How to Improve Your SEO in 2018

SEO in 2018
SEO in 2018

How to Improve Your SEO in 2018 Through Content Marketing

If you’ve been involved in the internet for any substantial period of time, you may remember the popularity of “black hat” tactics many webmasters used to “trick” rudimentary search engines. These tactics were used to get web pages ranked higher by these search engines. Such tactics would include loading pages with content that was stuffed with keywords and keyword phrases that the search engine would “see” and thus rate it higher in their organic rankings. The effect was that irrelevant websites often showed up while searching for the content users were in search for. This, of course, posed a problem for search engines, whose job it was to determine relevant content for its users.

The solution became better systems and bots to scan content, punish users of these black hat tactics with poor rankings and to reward websites who were providing higher quality, pertinent content. The results have been dramatic. Over the course of several years, Google made multiple changes which caused a seismic shift in how webmasters and marketers had to use content to improve their SEO efforts. Today, content marketing is a critical part of online marketing. What exactly is content marketing and how can small to medium-sized companies use it to stay competitive with larger competitors? What are some “best practices” of content marketing and what are the real benefits? How can smaller enterprises keep up with bigger competitors to keep up when it comes. to content marketing?

The Two Ways Content Marketing Helps Your Marketing

A solid content marketing strategy will help your organization in two general ways. First, it will help in your organic search engine rankings. Pertinent, up to date content will rank higher than older content that a bot may view as outdated. This gets more eyes and presumably more clicks. The other significant aspect of content marketing is it helps funnel potential customers to you who may view you as an expert in your field.

In other words, if you sell all-natural dog treats on your website, not only will helpful information that includes words like “organic dog treats” and “healthy natural pet treats” help in attaining a higher ranking but the information you provide will work to steer prospects to you as an expert in your category. If you provide an article on “Five Ways to Keep Your Dog Healthier”, readers interested in the information have a higher likelihood of being interested in your healthy dog treat products.

A well-executed content marketing strategy achieves both higher rankings and a marketing philosophy that funnels readers right to you. That is well worth the effort.

How to Improve Your SEO in 2018

SEO in 2018

Content Marketing Strategies that Work

While there are certainly some best practices for using content marketing, they should not be confused with previous “black hat” strategies of the past. If a search engine ultimately views your site as intentionally deceptive, it can work against you, placing you further down in the rankings. So the first thing to keep in mind in content marketing that your goal is indeed, to provide valuable content.

What is considered valuable? Timeliness is key, as is relevance to what users are searching for. When your content is shared, it is viewed as more valuable. Shared links can help in your rankings. This is why so many organizations focus on social media to promote and share content. It is also why it is important to include easy-to-share social media logos and links to your content. Create content that is useful, up-to-date and widely shared are you are in the zone. Google is always in search of relatable content that keeps its search engine valuable.

If your company can benefit from greater local and regional visibility, be sure to include the names or local towns, landmarks or highways in your content. This can be particularly helpful for real estate, property management companies, insurance agencies and even attorneys. Many of these businesses are licensed to operate in a particular state and can benefit from local, SEO focused content. In this case, blogs and articles on “Distracted Driving Laws in Florida”, or “Finding Affordable Apartments in Boston” can pay dividends. Content marketing can be a very effective way to target in local markets.

What Are the Best Forms of Content Marketing?

It is harder for bots to determine actual content from a graphic image or video than from words, so written pieces are critical to content marketing efforts. If you have a jewelry store, for example, having helpful articles and content on “How to Buy a Diamond”, “What is Pure Gold?” and others can attract potential customers. Adding a short video or graphic examples can help but be sure to include your keywords and phrases in the content itself. “How To” videos have become extremely popular on YouTube and video sharing services, so do not ignore this visual content. Just make sure you have plenty of written content as the backbone of your strategy. Tag graphics and video content with written descriptions.

Written content can be in the form of webpage content, articles, or news releases. Most have found blogs as a useful way of sharing content. Blogs allow a company to add personality to its posts and serve as a way to better interact with readers. Readers often ask questions, offer topic suggestions, and share interesting blogs with others. All of this serves to help your content reach higher and higher in your SEO efforts.

If you can’t find the time to update your content yourself, there are other resources, including internet marketing companies, social media marketing companies, and even freelance writing websites that can provide customized content on a per piece basis. Take steps necessary to provide new, useful content on a regular basis. If you are not employing a content marketing strategy, now may be the time to start. Add valuable, pertinent, and timely content to your online presence and watch your SEO rankings soar.

How Social Media Has and Continues to Change Our World

Social Media History
Social Media History

How Social Media Has and Continues to Change Our World

Social media is such an integral part of our everyday lives today, we may not give much thought to how it developed and social media’s impact on our relationships and society in general. Grandparents use it to connect with grandchildren, employees make use of it to connect with potential employers, and couples use it to make romantic connections. We share our thoughts, pictures, videos, and far too often, our political beliefs. It brings us closer together and pulls us apart.

Where is social media today, how did it get here and what’s next?

A History of Social Media

Many understand Mark Zuckerberg’s involvement in Social Media with the introduction of Facebook of in 2004. There has been much written about Zuckerberg and even a major movie that chronicled Facebook’s development. Others will remember it’s predecessor, MySpace, which was introduced a year previously. Social media, however, has roots that precede even MySpace by eight years.

