Five Important To-Do’s before Publishing Content

Every marketer has heard the phrase “Content is King”, but that statement should come with asterisked. While content is important, there are certain factors that can make it king or make it an enemy.

Content development is important for every business and should have a strategy behind it. If you are creating content, just to have it with no purpose or structure, you could be doing more harm than good.

Make sure that all content you are creating is relevant and unique. Your customers like to read fresh, new content catered towards your industry, and so does Google! So “Relevant Content is King”.

Once you have created awesome content for your company, follow these 5 important to-do’s before publishing:

1. Get a fresh set of eyes. While you may be an excellent writer and editor, we tend to overlook common spelling and grammatical errors. It is important to have a co-worker or friend double check your work before making it live.
2. Do an ‘SEO’ proof.  Once your content has gone through a regular edit, conduct an ‘SEO’ proof. This means read through your content and check for relevant keywords and any missed opportunities to enhance the SEO. Use keyword research tools to help decide which keywords are optimal for content development.
3. Images need love too. Sometimes we focus so much on the content itself that we fail to optimize the image we insert into our blogs or articles. Double check that all images being published with content, and individually, have been optimized with Alt Tags.
4. Link Up! Content is not made to cover everything, and realistically it can’t. Find relevant content to link to within your writing, this helps to enhance your information and building relationships with others in your industry. Adding a link acts as an endorsement, endorse others and they will endorse you.
5. Encourage readers to amplify the post. If you have created engaging content, prompt your users to share your post. Adding share buttons to your content can make the amplification process easier for users and could result in more shares.

So remember, while ‘Content is King’, it is only king if it is relevant and optimized for your readers.

For more tips on how to develop SEO rich content, or to speak with a SEO Content Specialist contact Tandem Interactive directly. 

The Truth about What SEO Really Is

As entrepreneurs, we are all familiar with the term SEO, but do we understand what it is?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an evolutionary form of marketing your business digitally in order to reach a higher ranking in search results, rather than paying for ranking by using an SEM (Search Engine Marketing) approach.

The problem with SEO is that everyone claims that they know what SEO is and how to create SEO rich content. The problem with this idea is that “one does not SIMPLY get to the top of Google”. As smart as you may think you are, the employees at Google ARE smarter than you, and know the approach that you are trying to take in order to get higher rankings. Since businesses think that they can “one-up” Google, Google is creating harsher guidelines in efforts to enforce quality and promote a better user experience.

SEO is quality. Google has made it very clear that they do not want slapdash content infiltrating websites, with no effort in structure. SEO has forced content writers to really understand the desires of searchers and deliver what they want…answers. Search Engines have provided numerous tools to help your content writers create quality content that pertains to your industry – use them! These resources are free and at your disposal, why would you not use them?

SEO is organized. The writing process can be somewhat scattered; one thought leads to another, which leads to rambling about a completely different topic. SEO requires websites to have a natural process for navigating through their site to discover answers to their search queries. Make your site and your content uniformed and informative. It is better to have one great idea than 100 bad ones.

SEO is opportunity. Before the birth of algorithms and the panda/penguin/pigeon updates, SEO was not fair. The World of SEO has made clear guidelines on what is rewarded and what is penalized, making your true efforts more difficult, which is good and bad. The implementation of SEO guidelines has been bad for the websites that practice ‘black hat’ tactics and keyword stuff their website until it ranks first in 10+ keywords, but good for the little guy that has been willing to put the time and effort into creating real, quality content to inform their customers about their product/services/company. SEO allows great content to be found, that would not have been seen before the updates.

While some SEO marketing companies are still contributing to the mess that will get websites violated by Google, most SEO companies have revised their approach on creating high quality links and SEO rich content. If you have any questions regarding SEO tactics or have questions about your website’s current stance in the SERPs, please contact Tandem directly at JLaratro@Tandem-Interactive.com.

Haters Gonna Hate! 3 Ways to Avoid Negative SEO Attacks

SEO is important for every business, regardless of the industry. Keep in mind that with great success and fortune comes great envy, and this is where businesses fail to keep an eye on the gray area. Competitors can take advantage of your weaknesses by attacking your business using negative SEO tactics.

