SEO Improve Your Search Rankings

What is SEO and how can it help your business? SEO simply stands for Search Engine Optimization. This refers to practices and techniques for ensuring search engines recognize your web pages. SEO is used to increase your search engine rankings in search results. This is the primary method of organically driving traffic to your website.

On-Site Versus Off-Site SEO

As you begin looking for ways to gain more traffic, you may hear the terms On-Site and Off-Site SEO. On-site optimization involves steps that are taken on your web pages. This includes the proper use of keywords, titles, and descriptions, as well as other tasks.

Off-site optimization includes steps that occur away from your site. A few examples of off-site SEO include the building of backlinks through commenting on forums, sharing links on Facebook and other social media platforms, and sending out press releases.

When you hire an SEO business to help drive traffic to your website, they will likely employ both on-site and off-site SEO techniques.

Search Engine Algorithms Determine Rankings

Search engines use algorithms to determine which web pages are most useful for a particular search query. These algorithms are used to rank web pages based on how helpful or relevant they are to a user’s search. But first, search engines must create an index of web pages. In order to build this index, search engines send out crawlers.

These crawlers search the internet, landing on web pages, and following links, and gathering information about each web page that is visited. This gives the search engines details about the use of keywords on your site, external and internal links, and the actual content of your site.

How Can SEO help Your Business?

When you search for a term related to your business, how far do you have to search before coming across a link to your website? Depending on the industry you are involved in, if you do not show up on the first page, then you may need to improve the SEO on your website.

SEO experts can look at the existing structure of your website and come up with solutions to improve optimization. With SEO, you can begin climbing the search engine rankings, without having to pay for additional advertising. This is an organic solution for driving traffic to your website.

The Benefits of a Responsive Web Design

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As a business owner, you are probably aware that having a website is an essential part of running a business in the 21^st century. While the web design team that you hire will handle the process of coding your website or setting up a WordPress site, you still have control over the look and feel that you want for the site. After all, the site is a direct representation of your business in the online world.

With a growing number of consumers using their mobile devices for browsing the internet, responsive web design has become increasingly beneficial.

No Need for Two Separate Websites

In the past, a web design company would create one website for desktop viewing and another website for mobile viewing. Responsive web design eliminates the need for two sites, by allowing the elements on the page to adjust based on the width of the user’s screen.

Improve the User Experience

Using responsive web design can actually increase the overall user experience. If a visitor has difficulty reading text on a mobile device, they will likely leave the website and find another business. By having a website design that works with any device, you will not have to worry about visitors having trouble finding or viewing information on your website.

Increase Search Engine Rankings

Search engine optimization is a lot of work, but having a responsive web design can give your SEO a boost. Google prefers websites that use responsive web design. One of the latest changes to the Google search engine ranking algorithm increased the importance of having a mobile-friendly website. Since you will not be displaying the same content on two separate websites, you will also not have to deal with double content penalties.

WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for the development of quality websites. There are thousands of themes available that can be tailored to fit the needs of your business. When looking for themes, narrow your search to themes that use responsive web design.

Online Grocery Shopping Booming

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As people become accustomed to getting the products and services they need via their smartphones and mobile devices, they are beginning to turn to eCommerce for even the most routine purchases, such as grocery shopping.

According to a new survey conducted by the group 72 Point Inc. on behalf of online organic grocer Door to Door Organics, the number of consumers who shop online for groceries increased 29 percent in 2015. And 19 percent of those surveyed said they did all of their weekly food shopping online.

Virtual Grocery Cart

Grocery shopping is one of the last holdouts for online commerce. That’s probably because many consumers prefer to physically see the food products they are buying to feed their families — especially meats, produce, and dairy products. Don’t you always open the egg container to see if any are broken?

But given the convenience of online shopping, these attitudes are slowly changing. According to the survey, 13 percent of people said that they used a single grocery provider for all of their weekly purchases, but 34 percent said they used more than one. And 53 percent said they visit three or four online and offline stores each week for their food shopping.

Produce Holdouts

Most are still using online services to shop for everything except produce and other fresh grocery items. And of those people who have bought produce online, more than half — 57 percent — told the pollsters that they were disappointed with the quality and freshness of the fruit and vegetables they received.

Most consumers — 58 percent 00 said the would be more likely to buy produce online if websites included information about where the products were picked and packaged. And 51 percent said they would like to be more willing to buy produce online if they knew that it came from local farms.

The survey reveals that attitudes towards eCommerce are continuing to evolve.

Inspire Creativity with Your Workspace

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Having a workstation that promotes creativity and success is important if you have a job in which creative thinking skills are important, such as a graphic designer or web design professional.

But regardless of your job, most people spend a lot of time at work, so you might as well have an environment that is comfortable and puts you in a good mood so you can be more productive.

Get Some Boxes

Start transforming your workstation by getting a few storage boxes you can use to organize your office and clear out the clutter.