Depending on one’s specific definition of social media, the first site often credited with implementing aspects of social media was Classmates in 1995. Classmates allowed users to create their own profiles and friends lists. Others consider Six Degrees, which first debuted in 1997, as the first social media website. Its title was based on the six degrees of separation theory where we are all connected by six personal connections. While it quickly garnered millions of members, the internet was still relatively young. Six Degrees was ahead of its time and it would take a few more years before the internet’s infrastructure would catch up with the unbridled growth of social media.

Ryze, the precursor to LinkedIn was launched in 2001 with a focus on connecting members for career and business purposes. LinkedIn made its debut a year later in 2002. That was also the year Friendster came online.

The social media website hi5 began in 2003 and quickly grew to involve millions of users, mainly in Latin America and countries like Romania and Tunisia. The site still boasts over 100 million members.

Not all social media sites have been successes. One example is Orkut, which briefly made an appearance in early 2004. Orkut was launched by Google as an invitation-only site and never caught on. Yahoo!360 followed a similar path and suffered a similar fate. Yahoo!360 was also an invitation-only social media site. It launched in 2005 and was shut down in 2009.

Twitter and Instagram began to become widely accepted in 2010 and Google got it right in 2011 when it launched Google+. Today, social media platforms include YouTube, Reddit, VK, Tumblr, Pinterest Flickr, meetup, and a plethora of others.

Social Media History

The Current State of Social Media

Today, Facebook still rules the roost when it comes to social media. Mark Zuckerberg posted recently that the platform now has over 2 billion members. YouTube is second in monthly users with 1.5 billion. Twitter’s unique monthly users have reached 400 million, and Instagram is approaching 300 million. LinkedIn rounds out the top five with 250 million.

If there is power in numbers, social media is a force to be reckoned with. This was evidenced by the 2016 presidential election in the United States. There are still questions on if, and how, the election was influenced by Russian social media users, advertising, and websites. The U.S. President has grabbed the attention of the world with his almost daily tweets on Twitter. Everybody from members of Congress to late night television hosts have made their thoughts known on various platforms.

Careers are being made and others destroyed on social media. Live streaming has shown us crimes and even murders in progress. It has also provided an outlet for people to show abuses of law enforcement officers. Millions of dollars have been raised for good causes with the help of social media.

It has gotten to the point that much of the news of the day is filled not with what is going on in the world but what is going on in social media.

In the meantime, massive amounts of data is being collected from users who voluntarily make their data available via their favorite social media sites. This gathering of “Big Data” is what may ultimately, shape the future of social media.

Social Media History

Where is Social Media Headed?

There are generally three schools of thought when it comes to the future of social media. The first is that social media will continue to go on unbridled and to be self-governed by the companies who control it. When one considers the ramifications of this, it is hard ti imagine social media will continue to go along this path.

The second path is that social media will continue to grow but under more strict regulations, especially when it comes to matters of national security. One should keep in mind that in the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is already charged with keeping on eye on large segments of the media. There are regulations in place to monitor political advertising and being upfront with who is paying for the advertising. Many believe there will also be more steps taken to protect the personal information of social media users.

There is a third school of thought that users will recognize how much information and data they are voluntarily providing. They will tire of the constant bickering, shaming, and political posturing that is rampant today. Some feel large segments of social media users will seek alternatives. These alternatives may be more secure, less confrontational, and offer more privacy. They may or may not be in development now.

In recent years, there has been talk of social media “breaking the internet”. We may be getting to the point where the internet may just break social media. There are certainly some aspects of social media that are in need of attention.

How Safe are your Personal Data in Modern Online Society?

An image of hand writing 'online privacy' with black marker on transparent wipe board.

There is nothing wrong in being cautious when submitting your Personal Data on the Internet.

Facebook and Google are two of the biggest names on the internet today. What lots of people don’t know is how these websites who don’t sell anything can possibly make so much money.

The answer is advertising. But it goes a little bit deeper than that.

How Deep Does It Go?

The commodity that both Facebook and Google have in common is you, the users. These websites pay attention to the things that you like and dislike, which allows them to tailor ads to fit your taste and then to put those ads in bold colours right on your screen. That’s how these companies earn billions of dollars revenue annually: by working with companies to make sure you see the right ads that persuade you to go and buy their products.

Shouldn’t I Get Some Privacy on The Internet?

Lots of people wonder whether tracking their internet activity isn’t a violation of their privacy. The issue is that by using these services you’ve already given your consent for the sites to log and use most of your information.

You know those long, complicated user agreements that most of us just pass right over so we can finish setting up our accounts? If you read Facebook’s a little more carefully you find all sorts of things. For instance, if you don’t opt out of their advertising program then your name and profile image can be used to promote ads for pages you’ve liked. Additionally, information about your online activity can be sold, provided Facebook doesn’t give your name or other, more personal information out. What you like and the events that get your attention is all fair game.

While Facebook is a huge source of information, Google might be called the king of data mining. The search engine analyses what’s sent over Gmail and searched for on Google in order to determine what is trending at the moment. This information is then used to target ads and to try and get client products in front of a buying audience.

So What’s The Big Deal?

Data mining is primarily used for sales and advertising, but it can be used for more than that. Data mining can create a digital profile that makes it possible to assess job candidates, whether someone should be awarded custody of his or her children, or even (if some apps are to be believed) if someone is cheating on their spouse.

That’s the big deal regarding data mining, and Google and Facebook are at the forefront of the practice. It’s why many people who have realized how exposed social networking makes them have opted to share less and less of their information with the online community as well as the corporations who run it. It’s hard to maintain their privacy, but one of the chief methods they use is by giving away as little as they possibly can.

Learn more about information on online privacy, and how you can make changes to take extra caution, contact us today!