1. Perform Competitive Research & Find Relevant Keywords

Look at your competition to see what their successes and mistakes are. See if any successful design elements or body copy tone that can be tailored to your unique company brand. By researching their negative reviews, you can avoid any obvious mistakes that have already been done by other companies your similar industry. Also use Google’s Keyword Planner to discover search engine friendly keywords you can use in your website’s headings and body copy. Incorporating relevant keywords will not only separate you from the competition but increase your value to Search Engines like Google and your potential clients searching from products or services like yours. 

2. Optimize Your Website’s Content for Mobile

Most searches come from users on their phone. Google also uses mobile-first indexing that prioritizing mobile-friendly design. If you want rank higher on SERPs, your website must be responsive and load fast. While most web templates come already responsive, it is still wise to check on your phone to see if any content or photos gets cut off or if your website loads slow. You may need help from a digital marketing agency if you can’t fix any cut off content on your own or if the template you chose is buggy and loads slowly. 

3. Set up Google Search Console

 Google Search Console is a tool that allows you to submit your website to be indexed, as well as view data about your website’s traffic and performance. This is useful for successful long-term SEO plans, digital marketing, and performance of your website. It allows you to view items such as user click-through rate and other performance elements. You can also keep track of any site errors that will help keep your website functioning optimally and prevent unsafe web practices. The data you gather will help you create comprehensive plans that don’t waste your money and maximize you ROI. 

4. Create a Sitemap and Submit It 

A sitemap contains a list of all the pages on your website in a single file. If you have a sitemap, this helps search engines index your website quicker and easier. Google has a tool that can help you create one or you can ask a digital marketing firm to help. It is also wise to include a link to your sitemap in your website’s footer. Once you submit your sitemap using web master tools, search engine crawlers will find your website and index for SERPs. The quicker this can be done more likely you will increase the rank of your website, thus gain more users and clients.

5. Add Structured Data Markup 

Structured data markup is a code that you can add to your website’s HTML code. It is used to help search engines understand the information on your website. This helps when trying to attract organic traffic. Structured data is a standardized format for classifying page content. For example, on a recipe page: what are the ingredients, the cooking time and temperature, the calories, etc. This will help your website become more engaging to your users leading to rich results. The more interaction users have with our website, the more value search engines register it as and keep it high on SERPs. 

Let us include a SEO plan with your new website. Call 248.528.3600

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1. Set up exclusive offers 

2. Use email marketing 

3. Update old web content 

4. Use PPC ads or Google Ads

5. Optimize your website for mobile devices

6. Invest in SEO services

7. Live-stream videos

8. Create short-form videos

9. Partner up with an influencer 

10. Use local search marketing (Google My Business) 

11. Integrate social media to your website

12. Use Google Analytics to track web visits & other data

13. Create a landing page 

14. Retarget your ads

15. Chop up long-form content into short-term content

16. Update or upgrade plugins & software 

17. Set up holiday calendar for the rest of the year

18. Send out digital coupons

19. Network with your local community or journalists 

20. Reshare popular posts 

21. Build a company blog 

22. Start a company podcast 

23. Highlight good reviews 

24. Create branded icons for your website 

25. Send out a quality service survey 

Need help starting these strategies? Call 248.528.3600

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1. Use Appropriate Medical Keywords 

Make sure you target the correct keywords for your industry. Start with the medical product or services you offer, then use Google’s Keyword Planner to help find the best keywords to incorporate into your content. Compare your results to what is and isn’t being search by users. Avoid keyword stuffing at all costs! This is a spammy tactic that will penalize your website. Instead, be specific. Use short-tail keyword in titles and long-form keywords into your body copy. Make sure your body copy is relevant, readable, and simple enough to understand. A lot of medical medicines or ingredients like to use long Latin words, don’t be afraid to mention their common names in your content as reference. 

2. Add A Lot of Content Pages

Other industries usually have to cut back on the amount of content they include, but for medical websites it is the opposite. Include high-quality information that goes into detail on how your product or service will help make your target audiences lives’ better or easier. The more long-form content you include, the more likely Google will recognize you as an authority and thus increase your ranking. Ideas on how to increase your content length are:

• Add a blog page
• Side effects section
• How-to-use section 
• When-to-use section
• Symptoms section
• Ingredient section
• When-not-to-use section
• How it will improve your life description 
• Meet the doctors page 
• About the manufactures page 
• FAQ section or page 
• What to ask your doctor section 

3. Optimize Visual Elements 

Include photos and graphic elements to make your pages more interesting to look at. If you can include a video, even better! Infographics are also an underrated visual medium that could display useful information for your users. This will increase organic traffic and encourage visitors to stay longer on your website. Increased view time tells search engines that your web pages have valuable content that is useful to users. For images, make sure you don’t forget to include accurate alt text and meta descriptions for Google crawlers and e-readers.