Negative SEO is anything that could harm your reputation, visibility, or traffic in search. Some of the malicious efforts could be your competitor trying to build unapproved links to your site, or their attempt to break some of your best links.

While we know that negative SEO efforts work well, there are a few things that you can do in order to stay proactive, maintain your ranks, and identify any attacks.

1.  Google Webmaster Tools: As a website owner, you must be familiar with Google Webmaster Tools. It is important that you set up and verify your business so that you can create email alerts that can provide evidence of any malware on your site. Any suspicious activity seen on your website will be reported by Webmaster Tools and an email alert will be sent to you. You can also receive emails on link penalties, allowing you to be warned when someone is creating low-quality links to your site.
2. Google Alerts: Google Alerts is a basic, free tool that allows for reputation management. Every business and business owner should have Google Alerts set up for their company in order to prevent any negative SEO efforts or slander that could be occurring without your knowledge. Google will monitor the web for new content that is published containing keywords that you have chosen and will email you the links to the content that is found.
3. UberSuggest: UberSuggest is a free keyword suggestion tool that can show what people are searching for in relation to your business. Very similar to the Google Waterfall (when Google will finish your search query with multiple options that are commonly searched), UberSuggest can help you search for your name, business name, unique product names, and searches performed.

These three free tools can help prevent a major defamation attack on your company or even yourself. It is important to be knowledgeable about good SEO and negative SEO tactics and their effects. While negative SEO attacks can be rare, they do happen. While “haters” are an indication of success, they can have an unfavorable effect on your SEO.  Keep an eye out for malicious activity and low-quality links that could be an indication that your competition is a HATER: Having Anger Towards Everyone Reaching Success! 

The Myth on ‘You don’t need SEO’

When a well know brand goes astray and builds up a page with no SEO help whatsoever, they soon find out how much of a myth ‘not needing SEO’ really was. It is well know that Google preforms there algorithm audits every so often and is constantly changing what they consider to be penalties. Well this one brand had to find out the hard way just how much they really needed to hire someone with the proper up to date knowledge on what was acceptable and what was not.

Google is constantly trying to eliminate search spam, therefore it is always a constant and daily research for Google updates that SEO’s have to be on top of to prevent a Google penalty, and it doesn’t stop there! They have not only targeted the bad content that is produced, but they are also targeting the bad experiences as well. Google’s own Matt Cutts made a statement in a webinar, that SEO should mean search experience optimization. 

In conclusion I believe that you in fact need to have an SEO to manage the content for your page and be up to date with all of the Google updates, it is constantly and will always be ever-changing. So in case you don’t want all the work you put in to your page to be in vain then I suggest you revisit that idea.

•  Cost Vs Investment

If you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen! That is exactly how I would put it to someone considering an SEO position. This is a sum of how it goes in the SEO world. As an SEO you always need to be on the up and up with your skills and knowledge, Google has roughly changed the algorithm at least between 50-80 times a month last year. There were also 10 major updates; including the major change of Googles new search tactics with the launch of Hummingbird. You are expected to learn and comprehend what’s happening to search, but also have an understanding of the website itself.

For example, the new algorithm goes as so:

• The traditional three of SEO (content, links, meta tags).
• How pages are laid out
• How advertising is being used
• How quickly the sites load
• If you have implemented the code correctly (mostly for mobile)
• Whether or not you moderate your comments
• If the content you produce is thin or thick
• How the site is hosted
• How sites are severed
• How quickly you get to the first pixel

And just when you start to learn of those changes, guess what! They change again, shift or sometimes in cases even go away completely.

Now if that wasn’t too much for you I would like to also add that SEO’s have to keep up with and understand all social media changes such as, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Blogging, whatever Google views as a natural link and more.

A good SEO will not come cheap due to the knowledge they have regarding the nature of the site and search. Onsite and off, along with all of the changes in search itself. This makes your SEO an investment instead of a liability and will also bring more in than you necessarily have to put out. Many label SEO as voodoo magic which leads clients to believe that it is not necessary or that the value is unrealistic, when indeed the outcome without it proves to be otherwise. Causing more damage in the long run.

