“Mobile Usability” Now a Critical Issue for Websites

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Google has changed the rules of the game again. The search engine superpower will now judge your website based on its optimization for mobile devices. Will your site pass the algorithm test? If not, your ranking will be considerably affected and not in a good way. Get started by answering these questions:

Does your website use Flash technology? It’s time to switch it up from this non-mobile-friendly technology?
Does your screen adjust its size for the device being used, whether it’s a bigger tablet or a smaller phone?
Are the font sizes and text readable on smaller devices?
Can fingers click just one button or just one link? Make sure they are not too close together and have users frustrated by the clicking the wrong buttons.

Get more instruction, including specifics on how to fix these issues on this page from Google Webmaster Tools.

Other search engines have not announced any changes, however, Google’s decisions provide the standard for what others follow in terms of website optimization and this represents a major shift, particularly with internet searching on mobile devices at an all-time high and rising every year.

Brenda Stoltz, CEO or Ariad Partners, a strategic marketing firm talked about the importance of a responsive website on The Marketing Mojo Show:

Many business owners say I don’t need to or it’s not worth it or I can’t afford it but what they’re not factoring in is the revenue they’re missing out on because of a static website that’s not generating any leads or not mobile ready or no mobile strategy.

Get a preview of Brenda Stoltz’ Mobile Marketing Makeover below and get the entire interview here.

Is your website mobile friendly? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.

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SEO Time Management: Got an Hour?

In the time it takes you to do these things at the office you could have already facilitated the set-up for HitTail:

Check your daily email and voicemail messages
Perform weekly website updates
Attend the weekly staff meeting
Prepare social media posts
Eat lunch and socialize at the water cooler

So, what is HitTail? We talked about it previously here, but, in summary, it is a service that helps businesses increase their website search traffic by pinpointing the keywords people use to find the company. For example, did they find your men’s custom tailoring shop by searching for “tailors,” “custom tailors” or “custom tailors for men in Chicago.” HitTail’s SEO methods will analyze the data, provide suggestions based on the long-tail keywords and allow you to create content based on real data and guide your back-end marketing based on the results.

And it only takes about an hour to set up – a real selling point in our book. This article by Ashkay Hallur, How to Do Long-Tail Keyword Research for SEO gives an alternative do-it-yourself method:

Find a topic to blog upon
Put the base keyword in Google search
Go for UberSuggest
Analyze the competition for the keywords
Optimize the blog post for the keyword

Source: GoBloggingTips

It could be effective for sure, but does a small business really have time for this? Doubtful. In addition, it requires expertise, while not impossible to learn, might be intimidating for the everyday, multi-tasking employee.

There is another substantial advantage to HitTail we like after testing it for just a short period. The information is in a format we can understand. So that means no numbers of unknown origin, no indecipherable gobbledygook and no more “not provided” keyword messages. What good is data that people don’t use or understand? Not much, according to this Harvard University professor.

Big Data Is Not About the Data!

(Presentation from Gary King, Harvard University, about how the real value of Big Data is in the analytics)

Long-term our interest in HitTail is also to create better content that our partners, friends and potential clients can enjoy and find on the crowded Internet superhighway.

Of course, the ultimate goal is to increase web traffic and in turn generate new business. Moreover, while we are trying the subscription-based service courtesy of HitTail, it is still early in our testing phase, so we will continue to provide updates of our experience.

Leisa Chester Weir

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LGK Tuesday Toolbox: HitTail

Open the marketing toolbox for a great find to help your business master the art of the keyword…

Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly how your customers find you online? Enter HitTail. Their services analyze your web activity to show exactly what keywords and phrases people use to get to you. It’s a valuable tool particularly since the backend methods are ever evolving. For example, traditional methods for using keywords on websites, blogs, news articles, press releases and the like is to be brief and use several one-word descriptions to describe the content. The thought is that global descriptions will maximize the audience for searches – SEO 101, right?

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

Well a lot has changed since the days of Thomas Jefferson and this is one place where wordiness pays because existing data shows four and five word “keywords” could be an effective SEO strategy to boost your sales and marketing efforts. So, rather than several single all-encompassing words, several phrases of two or more words could bring better results.

