business and make it as easy as possible to run a campaign across various properties in the Google Universe
  • As a side note, see where it makes sense because it’ll be an easy way to spend all of your money at once.
• Responsive Search Ad (new ad type)
  • Google does A/B testing for you and you’re able to input up to 15 headlines, 300 characters and 4 descriptions in the pool where they’ll mix up all the combinations (including extensions) and test on your behalf (leading to roughly 40K+ possible combinations) so that you know the ads give you the greatest opportunity for click-through rates.
  • These ads will essentially take over page one of Google (which is great for advertisers) and is something marketers should pay attention to.
  • These ads are currently in beta and aren’t showing up for everybody just yet (best practices aren’t currently in place in this beta phase either)
• Local Service Ads from Google
  • This feature has been around for a while but it is something that has been expanding rapidly. It is focused on a handful of home service businesses and if you’re one of these businesses, you need to be paying attention to these placements because they are dominating page one.
  • Reviews, proximity, responsiveness and how well your ad profile is optimized will contribute to your prominence in this space.
  • These ads are set up as cost per lead based on search term.
  • You have the ability to do search term and geotargeting.

To sign up for Local Service Ads:

• Go to google.com/adwords/local-services-ads
• Download the app
• Create a profile
• Get Google Guaranteed (employee background checks)
• Set a monthly budget in Google Ads
• Respond quickly
• Focus on reviews

If I had to name a few key takeaways from this post, they would be:

• Google My Business is a must for local businesses.
• Google Search Console provides the best SEO data.
• It’s important to connect Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console.
• You must pay attention to ads.

There you have it! Have you started to explore these areas of Google? If not, I highly recommend doing so.

Need more tips on search engine optimization? Check out our entire Guide to SEO.

If you liked this post, check out our Small Business Guide to Paid Search.

Need a proven small business marketing speaker for your next workshop, conference or event?

Marketing Podcast with Justin Sturges
Podcast Transcript

SEO tools and strategies are constantly changing. All the while, it’s never been more important that you get found online when people go out there searching – particularly if you’re a local business.

Your website is the foundation for how you get ranked and found locally. It’s important to have a well put together website with unique content that is tailored specifically to the search results you want to show up in.

It is very difficult to rank for your most desired keyword phrases without great content.

My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Justin Sturges. He is a local SEO, website building & lead generation expert, Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant, and co-author of the award-winning book The Small Business Owner’s Guide to Local Lead Generation. We discuss SEO, website design and the keys to getting your business to rank.

Being immersed daily in SEO, Sturges knows what works (and doesn’t work) to help small businesses rank locally.

Questions I ask Justin:

• What are common SEO mistakes that businesses often make?
• What role do reviews play in your ranking factor?
• What are some good resources for local SEO?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

• The driving factors in organic placement
• Key aggregators often missed in citations
• How using the right extensions can increase your click-throughs

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Justin Sturges:

• To learn more about Justin Sturges, visit his website here.
• Click here to find out more about Justin’s book The Small Business Owner’s Guide to Local Lead Generation.
• Connect on LinkedIn.

Interested in joining Justin as a Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant? Find out more about the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network and attend a Discovery Call here.

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch About Voice Search

An increasing number of people are turning to search devices, but not necessarily search engines per se. We have laptops and our phones, and then, of course, we’ve got these Alexa and Google Home devices. These are how people are actually now executing searches. Not all of it is direction-based (“Google, find a salon nearby). A lot of it is going to be assistant-based. It’s going to be playing our music. It’s going be turning our lights off. The sky’s the limit.

As marketers, we need to start embracing this idea of search using voice. Research says 50% of searches will be voice-based by 2020.

So are we in “panic mode” time? I don’t know if that’s the case, but we certainly are at “pay attention mode” time, even for the smallest of businesses.

In fact, for local businesses, this is coming faster than you might have realized or understood, and it may be more important for these businesses to pay attention to voice search more than any other business now. According to Search Engine Watch, mobile voice-related searches are three times more likely to be locally-based than text.

Yes, a lot of those searches have to do with looking for directions or trying to find a good place to do “X”. They’re not necessarily doing full-on research, say to hire an attorney or to hire a plumber necessarily, but a lot of transaction-based searches and location-based searches are happening through voice search in the local market.

According to Bright Local, 53% of people use voice search to find information on local businesses. Many say they use voice search daily (particularly on a smart speaker).

Smart speakers have clearly taken off in the past couple of years, with Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa dominating the marketplace. Google has really moved into the spotlight with their speakers this year because it’s so tightly integrated into search to begin with.

