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Tag Archive for: search engine optimization
How To Get a Website To Rank on the First Page of Google (For a LOCAL company)
Thanks to the Internet Archive’s “Wayback Machine”, we’ve been given a priceless opportunity to look back and reflect on how we’ve changed and grown over the years (or at least, how our website has!)
The Largest Google Analytics Study We’ve Ever Done
This blog was originally published on Cupcakes & Websites website here: The Largest Canadian Google Analytics Study Ever Done
For this study we wanted to compare data from 2015 to 2016. Over those, only 57 qualified (had enough traffic over a two year period) to make the cut. If the website wasn’t setup until after 2015 we didn’t include the data as it is incomplete. Next years study (or later this year, we’ll see) will be even bigger!
What did we find?
Average number of visits to a website:
2016 – 14,267
2015 – 15,700
A decrease of 10%
A decrease in average traffic would indicate you can’t have the “build it and it will come” attitude. You have to be doing something on your website that gets people to come back again and again. No you don’t need SEO (search engine optimization) if you’re creating amazing content for your intended audience.
Monitor you traffic. One past almost client (they never said yes) asked if they could talk to us about their “new” website and why they lost 80% of their traffic. Get a monthly report from your website provider at the very least just to ensure someone is reading what you publish!
Average number of visits from search (traffic from Google):
2016 – 7,513
2015 – 6,150
An increase of 18%
Ever since we’ve been measuring websites in Google Analytics it’s always been an anomaly about how much traffic comes from search. And not just our website, EVERYONE’S, yes yours too! You just need to understand better what Google is looking for. Search in powerful, if someone if looking for what you sell, the odds are they will search for it eventually. Make sure when your potential customers search for what you provide, you come up!
Everyone needs a Google Strategy.
The average growth (loss) of traffic:
Total traffic – (10%)
Organic traffic – 18%
Facebook traffic – (.08%)
Traffic fluctuates. Google gives you some tools on seeing what the average search volume is for specific terms over the twelve months of the year to see when search peak.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategy For Beginners
SEO is an ugly topic. Lots of hearsay floating around with little evidence based opinion. Many assumptions, rarely facts that you can trust. It’s not my intention to tell you how to do SEO, no no, like they say, there are many ways to skin a cat! This is simply my findings over the past five years.
First of all we’re going to simplify what you’re doing with your website. Set one goal, one page must be more important than every other page. Pick three keyword phrases in your industry, those are your first three goals. Then develop your outreach strategy (how other websites will link back to your websites). Determine what you’ll update your website will ongoing forever and ever amen, and you got yourself a perfect little search engine optimization strategy.
- Set one main goal
- Pick three main phrases you want to come up for in Google search
- Why will people want to link to your website?
- Update your website weekly
- Measure relentlessly
If it isn’t as easy as described above than come along for the ride, you aren’t alone!
First, you don’t need traditional SEO if you are;
- A major corporation, simply changing how your website is structured will do wonders!
- If you have an amazing social media presence (e’hem, Wheel House, The Riders, Hard Pressed do NOT need SEO help)
- If you publish content (stories, photos, videos) weekly to your website you most likely have no use for SEO
For everyone else here are a few starting points to give you enough information to piss off your I.T. manager at the office.
A beginners guide to website strategy
In the real world if your store has a better location, if you can get in front of more people, if everyone can recognize your store from a mile away, you have a distinct advantage.
The Internet doesn’t work that way.
If you rent space in the West Edmonton mall beside a popular retailer you’re sure to increase your foot traffic. The catch is, retail space beside Holts, the Disney or Apple store will come at a premium.
When you build a website it’s like you put your store in a farmers field somewhere near Grenfell, SK. As your site acquires more links, is updated more often, you move closer and closer to a bigger town (more “traffic”). The front page of Google, the epicentre for qualified traffic, takes time and deliberate effort to get to the front page of and every day it’s getting more and more competitive.
