So why is this information useful? Well, if you work in digital marketing for a corporation, this is a grab bag of effective corporate SEO topics to bring to the table. If you work in an agency, this is a quick check-list of problem points to look for on a prospective client’s site to show them the kind of expertise you can quickly deliver.

1. URL Canonicalization

In the history of my experience working with corporate SEO, I have only encountered a few corporate sites not suffering from rampant canonicalization issues. URL canonicalization is the process of insuring that a consistent URL (the “canonical” URL) is presented to search engines for each page, to avoid the perception of having duplicate versions of the same page content on your website. The problem with having multiple URLs for a page is that link equity is not consolidated between them. And if it’s the case that search engines believe you have a ton of duplicate content on your site, they may perceive your site to be of low quality. Here are three common canonicalization issues we see:

• The homepage is reachable at a variety of URLs, like: example.com, example.com/home, example.com/english/home, example.com/home.php
• The entire website functions with or without the www subdomain: example.com and www.example.com both bring up the homepage without any redirection.
• URLs working with or without a trailing slash: example.com/products and example.com/products/

The reason this is such a prevalent issue is because it is so subtle. Website designers are typically focused on the user experience of the website, and the URLs only play a small role in this. But in some cases canonicalization issues can drastically affect the SEO of the entire site.

2. Diluted Title Tags

There is a strong tendency for corporations to include their brand (and sometimes even their slogan) in every title tag, no matter the length. This causes dilution of any keywords included in the title tag. For instance, consider the inclusion of keywords “Widgets” and “Gizmos” in the following two title tags:

“Widgets & Gizmos”

vs.

“Widgets & Gizmos | Example Corp: Bringing you Turn-key Theoretical Instances since 1945″

Google doesn’t really know for sure which of these words represent the topic of the page (they may have some idea based on where the words lie in the title tag, but it’s far from perfect). In either case, it is certainly a best practice to minimize extraneous words in title tags.

In some instances, we’ve encountered clients whose legal departments have required them to include at least the brand name on every page. If this is the case, we still always recommend using the shortest version of the brand name allowable.

3. Rampant Micro-siting

In large corporations with a handful of business units, it’s very common for marketing folks in each BU to desire complete control over their own website. Either they feel they know the people in their vertical (or horizontal) in a way such that a tailored website would be beneficial, or they just want the agility to make large changes at a pace they don’t feel corporate marketing could keep up with. In some other cases, marketers want to create micro-sites for an event or webinar they are hosting, a blog, or a new product launch.

We’re always supportive of creating new fresh content that is helpful to your visitors. But the problem comes in when business units go wild creating new top level domains or sub-domains for everything under the sun. This is an issue because any links pointed towards that new top-level domain aren’t counted towards your main website (and only a fraction of the equity of links pointing towards a subdomain counts towards the main top-level domain). This is a missed opportuntity from an SEO perspective, especially if the topic of the microsite is something press-worthy or social share-worthy.

4. Lack of Parseable content

The vast majority of corporate websites we look at lack substantial parseable content. Because internal resources aren’t allocated towards writing original content for the website (and also because most content has to be reviewed by a variety of department, ranging from legal to PR), most corporation fail to include more than 150 words of content on important landing pages. This results in fewer opportunities for keyword or optimized link inclusion. Ideally an important landing page should have a minimum of 300-400 words of content. This can be further calibrated by examining pages that are ranking above the fold and seeing how much content is on their pages.

5. Sloppy Website Transition Redirects

At some time or another (at least every 2-3 years), a given corporation will launch a new website. This is often to reflect a merger or an acquisition, or sometimes just a new marketing executive who wants to make a splash. In any case, it seems more common than not that the webmasters responsible for the website transition will do one or more of the following:

• fail to implement redirects from old website URLs to new website URLs
• redirect all old URLs to the new website homepage
• use 302 redirects (which don’t pass any link value) instead of 301 redirects.