4. Optimize Website Speed, Security & Mobile Friendliness 

Website speed, security, and mobile friendliness are all ranking factors. First, use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to check your current site speed. Since you have a lot of content, your page might load slower than others, however, you still want in to be quick enough for users to know that your website is active. A few ways to increase speed is to:

• Have a performance-optimized hosting provider
• Compress images
• Reduce URL redirects 
• Cache your web pages
• Enable browser caching 
• Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
• Eliminate unnecessary plugins
• Use asynchronous loading for CSS and JavaScript files

Second, check the security of your website. Use an SSL certificate to encrypt your website and ensure visitor data is protected from hackers. Also check for spam links in existing or old content. Always keep your website software, apps, and plugins updated (read more on keeping your website secure here). Lastly, ensure your website is mobile friendly and responsive. Check on phones, iPads, and desktops to see if your website is functional. Most CMS, like WordPress, have templates already optimize for responsive design, but if your site is still running on PHP you may want to hire a digital marketing firm to update the your web design. 

5. Offsite Factors 

Check your social media accounts, especially if you have a plugin linked to your website. Make sure the passwords are strong. Clean up comments that contain spammy links. Block suspicious accounts that want to follow you. Use social media platforms as a link-building tool that leads to longer form content on a landing page. You can also use social media to interact with clients by asking important questions. Then, you can incorporate their questions into your content. Not only does this make it so your audience feels heard, but Google will also see you as a direct authority.  

6. Local SEO

Have a Google My Business profile. This can by created through Google Maps. It is important to build local traffic, especially if your business relies on in-person experiences. You want your website to pop up in the top 10 results when they ask “(medical practice, drug store, med supplies, etc.)  near me”. Fill out the following information: 

• The business categories
• Your primary phone number
• The business description
• Your hours of operation (and any seasonal hours)
• Your address or service area.
• Google reviews of your business
• Photos of your business and products or services

Let us help with your medical business’ SEO. Call 248.528.3600.

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Review Snippet 

Recipe Snippet

Music Snippet 

Product Markup Snippet 

Movie Snippet

Events Snippet 

Use Structured Data to Get Rich Snippets

Structured data is a type of standardized code format that communicates information about your business’s web page content to search engines. It must contain two important factors to be successful: Schema and the format. Schema is the vocabulary that tells the search engine about the entity elements on your page and the format is the type of markup code that communicates schema to the search engine. These formats are JSON-LD, microdata, and RDFa with JSON-LD favored by Google. An example of creating structured data for a Rich Snippet would be:

Say you have a recipe for chocolate chip cookies on your bakery’s website. You could add structured data for the recipe:

• Cooking duration
• Nutritional information
• Ingredients
• Instructions, etc. 

Schema.org is a site dedicated to the universal vocabulary for structured data. You can use the website to help you write and test your structured data snippets, regardless of format. Additional tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper can generate the markup code instead of writing it from scratch and Google’s Rich Results Test tool to see which rich results Google generates from your markup code.

Need help adding Rich Snippets to your website’s code? Call 248.528.3600.

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Step 1: Create a List of Keywords 

Depending on the industry your business is in, the topics, and access to research tools could be flooded. Here are some of the most common ways to create a keyword list: 

• Google’s Keyword Planner or SEMRush used for researching competitors’ keywords
• Check for common keywords with Ahrefs or AnswerThePublic

• Use your website data from Google Search Console
• Look in suggested searches on search engines and brainstorm ideas

Step 2: Sort Keywords into Groups

Group keywords using an automated tool such as Keyword Insights or manually plug the terms into a excel spreadsheet based on good search volume, same search intent, items your think you can rank on, or are appropriate for the marketing funnel stage you are currently in. After that, you will need to identify keyword modifiers around the cluster you formed. This can be enhancement terms, for example, you are researching search intent for strawberry jelly. Some repeat terms that show up might be “healthy” or “organic”.  