• Google doesn’t hate SEO

There is a lot of misinforming information as to the way Google feels with SEOs. Referring to bad content that is not helpful to the users. Well this is not so at least for the good SEOs. SEOs that are good at what they do actually produce better websites and build them up instead of down. With a better website you get better experiences from the users when they search through Google which in return makes for a better product for Google. Basically good SEOs make Google look better.

At the end of the Day Google does not hate SEOs at all, good SEOs make it better and is worth it all in the end.

• AdWords don’t help Organic Search

Google Ad Words is a form of SEO, which technically is considered SEM (search engine marketing); definition being that Googles performance is optimized by your bids placed for certain Google keywords where, in fact Google makes most of its revenue. 

Although you may have PPC (pay per click) campaign in Google, it is not at all in common with SEO organic search (non- paid search) so buying the ads has no effect on one another, they are completely separate entities in their selves.

• SEO is like 7-11

Much like the well know ‘7-11’ stores locate all over, just as they are open 24/7, so is SEO. With hiring a SEO you are not only hiring a person, but all the knowledge that is contained within this individual.

Many people can deceive you into thinking that have knowledge, when in fact all they are after is a quick clickbait with little true meaning or value as to what they are writing about. These articles can be very harmful to site owners, and much of their existence does rely on SEOs action with (posts, comments, etc.).

The Impact of Content Marketing & SEO on Your Business

By now, you have probably heard the terms 'content marketing' and 'SEO' several times when discussing your online marketing presence. Content marketing, building links, increasing your company's search engine results presence with the help of some white-hat SEO--these are a few of the things that you can implement to help get your business in eyes of consumers without paying for Google ads.

Content marketing is more than just sharing a blog post you wrote and hoping someone links back to it. It is building your brand up as a resource for consumers, and becoming a site and source that people can trust when searching for information and for a company to work with. Here are some things to examine in regards to your current online marketing strategy:

• Where are you right now, career- or business-wise?
• Where do you want to be in the future?
• Why do you do what you’re currently doing? Are there things you’re doing that are wasting time? Might adopting other practices carry you forward faster?
• How do you know you’re making progress? Are there objective measures?

Some of the key principles you should take in consideration with your online marketing revolve around quality (no one wants to click to your page and see garbage or poorly executed content), trust (don't always push the sale, push your expertise), and intelligence (focus on communicating ideas and beliefs rather than shooting for a word count or dying to go viral). Even within the vast pages of the internet, your character shows.

What character are you showing to your potential consumers?

Inspiration can hit you at any time. When you have a great idea and you need help creating content to support your vision, contact us over at Tandem to help bring your great idea to the web.

Use Schema Markups to Make Your Search Results Shine!

Google Knowledge Graph is always developing new opportunities to enhance your listing on the search results page. Help create engaging content that will make your page stand out in search results! Here are some best practices for making a ‘stand out’ search results with a small time investment.

Location, Location, Location! Your business is one of HUNDREDS of listing trying to be discovered. Focus on helping searchers find what they are looking for at your business. Stand out by providing as much information as possible for your business listing. Also, make sure that your business location is precise on the map. Having your building show up somewhere that you are not located could cause some devastating results for potential customers.

Google My Business has now integrated multiple Google Search channels to allow one listing to show in search results, on maps, and in Google Plus. End result, customers are able to find your business no matter what device they decide to use! Most users have become familiar with Google Maps, but the addition of Knowledge Graph goes beyond maps and includes store-specific reviews as well as social media channels for the business.

If your business travels (in example, a band, comedian, show, etc.), use the events, places, and dates options to provide the latest details and current info about your company and/or brand. If you search for a band in Google, you will see their playlist, band members, upcoming events and ticketing info that is relevant to your location.

By creating these enhanced listings (such as Events) you can highlight temporal happenings and locations that are relevant to the search query being performed. We see these schema markups primarily with concerts, conferences, festivals; these additions are ways of producing geo-spatial results in your search engine responses. Ticketing info can be added to web-based content markups by using the “offers” option.

