SEO Quake

Looking to move the needle on your website’s performance? SEO Quake allows you to perform an in-depth analysis of each webpage on your site. It is one of the impressive local SEO tools that allow you to view the same SEO data directly on a search engine results page to find out how other sites are performing. Because successful SEO strategies need constant monitoring, all data is in real-time. You can get hyper-local and filter by location-based search results. Features like these help you to test what drives the organic traffic growth your business needs.

With the ability to adjust which SEO results display, SEO Quake is highly customizable. Any business can quickly identify and fix issues causing poor optimization and hone in on the most critical information to them. New businesses can focus on the high-level data that will help them gain traction. Established businesses can dive deeper into more specific data.

Google Analytics

Used to track and analyze website traffic, Google Analytics allows you to get the most value from your website. It’s a must-have tool for anyone who wants to grow their business website with digital marketing. With Google Analytics, you can check how many people visited your site and their location. You will also know which pages they visit most and the time they spend on each page. You can use this data to know what type of audience you should target and what you need to improve to turn your visitors into buyers.

Google Search Console

Previously known as Google Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console is one of the local SEO tools that you can use to monitor indexing status and optimize your site’s visibility. You can use this free tool to troubleshoot the presence of your website in Google Search results.

Want to see how your site compares to competitors? Compare the performance between specific URLs and domains. Build better links with powerful internal and external link reports. And then rapidly analyze a page’s keyword density all from within the same dashboard. Use this goldmine of data to create SEO strategies that expand the reach of your business.

Screaming Frog

Although it’s not free, if you need to extract data and audit some common SEO issues on your website, then it is worth checking out Screaming Frog. You will have to download and install this local SEO software on your PC if you want to improve onsite SEO. In addition to identifying issues on your site, this SEO Spider is a fast and advanced tool that collects the data you need, such as page meta descriptions and word count – to make better SEO decisions.

Sistrix

With this tool, you can track the visibility of sites on Google SERPs for the country you are targeting. You can check the visibility index to evaluate the pitfalls or successes of SEO activities. Sistrix can also analyze a thousand keywords. Additionally, you can use it to analyze how Google algorithm updates have affected competitor domains. In turn, this allows you to improve the positioning of your website in search engines.

Moz Local

This is a local SEO tool that you can use to update or create your listings, manage the information about your location, verify your listings again, and find or resolve any duplicate listings. By publishing consistent location data, Moz Local helps businesses to climb up the search results pages. Instead of managing your citations separately on multiple platforms, this tool allows you to get all your information and find out what is causing your site to drop down search engine results pages, not going higher.

Sparktoro

To do good marketing, you have to understand your target audience. You should know where they spend time when they on the internet, what they read, watch, listen to, and who they are following on social networking sites. Sparktoro is an audience intelligence tool that allows you to get the behavior of your target audience with just a single click of the button.

You can read about more local SEO tools in our post on how to conduct your own quick local SEO audit.

Need more than free local SEO tools? Let us know.

Savvy business owners know that search engine optimization is key for website growth and visibility, particularly when prospective customers are in their local areas. These local SEO tools will help you increase traffic to your website, giving you more opportunities to generate leads and sell your products or services. To learn more about local SEO and how it can put you ahead of your local competition, please get in touch for a free consultation.

The post Free Local SEO Tools & Resources for Small Business appeared first on DAGMAR.

How to Help Local Businesses During the Pandemic

One thing that came clearly into focus this year was how much we all depend on one another, both individually and as communities. Companies in every type of industry took a hit, not least of all the small businesses in our own neighborhoods. In addition to making a concerted effort to buy from locally owned, independent businesses, there’s one more simple thing we can do to help them survive: Boost them online. This post gives you some tips on how to do that.

What to Know About Google’s New Core Update

Our standard position on Google’s frequent algorithm updates is don’t spend all of your time chasing them—just maintain solid SEO practices to avoid suffering huge fluctuations in your rankings. This is good advice, but you still have to take a few minutes to be sure you understand the potential effects of major updates, such as the core update on May 4 of this year.

Localized Social Media Marketing Success: Lessons for Small Businesses

No matter what type of business you’re in, if you have multiple brick-and-mortar locations in various areas, each one should be treated as a standalone business for purposes of effective SEO and overall digital marketing. To a customer, that one location in their neighborhood is a single business, and that’s how they’ll go about finding it online. Even if you don’t have multiple locations, this post on localized social marketing has plenty of takeaways for grabbing more opportunities to promote your business by engaging with customers across social media channels.

Our Top 10 Tips for Better Local SEO

Eighty-eight percent of local business searches lead to a phone call or visit to a business within 24 hours. If you’re not taking advantage of the power of local SEO to make sure you rank highly on search engine results pages, you may be leaving money on the table. This quick list distills the local SEO fundamentals that increase your visibility to local consumers.

How to Conduct Your Own Quick Local SEO Audit

Local SEO isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it marketing tool. Getting the most from every dollar you spend on it requires regular checkups to make sure there aren’t any gaps in your plan or spots that need tweaking, whether those result from not having implemented everything you need from the beginning or from changes in Google’s ranking factors that you may have not been aware of. We put together a list of quick local SEO audit tasks to give your online presence a tune-up.

5 Tips: How to Create the Best Lawyer PPC Landing Pages

Our law firm clients are becoming almost as savvy about law firm SEO and digital marketing as they are about the law! They know their next clients are searching online for an attorney and that the competition online is fierce. One of the strategies we see law firms turning to in increasing numbers is pay-per-click advertising, which is a super-power for the firms doing it right. And doing it right means paying close attention to each part of a PPC campaign, particularly landing pages. While this post speaks to lawyers, you’ll find some good tips for best-practice landing page development no matter what type of services or products you sell.

Pest Control Marketing: Content Ideas for Your Blog

The demand for pest control services is growing, but so is the number of service providers as everyone from landscapers and home improvement contractors add pest control as a sideline. As with so many other types of service-based businesses, prospective customers are likely to engage with the companies at the top of search engine results pages, and content is one of (if not the) most important elements of a high-performing, long-term and sustainable local pest control SEO strategy. The problem? Small business owners such as those in pest control probably don’t have content publishing on their resumes. The solution? Our post on blog content ideas is a good start. 

Looking ahead

After a year that held changes with a scope that no one could have predicted, it’s a bit bold to try to predict what’s to come in 2021. One thing we think we can count on, though, is the continuation of the trend to move more of what we do online. Work, school, meetings, shopping, family and social interactions—things to do are getting done digitally in all kinds of new ways. We’ll keep doing all we can to make the most of digital tools for our company, our clients, our families, and our communities. If we can help you do that, too, just let us know. 

The post 2020 Blog Post Roundup appeared first on DAGMAR.

Blog post content vs. website page content

First, a bit of Content 101 to take a look at what blog post content is, or can be—feel free to skip down if you’re already clear on this.

Technically, content is content. You usually publish blog posts and web pages in the same way, using the same content management system. The main difference between these is in the type of content each contains and what readers expect from each.

