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Search engine optimization is the process of increasing the number of users to your website by ensuring a domain appears high in a search result. Each year more and more businesses are investing money in SEO for their business. For a lot of small businesses this can be a new venture and they aren’t sure where to start. We’ve reached out to the top digital marketing experts to ask their opinion on the state of SEO.

Is SEO Dead?

“Recent provocative claims by Chase Reiner and Amanda Bond have the marketing world surprised and puzzled,” says Charles Rosseel of Agency Rosseel. “Reiner said SEO is dead while Bond pronounced funnel Facebook ads no longer work. Although both sell courses with the “new” effective methods (authority hacking replaces SEO and StrADegy System replaces funnels) they do make compelling arguments. Your thoughts?”

Understanding Your Audience

“SEO trends and strategies are always changing as digital technologies continue to mature, and as search algorithms from Google and others get more advanced,” describes Kevin Kennedy of Marketpath. “That said, the most successful optimization strategies and projects still begin with research and understanding your audience. What are their unique interests? How do they search for this specific topic or service? What are they hoping to find by their inquiry (What is their intent)?

Once you understand your audience, you can then cater targeted, high-quality content for that specific group or niche, and to their preferred medium (text, video, images, etc.). Unique, creative content is still the foundation of successful SEO, that will drive sharability. Once you have exceptional content, focus on a link-building plan geared towards niche appropriate websites that are high quality (high domain authority).”

Video Content

“Going into 2020, I believe you have to dedicate a good portion of your resources to video content. The numbers don’t lie and people will engage for a longer period of time with video. Telling your “story” with video is going to be the tool that builds confidence in your brand and leads to greater conversions,” echoes Tommy Stitt of Digital Marketing Group. “Upload these videos to YouTube and rank them. Most people don’t realize that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.”

Reviews, Quality Scores, And Conversion Rate

“Google is going to do what is best for Google and its users. It is up to the rest of us to adapt. Click-through-rates are down and people have more options on the search results page. This is because Google wants to monetize the search results as much as possible and users want quick answers,” says Adam Draper of Gladiator Law Marketing. “Expect the competition to continue to increase for both organic and paid results. To maximize potential, get aggressive with reviews, quality scores, and conversion ability of the website. Content remains king with SEO. Don’t forget to pay attention to your close rate as well, making contact with a potential sale is only half the battle.”

Web Push Notifications

“Web push notifications are a fundamentally different technology than email, but many of the same concepts and strategies of email marketing apply. This technology is built into every major desktop web browser and is incredibly powerful because it allows you to send notifications to your website visitors that have opted-in after they have left your website,” says Matthew Paulson of MarketBeat. “You can use your web push notification list to promote new content on your website, your products, and services or even the products of your advertisers. Our business has attracted more than 300,000 web push subscribers and has generated more than $1 million in revenue from web push notifications in 2018 alone. I believe so much in web push notifications as a digital marketing tool, that I will be adding a brand new chapter to the end of the book that teaches how to leverage web push notifications in your business.”

Video Production

“One of the most effective SEO strategies that we’ve been utilizing for our clients in 2019 still involves using targeted videos, posted to YouTube and other social media,” says Jim Zons of EZ New Media. “The traffic generated can be instantly tracked and there is still no better engagement object than a well produced video. I tried Levitra for the https://medimagery.com/buy-levitra-online-generic-levitra-vardenafil/ first time last night. I had a great sex last night and twice this morning. I tried switching from Viagra and to Cialis. Both worked, but not as effectively as Levitra. Subsequently, there was a slight headache. And I can’t stress “well produced video” enough; there are so many poorly produced, ineffective videos out there it takes a sharp video with a compelling or engaging message to stand out and hopefully be widely shared.”

Focusing on User Intent/Search Intent

“One thing that has had a major impact on our client’s rankings in 2019 was how Google interpreted the search intent/user intent of the keyword users are searching and the relevance of the client’s page for that term,” describes Timothy Warren of Helium SEO. “Google is now looking heavily at what the user is really looking for when they search a keyword and placing that factor over traditional SEO factors like Domain Rating and On Page SEO.”

