7 Elements of Keyword Research Success

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Keyword research should be the very first step of every SEO strategy. You should start by thinking about the words you want to rank for, but the keyword research process can be daunting. This post provides some strategies to keyword research success.

Execute Your Keyword Research Correctly
Researching keywords the right way takes time. Dive into the language that your audience uses. Which words do they use? What terms do they search for? The result of your keyword research should be an extensive list of keywords you would like to rank for. Make sure you update this list regularly. As your audience or products change, so does your keyword strategy.

Aim for Realistic Keywords
Some niches are very competitive. If you’re just starting your website or business, it’s very hard to rank in a competitive keyword niche. If you’re new, you should focus on long tail keywords (which are easier to rank for and have a higher chance to convert).
For example, if you are a yoga instructor, it will be too hard to start ranking for the term ‘yoga’. Find out which aspects of your services and business are unique and try ranking for those terms. Perhaps you specialize in chair yoga for disabled military veterans. Aiming to rank for ‘adaptive yoga or veterans’ could be a good strategy. In that case, you should also aim for ‘disability yoga’, ‘exercises for disable vets’ and so on.
If you have been around in your niche for a little longer and you’re succeeding in ranking on long tail keywords, you could aim to rank for more competitive head terms as well. Ranking for competitive keywords should be part of a long-term successful keyword research strategy.

Use Relevant Keywords
The keywords you are aiming to rank for should be the same words your customers use. You should always use the language of your audience.

Use Singular or Plural Keywords
Always check whether you should use the plural or the singular form of a specific keyword. Should you aim to rank for ‘cupcake’ or for ‘cupcakes’? Do people search for ‘holiday home’ or ‘holiday homes’. Always check whether you should use singular or plural with Google Trends.

Make Sure All Your Keywords Have Traffic
Long tail keywords are a great way to start your keyword strategy. These words gain less traffic, but you’ll have a higher chance to convert your visitors into buyers or returning visitors. People that use specific terms to search for exactly that thing you’re writing about are just a very good match. However, if your keyword is too specific and doesn’t get any traffic, it won’t help your SEO. So make sure to aim for those long tail keywords that actually have some traffic!

Evaluate Your Keyword Research Strategy
If you’re aiming to rank for certain terms, make sure to check whether you succeed. You need to evaluate regularly if people actually find your articles. In order to do so, you should definitely google your proposed focus keyword every now and then.

Focus On More Than One Keyword Per Post
If you write a decent blog post, you could aim to rank for more than one search term. If you’re able to do that (without just stretching it), you should definitely do so.

For a comprehensive list of keyword research tools, I highly recommend Yoast.

SEO Copywriting Mistakes You Should Avoid

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Want to rank high in your particular field? SEO copywriting is critical. The copy – the text and words and ideas that make up your website – is the most important driver of website rankings.  If you create lots of unique, high quality content and don’t make the following mistakes, then your site will rank higher for your desired keywords. SEO copywriting is not just about creating blog posts. Make sure you don’t make the following copywriting mistakes:

  1. Not starting with keyword research – SEO copywriting always starts with keyword research. Think about the terms you want to be found for. Yoast has a great detailed free guide on keyword research.
  2. Bad, unoriginal content – content is king. High quality content will probably help you rank faster than any other SEO approach. However, never write content purely for SEO purposes. Remember your ultimate goal – it’s not just to rank high in search results. For most small businesses, the ultimate goal is to convert website visitors into paying clients. Good, readable content that answers prospective client questions will help your SEO as well as helping you increase your client base.
  3.  Keyword stuffing – do not mention your focus keyword in every sentence. It makes the text awful to read and you will risk a Google penalty for over-optimizing your text.
  4. Focusing on only one focus keyword – don’t focus too much on only one keyword. Try to rank for multiple kewords, key phrases and synonyms.
  5. Unreadable texts – copy should always be easy to read. People should be able to understand what it is you’re trying to tell them.

Conclusion on SEO Copywriting Mistakes

SEO copywriting mistakes are made when people don’t focus enough on the quality of the information they are providing. Website text should be informative and should have an original idea. Text should be easy to read. Text should be optimized for search engines without compromising readability.

Connect4 Consulting specializes in SEO copywriting. Contact us for more information.

What is AMP & How Can They Help Boost Search Rankings?

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AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, a Google project designed as an open standard for any publisher or website owner to have pages load rapidly on mobile devices.

For many people, reading on the mobile web is a slow, cumbersome, clunky, and sometimes extremely frustrating experience. Google’s AMP Project is designed to improve the mobile experience.