How people use voice search for local businesses

So, what are the things people search for? How do they use voice search for local businesses today? Making restaurant reservations receive the highest use, by far. Additionally, people are using it to find sales and offers from local businesses, as well as to find out which products a local business has in stock. In a nutshell, it consists of a lot of very product transaction-based searches.

What local businesses should do about voice search

Google My Business

If you’re a local business, you need to get really good at some of the things that Google has been telling us about for search anyway, such as optimizing your Google My Business listing. It’s now just become more important so you must embrace it and optimize it. Google is clearly showing signs that they’re not kidding this time. They are investing a lot of time and energy into Google My Business and continue to add features, which I think businesses need to be paying attention to. I’d recommend taking advantage of every new feature they offer, including Google Posts, Messaging, the new description, and product and service offerings. Don’t forget to add photos and videos as well.

Bottom line? Make sure the listing is claimed, accurate, and complete.

Featured Snippet

Have you ever done a search for something and see a full description at the top of the page? This is what people are starting to call position zero or the featured snippet.

What I believe Google is trying to do is get you to stay on the page. Why ever leave the search results if they can give you most of the answer they think you’re after? The featured snippet is what around 70% of voice searches bring up today. Google Maps results are also big for voice search results.

To get this coveted spot, start doing some brainstorming. Find some low intent terms that don’ have a featured snippet today and write an answer-based or list-based blog post that clearly gets at the intent of what those low intent search terms might be. You might want to take a look at Answer the Public to find questions or related phrases. A lot of times you can create content that more specifically addresses the search term or at least what the intent of a search term is.

Site speed and security

This has never been more important. If your site doesn’t load, you’re never going to show up in voice search results because that’s a bad experience.

According to my friend Brian Dean from Backlinko, 70.4% of Google Home result pages were secured with an HTTPS or SSL certificate. We need to all go to HTTPS, or have secure websites. At some point in 2018, you’re going to start seeing search results that indicate that a site is not secure.

As you can see, reputation matters more than ever. There’s a lot of indication that search results are not going to show up for companies with low ratings for voice search. Local media mentions are probably underrated, so make sure you pay attention to them and social signals as well (even though Google denies it, I believe that it does in fact matter). 

Google Assistant

Google Assistant, which is really part of the Google Home piece, is really going to start doing things. They have a new tool that they’ve announced that’s been getting a lot of hype called Duplex, where you can say, “Hey Google, find me a hairdresser near me and make me an appointment for 2:00 on next Wednesday,” and it is actually going to make the phone call and interact in an artificial intelligence-way with whoever answers the phone.

You’re going to see more of that coming and for a lot of businesses, particularly appointment-based businesses like restaurants and hair salons, the staff are going to need to get those phone calls and it clearly is going to sound like Google. They’re going to need to understand what it is and how to respond to it. 

You’re also going to start seeing smart displays. Televisions today are going to have built-in Google Assistant available more and more where somebody can just be sitting there and tell Google to order them a pizza right from their television without getting up.

As I said, this is not panic time. This is the time to start preparing. Be realistic about it and see if voice search applies to your business at this point. You’re not going to go out there and dominate for voice search in a competitive industry, but I will tell you one thing: Even if you think that they are evil, pure evil, you need to get one of these smart speakers like an Alexa, or a Google Home so that you can understand a little bit about how they work, and what kind of search results they return. 

What is your business currently doing for voice search?

Need more tips on search engine optimization? Check out our entire Guide to SEO.

The video above is a replay of a recent live webinar I conducted. Combined with the text below you should have a pretty good feel for how to use the new Google Search Console.

There is a tremendous amount of interest in Google tools, especially for small business owners because these are important tools and they change a lot, making them difficult to stay on top of.

One of the tools that deserve a lot of attention these days is Google Search Console, so I thought I’d cover some of the basics here to help get you started.

Google’s Small Business Universe

Before I dive into Google Search Console, I want you to be aware of the other essential tools Google offers to small businesses:

Google My Business: This tool is especially important for local businesses. Google seems to be putting a lot of energy into making improvements in this space, which, to me, is a sign that this tool isn’t going away. If you’re a local business and haven’t gotten started with this yet, I suggest you begin here.

Google Analytics: This is a free tool that allows businesses to understand their traffic and other relevant data.

Google Search Console: Partnering Google Analytics with the Google Search Console is how you get the most complete picture of what’s going on in terms of people finding your website, clicking on search results, and so on.

Google AdWords: For a lot of small business owners, paid search is the way they generate leads and customers.

These elements all have the ability to be integrated with one another and you should take advantage of this to get a full picture.