Digital Marketing Keeps Evolving

“Digital marketing is an every changing landscape and more than ever its important to learn how to navigate it or your competition will,” says David Juilfs of Gorilla WebTactics.

Each year the digital marketing industry gets disrupted with multiple Google algorithm updates. It is a challenge for businesses to keep up with new strategies to stay atop of page one in Google. With all the noise from these updates, it leaves owners scrambling to determine which strategy to follow.  We’ve reached out to the top digital marketing experts to ask they’re advice on what to do in 2019.

Use A Three Tiered Approach

“The most foundational way to ensure your SEO program is successful is to manage it using a strategic process and with a little SEO education,” says Janet Bartoli of Strategy Rework. “Using a three tiered approach, start with a full technical audit, identify search engine inhibitors. Next, move to content strategy – target user intent, and develop content for all parts of the buyer journey, and finally manage your trust and authority with brand strategy leveraging link acquisition. Whether you manage SEO programs for your employer in-house, or work with clients through a digital agency, SEO needs oversight and daily management to make it work most effectively.”

Onsite SEO Will Boost Paid Media

“For most business owners, investing time and resources into good onsite SEO is a no-brainer, but did you know that same investment can positively affect your paid media strategy as well? For those looking to make the most of their SEO investment and take their PPC to the next level, we suggest checking out Google Ads Smart Campaigns,” echoes Adam Arkfeld of ParaCore. “This campaign type scrapes your sites index and automatically generates the most qualified traffic, maximizing your paid ads performance. Good SEO isnt just about driving organic traffic anymore—it should be part of a larger organic and paid strategy.”

“The rise of voice and its impact on a company’s online visibility needs to be top-of-mind for online brands. The more people rely on intelligent assistants to access information, the more important it is for companies to have a strong SEO strategy,” describes Grayson Kemper of Clutch. “Though most people don’t scroll through multiple search results pages as is, its literally impossible to do so through voice. This means that if a company doesn’t rank well for a term, it has no chance of earning exposure when people search that topic through a voice assistant.”

Implement Structured Data

“Structured Data has been one of the most under estimated options in which helps assisting with Organic awareness and click through. I am not talking organic assistance as in the rank boosting. I am speaking in the terms of credibility in the eye of your audience,” states Carley Kuehner of Cosmick Technologies. “We have been monitoring very closely the differences with sites that do not partake in the Google structure data options out there. An example, we recently implemented on a Fortune 100 company was an 8 month test. We performed this test on 65 franchise websites. Understanding the markup for proper structured data is key. It all started when we noticed a star rating appearing in SER’s that were primarily eCommerce related websites. Basically, if you think about it, these are people who purchased a product, and came back to leave a review. When structured data is implemented properly these reviews are crawled by Google. Structured data is Google’s way to scrape what is product-based reviews customers are leaving regarding your products sold. This is the one voice the customers have to state how good your products are. With that mentality we of thought of implementation that philosophy on non-eCommerce sites. Companies do not have to have an eCommerce site to make Google aware of what your customers are saying. We simply took standard reviews that customers are leaving within a website, and we coded them to support the structured data markup, and within 3 months we noticed that most all SER’s now were being broadcast-ed with a review rating. Understanding the mentality of a https://handsfreehealth.com/buy-inderal-online/ consumer or b2b shopper is key. You have seconds to capitalize on our audience. Other SEO’s state there is a 3 second rule when a visitor visits your website. What about a 1 second rule when some is browsing Organic results. Maximize that presence with using structured data and offering the best possibly listing display you can. Once you at least do that we have seen a 25 to 35% traffic boost in organic click through.”

Website Speed

“One of the easiest ways to begin a successful SEO strategy in 2019 (and beyond) is to choose a great website host that guarantees speed performance with ultra-fast servers,” states Kelly Kilgallon of Tap House Media. “We suggest hosts like WP Engine or SiteGround. A slow website can lead to a major decrease in conversions not to mention hurt your SEO rankings with our best pal, Google. It’s also a good idea to boost website speed by using a CDN, a caching plugin, and an image optimizer.”