Web pages are where we go to get a solution to a problem or answer to a specific question, such as when your customer wants to know these sorts of things:

• Whether you offer termite warranties or green pest control
• How long you’ve been in business
• Where or how to pay an invoice
• How to make or change a service appointment.

Think of a web page as a place to get things done. (Related: This is why your website should have user-friendly navigation and your pages should load quickly, and why you should have a mobile version of your website.) Make sure your site doesn’t have any barriers to getting things done that can cause a visitor on any type of device to quickly bail out and go to a competitor’s site for the information they need.

The kind of content you put in a blog post can be just about anything you want it to be—a how-to guide, an announcement about a new service or earned recognition, quick tips, an infographic, a video, or any other type of content. The purpose of a blog post can be to inform, educate, and more, and when a blog post provides truly useful information that makes a reader’s life easier or better, you begin to build your authority on your topic. Perhaps best of all, a blog can be a source of frequently updated content, which is a solid ranking factor for search engines. The more often you can add fresh, relevant content, the better.

Pest control website content and blog content can have a mutually beneficial relationship. Use your blog content to point toward a relevant page, such as a service page, and use your web pages to offer links to relevant blog posts that let people learn more or see a topic from a different perspective that may not quite fit on a straightforward web page.

How to get started writing pest control content

You’re sitting there in front of a blank screen and all you can do is wonder why anyone who doesn’t work in pest control would read a blog post about pest control. Instead of getting stuck with that thought, think about your potential topics from a few new sides, the best of which provide answers your customers may be looking for.  

Here are some prompts to help you move off the starting line:

• What does my company do that makes it different from all the rest?  
• Are my customers looking at pest control as just a way to kill bugs? Or do they know its role in the health and safety of individuals and communities?
• Do my customers understand how much pest control has changed over the last few years and how much safer it’s become?
• Have new species of pests become a problem in your area? What should customers know about them? 
• Similar to the above point: Did some new, exotic-sounding pest appear in national or local newscasts? Be the first to let your customers know whether they should be concerned and how you may be able to help.
• What information can I share with my customers to make their lives easier and my services more effective? 
• What does my company do to support the community in ways other than pest control? 

Prompts such as these can help you think of your company as more than just a pest control provider, which in turn can help your customers and prospective customers do the same. We’ll go into more detail on these types of topics in the next section.

An important note: You don’t have to avoid writing about the fundamentals of pest control. Publishing a comprehensive guide to common local pests, for instance, not only gives people information on a particular pest problem they may have, but also helps position you as the local expert. 

Pest control blog topic ideas

When you start your planning, consider grouping your potential topics into categories. That can look like this:

News and announcements

Introduce a new service or an update or expansion of an existing service, particularly if you can offer a limited-time discount on the startup fee or first month of service. You can also provide your own perspective on pests that are in national news. 

Examples: 

• Let customers know you’ve added an environmentally friendly mosquito control product.
• Offer a realistic assessment of the threats posed by “murder hornets” or a rise in pest-borne virus cases, and how you may be able to help.
• Tell customers about your company’s participation in a local charity event or News on your support of a local charity or participation in an interesting community event can make your company appear friendly, trustworthy and approachable.

DIY information

This may seem like a questionable idea at first—why would you want to help customers do their own pest control rather than call you?—but keep in mind that people conduct very specific searches to get solutions to their problems. If you can provide information on a solution that brings them to your blog and makes them aware of your company, your blog post has done its job. It may even inspire them to call you for an estimate if your post helps them realize that DIY pest control may not be such a good idea.

Let your own experience on which pest problems are most urgent for your customers guide you and write about those.

Examples:

• If customers frequently call for help with an ant problem, write a post entitled “How to Get Rid of Ants.” 
• Write a brief guide to DIY pest control that offers tips on what works and what doesn’t. You can provide helpful information while busting a few pest control myths.
• Provide information on the steps they can take themselves—framing it as DIY— to get better results from professional pest control, such as making their yards less attractive to mosquitoes.

Frequently asked questions

A blog post in a frequently-asked-questions format makes for an easily scannable article that can provide a lot of different information without having to create a cohesive narrative story.

It’s also a great way to get some positive SEO results, because Google loves helping users get answers to their questions. A bit of research into the “People also ask” results can help you strategize which FAQs to include. For example, do a search for “termite control,” then scroll down the results page to the box labeled “People also ask.” You’ll probably see questions such as:

• Can you do termite control yourself?
• What kills termites naturally?
• What is the average cost for termite control?
• What is the most effective termite control?

Then, click on some of those questions and you’ll see additional, related questions, such as “What attracts termites in the house?”

Use these same questions as the basis for your set of FAQs, but write your own original answers. Be sure to provide the information the readers are asking for and, where appropriate, include a call to action to contact you for help in solving their issues.

Seasonal highlights

Nearly every area of the country has its own seasonal pest issues. Unless you’re in a climate that hardly changes throughout the year, you’ve got a timely topic to write about. 

Examples:

• Your area has a short but intense mosquito season at the height of summer.
• Termites swarm in your area in spring and fall.
• Mice and rats head indoors during the coldest months.
• Fire ants are more likely to be encountered during warm months when people are outside more often.

Put notes on your calendar to publish these timely posts or schedule a quarterly “guide” post that tells readers what types of pest activity to expect in the upcoming quarter and promote the services you provide that helps control seasonal pests.

Checklists

Checklists are quick for readers to consume. As with frequently asked questions, you can get a lot of information into this format without having to craft a narrative. Checklists can also be particularly informative and helpful to your readers. 

Examples:

• Create a checklist of steps that homeowners can take to suppress infestations and keep pests out of their homes. 
• Make your technicians’ jobs easier with checklists that help property owners prepare for extensive or disruptive services, such as fumigation or bed bug treatments.
• Combine seasonal highlights with the checklist format to provide information on steps to take to exclude specific types of pests during their most active seasons. 

“Green” pest control topics

This category gives you an opportunity to accomplish three things: (1) provide straightforward, educational information for prospective customers who are interested in organic and/or more environmentally friendly pest control methods (including DIY), (2) educate your audience on how far modern pest control has come in terms of its safety for humans and pets and its reduced environmental impact, and (3) emphasize your company’s commitment to customer health and safety.

Examples:

• If you use an integrated pest management (IPM) approach, explain how it focuses on preventative measures, supports a balanced ecosystem and biodiversity, and reduces the need for chemical controls.
• If you offer green or organic pest control, write a post that does a deeper dive than what you may have on your web pages. 
• Write a post on the varying effectiveness of off-the-shelf organic pest control products or homemade sprays and baits, and note which ones may still pose some dangers even though they are considered “green.”