Step 3: Other Ways to Cluster by Topic

When you have identified the keyword clusters that answer the questions your audience asks the most, you can start creating a content plan around those clusters you have discovered. Some clusters have subjects in common and can be further grouped into topic clusters. Use the hierarchy of most to least relevant to create a page structure or sitemap for your business’s website. In the middle of every topic cluster, place a piece of content that can target a large number of keywords and phrases. Then surround the larger content withsmaller pieces of content. These content pieces are usually blog posts. This will allow you to focus more on certain topics, build up internal linking, and generally explore the various aspects of the topic that may be too rich to fit on one page without exhausting the reader. You could also use these keyword clusters for Google ads and other marketing campaigns if you fear your website is getting too crowded. 

Struggling to cluster keywords? Our SEO service term can help! Call 248.528.360

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41% of shoppers go to Google when discovering a new brand according to their survey across countries. As your company’s brand grows, it’s important to appear across places where potential customers may be browsing and to create real value that is meaningful and distinct through your content. Immersive and creative content in channels such as video, search, and feeds on Google can help build brand awareness. It will also help you differentiate your brand from your competition with shoppers who are in the market for products or services like yours.

Connect with Customers Through Video Marketing 

Over its lifetime YouTube has evolved from purely an entertainment platform to a place where viewers go to learn, stream, and get inspired by their next purchase. Google found that every day people watch over a billion hours of video and generate billion of views on YouTube. That is a huge amount of people and opportunity to create potential new customers. Video reach campaigns can help spread your brand’s message, product advertisement, or service demonstration reach as many people as possible in your target audience demographic at a reasonable cost. This is perfect if you are small business or if you marketing budget is tight. 

Let Your Business be the Answer When Users Search and Browse 

According to the guide, 61% of consumers in surveyed countries around the world say they visit multiple websites before settling on what to buy and who to buy it from. This means shoppers do not always have a specific company in mind when they search the category they are interested in. They usually search for reviews or articles first to help inform their decision. There are many ways to highlight your good reviews or demonstrate trustworthiness. Here are some important items in include in your digital marketing strategy to achieve this:  

• Broad match keywords & Smart Bidding

 Broad match can save time, simplify your Google account, and increase website traffic by finding all relevant searches that are expected to perform. Combine with Smart Bidding to set the right bid for each search within your performance goals.

• Responsive search ads

Responsive search ads combine creativity with machine learning to help show relevant ads to users. If a customer is searching Google without a specific brand or product in mind, you can put your products in the spotlight by appearing in these searches.

• Image extensions 

Compelling visuals can help you differentiate your brand from companies that sell something similar with shoppers across Google. To optimize your ads’ performance, use image extensions to complement your existing text ads with relevant visuals that engage your audience and drive a call-to-action.

• Discovery campaigns 

Discovery campaigns can help you deliver highly visual and inspiring personalized ad experiences to your target audience who are ready to discover and engage with your brand. With this solution, you can reach up to 3 billion users on feeds across Google and YouTube with a single campaign.

• Audience solutions 

To build consideration among users who are actively looking to make a purchase, use in-market audience targeting. This drives action from new customers who share similar characteristics with existing customers, use similar audiences. To reengage existing customers across the web, use Customer Match. Telia Norge increased their revenue by 15% and conversion rate by 22% among existing customers using this service. 

Ready to optimize your marketing plan with these Google tips? Call 248.528.360

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How Do You Identify Content Spam?

1. Analyze Ranking Losses
2. Conduct an SEO Audit 
3. SEO Analysis to Narrow Down Problem 
   • Auditing your domain
     • Analysis of backlink gains or losses
     • Backlink audit
   • Auditing competitors 
     • Analysis of backlink gains or losses
     • Analysis of competitors’ content
   • Check your on-page SEO & technical SEO
     • Site Audit & technical issues
     • On-page check (page titles, subheadings, etc.)
   • Check for Google Updates

How Google Detects Duplicate Content 

Google is great at identifying duplicate content and detecting on which pages the content appeared first. So why do so many spam sites rank? John Mueller of Google provides some insight to why that might be:

“But even if we know which one is the original and which one is the copy, sometimes it makes sense to show a copy in the search results…And one of the situations where I have seen this happen consistently is if a website is of lower quality overall, where when our systems look at it they’re like, well we can’t really trust this website. But if a higher-quality website were to take some of this content and publish it, we would say, well we know more about this website and actually maybe we should show this content in the search results.”

