Comprehensive Analysis: Assessing Your Website for Effective SEO

effective SEO

Effective SEO has many parts

Performing regular audits of your website is essential if you want to ensure that your SEO efforts are paying off. What you uncover can make a big difference in conversions. Get started on your first audit with these practical steps.

Check Visibility

Search your brand name by itself and along with your location using all major search engines to determine your current page rank. A high ranking is indicative of successful SEO practices. The higher your brand appears, the more likely people are to click through to your site. You should also check the information displayed when your business is searched to make sure that all contact and location listings are correct. Continue reading

Interpreting Google Analytics: What it All Really Means

interpreting Google Analytics

What do these numbers mean?
Interpreting Google Analytics

The metrics reported by Google Analytics provide valuable information about how users interact with your website. This guide can help you interpret the data and apply it to your marketing and SEO campaigns.

Sessions

Google defines a session as “the period of time a user is actively engaged” on a site. Sessions typically expire after 30 minutes, but the amount of time can be adjusted as desired. High numbers of new sessions means more new traffic. Low numbers indicate repeat visitors and a potentially higher level of engagement.

Visits and Page Views

Visits specify the number of people who come to your site. Every visit is counted, but only visits from new users are listed as unique. The “pageviews” metric shows how many visits a particular page on your site has received. Taken together, viewing data helps determine the popularity of your site. Continue reading

What Do You Know About Off-Page SEO?

Broken link internet connection concept

Links make the web

You know all about on-page SEO. Your site loads quickly. Visitors are telling you how much they love your content. All of your essential tags are in order. The meta description you came up with looks great. You made sure the site is mobile-friendly. However, there is still some more work you have to do.

Off-Page SEO

What is Off-Page SEO? It is activities that you do away from your site to attract visitors, and to raise the rank of pages in the search engine results. Now, the first thing people will think of is link building. Yes, link building is important for ranking pages. But we need to take a step back. There one important step you have to take to prepare your site for off-page SEO. Continue reading

The Importance of Online Business Listings & Reviews as Ranking Factors

Having correct and consistent online business listings and gaining positive reviews in those listing venues are an absolute must for obtaining higher rankings in the search engines these days, especially for companies who provide ‘local’ services such as practitioners, contractors, attorneys, repair companies, etc, or who sell products locally, for example restaurants, auto dealers, etc. Continue reading

Was Google’s “Mobilegeddon” all smoke and mirrors?

Google

It’s been two months now since Google released it’s latest “Algorithm” that has changed mobile searches on smartphones. The vast majority of websites today are not mobile friendly and do not meet Google’s standards. If you’d like to test your web site for to see if it is mobile friendly please plug it in here and check for yourself.

Google’s Mobile Friendly Test Site!

There are several great articles which describe Google’s “Mobilegeddon” of which I have provided links for in this letter:

Google’s New Search Algorithm Stokes Fears Of ‘Mobilegeddon’

Google has made a giant change that could crush millions of small businesses

Mobilegeddon: how Google’s new search algorithm affects business

“The change is only taking place on Google searches made on smartphones. The results will favor websites deemed “mobile friendly,” giving them higher rankings than sites that are only optimized for desktops and laptops.”

This is an excellent article:

Post-Mobilegeddon Update: Is The Impact As Catastrophic As Predicted?

It is my desire to make as many people aware of this so they can take advantage of this situation. Just think! Shear statistics state that 85% of web sites today are not mobile friendly. I believe it safe to assume the same about your competitors.

If your web site is not “Responsive” / “Mobile Friendly” give us a call today so we can explain what you’d have to do in order to comply with Google and beat your competitors to the rewards!

Image Optimization in SEO

Behind your page title, image captions get read more than full page content.

Behind your page title, image captions get read more than full page content.

There is an SEO value to pretty much everything that you do on your website. You may not realize it, but adding images, and doing the accompanying SEO legwork, can help generate loads of traffic from Google Images and other image-based search engines. It’s not enough to just drop a picture on a page. Would you create a page and not title it?? That same regard should be held when talking about images.

Image optimization is simple. It’s a simple practice that’s also simple to accomplish and the results can be through the roof. It’s so beneficial that we here at the Orion Group, ensure that every image uploaded to any website that we manage for SEO or internet marketing, is optimized.