See more: Difference between RAM and ROM.

Create Unique Content For Your Users

“The best way to rank high in the Search Engines is to learn from your competition. A great SEO strategy is to first visit the top twenty sites ranking for your target keywords. The next step is to identify what makes those SERPs special, and what information they are offering to users,” echoes Bradley Poller of Princeton Internet Marketing. “Once gathered, create a page that leverages that information to create a unique compilation of content. You can utilize a headline generator tool to create witty posts. Be sure to incorporate your own version of this information, along with any new information you can contribute to the topic. If your page has this compiled content, then when comparing apples to apples (similar backlink profile, domain status, etc.) these pages will quickly gain position.”

Voice Search

“2019 is a milestone year for the number of people claiming they’re going to start trying Voice Search,” echoes Ryan Klein of Market My Market. “Proper structured data and content will be crucial for these voice results to include information from your website.”

Conversion Rate Optimization

“In 2019 we’ve seen more of our clients investing in Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) based website re-designs and an increased commitment to Search Engine Optimization,” says Kurt Schell of Lithium SEO. “This has been especially beneficial to our local SMB service industry clients who are in growth mode with the economy being so strong. They recognize that now is the time to take up a bigger piece of the search visibility landscape so that they are better positioned when the economy inevitably slows down.”

Update Directories

“More mobile searches mean its more important than ever to optimize your main “barnacle” sites. Yelp, Angies List, and Yellowpages are examples of barnacle sites that “latch on” and rank on the first page of search results, often outranking the sites of local businesses,” says Dan Delmain of Delmain. “Mobile searchers are usually still early in the decision-making process, evaluating multiple options, and looking for reviews. They will often click into these barnacle sites over a business website. Its crucial to create profiles on these sites that are thoroughly and correctly filled out with up-to-date information and plenty of photos.”

Create Great Content

“Content marketing, definitely. We’ve been working with a lot of small, low profile companies looking to raise their visibility. PPC can get you out there for the search engines, but not so much for branding visibility – or real authority, for that matter,” echoes Gabriella Sannino of Level343. “We’ve found content marketing to be our top method of introduction. Add in a little social media and its the perfect combination for a one-two punch.”

Ahava Leibtag of Aha Media believes you need to write for users first. “When filled with quality content that website visitors find useful, question and answer pages (like FAQs) can become a treasure trove of SEO potential. Always write for users first, focusing on plain language they can understand. This flows right into the third trend, voice search. The key to voice search optimization is using conversational language. Incorporating conversational content topics and keywords into your strategy is one of the smartest things you can do to tweak your content for voice search.”

Look At KPIs Beyond Keywords

“Keyword rankings do not always tell the entire story when it comes to the success and growth of your digital marketing and SEO campaigns,” states Robb Fahrion of Flying V Group. “When defining goals for SEO campaigns, focus on things like overall site traffic, impressions, and average keyword positioning. These are the best indicators for the success of the campaign. A SEO campaign is more successful if more traffic is driven to the site no matter what keyword position primary keywords are in.”

“One of the strengths of the internet is its ability to help consumers find the right needle in a digital haystack of data,” says Jesse Underwood of Underwood Marketing.

The digital marketing landscape takes a different turn each year. It can be challenging for small businesses to keep up with the number of Google Algorithm updates. We have reached out to the top industry experts to get their perspective of what to expect in 2019.

Content Still Delivers

“The bulk of the work and effort in digital marketing today has shifted from pixel perfect, jaw dropping creative designs to heavy content-laden websites (2,000 + words per page) chock full of value-add marketing assets such as tech manuals, whitepapers, and case studies,” describes Mike McDermott of Bash Foo. “Google search has never rewarded looks, but they are heavily rewarding SMBs that offer valuable content to their visitors. For agencies, its created a shift from a staff of 15 coders and designers to 15 creative writers and layout specialists.”

Content Is King

“Keyword research and link-building is essential for SEO, but its only part of the battle. Without quality content, you’ve likely already lost the reader. Content is king,” says Lexi Smith of Arrow Marketing.