The front page of Google is a zero sum game…
as one website goes up, another has to go down. All four major players in the market can’t rank number 1. As one company builds links and increases their rankings, other websites feel the equal and opposite reaction. If you don’t start being proactive about your online presence you’re going to see you traffic decrease from Google.
And I’m not sure if you’ve checked your traffic sources report in Google Analytics lately, Google organic search is probably your websites largest traffic provider. Might be a good idea to build a strategy to increase that traffic from Google.
You could advertise on Facebook or LinkedIn or reddit or the Leaderpost.com. Telling more people to come to your website should help you get closer to your goal.
You have defined a goal haven’t you?
OK we may need to take a step back here. No one really “needs” a website, think about it.
You need a contact us page so people can get a hold of you. You need a products page so people can see your new products regularly. You need a staff page so potential customers can see ‘who’ they’ll be dealing with if they so choose to set up an appointment. But no one really needs a website, a website is a tool, a tactic within a strategy. The sooner you recognize this the sooner you can being to use your website to its full potential.
No one really needs a website, companies need to be found, they need to be searchable, within a couple words hopefully. So that in the moment when your next customer has a problem, they pick up their phone, pull up Google and search for (insert your company’s keywords here) “funny marketing speaker Regina” and boom you’re right there.
The Top 11 Home Construction Related Keywords in Regina
Have you ever sat and wondered why your website isn’t getting the traffic you think it deserves?
The key to good traffic stems from many core parts, one of them being:
Optimization!
You could have the most outstanding content in the world, with videos that look like they were directed by Michael Bay (minus the scantily clad women of course), and writing that would bring a tear to Shakespeare’s eye, but if your website is not optimized properly you may not be getting the traffic you deserve.
One key part of optimization is the use of keywords on your page, in your blog, or anywhere else relevant on your website. We tried a little experiment in the lab here to see what the Top Home Construction Related Keywords in Regina are and this is what we came up with.
Now, if you are in the business of homes and you want your website to have more traffic, knowing which keywords perform best and optimizing for those keywords is your golden ticket!
Of course, optimizing is not the only thing that needs to be done to get more traffic to a website but it is definitely a step in the right direction. If you think your website may be lacking and might need a little boost, we might be able to help! Just fill out the contact form on the Contact page and we we’ll get back to you within 24 hours.
20 of the Most Difficult “Regina” Keyword Searches in Google [Top 10 Google SERP included]
Your search results are wrong. Well not exactly, but kind of. Google personalizes your search results based on your search history and location. To get a true look at the top search results in Google you have to turn off your cookies or use a service like Moz (the company we use).
Before we get into the 20 top Regina keyword searches we need to define a few terms for you.
Domain Authority
From Moz (formerly known as SEO Moz): “Domain Authority represents Moz’s best prediction for how a website will perform in search engine rankings.”
- Based on 40 different signals Moz measures, including linking root domains, number of total links, MozRank, MozTrust, etc.
- It’s a logarithmic scale so going from 10 to 20 is significantly easier than going from 60 to 70.
- It’s a relative measurement for predicting Google search results. It’s better to compare Domain Authority to other websites than simply using it to track a single websites’ success.
Page Authority
From Moz: “Page Authority is Moz’s calculated metric for how well a given webpage is likely to rank in Google.com’s search results.”
- Based on 100 measured variables Moz tracks
- Also a logarithmic scale, going from 10 to 20 will be easier than going from 50 to 60.
- Page Authority differs from Domain authority as the former measures how well a single page will rank in Google and the later predicts the overall performance of your website in Google.
External Linking Domains
External Linking Domain are hyperlinks on websites pointing back towards your website.
- Top SEOs believe that external links are the most important source of Google ranking power.
- Links to your website act as votes to search engines. The more votes you get, the more valuable your website appears to Google
Here are 20 of the most difficult “Regina” keywords to rank for in Google. It’s interesting to compare these keywords to the same for Vancouver, San Francisco and Palo Alto. It’s obviously not as difficult to rank here in Regina, but looking at other centres to see what the future of search engine optimization holds is always a good idea.
SERP
Search Engine Results Page
20. Apartment Regina
19. Dentists Regina Read more