Any given one of these is likely to have a drastic negative impact on non-branded organic rank and traffic. There’s nothing like a drop in traffic and leads to signal the failure of a new website launch. We encourage corporate webmasters to take the time to individually map out 301 redirects for as many old website URLs as possible; it can be worth delaying a website launch for another few days in order to do things right.

Well that’s my top 5 for corporate SEO. Please leave a comment or email me with questions!

The post Top 5 Most Common Corporate SEO Issues appeared first on Pure Visibility.

Remember Planking?

People would take pictures of themselves randomly imitating inanimate pieces of wood by laying face down in an unusual location? Have you ever wondered just what made that catch? What made that “a thing”?

This month, Hadoukening hit the scene. A couple Japanese schoolgirls were having fun with their camera phones, imitating the notorious Street Fighter move and HADOUKEN! – a viral meme was born.

The origin of memes

Memes have been around since humans have been communicating. Richard Dawkins, who coined the term meme (in 1976) described it as a noun that “conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation“. Malcom Gladwell explains “A meme is an idea that behaves like a virus–that moves through a population, taking hold in each person it infects.”

Wikipedia defines an Internet meme similarly; “a concept that spreads from person to person via the internet… It may take the form of an image, hyperlink, video, picture, website, or hashtag. It may be just a word or phrase, including intentionally misspelling”

Planking, Hadoukening, Vadering etc…

Vadering

An interesting observation, is that it hasn’t even been 4 weeks since Hadoukening hit the scene and already it’s been replaced by Vadering, Pottering, and Pottering’s more sophisticated brother – Quidditching.

Pottering

Quidditching

The life and death of the Harlem Shake

If you’re web savvy enough to be here reading this, you’ve heard of the Harlem Shake. February 2013 was the month of the Harlem Shake and EVERYONE was doing – from offices and schools to military units and strippers (we’re not linking to that, look it up if you’re curious)… Interestingly enough, just as fast as people fell in love with the Harlem Shake – they got tired of it!

Meme breeding grounds

It’s easy to deduct from this, that as the internet is turning the world into a more connected place, this so called “virus” has an better breeding ground to become a “super virus” – with the ability to “infect” more people in less time.

Some great meme breeding grounds include Imgur, Reddit and Tumblr; all image based- rating based, social news websites.

How memes go viral

So what makes some memes viral and some not? If we go back to the virus comparison it’s simply survival of the fittest; Some memes carry something in their DNA, that inclines people to share them and some don’t. That thing is an emotional response.

One way to trigger an emotional response is to show people something new.

Furthermore, if we look at some of the examples above, we’ll see that despite often sharing similarities, memes are like snowflakes – never exactly the same.

Take the Harlem Shake for example – The theme might stay the same (same music, same idea…), but the execution is always different (different participants, in different outfits, dancing differently, with different backgrounds…). This makes them surprising, which triggers an emotional response, which entices us (as social creatures) to try and replicate this emotional response through other people – by sharing it with them. Sharing is emotional contagion.

Gangnam style is a great example; Many words can describe Gangam style – funny, crazy, obnoxious, weird, ridiculous… Love it or hate it – indifference is not an option. It triggers an emotional response that almost demands to be addressed. We do this by sharing.

Replication and mutation

What happens when you have a meme that’s easy to replicate while still maintaining the element of surprise? A great example is crasher squirrel – a real, everyday squirrel that literally crashed this Canadian couples photo:

The original Crasher Squirrel

And the rest was history; Photoshop enthusiasts have added the furry scene-stealer to family portraits, famous paintings, and even to the top of the Queen’s hat with a pile of nuts:

Crasher Squirrel photobombing Tiger Woods

Photobombing Putin

Photobombing on the moon

So Crasher Squirrel, despite being just a regular squirrel, always seems to be able to surprise us, because people keep figuring out ways to copy/paste him into the most surprising settings. Easy to replicate, but still surprising or as the Thai saying goes

“Same same, but different”.

When more people replicate a meme, more interpretation is involved, and when more interpretation is involved, memes tend to mutate, spawning versions that are increasingly distant from the original version (just ask crasher squirrels predecessor: Dramatic Chipmunk)

How you can use this for your business

So although all of the above is nice to know, what can you actionably do to leverage your business via trending Internet memes? How can you use memes for internet marketing?

