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If you check your Google Analytics data, you’ve probably noticed one factor that gets a lot of attention: your bounce rate. For readers unfamiliar with the term, bounce rate refers to the number of people that visit your site and then leave immediately without visiting a second page. It can also be described as a single page visit. High bounce rates can be locally seo reducing bounce rateindicate a number of problems, from an ineffective web design to a mismatch between your online marketing messages and your website content. Reducing your bounce rate means that you are effectively engaging visitors and increasing your chance of conversions. Here’s a closer look at why websites have high bounce rates and what you can do to reduce yours.

Compare your ratings

A bounce rate in isolation doesn’t mean much. It’s important to look at your overall performance and your historical performance. For example, a bounce rate of 70% may seem high but if it’s dropped from 90% then you’re trending in the right direction. You also need to compare your rates against industry and site type averages. The team at KISSMetrics put together a helpful infographic that reveals some important statistics: the average bounce rate is about 40% for all websites. Retail sites range from 20-40%. Content-focused websites range between 40 – 60%. Simple landing pages are in the region of 70 – 90%. Your bounce rates are relative, both to your performance over time and your competitors’ sites.

Improve your design

One of the first areas to evaluate if you have a high bounce rate is your website design. Does your website have an attractive, professional overall look and feel? Is your message and positioning immediately clear to visitors at a visual level? Does the navigation menu make it easy to find what you’re looking for? It’s also important to ensure that your site is optimized for mobile devices, renders correctly on a full range of browsers, and that your page loads at a reasonable speed. Each element of a strong design reinforces a good visitor experience and high search engine rankings.

Showcase recent activity

Is the content on your home page fresh? If your site is currently showing dates of postings that are more than one month old, it’s time to update your content. Websites with fresh, regular content rank higher in Google’s search results. Regularly updated sites also build trust with customers and visitors. A site that hasn’t been updated in months leaves prospective buyers worried they’re interacting with a digital ghost town. Let visitors know that you’re working hard to bring them valuable information and actively serving clients or selling products. A quality blog is an excellent way to make sure your website has fresh content regularly.

Check your keyword/messaging alignment

A bounce rate can also indicate a mismatch between the search terms you’re ranking for and the messaging on your website. It sometimes happens that websites rank for irrelevant terms, as a natural byproduct of content generation and indexing. But overall, these type of visits should account for a low percentage of the people visiting your page. Understand what terms are driving your traffic. If the content is connected but you’re using different language, it’s time to evaluate your copywriting. Should your findings reveal that you’re simply not ranking for the terms that your customers are searching for, the fundamentals of good SEO will help overcome this issue.

Evaluate image and content quality

Another factor that’s important to consider is the quality of your site’s writing and images. Is the imagery professional, consistent, and appropriate to your business? Does it resonate with your audience’s expectations? It’s also helpful to audit your content. The quality of writing, editing, formatting, and thinking all play a role in whether visitors read and share your content. Weaknesses in either area can be addressed by identifying better imagery or hiring a professional editor or writer to whip your content into shape.

Does your business website have a high bounce rate? Contact Be Locally SEO today to discuss how to refine your website, content, and marketing strategies to help you engage prospective customers and keep them coming back for more.

It makes sense at first blush. If your competitor’s have already done the research and hard work to determine what the best key words and keyphrases are, why not just follow their lead (assuming you otherwise have completely original content, of course)? Unfortunately it’s not that easy, according to new research from the Institute for Operations Research be locally seo keywordsand Management Sciences.

You might have been able to piggyback when you were in school by cheating off your smart neighbor’s paper, but things are a little trickier in the world of search engine optimization (SEO). According to the study featured in Marketing Science, buying keywords from top competitors who appear on the biggie search engines like Google and Bing can seriously backfire.

Bait and Switch

The research revealed that most companies that engage in keyword purchases don’t limit themselves to “just” generic keywords but also buy up the actual brand names. It’s like if a local coffee chain decided to buy keywords like “Starbucks” and “cookie Frappuccino,” which are clearly Starbucks brands and products. Even if you reel in someone with those shoddy tactics, they’re going to know right away you’re not Starbucks and back click to find what they really want.