“Content really is king. In 2019, weve seen that good quality content can make all the difference when it comes to ranking well with Google. In 2020, were going to continue seeing that, and social media is going to play an even bigger role in how highly your clients can rank as well,” echoes Sarah Gellber of Portland Website Co.

Measurable ROI

“As a niche agency specializing in digital marketing for dentists, weve finally seen dentists demanding what weve instituted and preached about for years – the importance of call tracking and measurable ROI in digital marketing,” describes Xana Winans of Golden Proportions Marketing. “The ability to track every action and reaction in the dental marketing funnel now allows every practice to truly optimize their investment. SEO, PPC, Social and more are no longer just trends. There are data driven, provable investments in growth.”

Social Advertising

Instagram story ads are the most undervalued form of advertising. SEO is still the largest source of converting traffic,” says Trenton Erker of Clarity Online.

Well Researched Strategy

Joanne Vaiou of Marketing for Architectural Firms has these 7 steps to follow in 2019:

1) Market research in order to define who their ideal customers / clients are
2) Find them. Ask them specific questions with surveys. Make a list of their problems they try to solve. Llisten to their needs in order to improve any aspect of their life
3) Create content that will answer directly to these problems
4) Be everywhere these ideal customers / clients are, through Google organic & paid advertising campaigns and through their branded social media pages
5) Build their E(xpertise) – A(uthoritativeness) – T(rustworthiness), aka “EAT”. In other words, winners will be those who build their brand and improve their message, their services, their products, their communication channels and their customer support
6) Have an expert help you in all above majors that are required for a company to build a solid brand foundation (i.e hire an SEO Expert to do the SEO strategy & management work, hire an seo copywriter who will work closely with the SEO Expert, have a web developer / designer inhouse to work closely with the SEO Expert etc)
7) Create happy customers / clients and maintain positive relationships with them. Word of mouth marketing will never die!

Create Content For Your Audience

Creating content that aligns with all levels of your audiences intent will help you reverse engineer what is important to them, no matter what stage of the journey they are at,” echoes Paul Mendes of Conversion Chasers.

Watch Out For Google My Business Spam

“One of the industries hit hardest by GMB trolls are restaurants. Helping a client unwind the damage done by the scandalous thievery of online ordering platforms who attack a restaurants listings is no small task,” stats Julia Rose of Chicago SEO Lyfe. “There are scammers that steal orders right off a GMB listing by substituting the URL’s or contact information on the listing so that they can charge a fee to process food orders (even when the restaurant has their own online ordering). The same scammers are known to accept payment for orders and them not reimburse restaurants for orders fulfilled.

Be very careful with who you allow access to your local listing. Since it is a free service Google support is very minimal. Losing control of your listing can be a very costly and damaging result for an innocent business owner who gets hacked or fooled by scammers. Do your due diligence whenever you hire someone to work on your businesses local SEO.”

Maximize SERP Conversions

“In 2019, were really stressing to clients the importance of leaning into Google trends,” says Sam Kessenich of RyTech. “While features snippets are an obvious trend that comes to mind, I’m thinking about the trends in Local SEO more and more. Instead of fighting Google algorithms for website traffic, try and maximize on-SERP conversions. This includes an active GMB presence (Google Posts, Q&A, Enable Messaging/Request A Quote), and proactive review solicitation. Google seems to be more interested in keeping users on their platform – that is, in SERPs, and businesses are going to have to learn how to cope with that to increase ROI.”

Content That Answers Questions

“Don’t forget the basics. We start with content that answers questions and is of value to a website’s audience,” echoes Roger Hicks of Electrum Branding. “Then we make sure that every on page element (URL, title tag, H1 and H2 tags, meta descriptions and alt tags) is formatted properly, contains relevant key words and is descriptive of its specific page. We also employ an internal link strategy to entice more page views and reduce bounce rate.”

Backlinks With Traffic

Traffic, backlinks with traffic, is the real big thing when it comes to winning rankings in the current landscape,” Isaac Vegas. Given the huge number of side effects and toxicity of https://sdarcwellness.com/buy-xanax-alprazolam-online-1-mg/
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