— John Mueller, Google Web Trends Analyst, June 2021

Translation: Google believes that copied content should sometimes show up in search and may work better on some else’s domain rather than the original website. So, making sure your website is updated in design, function, and content is extremely important. Spammers duplicate the original content until the original page ranks worse and destroys the original website’s authority. The original site usually has fewer backlinks and is often overall smaller that the, while the spammed content aims for ranking on a national level. If you find your business’s website is under this spam attack, Google provides a dedicated form for reporting spam websites. In addition, if the spam site is spreading malware or aims to steal data, you can report these phishing attacks through Google Safe Browsing.

How is Stolen Content Used on Content Spam Websites?

1.7 million websites, 1.5 million images, and more are imported into the hijacked Search Console via the sitemap. The hacked page was also can be accessed via a WordPress to exploit. Once a site has been hacked, a thorough expansion of subpages begins. For Example, 25,800 Google results for a small pipe cleaning website that is distributing dangerous malware attacks on hacked websites. Spammers’ websites use plagiarism to not only place is search results, but in post snippets for easy SEO wins on social media platforms as well. 

They use backlinks alongside known, relevant text content in social media linking to completely different domains to boost these domains and entire sentences are taken from third-party content to post on Facebook to enhance their own content. Sometimes text content is taken from a webpage with a top 3 ranking and appears on a competitor’s Facebook profile. 

OnlySpams.expert by Seybold found 17% stolen content on a website at the top 3 Google SERPs Page. That may not sound a lot, but for a 10,000-word article, 17% is 1,700 stolen words. When attackers’ websites are removed from the index after a webspam report is sent to Google, rankings may recover, but a complete recovery under continued DDoS attacks and restoring an online store’s top rankings can take up to 7 months with considerable SEO skills. That is a lot time taken away from authority and brand building. 

Avoid negative SEO tactics and create an ethical SEO strategy with us. Call 248.528.360 

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1. Focus on User Intent 

“In 2022, the SERP (search engine results page) will pay more attention to the search intent,” co-founder of RevenueGeeks Adam Wood says. Search intent is Google’s way of understanding the intent behind a user’s search. The pandemic impacted worldwide human behavior, including search behavior. Consumers were home-bound, they turned to Google for product information instead of on-site salespeople.

“Because of this shift in customer search intent, SERPs returned more comparative and informational articles instead of product pages,” Wood adds. He believes brands who understand this trend will succeed in dominating organic search. “The problem will be in knowing the users’ needs and meeting them.” Wood predicts educational material will be a significant growth driver in organic search this year. Business should research what themes to cover, how to structure content, and what content type to use for a particular query.

2. Produce site-wide quality content

It is crucial to pick the proper search terms to target and analyze the competition that is currently ranking for those terms. “Look at what’s ranking in terms of length, quality, site speed, and whether it’s a well-known website,” Jeff Campbell, owner of multiple websites and six-figure-earning blogger, suggests. “For a new site with a relatively low domain authority, it’s best not to go after phrases where the top search results are well-known websites.”

He also suggests making your article 20 percent longer than the top search results if that added length is comprehensive and not fluff. “Go deeper into the topic, include original research or statistics, and Google will reward you with better rankings.” Continue the process to ensure that you are producing the same quality of content site-wide instead of having a few quality content assets. This strategy will help boost your search position for a range of terms.

3. Consider localizing content

Local SEO is increasingly important. Optimize your site content for maps and local search. It holds a powerful position in driving traffic to your website. The following tactics can help you rank for local search terms:

• Solicit and respond to reviews. 
  • Authentic customer reviews 
  • Star rating is the most crucial factor in determining a business’s quality.
• Set up and optimize your Google Business profile. 
  • Optimize metadata 
  • Ensuring your contact information is 100 percent correct everywhere on the web
  •  Link to your contact information or “about us” page on both your Google Maps and Google Business Profile.
• Visibly display your business name, address, and phone number. 
  • Local indicators should be prominently displayed on every page of your website, like on your website’s footer. 
  • Ensure that these identifiers are consistent everywhere you place them so that search engine crawlers can connect all the pages where they appear.
• Create location-specific content and product pages. 
  • Create location-based pages for each area you service. 
  • Add optimized header tags that include the search terms locals use to look for the services you’re offering. 
  • These tags will help your readers and crawlers understand the flow of the page and what to expect. 
  • Include landmarks, city, and street names in the content of these pages to optimize them for local SEO further

4. Pay attention to quality rater guidelines

Google primarily uses search bots (artificial intelligence) to scan and rank the millions of web pages on the Internet. However, it has recently implemented human review. These people are called “search quality raters.” They are actual human individuals who look at Google search results and determine if the websites truly solve users’ problems or questions. Google then uses those insights to better understand if its core algorithm is working as intended. No additional optimization measures are needed for quality rater guidelines. Quality raters are there as a secondary measure to ensure Google’s algorithm serves up the best results for its users.