On Feb. 24, 2016, Google officially integrated AMP listings into its mobile search results. Web pages making use of AMP coding appear within special places in the search results and/or with a special “AMP” designation.

Connect4 Consulting can help you integrate AMP into your existing website.

The process is detailed, but for starters, it requires maintaining two different versions of any article page: the original version that users typically see, and the AMP version of that page. There are limitations for form elements and third-party scripts so some elements that you are used to having on the desktop version of your site don’t work on the AMP version.

Contact us today if you are interested in boosting your search rankings by integrating AMP into your existing website.

 

 

5-Step Checklist for Revamping Your Small Business Online Presence

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According to Adweek, 81% of consumers conduct research online before buying something. You almost certainly already know this and pivoted your business storefront online years ago, but unless you are remarkably vigilant of the latest trends, your online presence could probably use an upgrade.

Changes continuously sweep across the internet, social media, Google, and the content marketing world. Your online business presence must change too, or you risk receding into obscurity, stagnating with an out-of-touch website or, god forbid, a MySpace page. Most small businesses aren’t maximizing their online presence. Less than half of small businesses advertise online, pay attention to Search Engine Optimization, or have a social media presence, and a quarter of small businesses don’t have a website at all.

For those who wish to gain a competitive advantage, consider this 5-step checklist for revamping your online presence before 2017:

  1. Re-assess and Segment Your Target Market

Before you make any actual changes to your online presence, it’s important reconsider your target market. Identify the common characteristics of your target market. Then segment that market into specific groups of people. Without segments to focus on, you will never have a highly-focused and effective campaign.

For example, an online clothing store has segmented their market – men’s and women’s – to push customers down the sales funnel toward their desired destination. Customers are looking for something specific from you – so direct them to that segmented goal.

  1. Listen to and Engage with Your Audience

Now that you have your target market segments, engage with them and conduct some experiments. Find the best channels to interact with your potential clients. Social media platforms often break down along demographic lines. Do you have a professional, career-oriented customer base? Try LinkedIn. Focused more on female creatives? Try Pinterest. Once you’ve zeroed in, engage with your audience, track their online activity, and set up Google Alerts to figure out how to best design your online presence to match your audience’s tendencies.

  1. Optimize Your Landing Pages for Conversions

The main goal of improving your online presence is to maximize conversions, turning a casual visitor to your website into a customer. Your landing page is therefore mission critical. Most site visitors spend only up to 8 seconds before leaving your landing page. This means that you must use the most effective design tactics possible to keep your visitor’s attention and readily satisfy their needs. Also remember that every page on your site is a possible landing page – not everyone will enter your site through the front door.

  1. Don’t Forget About Mobile

There are still many small business websites that aren’t optimized for mobile devices. This should be a major concern. To make the most of your online presence, make sure you hire a web designer who works in responsive design, who can create a flexible website for both desktop and mobile.

  1. Take Advantage of Google

Your business may not show up on Google Maps unless you’ve claimed your Google My Business. If you haven’t done this yet, do this immediately. Google accounts for more than 70% of all desktop searches. If you’re not maximizing your use of everything that Google has to offer, you are invisible to many potential customers.

How To Get Great Online Reviews

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Great online reviews are important to consumers and businesses. With today’s fast pace and the ubiquity of internet access, consumers consult online reviews before making purchasing decisions. Reviews can literally sway you towards or away from a product or service. Whether these reviews are on Amazon, Google, Yelp, or a medical doctor review site doesn’t really matter. What is important for businesses is understanding that buying decisions are influenced by online reviews. People trust online reviews almost as much as personal recommendations.

No matter how hard you try, you will get some bad reviews. They are inevitable. Somewhere along the line, a customer will have a bad experience and will voice their displeasure to the world. While you can’t stop this from happening, it’s not the bad reviews themselves, but how you deal with them that has the biggest impact on future buying decisions.

The most effective way of reducing the negative impact of negative reviews is to increase the number of positive reviews.

Getting your customers to give you good reviews can be tricky.

The Most Important Thing You Can Do To Get Great Online Reviews

When it comes to getting good reviews, there’s one thing that makes a huge difference. Deliver an exceptional customer experience. Happy customers will help you grow your business.

Ways To Get Positive Online Reviews

Here are five legitimate and effective ways to get positive online reviews.

Ask The Right Customers

Your customers might love you and be thrilled to be doing business with you, but you’re not at the center of their world; they are. They aren’t spending their free time coming up with ways to help your business. If you want that help, you need to ask for it.

But if positive online reviews are what you’re looking for, then you need to be asking the right customers. The right customers are the ones who are getting the most value out of your product.

If you know some of your customers are referring other customers, then first reach out to the referrers for a review.