You can frequently visit the meme breading grounds mentioned above and be one of the early adopters of a meme, and do it yourself (as we did here at Pure Visibility with Hadoukening). Catch a “super-meme” on time and you can generate serious traffic to your/site business by the exposure.

But just remember:

1. You snooze you lose. No one will care today if you take a picture of yourself planking.
2. Memes are fads. They come and they go. They are not long-term strategies.
3. People who actually care about memes might not be your customers

“You’re right, I sell insurance, what can I learn from this anyway?”

Two words: emotional response.

Forget the Internet memes above and focus your efforts on communicating your message in a way that spreads. To get your customers to proactively spread your idea, you need them to care, and the one way to do that is to focus your marketing efforts in communicating ideas that trigger an emotional response from your customers. Make sure the emotional response you are triggering is consistent with your brand’s values and not only will people spread your message, they will actually care about your idea.

Resources:

The post Meme Psych 101 appeared first on Pure Visibility.

At the end of the day, how do you determine if your website is successful or not? That is a good question to ask when starting the process of formulating Key Performance Indicators. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are business metrics used to help an organization measure progress toward organizational goals. The goals can either financial or non-financial and it leads to action.

1. Once the site goal(s) have been identified, the next step is to determine the actions that map to your goals and contribute to your site’s success.
2. Establish the numbers needed to achieve your goals. This step will frame your objectives by the questions you ask. How much profit do we need to make? How many visitors do we need to convert?  How many request for information do we need daily, weekly or monthly?
3. Determine the data source and reporting frequency for each of your KPIs. Depending on the data and the source, some of your data may make sense to report weekly, while other data may make sense to report monthly or quarterly.
4. Analyze your data to discover any actionable insights.
5. Optimize your site based on your findings. Improvements can range from a simple copy change to an A/B test.

There are many KPIs that can be used to determine a website’s success.  It is very important to define KPIs based on your companies’ organizational goals. By following the above steps, you should be well on your way to defining actionable KPIs that help drive change in your organization.

The post Key Perfomance Indicators appeared first on Pure Visibility.

The syntax of DKI looks like this:

Buy {keyword:default_text}

For “default_text” you plugin whatever text you’d like to display when your bidded keyword cannot be inserted. In the past, the main reason why a keyword would not be inserted was because it caused the line of ad text to exceed character limits. Occasionally, a member of Google’s editorial team would also mark keywords ineligible for DKI. However, Google has recently made changes that establish a minimum quality score threshold for a keyword to be inserted into ad text. This change has had some negative consequences for common uses of DKI.

Google’s new DKI policy can cause relevancy problems with Google ads. In cases where DKI is coupled with keyword destination URLs or otherwise keyword-specific landing pages; Google is often choosing to show a less relevant ad over a more relevant ad. In this case, it should never be in Google’s interest to show the less relevant ad, even in cases where their system is assigning lower quality to the keyword, as long as the landing page shares the same relevance to the keyword. Here is a hypothetical example:

Keyword:
HP XK 30300

Keyword Destination URL:
http://some-company-domain-goes-here.com/HP-XK-30300 (goes to a page all about model # HP XK 30300)

Ad:
Buy {KEYWord:HP Products}
Low Prices on all HP Models.
Order Today and Get Free Shipping!

Notice the use of “KEYWord:” in the headline . . . more on this later. But imagine that this keyword “HP XK 30300″ is in an ad group with a thousand other model numbers. Also imagine that each keyword has it’s own keyword destination URL that takes the visitor to a page for that model number (a common way to setup something like this). Now imagine that for whatever reason, Google has decided to give this keyword a low quality score (probably for ad text); also not uncommon. Because Google has given the keyword a low quality score, when a search engine user enters a query into Google for “HP XK 30300,” he/she will see an ad like this:

Buy HP Products
Low Prices on all HP Models.
Order Today and Get Free Shipping!