Need help implementing these steps? Call 248.528.360. 

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1.  Google Cares About Video

Google’s internal algorithm for generating search engine results pages considers video content. Google values two things above all others: the quality of your content, and its relevance to user’s original search terms. It scans for other types of media to see precisely what your website has to offer. If your sites have a mixture of text and quality visuals like videos, that means your pages are varied and informative. This boosts your SEO efforts because are your business is seen as more trustworthy, an expert in the target market, and considers different ways users consume information. 

2. Video Is a Traffic-Generating Machine

One of the qualities that Google looks at when determining search rankings is the amount of incoming web traffic you have. If your domain has a massive number of regular visitors, Google determines that you have the answers their users need. People are more likely to visit your website by watching a video on YouTube or other social media channels than they are any other type of content. Many B2B and B2C businesses have launched their own video websites and are investing heavily in video content placed throughout their main website and landing pages. The more video content you create, the more quality traffic you can draw to your pages, which will, in turn, boost your overall SEO in the long run.

3. Video Keeps Visitors on Your Site Longer

Search engines like Google also pay close attention to how long people are staying on your website. If you have a large amount of incoming traffic, but those people all leave after just a few seconds, it stands to reason that your content isn’t very good and they’re going elsewhere for the answers they seek. Video will more consistently help keep visitors on your page for longer periods of time. Users are more likely to watch a video than they are to read something like a blog post. Treat your blog text as a transcript as your video but keep video more prominent. You significantly improve your bounce rate, which, in turn, helps search engines like Google and Bing boost your article to the top of their rankings and SERPs page. 

4. Users Are More Likely to Link to Your Videos

Quality backlinks are one of the most important factors that Google uses to determine search engine rankings. The more uses are linking to your content and to your domain, the more authority you are seen as having. The more authority you have, the higher your pages rank in the search results. Publishing video content on sites like YouTube, TikTok, or other social media platforms is the perfect opportunity to create referral traffic and quality traffic that can also boost your rankings. Google does keep the exact architecture of its own algorithm a secret to prevent people from gaming the system. However, there is a correlation between high volumes of social shares and higher positions in search engine results pages. 

5. Video Helps Improve the Value of Your SEO

Potential clients are twice as likely to make a purchase after viewing something like a product video than they are without engaging that content according to HubSpot. A video helps increase your SEO by getting more eyes on your site and guides users through the customer journey by helping convince those visitors to convert to a paying customer. This means that at nearly all stages of the process, video provides meaningful gains to your SEO’s ultimate ROI. 

Update your website by adding a video today. Call 248.528.360.

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Why Care about Google? 

According to the digital marketing agency Reliabilesoft, Google commands the majority share of search traffic worldwide at just over 91 percent of global searches. The Microsoft Bing search engine share, depending on the country, is between 2.83 percent and 12.31 percent of global searches. Most professional digital marketing agencies focus on ranking for Google versus other search engines. Google uses an algorithm to establish what website shows up when a searcher types in a specific query. Previously, Google updates had humorous names like Penguin, Panda, BERT, and even Fred. Currently, most Google updates fall under one umbrella term: Google core algorithm updates. According to MarketMuse, Google updates its core search algorithm on an almost daily basis to provide “search results offering the best and most relevant content for every query.”

Why care about SEO?

Understanding how search engines work and how to rank content for them is a critical part of the success of your business website. Here are a few reasons to care about SEO:

1. Web content can bring in highly qualified visitors to your brand’s website and improves your content’s reach.
2. Grows into a valuable “evergreen” asset. Meaning it has long lasting effects after you take the time to create it. 
3. When optimizing your website for Google, you’re offering a valuable resource for those seeking information related to your industry.
4. Prompts users to enter the sales cycle without paying for lead generation.
5. Quality content has a compounding effect. It will keep visitors coming back and even referring others down the line.

Optimize your web content for search. Call 248.528.360. 

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