Ask at The Right Time

The best time to ask for an online review is when the value that you’ve delivered to the customer is at the top of their mind, making it easy for them to recall what happened and write an honest review.

Ask the Right Way

Want to lose your credibility as a business with a single word?

Send an email asking for “good” reviews. Or “positive” ones. Or any other adjective that suggests that you might be trying to tell your customers what to write, even if it isn’t true.

How to ask for a review (in an email)

Hi _________,

Thanks for coming in the other day. I appreciate your making time to see us.

If it’s not too much trouble, I have a quick request: could you please leave an honest review on (Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google, blog, etc…) Here’s a link.

Even a sentence or two would be hugely appreciated. If it helps us get more awesome customers like you, it’ll let us keep making (your business) better for you.  J

Thanks, and if there’s anything I can do to help you, don’t hesitate to let me know.

If You Get Ignored, Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Again

If your request for a review didn’t even get opened, that doesn’t necessarily mean that a customer doesn’t want to help you. You may have caught them at a bad time, or your email might simply have gotten lost in the fray of the average bulging inbox. Remember that ultimately customers with great experiences will want to give you a good review. It’s just a matter of timing. So don’t be afraid to ask your great clients two or three times if you get ignored.

Make It Easy for the Reviewer

Perhaps the most important step in getting great online reviews is making it easy for your reviewer to give you a great online review. Make sure your directions and expectations are clear and concise and if possible be sure to include a link directly to the online review form.

 

How To Deal With Negative Online Reviews

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Online reviews are important to consumers and businesses. With today’s fast pace and the ubiquity of internet access, consumers consult online reviews before making purchasing decisions. Reviews can literally sway you towards or away from a product or service. Whether these reviews are on Amazon, Google, Yelp, or a medical doctor review site doesn’t really matter. What is important for businesses is understanding that buying decisions are influenced by online reviews. People trust online reviews almost as much as personal recommendations. Online reviews are critical in getting customers to research a product or service.

Just look at some of these statistics about online reviews:

  • 88% of consumers say that they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. (Source: BrightLocal)
  • 70% of consumers say business service reviews (recruiting services, agencies) are as or more important than reviews of personal services (home contractors, babysitters). (Source: Capterra)
  • Customers spend 31% more with a business that has “excellent” reviews. (Source: Invesp)
  • 40% of buyers form an opinion of a business after reading just 1-3 reviews. (Source: BrightLocal)
  • 72% of buyers will take action only after reading a positive review. (Source: BrightLocal)

So what should you do when you get a negative review?

Respond Promptly

Promptly responding to a negative review shows the customer that you care and value their opinion. A prompt and personal response may also help you get a second chance from the customer that had an initial negative experience with your company, service, or product.

Take the Issue Offline

If it’s possible, try to replay via email or phone. For example, Yelp gives business page owners the opportunity to respond via email. If you are able to resolve the matter to the customer’s satisfaction, leave a brief comment in the public timeline.

Be Polite and Don’t Take the Review Personally

A negative review might piss you off and lead you to respond with harsher words than are necessary. Take time to collect your thoughts and respond by saying something like “Thank you for your valuable feedback. I would love the opportunity to speak with you about your experience. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.”

It’s more important for a business or service provider to take the high road and appear conciliatory to customer concerns than it is to establish its side of the story. The customer will always win any argument about their experience.

If, after talking to the person, you find there is a valid reason for his comments, take proactive steps to remedy the situation. When warranted, provide restitution in the form of a coupon or discount.

Monitor Your Online Presence

In order to respond to reviews, you need to know what customers are saying and where they are saying it. Either do this yourself, or hire an expert to monitor for you.

Understand How Rating and Review Sites Work

Each customer rating and review site has a unique algorithm that filters and ranks reviews.

Yelp recommends reviews it think will be most helpful to the Yelp community based on three factors: quality, reliability, and the reviewer’s activity on the site.

Tripadvisor ranks businesses based on star ratings.

Take Negative Reviews Seriously

In most cases, people who leave negative reviews aren’t out to defame you. They merely want to express their opinion about the experience. Take these reviews seriously because they may reveal an area of your business that could benefit from an improvement.

Encourage Customer Reviews

To offset the impact of a negative customer review, encourage customers to leave reviews.

Put signs or table toppers in your place of business for review sites you want to promote. Add a note to invoices or receipts asking customers to leave a review. If you email customers, ask them to share their feedback. These are subtle ways to encourage reviews from good customers.

Share Reviews with Your Employees

Make sure everyone in your company is aware of the reviews you’ve received, both positive and negative. Not only will that help you prevent a negative review in the future, but it will also build a customer-centric mindset among your employees.