Google+ - No Longer a Local Search Requirement!

Google+ isn’t dead. It just didn’t survive being an important component in a Local Search Strategy. And, I for one am extremely happy about that!

It’s always a bit embarrassing when I’ve insisted that clients follow particularly “important” recommendations (like Google+) and then have to turn around and say “never mind”. But, that’s the nature of SEO. No let me correct that. That’s the nature of Google.

But I do not suffer alone; all SEO consultants and agencies have to live with the never-ending unpredictability of Google. And it must be the responsibility of (great) SEOs and agencies to report up-to-date requirements; even if it makes us look like we may be trying to cover up our lack of knowledge. On behalf of my fellow professionals, please know that sometimes we can only be the messengers. And, it’s because we know our stuff that we can come before you to report yet another SEO modification.

The one thing that you will need to remember, however, is that Google My Business has not changed and is extremely important for improved local search positioning. 

Local Search optimization has become more and more complicated; it no longer consists of using geographical modifiers in your title tags.   It’s also become more and more effective for driving new customers to your website.  Awareness Creation has been solidifying our knowledge base to become Local Search experts to improve our clients’ Internet Marketing campaigns.  We love to disrupt business as usual and Local Search is just one way we make sure you no longer have to settle for “business as usual.” 

Stay tuned. I’ll be sharing other SEO news (the good, the bad, and the ugly).  But today, let’s bask in the demise of Google+ as a Local Search requirement.

Online Marketing for Boomers

Rethinking Retirement?

Then You Have to Reinvent… Why You Absolutely Need Online Marketing!

Forbes reported back in June of this year that Baby Boomers are more likely to start a business in the next year than Millennials – twice as likely.  One of the fastest-growing segments of entrepreneurs in the U.S. is comprised of Baby Boomers (specifically, those over 50). See Boomers Rethinking Retirement.

Good news:  Boomers have decades of invaluable experience.  Bad news:  they may not have all the experience (or facts) they need to start a successful “encore career.”  For instance, what it takes “nowadays” to market the products or services they’re promoting. 

We may be a little biased, but we don't think any business can succeed without using online marketing.  Digital Marketing includes a variety of necessities such as a responsive website, SEO, Optimized Content, Social Media and Online Advertising.

Awareness Creation Reinvention Services (aka Internet Marketing)

Marketing is all about inventing and reinventing a business. So, if you’re ready to reinvent your retirement with a new business, you need to get in touch with us.

We love small businesses, we love entrepreneurs and we love the Boomers.  So much so that we’ve created a special SMB Internet Marketing program that helps startups get a grip on how to do business in the digital world; which, by the way, is much more cost-effective than most people think.  Check out Awareness Creation Small Business Internet Marketing.  

Should Doctors Be on Social Media? Absolutely!!!

You'll find a lot of doctors who are very vocal about all the reasons doctors should not be on social media:  HIPAA issues, no ROI, no time to keep up with it all, the potential of being burned by disgruntled patients' online reviews.  My comment?  Get on with it!

All business have very similar objections to using Social Media Marketing in their business development and communications strategies. However, the businesses who are using Social Media (including medical practices, hospitals, therapy providers, etc.) are finding ways to go around their initial objections and, ultimately, reap the benefits of Social Media:

• Affordable Marketing for greater reach than traditional methods.  Doctors can build or sustain their practices with the amount of new patients that can be found within a variety Social Media platforms.  Using tools such as Google Analytics or Facebook Insights can provide you ROI (or even Social ROI - SROI) values.
• Improved patient relationships result when doctors provide useful information about health management. Getting "social" doesn't mean you share your party selfies or travel plans. It's about having a give and take "conversation" about the needs of your audience and the professional information you can share that relates to those needs. Of course, you will not give personal health advice or reveal any person's private health information.  But, you will create a trust and following among your social media contacts. 
• Outshining the competition is never a bad thing.  Your social media participation can position you as an expert, a leader in your field.  And, if much of your competition is still afraid of social media, you can definitely leave them in your dust. You will be seen not only as an expert but as a progressive professional. And what if you do get a bad review? It can happen even to the most perfect.  But staying on top of the social chatter and keeping on track with your strategy will resolve any negative issues that may (or may never) come up.

Need other reasons to get in on Social Media. Check out 24 Outstanding Statistics & Figures on How Social Media has Impacted the Health Care Industry.

 As always, I welcome your feedback and questions!

Carole

Google has announced that changes in mobile search results are coming as of April 21, 2015. One point that is important for every website owner is that Mobile-Friendliness will become a ranking factor for SEO.

If your website is not mobile-friendly or does not use responsive design, your search engine rankings may be negatively impacted. Mobile searches have grown and so has mobile traffic. If your website is not "friendly" to this type of traffic, you may find a drop in your website activity in addition to a drop in the rankings.

You don't need to use responsive design but you will need to make sure that all the pages in your site are, again, mobile friendly.  Google will be updating the search rankings once they discover the mobile status of each URL.

Don't know if your website will pass the new Google mobile-friendly test?  Get in touch with Awareness Creation and we'll run a free test to let you know if Google sees your website as mobile friendly.

Remember:  the deadline is April 21, 2015!

Good luck!