“Localize” your blog content

The success of your online content depends on getting it in front of customers in your local area. The key? Making sure you include your location in your content. Here are some tips for helping your content be deemed by Google as relevant to your local audience:

• If you have more than one brick-and-mortar location, include those specific locations in your content. It’s best to create a piece of content around a single location if that makes sense for the topic. Be careful of randomly including a mention of a location in too many spots where it’s not really relevant—that can be seen as spam by a search engine or even recognized as spam by a reader.
• If any one location has its own distinct pest problems, you may have a topic to write about. One of our pest control clients took part in treating a local historic structure for Formosan termites, a topic that was of local interest as well as one that allowed them to tout their expertise.
• If you have separate service pages for your locations on your website, be sure to link blog posts about the location to its relevant page.
• If you sponsor or participate in any local events or community organizations, do a short blog post and include a link to the event or group.

Learn more about content and local SEO

If you’d like to know more about the universe of local SEO universe, how content fits in your pest control marketing plan, and more, here are a few resources:

• A haphazard approach when you’re first starting out with pest control content may end up wasting some time if you don’t have a roadmap for where you’re going. This guide on how to create your pest control company’s content marketing strategy can help you craft a plan that makes the whole process more efficient. Also take a look at this Forbes article on content marketing strategy for small businesses for an overview of what content marketing is and why it matters.
• You’ll also find some nuggets in our post on localized social media for small businesses that can provide an extra boost to your company’s visibility online. Find out why claiming your social media pages, managing reviews, and verifying your Google My Business (GMB) listing are worth your time.
• Local SEO can be complex, but there are some foundational strategies with the power to get you in the best position to succeed online. Check out our post on the seven best pest control local SEO strategies.
• Subscribe to our blog at the bottom of this page to have more pest control marketing ideas delivered to your inbox.

Don’t have time to write content for your pest control blog? Get help!

Building a content engine that fuels your local SEO takes time, attention, and energy that most small business owners just don’t have. You need not only a sizable volume of content, but content that’s strategic, useful, relevant, and robust. 

There are plenty of freelance writers and online writing services out there that can take some of the weight off. They’re not all created equal, however: You’re likely to find that you get what you pay for, so don’t base your decision on the lowest rates.

Also keep in mind that few freelance writers are also marketers, so you shouldn’t look to a content creator to also create a cohesive content calendar or pest control marketing plan that’s grounded in a local SEO strategy. That’s where the services of an agency come in—experienced digital marketers who focus on SEO can provide an end-to-end strategy and the right blend of services to get your pest control company ranking well against your local competitors.

If you want to know more about the power of content in your marketing plan and how our full range of pest control digital marketing services can help you stake out a strong position online, please get in touch. We’re happy to provide a free strategy consultation.

The post Pest Control Marketing: Content Ideas for Your Blog appeared first on DAGMAR.

First, a refresher on just how important it is for your prospective customers to find you before they find your competitors: Eighty-eight percent of local business searches turn into a visit or phone call within 24 hours. If you haven’t implemented good local SEO practices, you’re missing out on potential business. Now’s the time to make the time to improve your local SEO practices.

So, how do you do that? Here are 10 SEO optimization tips to help you improve your website traffic, attract better-qualified leads, and convert more site visitors into customers.

1. Do Keyword Research with a Local Focus

Like every good SEO strategy, SEO for local businesses should begin with good keyword research. For local SEO, though, you’ll need to look at keywords with your location in mind. Using a service like KWFinder to start your research, think like a potential customer. What would they search for? What would you type in to find a service like yours in another town?

For example, say you run a local coffee shop in Houston. To find you, someone might search for a term like “Houston coffee shop” or “best coffee near me.” You’ll want to attach your location to those keywords within your SEO strategy. So, your final list of keywords might include “coffee shop Houston” and “best coffee in Houston”. When you have a list of the keywords you want to target, you’ll be ready to use them throughout your website.

2. Optimize Meta Tags With Local Keywords

When it comes to improving SEO, one of the best places to put your keyword research to work is within your meta tags. Search engines like Google use meta description information to learn more about what the pages on your website are about. Use those keywords as naturally as possible in both the title tags and meta descriptions for each page of your website. This will help local searchers find your page more easily and, at a glance, see that it’s giving them the information they need.

3. Create Location-Specific Web Pages

Add some location-specific pages to your website using your keywords. For example, if you are a plumber, along with your main plumbing website add some pages for each of the cities you serve. Along with city names, you can target counties, neighborhoods, and district names. Be sure that you include your location-specific keywords in the content of each new page, too. This will increase the chances Google delivers it as a page one result.

4. Optimize URLs on New Web Pages

When building those new location-specific pages, make sure you optimize the URLs, too. URLs are often overlooked in local SEO strategies, but they are actually an important factor in how your page ranks in results. URLs are another signal to tell a search engine what the page is about and what its target might be. That helps the search engine deliver more accurate results to the searcher and increases your chance of being on the first page.

5. Optimize Your Site for Mobile Viewing

Local searches are overwhelmingly done on mobile devices, so make sure your website is mobile-friendly. If you fail to make your website user-friendly on a mobile device, you risk losing potential customers to your competitors. HubSpot found that 61% of searchers are more likely to call a business if they have a mobile-friendly website.

6. Create Local Content Strategically

When you are creating content for your blog or social media channels, give it a local focus. Write about local events, feature other local businesses, or talk about the history of your area. Try to generate cross-linking with other local businesses, too, for an added SEO boost.

7. Optimize Your Site for Speed

Long gone are the days of dial-up and painfully slow download times. Customers expect their internet experience to be nearly instantaneous. Your website should be no exception. Websites that are slow and clunky to load (especially on a mobile device) have a much higher bounce rate. So slow-loading pages could be a gift to your competition. Monitor your page speed rates and do what you can to make them as fast as possible. The easiest way to see your page speed score and get optimization tips is to visit Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool and add your URL.

8. Create a Strategy and Monitor Your Online Reviews

Online reviews have a big impact on whether a potential customer chooses your business. Make sure you stay on top of online reviews with a strong strategy. Start by soliciting positive reviews from your customers to boot your online rating. If you do get a less-than-stellar review from someone, make sure you respond to it publicly. Potential customers are more likely to forgive a bad review when they know you care enough to address the issue.

9. Create and Claim Your Google My Business Profile

Google uses your Google My Business profile to pull information not only for text searches but for voice searches as well. So if someone asks their Google device “Where is the nearest coffee shop,” your information will only pop up if your Google My Business profile is complete. Take time to fill out the information and keep it updated. It only takes a few minutes but can have a significant impact on your web traffic.

10. Keep Monitoring Your Local Results

Slow and steady wins the race here. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for local SEO, so you’ll need to find what works best for your business. Making small, incremental adjustments here or there allows you to fine-tune your strategy into something that’s really working for both you and your customers. Keep an eye on your metrics or have a digital marketing company do that on your behalf. Your analytics can tell you what keywords are paying off with conversions and what’s falling flat.

Looking for More Local SEO Tips?

Improving your local SEO takes time. As a business owner, it may not be time that you have to give. If you need help implementing your local SEO and increasing your traffic, talk to our team. We work with businesses to develop strong local SEO strategies that focus on getting conversions. Contact us for a free consultation and let’s talk about how we can help improve your local SEO marketing strategy.

The post Our Top 10 Tips For Better Local SEO appeared first on DAGMAR.