A tour of Google Search Console

If you’re relatively familiar with Google tools, you may remember Webmaster Tools. Google Search Console has replaced that (in fact, if you type in “Webmaster Tools,” you’ll get directed to Google Search Console).

In addition, there is also now a new version of Google Search Console but you can still get access to the older version. You’ll find that you’ll jump back and forth between new and old because there are elements in each that are better than the other version.

Dashboard: Old Version

In my opinion, the dashboard serves as the landing place when you log in but it doesn’t really provide any valuable or actionable information. The menu on the left side of the page is where you want to focus your time.

Messages: If you have any messages, this is the area where Google will let you know. In my opinion, this is reason enough to have a Google Search Console account. If there is something wrong with your website (including it being hacked), Google will let you know here.

Search Appearance: The sections under Search Appearance include Structured Data, Rich Cards, Data Highlighter, HTML Improvements, and Accelerated Mobile Pages. I personally love HTML Improvements because it will show you the pages Google looks at that let you know if you have duplicate or missing title tags, or that the tags are too long or too short, and so on. It shows you actionable steps you can take to improve your site pages.

Search Traffic: Within this category, there is a tool called Search Analytics that will show you just that, metrics that give you insight into how your site’s performing with traffic, including clicks, impressions, and CTR. It will also give you keyword rankings for terms you’re going for. It’ll essentially show you what’s sending traffic to your site. I look here for opportunities of where to start for places I could rank.

Search Traffic also includes an area called Manual Actions where Google will show you why they may be penalizing your site for various reasons and how you can take action to fix them. Mobile Usability under the same section will show you what’s wrong with your site from a mobile standpoint.

Google Index: This is where you can see what pages Google has indexed (as the name implies).

Crawl: Here, you can see how Google actually sees your pages. This becomes important when you’re trying to see why pages aren’t ranking. This can also show you 404 pages that need to be cleaned up.

Dashboard: New Version

As you can see, there aren’t nearly as many tabs on the left-hand side in this version. It only includes Performance and Index Coverage. They’re useful, but as I mentioned, this tool really becomes useful when you dive deeper, which is why it’s important to jump back and forth between each of the versions.

The Performance Report in the new version, however, has a lot more information than the previous version and I believe it’s the best feature of the new one. You have the ability to look at the past 16 months of data, which can be very useful when identifying trends and patterns.

How to set up Google Search Console

Claim and verify

You need to verify you are the owner. Not anybody can just set up an account for any site. You need to go through the process to claim you are the owner or have access to the site.

I usually click on Alternate Methods (see image to the right) and select Google Analytics because this seems to be the easiest way to verify if your analytics account is already set up.

Add sitemap (use Yoast SEO plugin)

This gives Google the opportunity to be able to index the pages on your site. If you use WordPress, the Yoast plugin will automatically produce a sitemap for you and gives you a link to submit to Google (there are other tools that do this as well but I tend to go with this one).

Once you have the link, go to Crawl in the old version of Google Search Console and click Sitemaps, which is where you’ll be able to submit it. You may not see the information populated immediately but it will happen over time.

Check messages

Once your account is set up, go look at your messages immediately. It may take a few days for messages to show up, but you’ll want to see them as soon as they do.

Integrate with Google Analytics

This will allow you to see search term performance data within Google Analytics which isn’t there by default.

Wait a few days!

It may take a bit for information and recommendations to populate, so be patient!

Google Search Console performance

Analyzing the performance of your website is one of my favorite components of the Google Search Console.

Find keyword search rankings

You can see actual search terms people are using to find the pages that they land on on your site. Google Search Console is the only place you can get this information.

Compare performance over time (16 months)

As mentioned this is a great way to see trends, but it’s also a great way to see improvement for your business or your client’s business.

Check out click-through rate (CTR)

This ranking factor isn’t talked about very much, but it’s important. Understanding your CTR and ways to improve it can help you get an extra SEO boost. CTR is where I often spot opportunities for ranking and conversion. On page one, aim for at least 5% CTR. You can view CTRs under the Performance tab on the updated version of Google Search Console.

Looking at a combination of search terms, impressions, CTR, and position on Google can help you identify areas of opportunity to rank and convert. To make a CTR better for any given page, look at the metadata, including title and description, for the page.

While the description isn’t technically a ranking factor, it is an ad for the page. See how you can improve it to make the page more enticing. Additionally, see how you can improve the content and on-page elements of that page to make it more clickable. Consider adding internal links to the page as well to increase dwell time which can also help to boost CTR and rank.

To see what search terms are bringing traffic on individual pages, look at Pages within the performance report, click on the page, and then click on Queries to see what search terms are for that page specifically instead of the site as a whole. Whichever term is bringing in the best results, that’s the one you should consider optimizing the page for moving forward.

