SEO Archives - Modern Marketing Partners

Quality Content Needed at Every Phase of the Sales Cycle image

Quality digital content has the potential to help B2B marketers cost-effectively reach annual company goals. The key to pulling this off requires a commitment to providing content that puts your audience’s needs first. And it must happen at every point in the selling cycle. A recent survey by Clutch Research finds that 88 percent of B2B audiences read business content online at least once weekly to stay informed, research companies and make purchasing decisions. The report identifies four stages in the sales funnel and the content consumers consider during each phase in the sales conversion. Taking a look at their findings can help companies understand how to interact with B2B audiences and take advantage of opportunities to engage potential customers ...

16th of October, 2018
In: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media
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Google+ Cancellation – Implications for Social Media and SEO image

Millions of businesses are signed up to Google+: it has become an important part of both social media and SEO initiatives. Did you know that Google+ engagement is comparatively better than most social networks? According to SEP, “Google+ active users spend quality time on the site -- an average of 3:46 per visit.” And Google+ bounce rate is excellent at 53.6%. See chart below. So what happens when Google decides to shut down the platform? You didn't see that coming but it's actually going to happen over the next 10 months. To the uninitiated, this may not seem like a problem. But to you that every once in a while uses Google+, why wouldn't Google just consider you! The fact is that ...

Local SEO for Contractors – Part 2 image

Now that the construction business is established with Google, it’s important to optimize the website so that you can further improve the likelihood of coming up in local search. What follows are some important tips forlocal SEO that go beyond GMB. Digital Marketing Tips to Improve Local SEO Increase the company’s chances to land on the search results page! There are a number of steps that can be taken to achieve this. NAPs are Important Be sure to include NAP information (name, address, phone number) and other important details in an easily crawlable HTML text format. Remember that images can’t be crawled, other than the alt text, so don’t include vital NAP information in image format; be sure it’s in text format. Carefully Place ...

Local SEO for Contractors – Part 1 image

As a contractor, it’s important to consider that much of the business received will be local. Accordingly, contractors benefit when their SEO strategy has a local focus. To stand out locally or regionally, it’s important to make sure all information on Google My Business is complete; then make sure to establish a local SEO strategy on the company website and beyond. Google My Business is Key Complete the entirety of your Google My Business profile. This allows users to learn as much as possible about the business before even clicking off of Google. It’s important to double-check this information often, because Google will often prompt users to answer questions about the business and allow them to suggest edits. This means that ...

11th of June, 2018
In: Marketing Strategies, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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How to Win at RankBrain image

Search engine optimization (SEO) is evolving in 2018 as Google now says 100 percent of its queries are processed through its artificial intelligence (AI) program, RankBrain. RankBrain was actually introduced in October of 2015, but it wasn’t until last year that Google confirmed it is among the top three most influential ranking factors in its overall larger algorithm. What is RankBrain Rankbrain is an AI-powered tool designed to try and understand user intent, to understand what a user is really searching for and present those results. RankBrain is all about making the user experience more relevant. It looks at every user’s search terms, then compares these to billions of other searches and assumes the intent or the interpretation of what the ...

Should Your Meta Description Be 320 Characters? image

Back in December, Google increased meta descriptions from 160 characters to 320 characters. Just how will this affect your meta description length? Well, there are plenty of factors to consider. Why did Google do it? Straight from the source, a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land: “We recently made a change to provide more descriptive and useful snippets, to help people better understand how pages are relevant to their searches. This resulted in snippets becoming slightly longer, on average.” Always keeping its visitors in mind, Google made the update to make snippets more descriptive and useful. Desktop vs. Mobile While the lengthened meta descriptions allows you to be more descriptive, it’s important to consider that the lengthened description may not show on mobile. Often, on ...

5 Tactics to Keep Your Digital Marketing on Track image

Most businesses understand the value of digital marketing to attract and retain customers. Most businesses have at the very least a company website, a Facebook page, and a Google My Business page. What they might not realize is that this constitutes the start of a digital marketing campaign or plan. What? Wait. You didn’t ever consider digital activities in those terms. Well it is a strategic marketing initiative, and you really need to keep it on track. Let’s first define digital marketing to include all your online marketing efforts like Google searches, SEO, email campaigns, social media, display ads, and company website. You may be doing a few or all of these activities, adding new digital aspects as time has gone ...

Businesses Can’t Afford to Ignore HTTPS Anymore image

Google has repeatedly talked about the importance of HTTPS as opposed to HTTP over the last year and discussed flagging non-HTTPS pages with warnings to users on its Chrome browser. Now, it appears to be in its final implementation. Non-HTTPS pages are displaying warnings in a variety of industries. A Reminder: What’s the Difference Between HTTP and HTTPS? HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol; HTTPS means HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. Both are protocols/languages for passing information between servers and clients. As the names imply, HTTPS is secure; HTTP is not. Without the security, it is possible third parties can view the conversation between the site and the user. HTTPS connections are secured through SSL/TSL protocol, which respectively stand for Secure Sockets Layer ...