You’re not alone!

Many of the small business owners we work with know they need to have more (and better) content, but don’t know where to start. In this post, we’ll take a look at how to use content to market your business and put a brighter spotlight on your business in your area.

Why local content matters.

Having good content—and enough of it—is essential if you want to compete online in your local marketplace.

Why?

Because, to rank your business higher in search results, Google wants fresh content that’s relevant to both what your business offers and to a searcher’s intent. If someone is searching for “mosquito control Houston,” Google isn’t going to display results for a pest control company in Denver. What it will display—particularly in the organic search results—are local companies that Google deems the most authoritative, authentic, and relevant to a searcher’s query.

That’s where local or “localized” content comes in: The more high-quality content you have that includes mentions of your location in a natural, non-spammy way, information that’s relevant to your local audience, and the keywords related to the business you’re in, the better your chances are of being seen online.

What type of content should you create?

When we refer to content, we define it as images, videos, blog posts, website copy, ebooks, case studies, infographics, and more. Basically any type of media a visitor to your site will read or listen to and share.

You have a business to run, of course, so you probably don’t have time to produce every type of content (and certainly don’t need to), but you can start by focusing on just a few, which will give you time to get that content right and see how well it performs over time.

Let’s look at some of the types of content that can get your business on a path to greater local visibility. Some require frequent care and feeding, while others will have a longer shelf life. Whenever possible, each should have some sort of local angle.

1. Blogging

This is one of the best ways to keep the content on your website fresh, build authority, engage and/or educate an audience, and increase the amount of search engine-friendly content on your site.

Here are answers to some questions we hear about blogging for business:

1. How often do I need to post on my blog?
   There’s a good bit of debate in the digital marketing world on how often you should write a blog post. The Marketing Insider Group recommends blogging two to four times a week for the best results, for example, and that’s a good place to start. There’s a strong argument, though, to posting new blog content more frequently: Research from HubSpot shows that small companies posting 11 or more blog posts every month have nearly twice the traffic of same-sized companies that post two to five times a month. The most important thing to consider is how much time you can devote to blogging while keeping the quality and the relevancy of your posts high. Better to offer truly valuable information than create a piece of content just because it’s on the schedule.

1. How long should blog posts be?
   For many years, a word count of about 350 to 500 was the norm. In the last few years, however, Google has increasingly rewarded much longer content with higher rankings. In 2016, one study showed that the average Google first-page search result was 1,890 words long, but today, the best results are seen with much longer content, often 2,000 to 3,000 words. You can read more about these numbers in our guide to long-form content and why it’s so important, or scroll down for some long-form blog post ideas.
2. What should I blog about?
   Your blog posts can be about anything you want, of course. If you’re going to invest your time in writing, however, focus most of your content on topics that help you reach your marketing goals and are relevant to your business. We offer some content ideas later on in this post.
3. I have some content on my blog that’s been there awhile. Is there anything I can do to make it better?
   The beauty of the web is that you can update, revise or expand existing blog content at any time. If you have older blog posts that weren’t relevant to a particular time frame (such as a sales promotion you had nine months ago) but that still offer something of value, consider expanding or updating the information in it. An example: A pest control company published a 300-word post two years ago promoting its mosquito control services. The company expanded this post by adding new topics: information on what customers can do to keep mosquito populations down, how certain mosquito species pose particular health dangers, the role of local municipalities’ mosquito control programs (get that location in there!), and a set of FAQ on how the company provides its services. Increasing the word count, posting new content, and offering useful information that’s relevant to search queries make this content work much harder.

2. Guides

Think about how many Google searches you’ve started with the words “how to.” Now think about how you can answer a “how to” question for your potential customers. Identify a topic that lets you share your knowledge and expertise and that lends itself to an in-depth, long-form content format (perhaps 3,000 words or even more). Include step-by-step, practical information that covers as many aspects of the topic as possible and avoid self-promotion. Guides are an opportunity to become an authority on your chosen topics as you boost your local SEO rankings.

At DAGMAR, we’re building a library of guides (we’ve even created niche-specific guides for law firm SEO, plastic surgery SEO, pest control SEO and others).

Some are focused on specific types of businesses, such as attorneys, and others provide information any type of company can use. Each of them offers valuable, in-depth information that can help readers improve their marketing results.

3. Videos

A couple of years ago, it was estimated that about one-third of all activity on the web is watching videos, and it’s not a stretch to assume those numbers are even higher today. More recent research cited by HubSpot in an article about video marketing showed that 54% of people want to see more video content from marketers.

That same research also showed that the four most common types of video content are:

• Explainers
• Product demonstrations
• Testimonials
• How-tos

So what ideas do those categories spark? Think about how these and other types of videos may be right for your content strategy:

• Explainer videos are most often used to give audiences a simple explanation of a service or product. Is there something about one of your products or services that people misunderstand or don’t see the full value of? Do you have a new product to introduce? A brief video (say, 90 seconds or less) that makes it easier for customers to understand how you can help them may increase the likelihood that they’ll decide to contact you instead of your competitor. This video from Mint.com explains its personal finance management product and shows how easy it is to use.
• Testimonials in any format are powerful, but especially in videos. A testimonial from a satisfied customer will be seen as a third-party endorsement or “social proof,” which consumers prefer over having to take your word for how great your own company is. An article in Forbes on “How to Make an Effective Testimonial Video” has some good suggestions for how to put together the flow of your video, such as starting by introducing your company with footage of your storefront, signage or personnel.
• Product demonstrations and how-to videos can be used for the same purpose as guides and deliver a lot of value to viewers. If you or your employees are featured in the video, all the better—you’ll be adding a personal touch and helping prospective customers get to know you, while putting your company’s expertise in the spotlight.
• Staff interview videos can have more than one purpose. If you’re in a service business such as HVAC, for example, that sends technicians into customers’ homes, featuring employees can go a very long way to making viewers more comfortable with you when they can see how professional, friendly and knowledgeable your team members are. Another effective use of videos that feature your staff: attracting employees by promoting your company as a great place to work with people who like their jobs.
• Behind-the-scenes videos can be fun, interesting and educational. Take your prospective and current customers on a tour of some of the inner workings of your company to give them an insider’s view of things. Much like staff interviews, these types of videos can break down barriers that may have kept people from finally choosing to do business with you, and they can make you and your company appear more approachable overall.

4. Infographics

Infographics are perfect for condensing a great deal of information in an interesting way, and they’re easily shareable. Graphs, charts and images have particular appeal to audiences that are in a hurry to get the information they’re searching for and/or prefer to get their information visually.

If you have the budget, you can contract with a designer for a custom infographic. You can also take advantage of one of the many infographic tools on the web, most of which have user-friendly drag-and-drop interfaces and customizable templates.

Check out Piktochart, Easel.ly, and Canva.

5. Downloadable checklists

Offering a downloadable checklist in exchange for a site visitor’s email address has several benefits: It can help you build an email list of people to market to, it provides information that’s helpful (and therefore valuable), it positions you as an expert, and it’s inexpensive to produce.