Instead of an ad like this:

Buy HP Xk 30300
Low Prices on all HP Models.
Order Today and Get Free Shipping!

Because the visitor is sent to a page about model number “HP XK 30300″ the first ad is misleading. It makes you think you’ll go to a generic site where you will have to enter another search, and where you might not find the model number you’re looking for. This ad will undoubtedly be surrounded by organic search results that are all specific to that model number, putting the ad at a disadvantage. Even if your keyword was scored low, it never makes sense for Google to show the first ad instead of the second one, because the second one is inherently more relevant. This is a common occurrence though for a common use case with DKI.

Back to the use of “KEYWord:”. . .  another feature of dynamic keyword insertion is you can affect the capitalization of the inserted text by using different variations of “keyword:”

keyword:
KeyWord:
KeyWORD:
Keyword:
KEYWord:
KEYWORD:

“keyword” will insert your text in all lower case: hp xk 30300. Using KEYWord will insert your text with the first word in caps and the first letter of subsequent words capitalized: HP Xk 30300. Notice this isn’t the correct capitalization for the model number; in this case, it should be in all caps: HP XK 30300. Google no longer offers this option. KEYWORD does not place the inserted keyword in all caps, it is equivalent to using KeyWord where the first letter of each word is capitalized. Because of supposed advertiser abuse of the all caps function, DKI often cannot handle acronyms properly.

While DKI is typically pretty handy, Google has made some changes that make your ads less relevant for some important cases when DKI is most suitable. For smaller keyword lists, it may make sense to break out keywords into their own ad groups with specific ad text that does not use DKI, but if this was practical to do in the first place, you probably wouldn’t have been using DKI. It’s always good to checkup on your ads though using the ad preview tool to make sure your DKI ads are displaying the way you expect them to.

The post Google AdWords Dynamic Keyword Insertion Changes appeared first on Pure Visibility.

Many businesses have fluctuating prices for their products/services, which they post online. For ads that advertise these prices, it is difficult to keep up with changes, and if you edit an ad manually you run into a couple problems:

• The ad could go “under review.” This is an ad status that prevents your ad from showing until an editor has a chance to approve the ad. If you’re editing prices and your ads go under review, you won’t have any ads showing for a period of time.
• The ad will be “eligible” but not approved before it reaches “approved” status. When an ad is “eligible,” its distribution is negatively affected – not showing on the Search Network or Display Network, or in top highlighted positions on Google’s search results pages.
• The ad’s history will be erased. Even slightly edited ads start anew with quality scores.
• It will be much more cumbersome drawing data from pools of deleted and active ads to report on ad performance.

To get around these problems, AdWords offers keyword-level ad parameters. Ad parameters are not shown in the AdWords interface or in the AdWords Editor. The only way to get and set these values is by using the API or scripts. The only values they will accept are numeric values, and they can include currency symbols. (In comparison, Bing Ads has always allowed ad parameters that are editable within the Bing Ads interface and that will allow text as well as numbers.)

To update prices in an ad, you only need to create an ad that uses ad parameters and edit the keyword parameter to display the appropriate price. In this way, you won’t need to delete and create a new ad everytime you need to update prices.  An example of a description line that uses ad parameters looks like this:

Starting at {param1:competitive prices}.

After I had my ads setup with param1 (on pause), I went about setting keyword parameters. This requires AdWords Scripts and a little bit of knowledge of JavaScript. To make it easy, I created ad group level labels, since all of the keywords that should share a certain price were setup in the same ad group. And I setup an associative array that uses the label as a key and the price as the value (sort of like a Hashtable in Java). I used the ad group labels to retrieve keywords that should have a certain price, and set that price for the ad param using an adGroupIterator and a keywordIterator and my array of prices. AdWords provides a bunch of starter code. I’m not posting mine here.

Because the company I set this up for didn’t have a feed of prices, I had to scrape them from their site using regular expressions in a separate Perl script. I didn’t feel comfortable fully automating this process because the structure of the webpage I was scraping could change (though scripts do support http requests, so it should be possible). Even though it is possible to schedule scripts to run, I manually run mine after updating the prices that my other script returns. It still saves me quite a bit of headache. Instead of spending an hour reading prices and editing them through the AdWords Editor, I spend a couple minutes running a couple scripts, without the negative side affects of deleting and posting a new ad.