Link Building Tactics Part 2: 4 Important Techniques image

Link Building Part 1 blog covered link building outreach, which is necessary to learn before approaching any of the other link building tactics, as they, too, require outreach. Link Building Part 2 consider four main tactics including: Guest Blogging Ego-Bait Broken Link Building Link Reclamation Below, we break down how to approach each tactic. Guest Blogging One effective way to build links is through guest blogging. This tactic involves you publishing your content on their blog. Step 1: Decide on what links you want to use. What page on your website do you want the guest blog to link back to? The homepage? Services? A contact form? Deciding which links you want your guest blog to link back to creates better focus for ...

Link Building Tactics Part 1: Using Outreach to Gain Links image

Search engines use links in two important ways: (1) to discover new web pages and (2) to determine how well a link should rank. Links act as the way that search engines crawl the Internet. Without link building, your website could be invisible to search engines. Some link building is organic. Quality content is likely to be shared on other websites. As a result, your site has earned an organic link. The best way to gain organic links is to create content others want to share. Consider the following forms of content to increase the likelihood of shares: Video Infographic Data Visualization Whitepaper How-to Guide Image Gallery Once you’ve ensured that your content is solid, you can look to other link ...

Google Algorithms Timeline image

Google has long been the leader of search engines and its influence is far-reaching. Ranking on Google means being visible on the Internet; conversely, not ranking makes you invisible. Over the years, Google has perfected its search algorithms to provide better searches for its users. On multiple occasions, its major updates have required marketers to completely shake up their strategies. Below is a timeline of major changes from 2011 to 2017, followed by a description of these updates. Google Algorithm Timeline Major Updates Penguin Initially launched in 2012, Penguin was created to catch sites spamming its search results, particularly by buying links or obtaining links from networks created primarily to boost Google rankings. Launched: April 2012 Most recent: October 2016 4.0: Phase 2, Phase 1 3.0: Everflux, ...

Google’s Fighting Mobile Pop Up Ads, Effective January image

After fishing through the search results page for an article you thought would provide answers, you click a promising-looking link and are ready to delve into the content, but then a large box or tab pops up immediately in front of that sentence you were reading. It can act as a minor annoyance in some instances- you pause your reading and find the ‘X’ to press. In other instances, these pop-ups are truly spammy, either difficult to close or in a new tab entirely. On a mobile device, navigating away from these pop-ups can be a time-consuming task. Google is all for making the search experience better for the user, and is less concerned about the SEO-adjustments marketers will be ...

Google Cares About What’s Being Posted on Google image

Last year, Google rolled out the Snack Pack, slimming the local business results down from 7 to 3. Since then, marketers have adapted their strategy by putting a greater focus on Google Reviews. On Moz’s most recent top local search ranking factors blog, we see Google Reviews growing greater in importance, and Google My Business (GMB) factors repeatedly make the lists. Clearly, to rank on this giant’s search page, brands need to create a strong presence on Google itself. Google Reviews Since Google rolled out the Snack Pack, marketers placed greater emphasis on Google Reviews, specifically those with text. In Moz’s blog, marketers placed ‘Quantity of Native Google Reviews’ as their third greatest focus since the Snack Pack, and that’s not ...

27th of July, 2016
In: Inbound Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized
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Find an Influencer that Fits Your Influencer Marketing Strategy image

If you read our previous article, you know to take influencer marketing seriously. But how do you need to approach this strategy? It’s difficult to track down an influencer that’s the perfect fit – both a balance of a large social following, and followers that would be interested in your niche. Selecting an influencer with too few followers is not going to be seen, but an influencer with many followers is useless if their interests don’t align with your product. If you find your perfect influencer, you need to think about your approach. How are you going to compensate the influnecers? It may not be enough just to give them a product sample. Give them a reason to talk ...

21st of July, 2016
In: Inbound Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Social Media
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Why Influencer Marketing Needs to be Taken Seriously image

As the popularity of social media marketing continues to grow, so does the use of influencers. Influencer marketing is a strategy companies use similar to word-of-mouth (WOM). Businesses find influential members within online communities and incentivize them to promote their product in a more organic or native way. Typically, these influencers are experts within a product category or have a large social following. Companies may offer free products, cash, or other compensation; in exchange, the influencer chats up or reviews the company’s product on their platform(s). Influencers may spread the word on a multitude of social platforms, blogs, or websites. Why Influencer Marketing? Advertisement exhaustion. We’re each exposed to 4,000-10,000 ads per day. Consequently, the population is sick of ads. This is ...

30th of June, 2016
In: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Design
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Google Launches New Version of it’s Mobile-Friendly Test image

These days, mobile web searches are significantly increasing so it’s extremely important to have a mobile website that functions efficiently on smartphones. It’s very important to create a mobile-friendly website that looks like the image below on the right. Information is more accessible and at the touch of a button rather than having to pinch and zoom in on a small screen to find what you are looking for. Google’s new mobile-friendly tool provides 3 different scores for your website: Overall mobile-friendliness score Mobile page speed score Desktop page speed score The overall mobile-friendliness score is now ranked on a scale from 0 to 100 instead of simply saying if your website is mobile-friendly or if it isn’t. Along with receiving this overall ...