As an example, we offer a very practical SEO Checklist for Launching Your New or Redesigned Website to developers to help them build in SEO best practices from the start.

6. Web pages

Don’t overlook the opportunities on the pages of your website! If you haven’t already, you can boost your local SEO by creating location-specific web pages.

As an example, let’s say you have a gift basket design service in Orlando. Your delivery area, of course, goes well beyond the official city limits. Your potential local customers probably search for “Orlando gift baskets,” but they may also search for “Winter Park gift baskets” or “Kissimmee gift baskets” to find services closer to where they live or work.

Create new pages for each of the cities (and major neighborhoods) you serve using those search phrases, making sure that the content on each page is unique and original to avoid the SEO rankings problems that duplicate content can cause.

Note: If you have more than one local brick-and-mortar location, it’s especially important to have website content that’s specific to each one. Just having a page that lists all of your locations isn’t enough—you need separate web pages for each. SEMrush, a service that provides tools for competitive research for digital marketers, offers a solid overview of why you should create location pages and what should be on them. It also offers this good advice: “Think of your location pages as microsites that you can expand on to create relevant related content.”

7. More long-form content ideas

In addition to comprehensive guides that answer “how to” search queries, these approaches can help you create the long-form content that search engines reward:

Frequently asked questions (FAQ): Coming up with enough questions and answers to reach a 2,000 or 3,000 word count certainly seems daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Start with questions that you actually hear from your customers or clients to ensure that your content will be relevant to them and be helpful. Then take advantage of the “People also ask” box that appears on most Google results pages. Example: A search for “what is personal injury law?” brings up these questions:

This is a quick way to find out the most common questions being asked about your topic, and you can use them to come up with more ideas.

“Questions to ask” lists: This is another format that can be great for search engine rankings and useful to your audience. One specific approach is to generate a list of questions to ask when choosing a company or firm that’s in your industry. Using the same example as above, a “Questions to ask personal injury lawyers” list could include questions such as:

• “Have you handled a case similar to mine?”
• “Do your attorneys have trial experience?”
• “Who will be the attorney handling my case?”
• “Can you provide references from past clients?”

As you write the answers to these questions, take advantage of the opportunity to highlight your company’s strengths and the benefits you can deliver to clients. “Questions to ask” lists offer a way to compare your company to your competitors’ and provide a great deal of detail on a range of topics.

“Best of” compendiums: This is the type of blog post you can work on over a period of time. As you come across things online that are pertinent to your business and customers, bookmark them.

Put some science behind your content strategy.

Basing your content on data can help you get more from the time, effort and money you put into marketing your business online. The more you know about your competitors and your customers, the harder your content can work.

Even the most preliminary research is worthwhile and you don’t have to devote a lot of resources to it to get some value from it. There are a number of free tools that can help you plan a smarter content strategy:

• Google’s Search Console will show you what keywords your website ranks for, external sites that have links to your content and points out issue your site may have, such as pages that Google can’t access.
• Google Analytics helps you see how people engage with your content, interact with your site and more.
• Keyword Explorer from Moz lets you find keywords your site can rank for.
• Google Trends can help you understand how search trends change over a certain period of time, which is useful for planning the timing of your content. As a very simple example, here’s a look at the crazy spike in searches for “gift baskets” in December as last-minute Christmas shopping ramps up:

It’s worth your time to learn more about keywords—check out this guide to keyword research from Ahrefs if you’re just getting started.

Get creative with localized content.

This section can help spark ideas on how you can go outside the lines to connect to local audiences with content. These ideas usually don’t lend themselves to a long-form word count, but they are focused on the important “local” angle and can be a relatively quick way to engage readers.

Let’s use a hypothetical accounting practice here in Jacksonville as an example for how a local business can come up with interesting localized content. We’ll call it Astrid Accounting Service.

You might expect the company’s content to stick with topics such as taxes, bookkeeping and the latest regulatory action affecting its clients, and that’s certainly the arena where Astrid should work to position itself as an authority among “Jacksonville accounting firms.” But the local angle doesn’t have to stop at some arbitrary boundary that says Astrid has to stay in its “local accountant” lane. In fact, the focus can be put more on the “local” aspect when it comes to getting creative. Here’s how that can work in several different ways:

1. Tie into a local event. Jacksonville sometimes achieves a sort of perfect storm of events in the fall. A single weekend can have a football game, a fair, and a popular performer at a theater that brings crowds to the downtown area. Astrid Accounting can tie in by doing a post on all of the ways people can get downtown without taking a car or where the best or most affordable parking areas are.
2. Offer a local guide. Guides relevant to your local area can make for great content that’s useful for readers and for your search engine rankings. Astrid can do this with a blog post on “Free Things To Do With Kids This Summer.” Such a topic can be both hyper-local (list and link to specific places to go in and around Jacksonville) and relevant to Astrid’s authority (“we know how important saving money is to our clients”).
3. Offer your take on local trends or news. Jacksonville was recently named to a list of the most affordable America cities for retirement, coming in at number 4. Astrid Accounting can do a blog post or even a guide that answers the question, “Is Jacksonville a good city to retire to?”
4. Feature a local charitable organization. Is your company or one of your employees involved with local non-profit activities? You can demonstrate your commitment to building a better community by highlighting an event or organization that you support and get some SEO goodness by linking to relevant websites.
5. Do a “## Tips” list. Astrid Accounting can do a blog post in November on “10 Tips for Holiday Shopping in Jacksonville,” which includes links to some popular locally owned stores and holiday events where great gifts can be found.

You’re a publisher! Now it’s time to be a promoter.

Once you get in the habit of creating content to market your business, what’s next?

Promotion!

Promoting content is part of what’s called content marketing. Hubspot has a good definition of this often-confusing term:

“Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing content to reach your target audience. As a business, this tactic can help you improve brand awareness, boost sales, connect with your target audience members, and engage prospects and customers.”

After getting the “planning and creating” part going, here’s how the “distributing, sharing and publishing” part of content marketing can help you achieve your marketing goals:

Social media: Whether your service or product is marketed to local consumers or other local businesses, the people you need to reach are likely to be on social media. When you’ve just published a blog post, guide, infographic or any other kind of content, also publish a post on your social media accounts to promote it.

A few tips:

• Use imagery! Nothing grabs attention like an interesting image. Become familiar with the various image size/type requirements on each platform, too, since they’re all different.
• Post your content on social media more than once. Try out different titles and images each time. Note that you don’t have to use the featured image from your content.
• Use the tools that social media platforms provide to determine the best days and times of days to post.
• If your post starts a conversation, make sure to join in. It’s a great way to show that there are real people behind the company.

Your email list: If you’ve been building an email list, send a quick email promoting your content. (If you haven’t, get started growing your email list!)

Paid promotion: Social media advertising is another way to promote your content. The cost of advertising on most social media channels is up to you—you can spend as little or as much as you like. Check out Facebook’s Ads Help Center to start getting familiar with how most paid social ads work.