The Performance report is really where the new version of Google Search Console shines.

Getting more internal and external links

Did you know your internal linking structure is a ranking factor? So, if you have a page that’s ranking, and performing well, but isn’t quite in the top three spots on Google, linking to it from other pages of your website could give you that extra boost to move you into those desired spots.

In the older version of Google Search Console, click Internal Links to gain valuable information as it relates to this ranking factor. You can see how many pages are driving to a particular link and see what areas could use a boost.

If you click on Links to Your Site in the menu, it will show you sites that are linking to your pages from external sites (another ranking factor). This tool will give you insight into areas of opportunity to get additional backlinks to your site.

The pages that already have a lot of backlinks are what I like to refer to as Power Pages because they have a lot of authority. I’ll often try to use those pages to link to other pages of the site that I’m working on to increase rank.

Opportunites

When I’m in the Performance Report, I want to look at pages that are doing well but are underperforming. For example, ask yourself how you can get your results on page two to rank on page one (these are the low-hanging fruit).

I also like to understand what keywords are driving to a page before I make any adjustments.

In addition, taking a look at mobile vs. desktop performance can be very beneficial. If you have a site where mobile traffic is extremely valuable, but CTR on a mobile device is lower than the desktop version, brainstorm ways to optimize for the mobile version.

While many areas of Google Search Console may seem technical, as you can see, there are other areas that can be extremely helpful without going to deep into the technical side of things if you spend some time playing with the tool.

Dive into the Google Search Console monthly and you’ll start to find information that could help drive your marketing efforts moving forward.

Head swimming with all this?

How would you like us to set your Google Search Console up for you?

Check out our Total Online Presence Audit service where we’ll review your website, content, SEO, reputation, competitive landscape and Google Analytics and Google Search Console – oh, and we’ll also give you a rundown of your highest priority fixes and opportunities – how’s that for getting some peace of mind? – Check out the Audit here.

Need more tips on search engine optimization? Check out our entire Guide to SEO.

As we are all aware at this point, voice recognition technology is continuing to get better and better, in fact, it is now believed to be 95% accurate. As users, we’re adapting to this new voice revolution rather quickly (almost 1/4 of mobile search queries are voice search), yet marketers and SEO specialists seem to be lagging behind a bit when it comes to optimizing for this new way to search.

If you’re in the marketing world, it’s time you start paying attention to voice search optimization to help you show up in search results via this method.

While optimizing for voice search requires slightly different tactics than the search engine optimization techniques we’re used to, they can benefit your website as a whole, regardless of how a person is searching for you, so implementing these best practices is really a win-win.

Aim for the Featured Snippet

Position zero, or Google’s featured snippet, is now the most coveted spot in search engine results pages for many reasons, but becoming the top result for voice search is now one of them.

A featured snippet is meant to be a quick answer to a question (as shown in the screenshot below), which is typically what people are looking for when they are using voice search.

If you are able to land this spot in results pages, you’ll be more likely to be the result found in voice search results. According to a survey by Backlinko, 40.7% of all voice search answers came from a Featured Snippet.

With the featured snippet, simple answers (such as asking a celebrity’s age) are answered directly as they are facts. For more expert/opinion-based posts, search engines will pull content from websites they think are the best fit to answer the question.

Helpful tips to get to that desired spot include:

• Knowing and addressing your audience’s intent
• Doing your keyword research
• Creating high-quality content that answers questions
• Implementing SEO best practices
• Focusing on easy-to-follow formatting

At the end of the day, aiming for the Featured Snippet should be a top priority regardless of how people search, but it can really give you an extra boost with voice search.

Optimize for certain types of keywords

As most people in the marketing world know, when it comes to SEO, keywords are, well, key. They are at the core of your content strategy and help you identify and respond to audience intent.

When it comes to voice search, you need to think about keywords and SEO a bit differently as these search queries tend to be a bit longer than type-based search. Because of this, you really need to put an emphasis on long-tail keywords.

Additionally, when people use voice search, they’re typically more conversational than when they type terms into a search box. Be sure to create content around conversational phrases. Having an FAQ page on a site or Q&A related blog posts can be easy for search engines to pull from since questions typically come across as being more conversational. I like using Answer the Public to find questions related to search terms I’m trying to rank for. I definitely encourage you to check it out!

When it comes to SEO, I don’t really condone shortcuts as SEO should be looked at as a marathon, not a sprint, however, research is showing that there are some common trigger words that may help with voice search that you could add to your target keyword phrases to help you get found through voice search. These terms include, but are not limited to:

• Buy
• Get
• Find
• Top rated
• Closest

Granted, don’t include these in all of your content, but you may want to consider sprinkling them in here and there.