17th of March, 2016
In: Content Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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Google Removes Right Sidebar Ads and Experiments a Concierge Service image

Google has been experimenting with its search engine results page for a while now and naturally, Google enjoys making any changes that will benefit its AdWords business. While these tweaks to the SERP may be beneficial to advertisers, regular SEOs will be irritated when their organic search results are pushed further down the page. The SEM Post, reported the Google update with an image of what the search results look like for business cards. Google has been testing with the 4 ads at the top of the search results since December but it looks like AdWords reps are only informing advertisers about the change. What Does This Mean to Marketers While the ads that at the top of the search results will ...

21st of April, 2015
In: Mobile Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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Google Replaces URL With Site Name and Breadcrumb Trail in Mobile Search Snippets image

If you had any doubt about the importance of structured data for your website, Google has made an announcement that they will be replacing the URL within the search result snippet with the site name and breadcrumb path. Currently, this will only be reflected in mobile search results, but it may roll out across devices over time. URL Replaced With Site Name and Breadcrumb Trail Check out this before (left) and after (right) picture of a mobile search results page to get a better idea of what this update entails: Via Google With this announcement, Google has introduced structured data schema to help website owners communicate their site name and website data. Site Name Schema Markup Google has introduced support for schema.org structured data so ...

How to Develop a Successful Mobile Website image

If you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, you are putting yourself at risk for lost leads, unprofessional looking posts, and unfortunate search results in search. With studies showing that over 70% of visitors likely to return to mobile websites, 67% of users more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly website, and 61% likely to leave a non-mobile-friendly website; you need to improve your mobile impact today. Why must you have a mobile website? How do you effectively leverage mobile web? Read on to learn more. 3 Reasons to Have a Mobile Website If the numbers in the opening paragraph didn’t surprise you, here’s one more. That was a 2012 study. Before the tablet market took off and the United States had ...

Link Building: Cautionary Tales and Best Practices image

Link building, along with guest blogging, have been at the top of strategies deemed questionable since the releases of Google Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird. However, is link building dead? What is link earning? How can all of this improve your content strategy? Many websites have gotten penalized for questionable link building tactics over the course of the last year. Rap Genius, Expedia, even Google’s own browser, Google Chrome, have been hit with penalties in the past few years. Related: Google Hummingbird: Questions and Answers Of course, this was a big topic at Search Marketing Expo West (SMX) last month. But just as the algorithm changes, so do your tactics. Kaila Strong, Director of client strategy at Vertical Measures, has this to say ...

Top 20 Free Infographic Directories and Submission Tips image

An infographic is a visual image such as a chart or diagram that is used to represent complex information or data that can be quickly and easily consumed by an audience. And their use is exploding! Maybe you’ve even started to build your own infographics. But, if you build it, they won’t necessarily come. Infographics, though viral by nature, can reach a wider audience through the process of submitting them to infographic directories/blogs – while boosting your SEO at the same time. A misconception of infographics is that they do not have SEO value. While it is true that a search engine cannot derive the content of your infographic, your audience can. An infographics can benefit a SEO campaign if it ...

Google Hummingbird: SEO Questions and Answers image

“Precise and fast” – the two words Google uses to describe Hummingbird. Hummingbird is Google’s new search ranking algorithm that reportedly impacts more than 90 percent of searches. Undoubtedly, you have been hearing A LOT about this Hummingbird update over the past couple of months. But, what does Hummingbird really mean for your company? Below we describe a brief overview of Google Hummingbird, who is affected, and the top 4 things you can do (or keep doing) to stay atop search engine results pages (SERPs) after Hummingbird. What is Google Hummingbird? The latest and most significant search algorithm update by Google, experts believe Hummingbird was implemented in September of 2013. Bottom line, Hummingbird is focused on semantic search, helping users find the ...

1st of November, 2013
In: Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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2 Simple Steps for Using Paid Search to Improve your SEO image

The beauty of paid search, or PPC (i.e. Google AdWords) is that when developing a list of keywords for your campaigns, it forces you to rack your brain & use keyword tools to find everything and anything relevant that could potentially pull your ad up in search. If you’re setting your campaign up correctly, you develop massive lists of keywords based on keyword research tools (i.e. Google Keyword Planner), put related keywords into different ad groups, and each ad group has a different and unique landing page. And without even realizing it, you are actually on your way to developing a deep SEO strategy. See how below. By optimizing PPC campaigns, you are able to: 1.) Optimize your on-page content for organic ...

13th of March, 2013
In: Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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Paid Search vs. Organic Search image

Organic search results, also known as natural search results, are based on the relevance to the search terms of the user. High rankings are achieved through free search engine optimization techniques, as opposed to paid search, or PPC. As mentioned in our last blog post, Paid Search – PPC Basics, paid search or PPC refers to when advertisers pay for click-throughs to their website. But how do paid search and organic search compare? This post, part two in our Paid Search Series, will detail differences between paid and organic search results. Paid vs. Organic Search Results The location of each type of result varies. Paid results are typically shown at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and on the ...

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