Guest posting: You may not have heard of guest posting, but chances are very good that you’ve read several guest posts, even if you didn’t know you were. Simply stated, you (the “guest”) submit content to a third-party online publication. In return, most publications will let you include a link back to your own website or other content you want to promote, which is always great for search engine rankings.

In spite of the benefits of guest blogging or posting, getting your content published on other sites isn’t quite as easy as it sounds:

• You have to approach the right publications. If your article isn’t a very good fit for the publication’s readers, it won’t be accepted.
• Some publications want your submission to be the finished post, while others want you to pitch your topic first. Either way, your post or your pitch has to be worthwhile for the publication to consider it.
• Content that’s too promotional probably won’t be accepted. Why? Because educational, interesting and relevant content rarely includes sales talk.
• You can’t skim past the publication’s submission requirements. If they have a 500-word limit, don’t submit 1,000 words. If they want a pitch first, don’t submit an article. If they want you to credit sources of data or quotes, include them. You get the idea: Follow the rules or you will have wasted your time.

All of that said, guest posting has more upsides than downsides. Do some research into guest post opportunities, which are fairly easy to find. Using our Astrid Accounting example above, a search for “accounting guest post submission” unearths hundreds of opportunities.

A side note: Look for opportunities to have other experts or authorities post content on your site. Don’t overdo it—your own original content is always best—but take advantage of a reciprocal relationship where you can post on each other’s sites.

About the local angle here: There probably won’t be many opportunities to write for local publications, but that’s okay. Expanding your online presence with guest posts, especially when you can mention your location, will still help you establish yourself as an authority in your field, strengthen your brand, and make more people more aware of your business.

Measure, tweak, repeat.

One of the best aspects of digital marketing is that you can consistently improve on your prior efforts. Check your content’s performance by monitoring visitors, page views, social shares, comments, and conversions. If a piece didn’t do nearly as well as you’d hoped, make revisions and have another go. Don’t make too many changes at once, though, or you’ll have a hard time determining just which change made things better.

Should you outsource content creation?

The quality and relevance of your content counts, so if you don’t have the time or on-staff talent to get it right, consider outsourcing your content development and/or content marketing.

With the increasing need for businesses to publish content, there are plenty of independent freelance writers and writing services you can find and work with online, or you can work with a digital marketing agency.

As with any outside service provider, there are pluses and minuses. The pros of outsourcing your content include freeing you to focus on your core business and saving you time; the cons include the time it can take to find a good writer that won’t completely break the bank and knows enough about your industry to write intelligently on topics.

Keep in mind that with writing, you definitely get what you pay for, and you really won’t know what you’re getting until you’ve had the writer do a few pieces for you.

10 takeaways for your local content creation:

1. Search engines and users want the same things from content: relevance, usefulness, thoroughness, and authenticity.
2. Make your content locally relevant—it’s good for search engine rankings and for building relationships with the local customers your business depends on.
3. Blogs aren’t the only type of content you can use for marketing: Think guides, videos, checklists and more.
4. Aim for lengthier content, but not at the expense of quality.
5. Always look for a local approach when creating content.
6. Google rewards fresh content, so publish frequently.
7. Promote your content in as many places and as often as you can.
8. Promote your content more than once.
9. Track your content’s performance and adjust your strategy accordingly.
10. Outsource content creation if you have the budget but don’t have the time.

Need help with local content?

Using content to market your local business can help you attract new customers, strengthen relationships with existing customers, and build your brand in your marketplace.

If you’d like to know more about marketing your local business with content, DAGMAR Marketing can help with standalone content services or as part of a comprehensive local SEO strategy. Please get in touch anytime.

Additional reading:

Ways to promote your content: The Content Marketing Institute offers these “7 Promotion Tactics to Get Your Content Noticed.”

Ranking locally: How can you get your business to appear more prominently in Google Maps and search? Learn more about local SEO and improving your local ranking on Google.

The post How To Market Your Local Business With Content appeared first on DAGMAR.

We’ve written about the cost of local SEO and national SEO, but what about the price of the content that drives nearly every aspect of online marketing? As with SEO, a better way to frame the question is from the perspective of the value of content writing.

Can you afford inexpensive writers?

Technology makes it possible for anyone with internet access to offer writing services on sites where writers and buyers can connect. A glance at these sites quickly shows the remarkably wide range of pricing, both per hour and per project, with a majority priced exceptionally low. A snapshot of the current freelance writer pool on industry giant Upwork, for example, shows more than 800,000 writers on the site, with nearly 350,000 of those charging $10 or less per hour and a total of about 700,000 charging less than $30.

It’s clear that hiring a content writer can be affordable for most businesses, but choosing a writer solely on price can backfire. Here are the two most important reasons why:

• Search engines: Google and other major search engines place a great deal of value on original content that’s relevant to users’ search queries when ranking sites in search results. Conversely, websites with content copied from other sites or that contain links to irrelevant third-party sites will compromise good rankings.
• Site visitors: Every business has one chance to make a first impression on people who come to their websites. According to the Content Marketing Institute, the median time site visitors spend reading an article is just 37 seconds. That means people make fast decisions on whether a business offers what they’re seeking, is trustworthy enough to buy from, and makes engagement easy. Poorly written content can waste this all-important chance and send potential buyers back to search results and on to a competitor.

Can a writer charging $10 an hour deliver well-crafted content that supports your business goals, your customers’ needs, and search-engine rankings? It’s certainly possible, but it’s not likely. It’s difficult to overstate the value of good content when it has the power to bring people to your website and improve the quality of your leads. Check out Google’s guide to creating valuable content for details on the importance of using content to “create the best possible experience for your audience.”

How to choose a writer.

Great writers with solid marketing skills can be found on freelancer sites if you know what to look for.

• Profiles: Most sites give writers space for them to describe their qualifications, specialties, and approach to projects. Check this first: If a writer didn’t take the time to craft a perfect statement to sell themselves—free of typos and jargon—move on. A lack of attention to detail should be a deal-breaker.
• Experience: Look for writers who have experience in your specific industry or in an industry that’s closely related to yours, and in writing the type of content you need. A writer whose specialty is technical copy for engineering firms may not be a good fit for a conversational blog post for your organic food store.
• Reviews: Reviews should be used carefully to assess writers. A long list of unsatisfied clients is a red flag, of course, but a writer with mostly positive reviews shouldn’t be dismissed due to a couple of negative reviews. Clients share some responsibility for outcomes through their contributions to the project and, let’s face it—some people just like to complain. It can be difficult to sort out which reviews are fair and accurate.
• Samples: Seeing a writer’s work is a must, and you should be able to review quite a few samples when making your decision. Keep in mind the unseen variables in writing samples: they may have been improved by a good editor or are not entirely original. The more samples, the better.
• Communication: Once you’ve contacted a writer, how promptly does he or she respond to your messages? A writer’s communication skills and style in the initial conversations are good indicators of how he or she will work with you throughout the life of your project.

When your project gets under way, remember that you also have a role in its successful outcome. To help a writer provide you with great work, give them what they need: timely and thorough responses to their questions, access to your subject matter experts, background on your audience, and creative direction on the tone and voice that’s right for your company.