Buy plastic or cardboard boxes at any office supply or home improvement store or get some boxes for free from your local grocery store or other retail business.

Get Rid of the Clutter

The first step is to clean everything off the surface of your desk, other than your computer and telephone. As you are removing each item, ask yourself this question: “Have I touched this particular report/paperwork/other type of clutter in the past week?” If the answer is “yes”, put it into one pile. If the answer is “no”, put it into another.

Most of the items in your “no” pile can be stored away or thrown out. This is especially true if they are printed duplicates of reports or paperwork you already have stored in your computer or can access online.

The majority of the items in your “yes” pile also can be stored or tossed. Unless a particular report or paperwork or other item is something you absolutely need to have access to today, right now, then it has no business being on your desk.

Lighting Your Way

Lighting is an area that is often overlooked but actually can have a profound effect on both the appearance and productivity of your workspace.

You should have two separate sources of light into your room: One from an overhead lighting fixture — or, even better, from a natural light sources such as a window — and the second should come from a task light.

Have a Focal Point

Having a focal point in your workspace directs your attention so that you can more easily keep on task. For many people, this is the laptop or PC at your workstation, but it also can be something like a calendar, a to-do list or something else that keeps you on track.

Rocket Your Website to the Top of the Charts

When it comes to attracting new customers and new business online, SEO isn’t everything … it’s the ONLY thing!

Search engine optimization involves using techniques to make your website or web pages more attractive to the most popular search engines — especially Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Why Be Popular?

Popularity is something everybody has to worry about, but especially website owners. Why? Because if search engines don’t “like” your web pages, there’s a very good chance that the customers you want and need will never find them.

Here’s why: When people search online for the businesses, products, and services they want, they usually will go to the search engine on their phone, tablet, laptop or computer and type in the keywords that best describe what they are looking for.

For example, somebody needing a muffler repair in Florida might type in “Florida muffler repair”.

Rocket Your Website to the Top of the Charts – Search Engines Rank Websites

The search engine will instantly search through the billions of websites online to find those that contain these keywords. It will then return results to the search according to an intricate ranking process that is based on such factors as where in the content these websites are located and how many times they are repeated.

Search engines stay in business by giving their users the best results for the searches they want. So they also will consider such things as how many social approval signals a website has — such as Facebook “Likes”, how many times people have shared the site’s link on Twitter, and so on.

They also will look at how many other sites link back to the website, giving additional weight to those that are considered “authoritative sites”, or sites that most people would go to in order to find answers to questions they have. Examples include Wikipedia, About.com, and websites maintained by academic institutions and governmental bodies.

How Your Website Can Increase Profits

Most businesses today have websites out of necessity. Customers today have an expectation of being able to interact with a company online to learn more about the organization, ask questions or leave comments, or to buy products or orders services directly.

In the past few years, a sea change has happened in global business: Most customers today use their smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices to search for the products and services they want. So if your business doesn’t have a website, you probably are missing out on most of your new business.

Websites and Profits

But it’s not enough to simply have a website. It has to meet the expectations of your online customers. And people also need to be able to find it.

An outdated, confusing, or cluttered website may turn more customers away than it attracts. If you haven’t updated your business’s website in a while — or if you can’t remember the last time you gave it a facelift — it’s probably time to review it.

How Your Website Can Increase Profits – Search Engine Rankings

To capture the largest share of the pool of customers for your specific type of products and services, it has to be simple for people to find your website on Google, Bing, Yahoo and the other popular search engines.

Here’s how most retail scenarios work today: Somebody needs a particular product. Let’s say for example’s sake it’s a frisbee cannon.

They take out their smartphone, type “frisbee cannon” into their Google app, along with perhaps their hometown:

“Frisbee cannon Detroit”

Up will pop a list of businesses that offer this product. Here’s the important part: 7 times out of 10, the customer will click on the first business listed. And that’s the business that most likely will get the sale (if they are mobile-friendly, right then and there from the customer’s smartphone!).

Are Backlinks Still Relevant to Your Website?

Just a few years ago, Google based much of its decision on where to rank a website on how many backlinks it had. The idea was that if a website had a lot of backlinks, it must be important and therefore of value to Google’s users.

But unscrupulous web page designers figured this out and started to artificially create fake backlinks using automated software programs. The result was that Google was leading its users to web pages that actually had very little content and value.

So Google changed its search engine algorithm to give weight to other things such as social approval signals, such as Facebook “Likes”, how many times a website’s link was Tweeted, and others.

So do backlinks still matter to getting your web pages ranked high on Google and other search engines? The answer is, “Yes, as long as the links come from authoritative places”.

Are Backlinks Still Relevant to Your Website? Authoritative Websites

Google considers websites to be authoritative if they are places people generally would go to get answers to questions they might have. That means sites like Wikipedia, Ask.com and About.com are considered by Google and other search engines to be authoritative sites.

