by Ken Seaney | Aug 9, 2016
The key to website marketing success is search engine optimization, or SEO. Obviously, as a business owner, you want your website to be listed among the top search results when people search for something related to your products or services. While there are many ways to enhance the SEO of your website, it is important to note that social signals are an important piece of the puzzle. However, some business owners are under the assumption that the more page “Likes” and “Followers” they get on social media, the better SEO success they will achieve as a result. If you have 400,000 followers on Google+, Twitter or Facebook, that must mean you are well-known to the search engines, right? Not exactly; while studies have shown a correlation between higher search rankings and page activity, they may not be directly related. A Google employee, Matt Cutts, made a statement saying, “…you have this many followers on Twitter or this many likes on Facebook, to the best of my knowledge, we don’t currently have any signals like that in our web search ranking algorithms.” In other words, just because you have thousands of page Likes and Twitter followers does not mean your website will rank higher on Google searches. Social Content is Powerful It’s all about valuable, quality content. SEO has changed in the past few years; today, human-friendly content rules the world of SEO. Since social media is mostly about posting and sharing great content, it definitely enhances your SEO efforts. Content that is shared often across social media is viewed as “quality information” by “credible sources” that should be...
by Ken Seaney | Aug 8, 2016
Usually when you hear that you have received a “citation” it is a bad thing, but in the online marketing world, the opposite is true. If you own a business and you have heard of or read about citations, you may have been confused about exactly what they are. In simple terms, a citation in the online world refers to any time your company information is listed on a website. These include listings such as local directories, such as Yelp.com, YellowPages.com, and SuperPages.com. Also, citations can be found on other types of websites such as local blogs, news website, employment sites, social media sites, government sites, the Chamber of Commerce site, and anything else that may mention your company. Even if the mention has no link to your company’s website and only your company’s name is mentioned, it is still considered a citation. However, the more information included, the better. Why Citations Are Good Any online exposure for your company will bring attention to your products and services, which you can obviously benefit from. Exposure opens you up to potential customers that may have previously passed you by; and citations play a vital role in helping you connect with these potential buyers. In addition to that, citations are critical for search engine optimization today. Google and other search engines use citations to rank your business. The more citations you have, the higher your website will list in the search results. A higher ranking means more web traffic, which in turn equals more business for you. So what is the key to getting more citations for your business? While there...