The post AdWords Scripts for Editing Prices in Ads appeared first on Pure Visibility.

Last Friday we discussed Q2 goals and plans at a lunch-and-learn session and we truly enjoyed it: informal setting, lots of interaction, celebrations and praises (pineapples in PV talk), and wonderful plans for Q2. The following Monday, we were all still e

nergized by the session and proclaimed it the best lunch and learn ever!

What did we do differently this time?

A few subtle things but apparently effective ones: a quick glance at our team roster will show that we are a Gen-Y staff (primarily). Given that, we (Gen-Yers) have certain communication preferences:

• We prefer information in small chunks: Q2 goals and plans was a single sheet of paper – a bulleted list with priorities and team member info; not a long prose of text.
• We like to be consulted and involved: our exec team sent out an employee survey prior to their off-site session to discuss Q2 priorities.  This survey helped the exec team get a pulse and work out goals accordingly. Additionally, each department lead consulted with individuals about their concerns/goals/wishes for the team.
• We prefer structured and short events: yes, lunch and learn session, including munching time was about 58 minutes! Agenda was compactand adhered to, with enough question/answer time.
• We like to interact with our peers at events: right-o! We all got to give ‘pineapples’ to each other and appreciate everyone’s skills and talents.
• We do like to be recognized and rewarded: our CEO hosted the event and individually acknowledged each of us for the special talents we bring to work everyday.

All in all, minor tweaks to accommodate different communication styles and we can say pish-posh to generation gaps and bring the fun at work every day!

The post New quarter, new goals: bring the fun! appeared first on Pure Visibility.

The post Office Hadoukening appeared first on Pure Visibility.

Earlier this year, two very smart fellows in Internet marketing industry, A.J. Kohn and Justin Cutroni, described a great way to track organic keyword rankings using events in Google Analytics.  It’s a very clever approach, one that I strongly recommend you look into (especially in light of Google cracking down on scraper-based rank trackers for violating their terms of service).

While A.J. and Justin focused predominantly on the application of their Google Analytics RankTracker snippet to track keyword ranking “indexes”, I chose to explore its potential contribution to content optimization.  The fruit of that exploration is outlined in this post, in which I’ve outlined my methodology for using the Google Analytics keyword ranking data to maximize the traffic potential of your existing website content, and to mine for content expansion opportunities.  Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Install the Google Analytics RankTracker

Justin’s post does a nice job outlining the installation method, so I won’t belabor that here.  And make sure to read the comments, as there are some handy “enhancements” offered by others to capture ranking data from all of Google’s international domains, not just Google.com.  The website I’ll be using for my examples (a sweet little organic tea company called Arbor Teas) uses such an enhancement.

Step 2: Collect Some Data

Once you’ve got the rank tracking script in place, give Google Analytics a little time to gather a generous helping of this juicy keyword ranking data! To give you something to shoot for, try to gather around 20 organic visits per organic landing page.  So, if your site’s got 500 landing pages driving organic traffic, try to gather at least 10,000 organic visits worth of data. Waiting to use this nifty data may be the hardest part of the process – at least it was for me!

Step 3: Configure Your Report

With a reasonable amount of data collected, you’re ready to build something!

• Within the “Events” report in Google Analytics, go to the “Top Events” report, and select the event category labeled “RankTracker”.
• Add a secondary dimension of “Event Label”, which represents the landing page URL.
• (OPTIONAL) Use an advanced filter to exclude your brand terms and (not provided).
• Sort the data in ascending order by Event Label (aka landing page URL).  This groups all of the keywords driving traffic to your site by landing page.
• Export to a Microsoft Excel workbook.  Unless you utilize the Google Analytics API in some fashion, you may need to perform multiple exports and stitch them together (setting the number of data rows displayed in the GA interface to 500 will make this at least a little easier).
• Once exported/assembled in Excel, delete the “Event Value” column, and relabel the remaining columns as follows: “Keyword”, “Landing Page”, “Total Visits”, “Unique Visits”, and “Avg. KW Rank”.