The post Spend Wisely on Content Writing appeared first on DAGMAR.

The “marketing is art and science” theme may be overused (guilty as charged), but in this age of endless data, it’s often true. We particularly see it in keyword development today, which barely resembles the simple process we used in the beginning.

Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday on keyword repetition last week really underscored for me how the basic content of a keyword list (the science) is taking something of a back seat to its intent (the art). This applies to content development in general as well.

Looking for meaning.

We always look for commercial/retail intent with our keyword research. For our own agency, a keyword such as “SEO” would make sense, of course, but “SEO company” or “SEO agency” has retail intent — it encompasses what the searcher is actually intending to find. A search entry such as “[keyword] consulting” may be used by those looking for consulting gigs rather than the services of a consultant. “[Keyword] consultants,” however, means someone is probably in the market for a consultant. A small difference at a glance, but a large one in terms of outcome.

We saw this in action when we first targeted “EHR consulting” for a client and ended up with a lot of undesired resumes. When we changed it to “EHR consultants,” sales leads started coming in.

Are you talking to yourselves?

Intent is coming into play more every day. Not only does Google continue to tweak its algorithms in its efforts to return search results based on what users are really looking for (which is reason enough for marketers to pay attention), working to understand intent is part of content development. You have to avoid the trap of talking to yourselves, using words and phrases that your audience would never think of when looking for you. You may have issued a company-wide decree that the frying pans you manufacture will now be referred to as “egg preparation vessels,” but your customers just want a frying pan.

As Rand says in his recent Whiteboard Friday, we make split-second decisions as we scan a page of search results, and we do that on web pages as well. We tell our clients that web copy is written on a tightrope, balancing what search engines want and what users need. Intent matters more than ever on both sides of that equation.

The post Move over content — intent is king. appeared first on DAGMAR.

Print on the decline, mobile on the rise.

A full-page ad in the Yellow Pages can tell consumers a lot about a business, but when you consider what more a great website can do, there’s no comparison. You can only update your phone book ad once a year, but you can change the information on your site anytime you need to. You can’t collect your customers’ contact information via a printed ad, but you can easily build an email list through your website. You can only show one or two photos in a Yellow Pages display ad, but you can add as many as you like to your site.

A much more important point of comparison, however, is the rapidly ascending rate of smartphone use for finding and contacting businesses. It may be the single most influential factor in ultimately making the printed Yellow Pages obsolete, but one thing is indisputable: You can’t fit a printed Yellow Pages directory in your pocket. Even the directory publishers themselves are acknowledging this reality, with many of them stopping their printed book production and turning to offering online directory listings to their advertisers.

Although the printed books are still being used by those with no access to the Internet, studies show that 70 percent of households in America go online when they’re in the market for local products or services, and nearly 65 percent of smartphone users are shopping online with their phones. It’s clear that your company’s online presence is critical to reaching most of your current prospective customers and perhaps nearly all of your future customers.

Make your business easier for customers to find.

There are a great number of online marketing agencies and many with the skills to get your website in shape and make it work harder to attract new business (call us!), but you can take care of a few things yourself to make things better in the short term:

• Consistency: The major search engines really like to see your business info listed in the same way wherever it appears online, because it helps them verify your authenticity. Find your business on the local search directories on Google, Bing and Yahoo and make sure your company’s name, address and phone number are exactly alike on each one.
• Content: Consider creating a blog that will let you include words and phrases that people use to search for your type of service or product. A blog also gives you an opportunity to publish timely messages, such as special offers or an expansion of your product or service line.
• Customer reviews: Provide an easy way for customers to review your business, and they’ll be helping to create more online content for you. Be sure to pay attention to the reviews that are posted, though — you’ll want to thank those who leave positive reviews and see if you can resolve any issues that surface through negative reviews.
• Community: Just as you nurture your business connections offline, you can use them to your advantage online. Links that lead from other reputable sites back to yours can help your site’s rankings in search engine results, so ask for links from other companies you do business with, trade-related organizations that you’re a part of or the organizers of events you participate in.

Use data to make your decision.

Still not sure that you should abandon your Yellow Pages advertising? Do some research that will tell you whether your phone book ad or your online marketing efforts work best by creating some type of system to track where your leads are coming from.

When prospective customers call, take the time to ask how they heard about your business, or include a special offer in your Yellow Pages ad that callers will need to request in order to take advantage of it.

On your site, setting up Google Analytics will help you track the traffic that your online marketing creates. Track the performance of each for several months and you’ll start to get a clear picture of where your marketing dollars are providing a return.

The post From Yellow Pages ads to online marketing: Time to make the move? appeared first on DAGMAR.

Getting started in SEO

Q: Why did you decide to go into SEO?

A: At first, I had only a passing interest in it. I’d heard about it, then looked into it to see if I could rank a site for certain things and found it fascinating. I started studying it in my time off by reading trade journals and blogs, and saw the mystery beginning to unfold. Then I realized how much I enjoyed it and that it was becoming a passion that I could follow.

Q: Once you began to dig in to SEO, did it match your expectations or were there surprises?

A: I was surprised by how technical it was, and thought that might be why more web designers and developers were getting into it before marketing people were. I’m not a tech guy from, say, a programmer standpoint, but I enjoy that side of it.

Q: What would you tell someone who’s thinking about getting into the SEO business?

A: You need to bring several different things to the table to be successful. An interest and proficiency in the technical side is a must, and that one factor can separate the good SEOs from the bad. Right next to that is an understanding of business and of marketing, which are closely tied together. Overall, it’s a mix that’s hard to find, but if you’re going to be good at this, you need all of these elements. If you don’t personally have all of these skills, find great people to work with you who do.

Q: In the two years since you started DAGMAR Marketing, how has the industry changed? Was there a different focus in the beginning?

A: Starting out, it was more about achieving rankings and just making sure whatever content was already there was optimized for search engines. Those are still factors, of course, but because of the constant changes the search engines make to the algorithms to reduce spam and increase the quality of search results for users, the focus has changed. What matters now are what’s always mattered in marketing and advertising: solid creative concepts, good networking with others, getting a presence on well-read sites and high-quality, original content. Together, these generate the best SEO signals, but they also raise the bar for everyone. I think it’s good, because the “black hat” SEOs who’ve had a negative effect on the perceived value of SEO are finding it harder to stay in business, and “white hat” SEOs are incorporating more services into the mix for a more valuable offering to their clients.

Q: What do you like most about SEO?

A: The fact that not everyone can do it well and that the need to have it in a marketing strategy has really grown. I also enjoy the competition — seeing what competitors are doing and knowing I have to beat them for our clients. That’s a “perfect storm” for me.

Q: What do you find most challenging about it?

A: It’s the constant change. You think you know all there is to know about SEO, and then a couple of months go by and your knowledge is already out of date. Providing the day-to-day services for clients takes up all of your time, but you have to find the time to keep up with the changes to maintain the value you’re delivering to those clients.