In the article, Industries that Use Google Adwords the Most, Chris Gregory, Director of SEO at Dagmar Marketing and a past guest on LGK’s The Marketing Mojo Show recommends long-tail keywords as one method to stay competitive.

Long Tail Keywords – are keywords that are more obscure that might have less competition. These keywords will have less monthly searches however, they will usually be cheaper to bid on. By targeting multiple long tail keywords you will have a better chance of ranking well and therefore increasing your CTR (Click Trough Rate), and when taken as a whole, might be a better source of leads than one of the more competitive keywords with more traffic.

Consider this example:

You are a specialty online retailer who sells handmade soaps and lotions with many unique combinations, such as grapefruit-lavender, all with a base of shea butter. Use SOAP, LOTION and SHEA BUTTER as your website keywords and the results will be a lot different than if you use a phrase to mimic what a shopper might actually use for their search such as SHEA BUTTER HANDMADE SOAP and GRAPEFRUIT-SCENTED LOTION. In this example, a keyword such as soap would probably not show your business in a favorable search location – you’d compete against drug stores, mall stores, grocery stores and other big stores that sell soaps. Shea butter as your keyword might produce various definitions of what shea butter is and where it comes from, descriptions of its magical properties and a page or two of other retailers.

Another advantage to this long tail approach, according to the HitTail graphic below, is that click-through rates are higher when keywords are more specific, probably because potential customers can narrow down specifically what they want more quickly.

In full disclosure, LGK is giving this subscription based service a try courtesy of HitTail. We’ll periodically provide updates on our progress on this blog. In the meantime, have you embraced the long-tail keyword approach? Feel free to share your experience and tips in the comments section of this post.

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Small Business Marketing Memo: Embrace Local SEO

Photo by Marcela Palma via Flickr under Creative Commons license

It is well past the dawn of a new day and if you have been hiding under a rock to avoid the monumental shift in how target audiences find your business, come on out, it will be okay, embrace the new normal of local search. Now, more than ever, local SEO (search engine optimization) matters and given the changing algorithms, data collection structures and listing vendors, it’s one strategy that small businesses can ill-afford to disregard. We would like to add a few bonus points to our monthly focus on boosting your online visibility and a previous post on the topic to maximize your search marketing momentum.

Scott Langdon composed an excellent article that includes eight suggestions to improve businesses’ local search position. In How Local SEO Works and Why It Matters for Small Businesses, the article presents, in non-techie speak, the whys and hows to make search a priority. Here are a few highlights.

Local search is a way for search engines to offer the most relevant results to users, which are calculated according to location data. After all, if you’re looking for a flower shop, you’re going to want to find one nearby, right?

It’s also a great tool for small businesses because the competition is smaller — you’re only competing for position with other businesses in the same location. The better visibility you have on a SERP (search engine results page), the more likely that someone will click and convert.

Here are eight tried and tested tips to help improve your businesses’ local search position right away:

1. Claim your business. Creating a local page is as easy as visiting Google’s dedicated site and signing in. You will be prompted to type in the name of your business, but be aware that your business may already exist in local search — even if you weren’t the one who added it. What you’ll need to do, then, is claim it.

2. Categorize your pages. Pay special attention to how you categorize your business. During the process of creating or claiming your page, you will be asked to select a primary category, which is the most important category you will choose.

3. Be consistent. Make sure that your business is listed consistently across the web. This means that your name, address and phone number (often called NAP data) need to be the same when it comes to your local accounts, directory listings and any other mentions of your business.

If your business has been listed somewhere on the web unknowingly, you’ll need to track down that listing and claim it so that you can edit all of the information to be consistent (or contact whoever is in charge to get the information changed.) Something as simple as a hyphen or a missing suite number can change everything. You can find unclaimed listings by doing a search or using tools like Yext or Localeze.

For the remaining five tips, read the original article at Entreprenuer.com.

Listen to Chris Gregory, a certified SEO Master, SEO Mentor, All Business.com expert and guest on The Marketing Mojo Show, explain what is, perhaps, the most important small businesses search tactic in this LGK Marketing Memo audio clip.