Step 4: Import Keyword Search Volumes

Paste the keywords contained in your export into the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, and download their exact match search volumes. Again, depending on the number of keywords you’re dealing with, you may need to perform several look-ups/downloads to gather a complete dataset (another good place to use an API, IMHO).  Once you do, use the all-powerful vlookup function to pull this data into your Excel worksheet, in a new column labeled something clever like, “Traffic” or “Awesomeness Potential”.  Once you’re done, the spreadsheet should look something like this:

Step 5: Filter and Sort Your Data

Filter your data for keyword-landing page pairs with an average KW ranking of >4 and <15 – this gives you all of the KWs that are within “striking distance” of either first page or above-the-fold visibility.  Then, sort in descending order of search traffic volume – this surfaces keyword optimization opportunities with the greatest potential. You can delete any rows with zero search traffic.

Step 6: Start Strategizing!

For each row of your filtered/sorted spreadsheet, ask yourself two questions:

1. Is this keyword valuable to my business?  In other words, is the term relevant and possess reasonable traffic that traffic likely to convert?  You could, of course, pull in some historic conversion rate data for your website, but since many of the keyword opportunities you turn up may be new, I suggest you keep it simple and trust your gut and past experience when judging the business value of a keyword.
2. Should this keyword be targeted to this page?  In other words, is the term consistent with the general topic of the landing page and reflect the right level of specificity?  Landing pages rank for a surprising variety of keywords, so you need to use your judgment about whether each keyword is appropriate for the page that current ranks for it.

If your answer to both questions above is “yes,” then you should probably add the keyword in question to the list of terms that that particular landing page is optimized for.  Of course, you can only target so many keywords to any given landing page.  But what if you turned up a gem of a keyword that generated four times the traffic of your original target?  Might be worth making room, and swapping out some keywords with less potential.

Using Arbor Teas as an example, we see that the “/organic-lapsang-souchong-black-tea.html” page saw traffic from a keyword we hadn’t previously optimized for: simply “lapsang souchong”.  Although our primary targets for this page are “organic lapsang souchong”, “lapsang souchong tea” and “lapsang souchong black tea” (each offering 260 searches per month or less), we see that there’s a lot more potential traffic optimizing for “lapsang souchong” (2400 searches per month).  And given that this page is consistently ranking on the second page for the broader term, there’s a strong change we can land a first page placement.  Probably time to shift or expand the target keyword list for this page!

If your answer to the first question above is “yes,” but you answered “no” to the second, then this keyword represents an opportunity to develop a new page more suited to that keyword.  Remember to link the original landing page to each new piece of supporting/related content identified this way (and vice versa).  Depending on a number of factors (like PageRank flow, external links, etc.), this approach should either increase the position of the original landing page for the target keyword, or cause the new page to rank for the keyword in question.

Going back to the Arbor Teas example, we see that the “arbor-teas-storate-tin-regular.html” page is ranking for the relatively general term, “tea storage” (590 searches per month), even though that’s not the explicit subject of that page.  Regardless of whether that term is the right keyword target for the page, visibility on that term definitely has business value for a loose leaf tea company.  This looks like a great opportunity for a new piece of content, focused more broadly on the subject of “tea storage”.

Step 7: Let the Optimization and Content Creation Begin!

For the new keyword targets you’ve identified for existing pages, get on with your typical on-page optimization tactics, and maybe update an internal link here and there using the new keyword targets as anchor text.  For the new content ideas you’ve surfaced, get your pen out!

Step 8: Rinse and Repeat

Once configured, Google Analytics will continue gathering ranking data for the organic keywords driving traffic to your website’s pages.  Since we all know keyword usage changes over time (and new keywords are entered into Google every day), this approach represents an ongoing opportunity to update/hone/tune-up your pages and the keywords they target.  Personally, I plan to revisit this approach every 3-4 months, especially for my client’s higher-trafficked, revenue-driving landing pages.