Company leaders might think this is a means to get some virtual real estate space close to their industry leaders via search ads, but do you really want to stack yourself up (literally) against bigger and potentially better competition? Plus, sometimes these brand purchases can get so extreme that it’s borderline plagiarizing and definitely a bait and switch scheme.

For example, if a brand like Volkswagen Passat decided to buy “Ford Mustang” (which never happened), that’s a pretty comparable brand even though they’re clearly not the same thing. But if No Name Model decided to purchase “Ford Mustang?” That’s a problem when it comes to quality comparison.

Inferiority Complex

According to Woochoel Shin, one of the authors of the study, when you put an inferior product next to a superior one, you’re not fooling customers—you’re just highlighting the disparity that isn’t in your favor. Shin, also a professor at the Warrington College of Business Administration, points out that this will actually just raise the brand reputation for the superior product (your competition) while simultaneously making the inferior product (ahem, yours) seem even worse.

Of course, if you are the superior product, that begs the question of why you’re buying up inferior keywords to begin with. The only brands and companies engaging in competitor keyword purchases are inferior.

Let Go of the Coattails

It might seem like an SEO hack to ride the coattails of your competition, but it often comes back to bite you. Of course, optimizing keywords for search advertising is challenging and constantly evolving. However, there are no real short cuts in SEO, and you’re better off having a pro research and analyze the best keywords for you instead of taking the road of least resistance.

Play your cards right and someday inferior companies might be buying your keywords. And when that happens, you’ll smile all the way to the bank knowing they’re doing nothing but making your brand look even more appealing.

If you’ve recently noticed a drop in your organic search engine rankings, you might be a victim of Google’s latest Panda update. Panda 4.0 was rolled out in early June, and has been affecting many webmasters. Some estimates suggest that the numbers may be as be locally seo search engine optimizationhigh as 7.5% of searches having been impacted. Let’s take a closer look at what Panda 4.0 is, why your site may have been targeted, and what steps you need to take to fix any penalties.

The Background of Panda Updates

Panda was originally rolled out by Google in February of 2011, and has been one of the most impactful changes that the search engine has made. Panda was designed to penalize thin sites that were ranking well for specific key terms using unethical SEO practices. As a result, site owners began to pay attention to the length, volume, and quality of their content. There have been several iterations and fine tunings of the updates, but it’s fair to say that Google’s Panda updates played a leading role in setting off the content marketing boom that drives much of SEO and online marketing as we know it today.

The Panda 4.0 update

Panda 4.0 continued the mission of the earlier Panda updates. Thin sites have been penalized. There seems to have been an expanded definition of thin sites. High volume sites such as Retailmenot and Ask.com seem to have been penalized. On the other hand, some experts are calling it the “softer side of Panda,” which means that small businesses have been less affected than anticipated and will continue to recover from previous penalties.

What to do if you were hit with Panda 4.0

If you’re among the 7.5% of sites scrambling to understand what’s wrong and why your rankings dropped, the first thing you need to do is take a step back and look at your website and content. Here are some important questions to ask yourself:

If your answers to these questions are murky, the best steps are to work backwards. Audit the content that’s already on your site. Identify gaps, areas for improvement, and things that should be removed. Take the time to create a content strategy that supports your messaging, business goals, and the value your want to deliver to your audience. Start creating that content and publishing it regularly, after ensuring that it’s well-written and clearly edited. Over time, you’ll recover from this penalty.
Are you facing a Panda 4.0 penalty? If so, contact us today to discuss how our content and SEO teams can help you stage your recovery efforts.

One of the most prevalent reasons that companies invest in SEO is to increase their visibility. At a concrete level, this goal translates into a desire for more traffic to your website. Ultimately the goal is that the traffic converts into email subscribers, leads, andbe locally seo drive traffice to your website buyers. Yet building traffic through SEO is an ongoing investment over time. There are a number of different strategies that you can take as a business owner to see more immediate returns in terms of traffic to your websites. Here’s a closer look at five suggestions that are working right now for driving traffic.

Traffic is the heart and soul of an active website, especially a blog or e-commerce store. As you build your reach through internet marketing, it’s also helpful to consider opportunities to attract short-term traffic through strategically leveraging your content, trying paid search, and being active in “online fishing holes” where your audience congregates.

Are you a small business owner that’s struggling to gain the visibility that you need to grow your business? Contact us today to learn more about how the Be Locally SEO team can help you reach your marketing and business goals.