Understand schema markup

If you’re asking yourself what schema markup is, I highly recommend starting your research (and don’t be deterred by code, this is important stuff!). Not only does it bode well for search optimization in general, it may also be one of the most important factors to ranking for voice search.

In a nutshell, schema markup helps search engines understand the content on a page. By including it on your website, you make it very clear what that page is all about, making it easy for search engines to scan.

Invest in mobile optimization

For SEO in general right now, it is imperative that your website is mobile-friendly. Google primarily cares about user experience and are now pulling the experience on mobile devices over a desktop for SEO. I’d recommend moving to a responsive design and ensuring mobile site speed is quick to avoid penalty.

Since so many voice searches are done via mobile device it’s essential you are optimized to help get found in mobile results.

Focus on content

While this may seem like a no-brainer at this point in the SEO game, there are a few specific tips that you should pay attention to specifically when it comes to voice search:

• Ensure your content is simple and easy to read
• Aim to write long-form content (roughly 2,000 words) as that’s typically what Google pulls from for voice search
• Answer your audience’s questions and solve their problems with your content
• Write/speak naturally in your content (this goes back to people using conversational phrases when using voice search)
• Share your content on social media regularly, as those tend to perform better with voice search

Stick with SEO basics

Lastly, don’t forget about the basics of SEO. The more you follow those best practices, the more Google will reward you. Just because there are new aspects to consider doesn’t mean you should forget about the existing elements.

• Be sure to optimize on-page elements with relevant keywords including URL, page title, header tags, alt text, meta description, and within the copy itself.
• Build a backlink and review strategy.
• Ensure your site is secure.
• Focus on page speed (according to Backlinko, the average voice search result page loads in 4.6 seconds (52% faster than the average page).

I say this all the time but it never seems to be enough: build out your total online presence. Create the best user experience you can and you’ll see the benefits roll in.

Need more tips on search engine optimization? Check out our entire Guide to SEO.

Let me be clear, SEO is absolutely a marathon, not a sprint. To do it well, it takes a lot of time and effort and needs to be a continuous practice.

With that being said, there are a few low-hanging fruit items that you can address first that can help turn your SEO efforts around (or kick them off) quickly.

Interested in what I’m talking about? Read on.

Focus on keywords with intent

With the way people search online these days, the key to SEO is understanding your user’s intent. What problems, questions, or goals do they have?

Did you know that if you’re already ranking on the first page of Google, providing the best answers within your content to questions your audience is searching for can potentially land you a featured snippet in search engine results pages? That’s huge!

People may express problems in ways that turn into key phrases, so content today has to be customer-focused.  To discover your customer’s intent, look at emails that you’ve sent. Talk to your sales or service reps. What questions are they answering?

I also find that tools such as Keywordtool.io and Answer the Public are extremely useful because they turn up actual questions people ask about specific terms, which is one of the best ways to find intent in a search phrase.

In addition to intent-based keywords, looks at the keywords your competitors are using as well and brainstorm ways to target those in order to compete in search rankings.

Use these target keywords within your content to help get found online.

Find and fix broken links

No matter how great your website is, broken links happen. External website URLs changes, pages get taken down, the list goes on. While it’s common, having broken links on your website can have a negative impact on SEO (404 errors are a big issue). It all ties back to Google wanting to provide their users with the best customer experience possible.

If you find a broken link on your website, either remove it or update it to the current link (or swap it out with an even better, more current one).

There are numerous tools you can use to identify these links without having to manually go through each page on your site. One of the tools I highly recommend using is Google Webmaster Tools. With it, you can not only identify broken links, but you can also see how your site looks from Google’s perspective.

Moving forward, if you decided to change any URLs on your site or remove any pages, be sure to set up redirects that drive to an existing page to avoid getting penalized.

Develop a backlink strategy

Link building is the new networking and is essential for your SEO efforts.

When I talk to business owners I often hear that link building is one of their biggest challenges, so they don’t always put a lot of effort into it because it can become burdensome and frustrating for them. Trust me, it doesn’t have to be that way.

They key is to create amazing content (this ties back into your keyword research strategy as well). By creating linkable assets, such as videos, how-to guides, infographics, and podcasts, you’ll be able to attract backlinks from other sites that want to link to that content. Share this content on your social platforms, via email, and with your strategic partners to help them spread the word with their networks.

In addition to creating this amazing content on your site, consider:

• Being a guest on a podcast – check out the numerous benefits of this tactic here
• Guest blogging on a credible site
• Leveraging partnerships – Consider writing testimonials for your partners and include a link back to your site in the review.
• Networking in person – Build those relationships!
• Getting added to citations and directories

Don’t forget to add internal links throughout your site either. This can also help boost your SEO and it’s within your control.