Working with an SEO provider

Q: Where should small business owners start if they’re just becoming aware of the need for SEO?

A: Start with a good website. Most small business owners underestimate the value of their site, or even see it as a necessary evil, and start with a template that’s not geared for marketing their companies. They invest in a brochure site, then it’s quickly outdated, and then they’re frustrated. A good site goes beyond visual design — it should be easy for them to add content to it, easily optimized and should be able to grow with their businesses. In any case, no site should be launched today without considering SEO. We’re well beyond that time, that was years ago.

Q: What can a business owner do to prepare to start working with an SEO consultant or agency?

A: They have to identify who’s good in SEO. Sometimes, because they’re on a limited budget, they go with lower-priced services and end up with a lot of bad links, bad content and bad advice. That results in the thinking that SEO doesn’t work. So by the time they come to DAGMAR, some of them have a bad taste for SEO but know they still need it. We may have to undo some of that and it can take longer to get good results for them. So before a business owner takes on a relationship with any SEO service, he or she should try to find referrals from other businesses that are experiencing the gains that a great SEO consultant can bring them.

Q: What can a new DAGMAR Marketing client expect when they first come on board?

A: The first thing that happens is an inventory of all of the variables that go into an SEO campaign. We look at the site, look to see if we can work with it or what needs to change. We look at the main keywords in their field — not just the ones the client suggests, but those that have more traffic.

Next up is a competitive analysis to see which keywords we can actually rank for. So the entire first month is spent doing research, assessing strengths and weaknesses, seeing where the opportunities are. Then we establish a baseline for reporting, so the client can see the improvements over time. This is an important point when working with an SEO firm — not all of them offer regular reports that let clients gauge progress and success of their SEO campaign.

From there, we have a solid foundation for an initial strategy. If we get that wrong, though, we may lose two or three months in having to start over. So we really need to get it right in that first month. Right after that first month, we focus on implementing the campaign, optimizing the site and monitoring everything to make sure we’re off on the right path.

Q: What about the longer-term? What kind of ongoing work is done?

A: There are probably a lot of good answers to that, but we’ve been doing this long enough to boil that down to two things: creating more content and generating more links. Either we’re going out getting links, or the client’s content is being marketed in order to get links.  Social signals are important as well, but if you get the first two right, social will naturally follow.

Q: How does SEO fit into a client’s overall marketing plan?

A: Without being biased, I’d say it should be at least half of their marketing budget depending on what kind of business they’re in. At a minimum, 50 percent of their budget should be spent in the digital marketing environment, which should include SEO. We are past the point of “trying” SEO.  It should be a part of just about every company’s marketing plan.

Local SEO, recommended resources and a look ahead

Q: What about local SEO? Do you think it will eclipse more general SEO strategies for small businesses?

A: Local SEO has really been coming on strong over the last year or so. Now we’re seeing national companies with branches or retail outposts around the country starting to realize they need local-specific SEO. It’s a big challenge for businesses with multiple locations and to do it really well, they need local signals on Facebook, Twitter or Google Places. The challenge is managing all of these local profiles while maintaining control of the corporate brand. We’ll see more of this.

Q: What about national companies that don’t have local branches — is there an angle on local SEO for them?

A: Not in the traditional sense of SEO. If you don’t have a local presence, you’re not “entitled” in Google’s eyes to have a place on the search pages that return a local result. You can still compete organically, but that’s going to be a challenge without a local address.

Q: Who do you follow in the SEO world? Any blogs or experts you’d recommend as good sources of information?

A: There’s no handbook and there’s a lot of bad info, so you have to read between the lines, especially with bloggers. Good resources for me are SearchEngineLand, Search Engine Journal and SEOMoz. On the local scene, I like Linda Buquet’s Catalyst eMarketing’s local search forum and Mike Blumenthal’s blog.

Q: Let’s wrap up with a look at the future. Where do you see SEO headed?

A: I see it becoming established on par with a PR department in an ad agency. It’s part of a much bigger process. I don’t see SEO as a standalone business staying viable. It will evolve as one of the services offered by more full-service providers. If you’re going to try to grow a business that provides SEO, you can’t do it on SEO alone. It surprises me that so many traditional advertising agencies don’t have SEO departments. If you’re not focused on digital marketing, you’re not seeing the future.

The post DAGMAR Managing Partner Chris Gregory on SEO appeared first on DAGMAR.

It was just two years ago that Twitter purchased TweetDeck, the app so many of us came to rely on for a manageable view of the constant stream of updates from our Facebook and Twitter accounts. Now they’ve announced that they’re discontinuing support for their older apps, including TweetDeck for iPhone and Android and TweetDeck AIR, and will no longer support Facebook integration.

According to their blog, Twitter will instead focus on what they refer to as “our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck.” Having new versions of our tools move from the desktop to the web is nothing new, and we’ll continue to see this shift happen across applications of all kinds. But if you’re particularly attached to the friendly TweetDeck app on your desktop and still want to manage your social accounts from there, there are plenty of other options, although not all of them are free Twitter clients as the TweetDeck desktop as was.

Tools for taming social media

There’s no shortage of choices, of course, in the desktop and mobile Twitter client category. (Google “Twitter client” and you’ll have an evening’s entertainment.) Here are just a few of them, some at the top of the popularity list and a couple from the fringes:

Tweetbot is for the Mac, iPhone and iPad, and comes in at a relatively pricey $19.99 on the Mac App Store. It can handle multiple accounts and lists, and has the integration capabilities you’d expect on a client designed for iOS. iCloud sync dials it up another notch.

Twitterrific is another one for the Mac, iPhone and iPad. It’s $4.99, a reasonable price for a straightforward Twitter client. It’s missing some of the power-user features, such as filtering, but it does manage multiple accounts and the UI in the 4.5 version released last month is getting some great user reviews.

MetroTwit works with Windows 8 Pro, Windows 7 and Vista. It’s reportedly easy to use and its basic version is free. A pro version is a $4.99 in-app upgrade from the Windows Store, which brings you multiple-account support and no advertising.

HootSuite has options for casual social media users but its focus is on social media managers. The free account allows five social profiles and basic analytics, while a pro account ($9.99 a month) provides unlimited profiles and allows one additional user. It’s all about integration, from LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, Google Analytics and more. The Enterprise version supports half a million team members, geo-targeting and serious customer support.

UberSocial is a good option for BlackBerry users looking for a TweetDeck replacement (it was originally built for the BlackBerry platform), and it’s also available for iPhone and Android users. Features include multiple account management, posting to Facebook, muting users and searching for Tweets from a specific location. The basic version is free, with a pro upgrade available for $4.99.

If having a Twitter client on your desktop or mobile device isn’t a priority, you don’t have to give up TweetDeck altogether — there’s still the browser-based TweetDeck version mentioned above, and you can find it at https://web.tweetdeck.com.

Have other recommendations for a replacement for TweetDeck? Let us know in the comments.

The post TweetDeck leaving the desktop: 5 alternatives for managing social media appeared first on DAGMAR.