You don’t have to be a famous icon to get top billing in search results for your event. Schema markup for Events and Locations also help answer any questions about what to do this weekend or next weekend. Looking for “things to do in Fort Lauderdale, FL” this weekend? Go no further than Google Carousel.

These enhanced listings options bind a point of interest for a specific location with a schematically optimized image to achieve getting your content placed at the top of organic results. If you take the time to incorporate schema markup into your event information at a local point of interest this may help influence the left-to-right order in the local carousel. Any events that are held in this geographic location are located in this Carousel, as well as staple POI’s for that city.

Regardless of your industry, if you put structured markup on your Web content, you can give off a very rich visual display in line with regular search results. This is a perfect opportunity to optimize your business to consume better and/or more real estate in the search results.

Another opportunity is to answer a question people could be searching for. Google Answers surpassed Wikipedia by including high-quality content that addresses specific questions and even includes step-by-step instructions. For example, if you are curious “how to make a key lime pie?” ask Google. The search results provide you with complete directions for baking a key lime pie.

By using the creative schema markup for Recipes, a small site can supersede the giants in the industry for top search results. Keep in mind that the surge in search referrals may be temporary. Google collects Feedback to determine which user interface features to keep in search results.

Using structured markups on your Web content can help it rise to the top of the SERP’s in many different ways. Schema.org is a website dedicated to providing schema’s webmasters can use. You can also refer to Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper. There are also schema plug-ins available if your site is on WordPress.

Google is growing which means change. Search Engine’s number one goal is to provide the most valuable and relevant content to the search user based on the search query. We recommend that you add structured markup to important content today in order to leverage new UI displays in all major engines tomorrow. Tandem Interactive encourages questions to clarify any of our suggestions and, as always, we can help implement as much as possible if you need our help! 

3 Ways to Prioritize Your SEO Efforts

Prioritizing is a difficult part of life seen in all aspects of your day; at home, work, socially, etc. We see priorities are a crucial part of our SEO efforts and must make decisions to really PRIORITIZE what is most important goal. The key to a successful SEO strategy (when I say successful I mean those who receive the most links, traffics and really reap the benefits from search engines algorithm updates) are those that have mastered the art of prioritizing.

Here are three ways to help you prioritize your SEO content for your marketing campaign: 

1. Define Your Goals

Understand the purpose of your marketing campaign and what you want to accomplish. Focus on your business’s overall goals rather than SEO goals. Shift your focus from the highest traffic driving keyword to your company’s best-selling product (or highest profit margin) and/or service.  Here are some examples of good and bad goals:

•  Bad Goal: The increase ranking and organic traffic for “movers”
• Good Goal:  To see a 15% increase in traffic for “movers in Fort Lauderdale”

Remember, the key to your SEO goal has to contain a qualitative aspect; this is the only way you can measure your efforts. By having a dependent variable, you can measure, report and analyze the process and/or success of the goal you set.

2. Audit Your Site

Evaluate your site and determine what you want your website goal to be; drive phone calls, lead form generation, product purchases, newsletter subscriptions, etc. Once you know what you expect from your site, create a course of action to make it happen. When creating this course of action use some of these questions to help map out your progress:

·         What optimizations have been done?

·         What opportunities do you see to improve?

·         What is your current ranking for elevated keywords?

·         Who are your competitors that outrank you?

·         What are these competitors doing differently? 

For those that have never used Moz (used to be SEOMoz), they have an amazing guide on how to do a site audit with a step-by-step guide on what to do. If your business is too busy with other to-do, you can always ask our Tandem Team to do a site audit and/or site review for you.

Prioritize your site’s audit. Create a timeline of based on these 4 factors:

1.       How much time and resources will these changes take?

2.       Will these changes impact your SEO and overall business?

3.       What is the expected time frame to see the impact?

4.       Can I, or someone on the team, actually make this change?

3. Small Scale Implementation : Test, Rinse, Repeat

We all know that SEO is a priority but there is no guarantee to the fruits of our labor. SEO is based on best practices rewarded by search engines and previous experience. There is no way to predict a date for our efforts this is why we recommend small scale implementation.