At the end of the day, reputable backlinks will help to keep your site relevant in search engines.

Focus on the basics

It’s always good to go back to the basics and focus on your on-page SEO. Here are some tactics to keep in mind:

• Include your target keyword or keyword phrase in your page title, meta description, H1 tags, URL, and organically within your page (don’t keyword stuff)
• Ensure the page title is less than 65 characters and that the meta description is between 50 and 300 (this limit was increased this year)
• Add internal and external links to your pages and posts
• Label the image alt text with the topic you’re writing about

Additionally, do a review of your blog posts and optimize past content. See what links are dated and update them. Do your keyword research and see if there are newer and better keywords to target for the posts. Swap out old CTAs and replace with new ones. Keep your content current and show Google you’re staying active. It will benefit your SEO efforts.

Lastly, do a crawl of your site to ensure there isn’t any duplicate content. While this may sound like a no-brainer, after you’ve been developing content for a while, it can be difficult to pinpoint what you’ve already written about (it could have been created years ago!). While writing about the same topic is OK, just make sure the content itself is unique from page to page or post to post.

That’s it for today! What low-hanging fruits have you grabbed onto that have produced good results for your business?

Need more tips on search engine optimization? Check out our entire Guide to SEO.

We’re almost halfway through the year (what?!), which makes it a good time to start taking a look at what’s working as it relates to your SEO efforts so that you can plan accordingly moving forward. We’ve seen a lot of people increase their SEO budgets this year, which isn’t surprising, as it’s a significant piece of your marketing puzzle.

Here are the SEO tactics that seem to be working thus far.

Master keyword research

The importance of keyword research hasn’t changed over the years, but how we approach them has.

Your keyword strategy is the driver behind your content efforts (and in turn, your SEO efforts). Keywords should be used to identify user intent and search behavior.

Focusing your content on long-tail keywords gives you a better chance to match the intent of the person searching for you.

I’ve been using my keyword research to help me identify content hub themes every month.

Content hubs are fully foundational pages that have tremendous amounts of value about what the theme is, with blogs and other resources that people can click through to for further information.

I not only have internal pages driving back to this one hub page, I also include links to external, high-quality content on the page that can also be linked back to the hub page.

With so many pages driving to one another, you’ll start to gain a lot of trust and authority from Google, which will help your SEO efforts.

Think about the context of your content

As many marketers know at this point, Google’s primary job is to provide people with an excellent user experience, and because of this, they want to make sure their users get the best possible content provided to them based on the search criteria they’re looking for.

Gone are the days that you can just skim over a given topic. Today, you must take a deep dive into what you’re trying to cover so that a user can get all of the information they’re looking for in one place.

I’ve seen people say your post needs to be 2,000 words to be effective, however, I say use as many words as necessary to get your point across thoroughly. What’s worse than not hitting 2,000 words, is rambling on about nothing for the last 1,000 of those words. Think quality over quantity.

Focus on link-building

When I talk to marketers I often hear that one of their biggest challenges is link building, and because of this, putting a strong effort towards it is often put on the backburner, but this is a big problem.

Although rules and tactics have changed over the years, the heart of SEO still revolves around content and links. Without great content, you’ll never get links, so if you’re looking for a place to get started, create that amazing content. By creating linkable assets, you’ll be able to attract backlinks from other sites that want to link to that content.

Now, don’t forget internal links either. Linking to other content on your site can also help boost your SEO and it’s a low hanging fruit to grab onto.

Improve CTR

What you find on Google’s search engine results pages has changed over the years with different types of ads, answer boxes, and so on (that’s as of today, who knows what will show up tomorrow).

With so many places to click through to, it’s no wonder that click-through rates (CTR) on SERPs has declined for companies over the past few years.

So, how do you avoid this? Master the art of developing CTAs and copy that scream to be clicked on. This applies to ad copy as well as copy that shows up in your organic posts (such as the copy that can be found in your page titles and meta descriptions).

Optimize for mobile

Have you heard of Google’s mobile-first index? It’s exactly how it sounds. Google is now ranking search results based only on the mobile version of the page as opposed to taking both mobile and desktop versions into consideration. This makes sense from a customer experience standpoint as the majority of Google searches are done on a mobile device these days.

This is not good news for people who have put the majority of their time and effort towards desktop functionality.

Moral of the story is if your website isn’t mobile optimized, you’re going to take a hit when it comes to SEO. Some people think they can get by with their website being technically mobile friendly, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfectly optimized. Keep your visitors’ experience in mind and make sure the mobile version provides the best one possible. It will increase your odds to get found on search.