Carole

Beware of Semalt Referral Traffic

For some time, our clients website analytics have been showing minimal traffic being driven by semalt.com which was not creating any big concern. Even though this type of traffic has been showing up for some time, most likely it wasn't referring a great number of "visitors".  However, during the last half of 2014, Semalt has beefed up its activities and this can now create problems for your website.This is website traffic you don't want.

What is Semalt?

It's bad news. Semalt is a Ukrainian-based spamming operation that uses its "botnet" to hijack hundreds of thousands of computers around the world by hiding within Soundfrost, which is a mp3 download web utility. Without going into the ugly details, just know that Semalt affects your website analytics by "driving" high numbers of bogus referral traffic; however, the traffic will show a 100% Bounce Rate, reduced average session duration times and takes up bandwidth - which can negatively impact your website rating. So what can you do to lower the impact of this spammer? 

Semalt Don'ts

• Don't opt-out of Semalt with any links they provide. Many have reported that once they attempted to opt-out, the more traffic was generated by Semalt. 

• Semalt ignores robots.txt commands so trying to block it with robots.txt won't work. 

Reducing the Impact of Semalt

Fortunately, there are a couple of ways you can fight the Semalt battle:

• Check with your web development team to make sure they have used the required  code for your .htaccess file. to block Semalt traffic.
• If your website is on Wordpress, use the Block Semalt plugin. 
• If website uses PHP, Nabble has a Semalt Blocker.

You've got enough to deal with when it comes to getting and tracking legitimate traffic to your website; use the above recommendations to stop Semalt from driving bad traffic and messing with your analytics.

 

No More Exact & Phrase Matching in Google AdWords

As of late September, Google AdWords advertisers will not be able to use the Exact and Phrase matching options. 

The “close variants” (an option at this point) will be applied to all match types and a “pure” exact match will be a thing of the past.  Some believe this will limit the control advertisers will have over specifying the key phrases that trigger your ad to show in specific searches.  

Good news:  less complicated matching selections for key word bidding. Bad news:  potential losses in performance which may necessitate an increase in spend. Some analysts believe advertisers may need to ante up a 10% budget increase to get the same results pre-exact/phrase kill announcement of 8/15. Others see it as an opportunity for advertisers to let go of the efforts and $$ put out for possibly lower performing keywords and focus more on strategy.

But, since I'm a glass totally filled kinda gal, I see this as a good opportunity to refresh campaigns (usually a much needed action) - AND - that this is probably a Google move that will benefit the "little guy". By all analyses I've reviewed, this change will have more of an impact on those spending $100K+ per month: the top 5% tier of elite Google advertisers. But, no matter the budget you may have for your campaign, you will need to change up some of the keyword strategies to make sure your Google AdWords campaign is as efficient as possible.

We recommend that you declutter your campaign’s keyword lists but definitely create much more focused landing pages. By having well-optimized landing page you can experience 3-5 times gains. 

So... Awareness Creation is starting to strategically modify all of its AdWords clients' campaigns to counteract Google's most recent decision (nothing new for us!). We will continue to strongly encourage improved optimization of landing pages.

Bottom line: Never get comfortable (read "static") with your Google strategies.

Speaking of modifications:  Awareness Creation has begun its amplified Google+ strategy. Please follow!

Content Marketing + SEO + Increased Web Visitors = LEAD GENERATION

Don't cha just love it when studies come out that reinforce the broken record message you've been delivering for, oh, I don't know - forever?!

Demand Metric in partnership with Ascend2 completed a SMB/Enterprise Survey covering content marketing objectives for SMB and Enterprise organizations. The survey results were provided by Marketo. Thanks to all for the great info!

Here's one snippet I particularly liked:

"As a lead generation strategy, content marketing is more effective when paired with other objectives on this list, such as increasing website visits and improving organic search rankings. 

While these latter objectives are not highly ranked, they also are top drivers of lead generation performance."

The majority of Small Businesses and Enterprise organizations surveyed had lead generation as a top objective for content marketing while less than a third named their content objectives as focusing on increased website traffic and SEO. The bottom line: you need to have a mulit-dimensional content marketing strategy for it to deliver the benefit of lead generation. And, you need to make sure your content is compelling (will increase web visitors), audience-driven, and optimized for search engines (will improve organic search rankings). 

Why Is Web Content so Important?

Content is vital for the success of your Marketing campaigns. Your audience - no matter the size of your company or the type of product or service -  is a group of "self-educators" who are doing more online research before making purchasing decisions than ever before. 

Because of this self-education process, the information you provide has a big job of attracting, engaging, and acquiring new customers. This is something you might want to do right to make sure your lead generation objectives are being met.

Resources Needed for Content Creation and Implementation

For most companies (SMB and Enterprise) the problem with creating and executing successful content strategies requires resources. Here's something to think about:

"More than half (53%) of SMBs use only in-house resources to execute content marketing campaigns. 

68% of large enterprises outsource all or part of their content marketing campaign creation and implementation, gaining higher levels of expertise and performance available outside the organization. 

Outside resources are helpful for obtaining specialized skills or to remain agile in the production of content." 

SMBs... do you think your in-house resources are the most knowledgeable choice for creating and executing the best content marketing strategy that will meet your lead generation objectives.  Enterprise organizations... are the 32% of you not using outside resources with more specialized skills getting the results you want to compete with the 68% who "get it"? Two words to remember:  Awareness Creation!

Just saying...