For the noob, there are four areas of concentration that need to be addressed when concerning yourself with image optimization: file name, file size, alt text, and descriptions/captions. Continue reading

What does Google’s Mobilegeddon really mean?

Hello!
This is Bill from the Orion Group. I am reaching out to as many people as I can to explain, in layman’s terms, what Google did on April 21st of this year. Some of you may have heard about Google’s “Mobilegeddon”. The title is most accurate because what Google did was literally pull the rug out on the entire internet affecting every website that exists today.

For those of us who do not understand, here is what Google did.

Why is this important?… because Google does not play around and make such announcements just for fun.

Want proof this is happening?

Image3

 

All of this is because neither site was optimized to “mobile friendly” status before the algorithm update by Google.

Does this not make one think that if such a large percentage of web sites are not responsive, and only those that are will be shown in mobile search results, then we better get going and update our web site? We need to take advantage of being part of the small percentage of sites that will show up in mobile search results and capitalize while others are still playing catch up. In essence, the entire internet is starting over and only the smartest of companies that understand all of this will take advantage of such a small pool of competition showing up in mobile search results.

This is a chance that may never come around again. In order to rank higher in mobile search results and NOT be doomed to losing that traffic all together, you have to have a website that is mobile-friendly. When will Google say that they will be doing the same thing in Desktop and Laptop searches? It’s a scary thought but Google is scary.

I believe Google is forcing the entire internet to do it their way. It purifies searches and it will cost advertisers a lot more money as the field of viewership will be so much narrower for a while.

So, while you may have been putting off redoing your web sites for years, there is now an opportunity to strike while the iron is hot. When the wagons went west in the search for gold, it was the first ones there that got richest the quickest. Now this can be said for having a responsive, mobile-friendly website. If your business values mobile traffic, why wouldn’t you want to be able to cash in on being the only ones who come up on the mobile search results with little to no competition around you for the foreseeable future?

How can you tell if your current website meets Google’s definition of mobile-friendly? There’s an online tool for that. Visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/, paste or type in the URL of your website, and click Analyze. Does your site pass? If not, then it’s HIGHLY likely that your site is NOT showing up in mobile search results.

This was a collaborative effort by Emma Edgar, Adam Kuhn & Kevin Barnes

If your website is not mobile-friendly, Orion Group can help.
Call 262-820-9520 for a free consultation.

Google To Release Responsive Mobile Update – Is Your Website Ready?

Google Logo

Google is set to release a new mobile-friendliness algorithm update on April 21 that will impact the mobile search results of websites that aren’t responsive. Is your site responsive?! If not, it may be time for you to upgrade. Here are a few resources for you to check out from the Google Webmasters themselves and Moz who’s a leader in Google Algorithm updates. Continue reading

Increase Traffic With Long-Tail Keywords

image of long tail marketing wordsBecause the World Wide Web and the search engines that help us make sense of what it offers are always changing, it can be difficult to develop websites that will be recognized by large or targeted audiences. According to WhaTech, a leading online technology journal, one of the top five ways to increase traffic to your website in 2015 is to research long-tail keywords and incorporate them into your content.

What Is Search Engine Marketing?

Search engine marketing (SEM) has become increasingly popular for businesses of all types as more and more people begin to rely on the Internet as a form of media. SEM is a subset of marketing centered on website development and promotion through search engines, such as Google, and Bing too. One of the most important aspects of SEM is increasing the visibility of websites on search engine results pages (SERPs), and enhancing sites strictly for this purpose is known as search engine optimization (SEO).

A great number of SEO techniques are available to webmasters and SEM specialists, but the most efficient of these is the use of keywords, which are single words or strings of words likely to be entered in search engine queries. Continue reading

Get the Most out of Your Business by Blogging

image of typing on keyboardIncreasing numbers of business owners and corporate executives are beginning to realize the power of blogging. Today’s online presence is about more than a traditional website. Websites are a form of passive advertisement, and visitors are often referred to as viewers because that is basically all they are doing. However, a blog not only provides valuable information to current and potential customers but also acts as an outlet for them to interact with your business.

Your Business Blog is a Trigger

According to recent research, successful businesses use a four-step approach to hook customers on products or services, and business blogging can work as an essential element in the first step: the trigger. Continue reading