Some Caveats/Reminders

Before you race off and put this methodology to use, make sure to keep a few things in mind, lest you run off the rails or are sorely disappointed:

• This approach only highlights keyword optimization opportunities for terms you’re already receiving visits for.  For this reason, you shouldn’t expect this method to replace traditional keyword research to explore the full universe of opportunities available to your content.
• As with any SEO analysis that relies on keyword data these days, (not provided) muddies the water a bit.  Depending on your vertical, (not provided) could amount to 30% to 80% of your query data.  Knowing the ratio for your website at the outset will help you keep perspective.
• The RankTracker code snippet created by AJ and Justin determines your position for each keyword across ALL non-paid results, not just the traditional organic ones.  This means that if four image results follow the first three organic results on the SERP, the fourth organic result immediately following the images would be considered position 8, not 4.  Just do some spot-checking to make sure you understand the opportunity that exists.
• The RankTracker code snippet only captures organic keyword ranking for Google – if anyone out there knows (or can figure out) a way to capture this same data for Bing, I’m all ears.
• This approach hinges on the continued availability of the “cd” parameter in the Google referrer data.  The minute Google decides to take this handy piece of data away (fingers crossed that they won’t), we’re all dead in the water.

Of course, this approach can’t replace all aspects of traditional keyword research, but I think it offers a nice, streamlined process for iterative content optimization and expansion (and somewhat of an “inside out” view of your keywords and pages).  I hope it proves to be a helpful addition to your SEO workflow.  Ideas for improvement are welcome!

The post Evolve Your Content Optimization and Creation Strategy Using the Google Analytics RankTracker appeared first on Pure Visibility.

Does your local business manage its online listings? There’s a good chance your answer is no. Only 50% of small businesses have updated local online listings. With over 40% of all Google search queries have local intent, it is crucial for businesses that value foot traffic to ensure customers can find them online. This Local Search Checklist provides the first steps your business can take to increase its local online visibility.

1. Claim Your Listings

There is a good chance your business is already has a listing on sites like Google+ Local and Yelp. To manage these listings you must first claim them. Since of 65% of the world’s search queries are performed on Google, start with Google+ Local. This listing will allow you to manage how your business shows up for local searches on Google or Google Maps. To claim your listing, go to maps.google.com and search for your business. Select it on the map and then click “more info.” This will navigate you to your Google+ Local listing (formally Google Places). Click the “manage this page” button and follow the directions to claim your listing. The easiest way is to select phone verification. An automated Google dialer will call your business with a pin number. Use this to claim your listing. While Google+ Local is one of the more important listings to manage, you should claim as many listings as you can. Start with these influential local search providers:

• Yelp
• Citysearch
• Superpages
• Yellowpages.com
• Yahoo! Local
• Foursquare

2. Consistent Name, Address, and Phone Number

The most important thing besides claiming your listings is constancy. It is crucial that your business’ name, address, and phone number (NAP) is the same on all listings and matches what is on your company’s site. Other information such as hours of operations should also be consistent online.

3. Upload Photos and Business Descriptions

Besides your location, business hours, and phone numbers, potential customers viewing your online listings want to learn about your business. Recent photos and well crafted descriptions can attract consumers to your location. Including a high quality picture of your storefront makes it easier for customers to recognize your location.

Your business description should include terms that people would use to search for your business. If a search for “downtown clothing stores” should display your business, include this in your description. Also, look for categories offered by the online listing. Select all that are applicable to your business.

4. Reviews

Reviews are very influential. Not only to potential customers viewing your listings, but to the online services as well. Yelp for example will show listings with better reviews towards the top of their search results.

Most online listings do not let you input your own reviews. They also do not want you to actively solicit reviews. If a service like Yelp sees that your business gets a large number of reviews in a short period of time they may not be posted to your profile. If a customer tells you they had a positive experience at your business, casually ask them to leave a review on a service like Google+ Local, Yelp, or Foursquare. Tell them that your business actively monitors online reviews as a form of customer service and you would greatly appreciate their feedback. A casual approach will help generate a more “organic” level of reviews, increasing your chances they will be posted.