Rather than making drastic changes to the entire site, make changes on smaller scale. In example, add title tags, optimize different pages, and add rich keywords. By creating small project implemented individually you may get a stronger sense of where the site is really benefiting.

An important best practice people forget is testing. You should always test against your original to see what your audience interacts with best. If your test shows no results, diagnose the problem, determine why, and test again. This can be very beneficial if you’re working on huge websites with thousands of URLs. 

Understanding SEO Content

This material is very useful for any individual looking to learn and understand SEO concepts more efficiently. We are going to breakdown SEO concepts starting with the three main building blocks: Relevance, Importance, and Popularity.

Relevance is the most crucial and basic question in SEO; is the content you are covering relevant to what the consumer is looking for. Here are 6 ways of determining your content’s relevance:

You will start with the title tag. The title should be the clear indicator of the relevance it has to what the user is looking for. Next you will need a semantic analysis of the content. Analyze the general relevance of the words and phrases being used in your content. Always use anchor text in your content. Anchor text is a link you click on that acts as a label which directs you to what you would expect to find once you get to that page (in example the phrase “moving company” would have a link to the All My Sons Moving and Storage website). Look at the topics of third party web pages containing links to the page. Ensure that your pages about moving to Denver link back to your page discussing child friendly neighborhoods in Denver. That is exactly the result you are working for. The topic matter of the site where your page resides should match. Your SEO efforts should all be focused on providing the most relevant information on your page and overall website. So on your child friendly neighborhoods in Denver shouldn't be a page on a website about focused on growing tomatoes. Analyze how users respond to content in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Look at your metrics to understand if there is a problem with your landing page; if you are seeing patterns such as a high bounce rate (when someone clicks on your site and then hits the back button to go back to the SERPs page) that is a problem that sound be addressed quickly. Your page should be relevant to the search query being performed, if your bounce rate is high, that means the page the user is being sent to, is not the information they are looking for.

Search engines use a system ranked by importance to determine where a page should be placed in a particular search query. Page importance is defined by a combination of things, with inbound links and content being the heaviest hitters. Although many believe that social is a major contributor of page importance, it is believed in the SEO community that inbound links are more valuable in the eyes of any search engine. The Impact of Importance is a direct correlation between the content offered on your page and websites wanting to link to this content because they believe it is important.

Last is popularity. Popularity in SEO is very different than importance in search queries. Popularity is a very powerful factor for trending topics such as breaking news, social topics and trending hashtags. As with relevance, a search engine can try ranking certain articles in particular order based on the click patterns by users. Many factors can influence the popularity of something. We see a great example of Facebook stories that have 100K+ shares of a photo that has created an emotional reaction of the viewer such as a dog being rescued or a soldier coming home. Images and videos are strong ways to tell stories and create popularity on social networks.

Although relevance, importance and popularity are the foundation of SEO other important SEO concepts include segmentation, diversity, quality, and trust.

Segmentation is an interesting concept in SEO because you are changing the search results based on what is known about the user. Localization is the most common form of segmenting users on search engines. You can segment a user through personalization; when someone have been to a page before so the search engine shows them higher in the results because they believe the user is looking for that page again.  Google+ connections can also alter search engine rankings by ranking a related search query to something you previously +1. Time of day and time of year can influence your results.

If the user does not find interest in the first or second results, they’re most likely not going to find interest in the third if it is of the same relevance. Therefore you need to diversify your search queries so your webpage can stand out.

As we all know, search engines have algorithms to measure the quality of a page. Your website’s quality could demote the rankings in search queries.  Make sure your page is useful, accurate and informative. When optimizing go through the 6 steps of relevance to ensure you are creating relevant pages that will promote a good website experience to the user. Double check spelling and grammar perform publishing content.

It is very important that you are not violating any search engine guidelines or your page cold be demoted. Gaining your audience trust is crucial to your business. Read the Google Webmaster Guidelines to guarantee you understand what is considered valid practices. Get a second opinion; have others review your site and ask for feedback. This is also a way to developing a relationship with others in the SEO industry. Hint… Hint… your Tandem team! :) 

10 Tips to REALLY “Help a Reporter Out”

As an Agency, our team followers the best names in marketing, we also follow the small people that do not receive the credit they deserve. One of my favorites to follow is a *Henry. Henry is a link activist and a dedicated SEO analyst, he is constantly studying the latest tactics and best practices to help with a website’s link profile.