In 2014, it became official: There were more people using mobile devices than desktops. Consider this, 32 percent of consumers start the hunt for their next purchase on a mobile device according to Econsultancy. This means that a big chunk of your potential customers and clients might be skipping over your website if you’re not mobile ready. be locally seo mobile friendlyEven Google’s on board with this, updating algorithms to give a higher ranking to sites that are mobile accessible, and a number of other search engines are doing the same.

This means you need to ensure your SEO strategy includes mobile readiness as well as—not in lieu of— desktop readiness. However, don’t panic just yet. The silver lining is that the bar is set pretty low right now, with very few businesses boasting premium mobile SEO. This gives you just enough of a window to surpass the competition and rake up those new consumers. But you have to move fast.

Responsive isn’t Mobile

You already follow responsive design best practices, so it’s the same thing as mobile readiness, right? Wrong, or at least it’s not completely right. It’s kind of like how all sugars are carbs, but not all carbs are sugars. All mobile readiness is an element of responsive design, but not all responsive design best practices lead to mobile readiness. Google has explicitly stated that responsive design is preferred, especially for sites designed for mobile use. After all, it’s easier to share content and quickly load pages when there’s just one URL.

However, thinking about these two strategies from a business owner’s perspective really highlights the bottom line—literally. A complete responsive design overhaul can take a lot of time and cost a lot of money. Plus, if something goes wrong, it might end up making the experience much slower for those on mobile devices. Google isn’t saying that having a different mobile domain means you won’t score the highest rankings, but simply that it’s easier for Google to scour one page set for indexing rather than two.

Easy SEO?

It’s easier to offer a mobile site that’s customized with content, but there are risks. Specifically, duplicate content and split link authority issues can come into play, especially for companies that aren’t savvy with black hat tricks and might mistakenly use them.
For some businesses, adaptive web design might be a better option, where devices intuitively figure out which of a business’ site is designed for which gadget. Adaptive design uses the best parts of responsive design (including zero duplicate content, shareable content, and one URL), and blends them with mobile readiness elements like fast load times and customization. Of course, this is also very expensive and complex.
Getting Started

If you’re ready to get “mobile ready,” start by verifying your website with Google Webmaster Tools mobile settings. This provides you with details on search queries that might pop up as “not provided.” Whenever you upload sitemaps to Google, you’re now uploading that mobile sitemap as well. Ensure your page load speed is as fast as possible, and avoid HTTP redirects which are notorious for slowing things down. This is another potential argument for not having a different mobile site.

Get control of your Google Local profile if applicable, since those Google Local details really stand out on mobile devices. It also shows you on Google Maps and the linked app, so you need to make sure that information is comprehensive and accurate. Finally, follow mobilization best practices such as properly sizing content so it scrolls vertically, choosing font sizes wisely, ditching the plug ins, and using buttons which can be tapped only when your readers want to—not in frustration when they’re trying to do something else.

Even the most robust content strategy will fail to yield results if your community isn’t engaged and helping to share your content. Many businesses don’t activate their existing network of fans and turn them into brand advocates. After creating new content, there are several steps you can take to help it gain immediate traction with your customers and thebe locally seo sharing content broader market. Here’s a closer look at five things you can do to get your community excited and sharing your content today.

Even the best content can’t do its job of building your brand, increasing sales, and attracting leads if it’s not seen by your audience. Finding ways to get your community excited about reading and sharing your content can yield a strong return on investment for your time. If you need assistance developing content your readers love and finding strategic ways to promote it, contact us today to learn more about how our team of expert marketers can help you reach your business goals.

There’s an ethics standard with search engine optimization (SEO) that goes beyond avoiding black hat tricks. If you want to ensure your SEO strategy has a longer shelf life—and avoid penalties from Google—it’s wise to make sure your ethics know-how is up to date. It all starts simply by following the guidelines established by search engines. They all have slight variances in the rules, but make sure you keep up with the basics of Google, Bing and Yahoo! at the least.

These guidelines will include definitions of what type of content they’d like, technical requirements to improve the indexing of a site, quality recommendations, organization tips to optimize inclusion, and a host of SEO/promotional techniques that are “negative SEO” or black hat tricks (which means you need to avoid those). However, it’s better to focus on the positive rather than the negative.