Use video and other visual elements

According to Cisco, online video will make up 80% of all online traffic by 2021. That number is startling, but does it really surprise you? It’s hard to ignore video, this medium can be so engaging!

So, while us marketers have been talking about video for years now, it’s time to really get serious about it.

Seems like a foreign concept? Start with YouTube! Not only is it easy to use and embed on your site, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and it’s owned by Google, which, from an SEO standpoint is a major plus (have you started seeing YouTub videos appear in Google Image search yet?).

In addition to video, be sure to include relevant and intriguing images on your site to help break up the written content on a page. Check your image file size to make sure it isn’t too large as that could slow down your site speed (a red flag for Google).

Be a guest on a podcast

I talked about this topic earlier this year but believe in the power of it, so I thought I’d revisit the topic, although you don’t commonly hear about it as a best practice for SEO. Here are a few of the benefits you’ll receive by being a guest on a podcast:

• Access to a highly engaged audience
• Easier than writing guest blog posts
• You’ll establish real emotional connections
• It becomes a highly shareable piece of content
• You’ll gain credibility
• Potential for online reviews

Combine the points above and you’ll create a recipe for SEO success.

Keep things fresh

Google wants to see that your site is active. In lieu of constantly posting new content, figure out ways to re-purpose existing content as well as ways to update that content. This can really help your SEO efforts without always having to reinvent the wheel.

Seems like a lot? It is, but don’t forget you have the ability to outsource these tactics to a specialist if you don’t think they can get done in-house.

Are you implementing the tactics mentioned above? What are you struggling with the most? What tactics are you seeing success with?

Need more tips on search engine optimization? Check out our entire Guide to SEO.

If you liked this post, check out our Guide to Content Marketing for Small Business or our Guide to SEO.

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch About Content Marketing for Small Business

I’ve had content marketing for small business on the brain recently so I thought I’d write about it today. “Boy, there is a topic that hasn’t been covered recently,” said nobody in a long time.

Here’s the thing though, I think it’s one of those topics that is misunderstood and certainly evolving. Content creation has fallen squarely into strategy as far as I’m concerned. In fact I often call content marketing the voice of strategy.

Looking at your website, website’s structure, your SEO plan, and content or editorial plan, overlap significantly in the category of strategy, and while you have to address them in an integrated way, you also have to start thinking differently about content and how you’re going to use it to meet some of your business objectives.

Ever since the major algorithm changes that everybody talks about, the hummingbirds and the pandas, where low-quality content and dubious backlinks really got slapped, a lot of SEO people are really starting to come to realize that content is everything that drives that entire industry.

Then Google comes up with something called RankBrain. This is their artificial intelligence engine that learns not only about what people are searching for, but what they do when they find it, how they engage, how they dwell, and how they share.

In fact, one of the most important metrics or ranking factors in the future is going to be engagement. So creating your content around getting engagement is not only a good thing from an awareness and trust-building standpoint, it’s also a very crucial ingredient in how content is going to be ranked.

Towards the end of 2017 I created a guide for local marketing, because I wanted to create content that was specific to the challenges of getting a local business to rank or to get customers. By local I mean that they are in a community and most, if not all, of their customers, are in that community and interact by coming into their store, or their place of business, or that they go out and have a sales call with that person.

There’s a lot of content on local marketing. It’s a really hot topic right now, and with that guide, I was able to rank number one in Google for various search terms around local marketing in about two week’s time.

I have a lot of pages that are on page one, about 1700 last time I looked. So obviously I’ve got a tremendous amount of momentum, and so I’m not going to suggest that just anybody can do this.

There are a lot of terms I don’t rank for in this approach. Identifying a term, a problem and a challenge that a prospective client has, and then putting all of my energy into getting that content to rank, is what took me from, maybe page two or three to the actual number-one spot, and this now is generating significant traffic,links, and opportunities.

Understanding intent

The key to anything we talk about with regard to content strategy is intent. What problems, questions, or goals does your client have?

Keep in mind that they’ll probably change along the way when they’re trying to find a product or a service like yours. To discover your customer’s intent, look at emails that you’ve sent. Talk to your sales or service reps. What questions are they answering?

It’s important to do keyword research, and SEO folks will still tell you that that’s step number one. I’ve certainly done a lot of education around this idea of how to do keyword research, and it’s important, but it’s a starting point only. If you stop there, you’re only going to get one piece. You’re going to optimize your content for keywords.