His latest newsletter gave a run-down of HARO, Help a Reporter Out, and where he sees flags in their system. The HARO Company is a paid subscription that give real-time media opportunities in a three tiered plan with subscriptions starting at $19/month and a basic plan that is free. HARO works by giving the subscriber publicity alerts that are powered by Vocus, an integrated marketing and PR software based in Maryland.

While there is some value in a HARO subscription for obtaining links, you have to be weary of the magnitude of crap sites that are distributed in the “3 Media Opportunities Emails a day”.  So here are 10 tips for HARO users:

1. Discretion

As with anything you do in life, be discrete and selective. Really look around sites before just deciding to post your information on them. Similar to a group of people, do you want people to see you associated with them? If you hang around dogs, you’re going to catch fleas… And no one likes a flea-infested website. 

2. Anonymity

Most of the “3 media opportunities delivered daily” are written anonymously; this is something that should cause a red flag. Good, rich, informative content will have a source, if there is no source, which means there is no reliability or assurance about the information you are reading. However, the HARO editors do claim to "vet each and every reporter source before they post to make sure that they meet an Alexa traffic ranking and that they actually write for the outlet they claim", a direct quote from Stacey Miller the Senior Social Media Manager at Vocus.  

3. Limitations

Do not limit yourself by restricting the content or topics you are willing to read opportunities on. Sometimes opportunity arises in the most surprising places, and the last thing you want is to miss it!

4. Time

All three of the subscription tiers for HARO include 3 opportunity emails a day, time is of the essence when reading news, so it is important to be timely about reading the notices upon receipt.

5. Spacing

There are two types of opportunities that you will receive from HARO: wide and narrow. Wide opportunities are good for building “mindshare”; that means traffic from making your business visible to those likely to visit your site at some point in time. This would be link exposure in related articles similar to your product/service. Narrow opportunities are more targeted towards your demographic and those searching for your product but many not know who you are. This is where you can see growth in lower conversion funnel opportunities such as social shares and traditional media newsletters.

6. Traditional SEO

Don’t just focus on the traditional SEO tactics, digital marketing is constantly changing to become more advance and serve a better purpose and more relevant search result. PageRank and other SEO trusted ranking metrics should not influence you to refuse participation in a potentially good space. Focus on the traffic and if sales could possibly come from it, search traffic is only one piece of the puzzle.

7. Investigate

Investigate where you are receiving the content, sometimes people have a bias because they are actually affiliated with a competitor or because they are an advocate of a group. Learn about the person who is giving you information before you decide they are a good or bad source. And don’t underestimate the ‘little guy’; you may think someone does not have a lot of followers on Twitter or Instagram, but could be VERY influential in your industry; the small fry may be the opportunity you have been looking for! “Pick battles big enough to matter, and small enough to win.”

8. Blogs

Bloggers can be very beneficial or extremely harmful depending on their audience. Again, do your research on the blogger before reaching out to them about any type of work or assistance. Be familiar with their work and see their metrics for posts and their quality of work.

9. Content

Google’s favorite food, color, number, sport, and word is content; fresh, unique, new, rich content. Any site you may find that has guest post or repetitive content, STAY AWAY! Google’s main focus is and will always be the best, most relevant search result for the customer query, there is a reason why that page in not listed. 

10. Quality over Quantity

Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, so do not be greedy when doing any form of link building or SEO. Focus on Quality of work over Quantity. It is better to have 10 dedicated followers, than 1,000 that do not engage with your brand. And this can be applied anywhere on your site and in any industry, it is better to have less but better quality work, employees, products, blogs, content, and links than it is to have a million crappy anything.

You can see satisfied customers and published stories in outlets like Men's Health Magazine, Yahoo!Fiance and the Steve Harvey Show here. To learn more about SEO and the services that Tandem provides, please contact Joe at JLaratro@Tandem-Interactive.com. Have a great weekend! J