So getting links to your page from these sites and other authoritative sites like them — including sites run by education institutions (in other words, sites with the suffix “.edu”) and governmental bodies (sites with the suffix “.gov”) can still improve your page rankings.

How to Get Backlinks from Authoritative Sites

The best way to get these high-value backlinks is for your site itself to be authoritative. In other words, make your website a place web users would go to find answers. Then it’s simply a self-fulfilling prophecy and your page will soar to the top of the Google rankings.

Another way is to plant these backlinks yourself. Go to places authoritative sites and interact with the content, leaving content, posting helpful information, and always remembering to include backlinks to your web pages.

10 Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Your Rankings

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If you want your web pages to appear at the top of the Google Search Engine Results Page for your keywords, you have to use the most effective SEO techniques.

Here are 10 fast and easy SEO-related things you can do to instantly improve your page rankings:

Don’t include characters like “&” and “?” in your permalinks. Google doesn’t like them and they can slow things down.

To make your content more readable, separate ideas and phrases with hyphens whenever possible.

But don’t use underscores (__) instead of hyphens because these can confuse the search engines.

Any time you include an image or photo, always create alt tags and descriptions that include your keywords.

Anytime you can — if appropriate — use internal linking. This is when you link to somewhere else within your page or website, rather than to an external page or document. Search engines like to see internal links and will rank your pages higher if you have them.

Use sticky posts when possible. These are posts that include a lot of links that keep you on the page, rather than being sent off to another site.

Include a category description paragraph on your page.

Encourage page visitors to subscribe to your website, blog or other content using a category specific RSS feed.

Make sure you understand the target audience you are addressing. If necessary, do some research by looking at other pages that are aimed at the same audience you want. Then update your content appropriately.

Speaking of updating content, make sure you are continually providing high-quality content that your page visitors can actually use in their everyday lives. This will make it more likely that they will return to your pages again and again.

Use these 10 fast and easy SEO tips to improve the SERP rankings of your web pages so you can attract more visitors.

5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Boost Traffic

Getting the attention of the Google search engine is getting harder and harder. With more 10,000 new websites launching every day, there’s more reason than ever to use SEO to attract more page visitors.

Here are five on-page SEO techniques you can use starting today to drive more traffic to your web page:

Stick to a Single Keyword or Topic

Many web page creators try to do too much with their content. Pick the one keyword phrase or topic that is the most likely for people searching for pages like yours to enter into Google and stick with it.

It’s often helpful if you tie your keyword to your geographic location. For example, instead of focusing on “dry cleaners”, use “New York City dry cleaners” to promote your small dry cleaning business in Manhattan.

Don’t Be Strict about Keywords

Google recently changed its algorithm so that it looks for variations of the same keyword, rather than the exact same keyword every time.

If you are using the same verbatim keyword throughout your content to boost your SEO, it can make your content seem stiff and unnatural. Instead, don’t be afraid to use variations that help with the flow.

Page Titles Are Critical

Google will use the title tag to display your page in its search results. So you want to make sure your title tag explicitly states what your page is all about. It may be your one and only chance to get people to click on it.

5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Boost Traffic – Include Natural Links

Google prefers pages that have natural, high-quality inbound links that lead into them from authoritative sources. pay attention the inbound links leading to your page to make sure they are continually growing and that they come from reputable, high-quality websites.

Implement these five SEO techniques on your pages starting right now and you should see more traffic by the end of the day.

4 Tips to Make Your Web Pages More Popular

When it comes to web design, everything you do should contribute to the popularity of your web pages.

It’s important that your web pages look great, but they also need to have great Search Engine Optimization so that people using Google, Bing and other major search engines can easily find them.

Tips for Improving Your Page Rankings

With that in mind, here are four quick and easy things you can do to make your web pages rank higher:

Content Is King

No matter how many backlinks, keywords or other SEO techniques you include on your web pages, if the content isn’t interesting and compelling to visitors, they are going to click off right away.

Try to include great content that visitors will find useful, entertaining or enlightening. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer and ask yourself, “What would I like to see on this web page?”

Join the Online Community

The Internet is a participatory sport. And the more people you can get involved with your web pages, the higher they will be ranked by Google.

Reach out to bloggers who write about your field and ask if they would be willing to review your products. A few positive reviews can not only get the word out about your business, but also drive more visitors to your web pages.

4 Tips to Make Your Web Pages More Popular – Network, Network, Network

Similarly, you want to be involved with the online community that is devoted to your niche. Link building and getting good social signals is all about building relationships with people.

Today’s search engines look for ways to understand how people connect with one another. So the more connections you can create between your web pages and actual Internet users, the more value search engines will assign to your web pages.

4 Tips to Make Your Web Pages More Popular – Track Your Business

It’s also important to understand what people are saying about your business. Something as simple as setting a Google Alert to track mentions of your company can keep you informed.

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