Google+ Local is notoriously difficult to have reviews posted. A few guidelines to follow:

• Reviews submitted by users with established Google+ accounts from their home wifi network work best.
• If your business only receives positive reviews Google may stop posting new reviews as to not inflate your business’s score.
• Users must navigate to your Google+ Local profile using google.com or maps.google.com. Sending a link to your review page may disqualify that review.

5. Local pages with unique content

Does your business have multiple locations? If so you should claim listings for each location. On your company’s site, develop a unique page for each business with unique content. Each business location page should have accurate NAP data with pictures and a custom description of that location. Point links from each business’ online listing to the local page on your site.

Having local pages will increase search results. If you own a pizza shop in Detroit and Chicago each local page will be displayed if someone searches for pizza in either city. A search “pizza deliver detroit” will be more likely to display your business if you have a local business page for your Detroit location.

Troubleshooting

Updates to your listings can take days, or even weeks to go live. Be patient when it comes to updates. Google+ Local does not provide customer support. If your listings are displaying improperly you can try using Google Map Maker. Visit google.com/mapmaker, then search for you listing. Map Maker provides more control over your listing. You can even view changes you have requested and see if they have been approved or denied.

The Importance of Local Search

Your company’s local search strategy is crucial in driving web and foot traffic. Using this checklist will get you started. Here are some other resources that can help increase your company’s online visibility:

• Pure Visibility Blog: Dominate Local Search
• GetListed.org Blog
• Search Engine Watch Local News
• David Mihm’s Local SEO Blog

The post Can Customers Find You? Local Search Checklist for Businesses appeared first on Pure Visibility.

The recent announcement from Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, requiring employees to show up at the office or to quit made me realize how we at PV benefit from remote flexibility and are moving away from this model. A good percentage of our team works remotely and/or commutes a couple of times per week.  Quite often, some of us (on-site employees) are doing our internet marketing work from coffee shops or our home offices when we are writing detailed reports or researching or working on proposals  — allowing us to concentrate and getting the job done more productively!

Another thing at PV that blends well with my introvert personality is the option to squirrel away in a conference room or to squat on a bean-bag by the window. When I interviewed at PV nearly two years ago, I was shown around the office and walking around the open floor plan scared me just a bit as I was used to working in a traditional office space with doors!  I was immediately relieved when I was shown a cozy spot called the ‘cone of silence’  – a room with bean bags, windows, lots of light, and a door.  Our new space in Kerrytown is even more open but hey, we didn’t forget to make it safe for our introvert colleagues – the lounge is a haven with quiet nooks, a couple of desks are set up further away from the ‘bullpen’ and by large windows, and there are extra conference rooms!

PV lounge!

More privacy – conference rooms with lots of natural light!

That’s not all – we follow Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to guide our present and future company vision and mission; as part of this, employees are encouraged to take regular clarity breaks off-site to reflect ‘on the business’ instead of ‘in the business’. These breaks are refreshing and energizing but the key factor is being off-site with a blank notepad and a writing instrument; not a time for you to tick things off your to-do list!

Given the conveniences that come with advanced technology, it is not hard to stay in touch with satellite teams: we use Google Hangout for our meetings to ensure that we don’t lose the face-to-face opportunity. Similar to other workplaces, we use instant messaging, texting, and a slew of cloud-based software for communicating internally, sharing documents, and staying on the same page.  Also, having ground rules for remote work and honoring the same goes a long way in making team collaboration seamless irrespective of whether we are all in the same room or not!

Google Hangout with remote team mates

I can’t help but think this requirement of having employees show up at the office daily will not only make hard-working employees look for other considerate options but also stifle productivity in due time. Most of all, I am reminded again that I am grateful for the perks PV offers – as an employee; as a mum; and as an introvert!

Pure Visibility Corporate Headquarters photo courtesy: Jeff Garland

The post Work from home? Heck, yeah! appeared first on Pure Visibility.