People aren’t keywords and their problems aren’t necessarily keywords. People may express problems in ways that turn into key phrases, but the content today has to be customer-focused. Go out and talk to your customers. Look at reviews. Look at your competitors. What are people saying?

Those are oftentimes some of the best markers, or clues, to find the real problems that people want to be solved. Many times what we find isn’t the stuff that we want to put on our website. It’s the little things.

Do you show up on time? Do you return my calls? Do you clean up the job site? Those are things that are real problems that you or your competitors are actually solving for their customers because they are turning up and voluntarily writing those words as though they are talking to another prospective client.

It’s some of the best content you can get, but don’t forget to talk to your customers and ask them a lot of questions as well.

Helpful tools for content marketing efforts

There are a couple of tools out there that we use all the time. Answer The Public is a relatively new tool where you can put in a search term and you’ll get all kinds of variations, ideas, and questions that people ask.

Questions are so great and so valuable because there’s a lot of intent. If somebody just types in a couple of words, “referral marketing,” for example, it’s not often easy to tell what their intent is, but if somebody types in “how to set up a referral marketing program,” it gives you a pretty good idea of what they’re looking to do.

We also use BuzzSumo which is another great tool that shows the most shared content related to your phrases. A lot of times the fact that people are sharing content means that it hit the nail on the head. It addressed a problem or answered a question.

I wish I could tell you that you’ll magically get five themes that will just be the perfect thing that you need to write about, but it’s not that simple. There’s a bit of art in this. I can’t always tell clients exactly what I’m going to find, but I always find it.

Choosing content

The last piece of this is that a lot of times people make the mistake of saying, “Well, we’re this kind of company, but the most popular content people want is X, Y, and Z.”

There are a couple problems with just choosing content that you think will be popular. It’s very hard to be customer-focused.

If you’re a business that serves a certain type of customer, but you’re choosing content because it’s popular but you aren’t an expert on the topic, or you don’t have a unique point of view about that content, you’re probably not going to produce something that is customer-focused.

After you do keyword research and talk to your customers, you’ve got to take your unique twist, approach, and expertise, and bring those to it so that it will be completely relevant for your customers.

Once you’ve done your keyword research, the next step is to create themes for your content. To come up with your themes, you must think in terms of a body of work, almost like chapters in a book, that you’re going to put your emphasis on, maybe for an entire month, and create content that will allow you to outrank competitors for key search terms.

You must stay very focused to do this.

Creating content packages

The best way to rank for any search terms is to know your customer better than anyone else and create, what I call, a content package to address your known client problems and challenges.

So what’s a content package? I’m going to go back to the local marketing guide example. I create a page, like The Ultimate Guide to Local Marketing, that becomes an actual core page on my site (not a blog post). I turn that page into a table of contents of sorts that includes all the major elements of local marketing.

From there, I create numerous posts that point directly back to that page, and I link them all together with categories, anchor text, and a little bit of theme magic in WordPress that allows me to display related content.

All of these pages, along with some useful curated content from some very high-domain authority sites, really create this depth of content that allows you to then rank for, in this case, key local marketing problems.

It’s like I’ve built this little wing on my website where the major jumping-off point is almost like a table of contents. You go to that page and there’s audio, video, and a whole list of links to other content that is related to a sub-category.

I’ve taken local marketing, I’ve broken it up into five sub-categories, and then those sub-categories blast out to all kinds of other content on my site.

The beauty of this is that I’ve now got a lot of content that I’d written in the past that I was able to bring to this, but going forward, I’ve got a lot of content that I will continue to write into the future, and I will link it to this page, so this page will continue to get updated and freshened up. If I do a webinar, maybe on local marketing, I’ll go ahead and put the archived video on the page.

While I targeted the key phrase “local marketing guide,” it is starting to rank for dozens of related terms because of the depth of that content. As a bonus, one of the posts for using Ad Words for local business, which is one of the categories, has also jumped to the number-one spot for related search terms.

The power of interlinking and building a table of contents or chapters-in-a-book approach is the most potent way to rank for content today as far as I’m concerned.

Now this may feel like a lot of work and that’s because it is, but the bar’s been raised, and those that jump high enough are rewarded.

These pages are generating significant traffic, links, and opportunities. When people come to the main page, there’s a lot to consume, so they stay on the page. Bounce rate is almost nothing because they click and dwell on those links, and they visit more links because it’s all woven together, so Google sees high engagement in this form of content.

In addition, these pages become tools for all of our advertising and lead generation efforts.

So what next? Simply choose more themes and repeat the process every month. After a few months, you’ve created a massive content machine that is focused on your ideal customers, expertise, and unique point of view, not keywords, which will assist in driving business and leads, not just spammy clicks.