I was recently in Houston, Texas to attend the Internet Marketing Summit. It is a touring event that goes to about 10 US cities a year culminating in an annual mega conference in San Diego, California every February. The conference is run by Online Marketing Connect which is one of the foremost organizations for online marketing education and certification.
I never liked school but I love learning, so when I found out there was an event that fit my schedule and interests I jumped at the opportunity to attend (I'd also never been to Texas and wanted to see what was so damn big about it). I will be posting a number of articles regarding key takeaways from the conference. I hope you enjoy today's soup du jour regarding search engine optimization.
Search Engine Optimization (Sessions by Beasley Direct Marketing & LocalSplash)
Google practices tough love, so you either have to deal with it or settle for less traffic. Search algorithm's are constantly changing but there are a few fundamental things you can try that may give you some edge -
- Secure a descriptive domain name that contains a keyword reflective of your product/service (.com names are preferred).
- Try to get a virtual private server or dedicated IP on a shared server. A reputable hosting provider is also important, so stay away from the cheapest providers which often host dubious sites such as porn, link farms, and affiliate scams. Google prefers you keep good company.
- Google measures time on page and click-backs (bounces) so having quality content and fast loading pages is vital. For retail sites you should aim for visitor sessions of around 45 seconds per page and 1 minute or more for content driven sites.
- Build up the number of reputable sites that link to yours; use a tool such as Linkscape to see what links are currently present.
- Social media chatter and mentions will get picked up by Google since it practices high crawl rates on social media sites. Make sure your content is shareable and that you're using social media tools for distributing links back to your content.
- Create a Google Places listing since 90% of customers go online to find local products and services. In fact, 30% of all searches have a local intent, so it's critical your website and efforts are optimized for local searches.
- 9 out of 10 smartphone searches end in action either contacting the site or visiting the business. Ensure your website is optimized for mobile by having contact information and a Google Map listing.
If you liked these tips stay tuned for other posts regarding topics such as email marketing, social media strategy, pay-per-click ad tactics, and converting visitors to leads on your website. I glad to share and hope you find value in the information. Thanks for reading.
What are your thoughts? Do you have some interesting SEO tips not mentioned above? Please comment below. If you're hungry for more we offer a newsletter that notifies you of new posts.
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