An Eagle Eye

When choosing an SEO professional or firm, make sure they not only follow SEO best Earth in the eyepractices, but are happy to share them with you. The goal should be optimizing your organic search traffic, which leads to quantifiable results. This might include working with keywords, h# or title elements, alt attributes or a number of other tactics. However, different websites will respond differently to the various strategies. For example, if a website is already performing poorly and the market is competitive, such “on-page” strategies will get you started.

A better approach will be working on authority and peppering citations as well as links throughout the site. Once that’s established, on-page tactics will come into play. In other words, there’s no one size fits all approach (if there was, you could probably do this yourself!). Most likely, you’ll get the best results from high-value options along with SEO basics. This will give you the greatest impact.

Making Changes

While great design can impact SEO, it’s still a “non-SEO” tool. Of course websites need a quality user experience and website layouts—but design in itself isn’t an SEO tool. Your SEO pro should separate the SEO from the non-SEO (even though they may offer services above and beyond SEO). For example, when Google said that page speed was a factor in SEO ranking, suddenly every SEO agency was all about adding this service on (sometimes for a hefty fee). Even though Google announced that it was a small slice of the pie, it was the new buzzword for sales.

Keep the goal of SEO in mind: It should lead to more sales, visitors, ROI, conversions or another quantifiable factor you want and can measure. There are nearly endless things you can do to a site that might improve one or all of these factors, but these “things” won’t necessarily all be SEO.

Keep It Honest

There will always be new black hat tricks to try, or companies might promise the world to a business owner in order to secure their business. However, if you want success in the long haul, it’s better to be realistic. SEO takes time, and sometimes a business owner and an SEO company just isn’t a good match. Check out their mission, vision and values statements to see if their approach is what you are looking for.

As if search engine optimization (SEO) best practices aren’t challenging enough for the average website owner, there are also a lot of forum and message board owners out there. You have your work cut out for you! Not only do you have to stay on top of SEO basics, you’re also welcoming total strangers into the mix—and they can wreak havoc on your SEO rankings (many times without even meaning to). If you own a forum, you have niche SEO needs.

It’s a great thing when you see a link to your forum in the top search results for Google. This means more users finding your forum, more traffic overall and potentially more be locally seo forumsrevenue. If your target demographic is finding your forum easily, you’re on the right track. If you own a forum for collectors of vintage Barbies, you want to make sure this market is active on your site—but how?

Forum Owner Tools

The most obvious advice is to have good content, but as a forum owner you need to foster it. This means providing comprehensive responses and boosting livelier threads. Posts should be centered on topics that your audience is really interested in. Plus, “good content” is likelier to get linked by others regardless of whether it’s provided by you or your forum participants. Keep an eye out for great writers and ask if they’d like to be a moderator or start a post.

Getting the community interested is key to your success. However, you’ll probably stumble across some flamers, baiters or trolls at some point. This is where strict policing comes into play. Some will just spew abuse while others might build in a bunch of backlinks to use as spam (such as trying to get people to their Viagra site). This doesn’t just poison conversations, but it also destroys your SEO. Find them, ban them and keep them quiet. This starts by having terms of use that helps everyone police himself or herself.

Don’t Get Tunnel Vision

Your site might be all about the forum, but don’t forget about the homepage and other landing pages. Search engine algorithms still depend on these for indexing and you can boost your rankings here, too. Make sure you still follow SEO best practices for “regular websites,” which includes avoiding black hat tricks and keeping up with the generic best practices. When it comes to naming your community sections, make it as literal as possible and don’t get cute.

For example, if there’s a general discussion site for Ken Dolls, name it “Ken Dolls General Discussion,” not “Her Other Half.” You might come up with an adorable name for your forums, but Google doesn’t care about creativity. Make it blunt and to the point so that Google (and your not so savvy users) know what it is.

A Little Encouragement

Quality links and videos are SEO gold, so encourage your users to embed them into the forum. This will also boost discussions. However, ensure that it doesn’t slow down the page by only allowing YouTube and Vine videos. These popular options are fast and search engine algorithms trust them.

Also make it easy to link, and brush up on your forum management and SEO skills. Keeping up to date with the trends and advances will make you a better forum owner—and the better forum owner you are, the better your rankings will be.

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