Keyword Research: How to Get It Right

08/10/202209/22/2022 mwon

In-depth keyword research is an essential part of building a successful SEO strategy and campaigns. Keywords tell search engines what each page on your site is related to and when it should be presented to searchers.

Not spending enough time on keyword research is a common SEO mistake. Without the right keywords, your website is less likely to appear when potential customers are looking for the exact products or services that you provide.

But researching your keywords will help you understand how to gain visibility on SERPs and get your site in front of buyers. Still, keyword research can be a complex, time-consuming process and difficult to get right.

To help make it easier for you, our Orange County SEO pros share four simple tips below!

Generate Ideas Relevant to Your Business and Industry

Start by brainstorming topics related to the products or services you sell, and your overall industry or niche, to generate ideas for potential keywords. For example, these might be topics that you already cover in your blog posts and videos, such as ‘home security’ or ‘beauty products’.

This process can help you get into a buyer’s mindset, and prompt you to think about what users will search for to find specific products or services.

Consider User Intent

User’s search intent is categorized into four types:

Informational: The user is looking to learn about a topic.
Navigational: The user is looking for a particular website or business.
Transactional: The user is ready to buy an item or use a service.
Commercial: The user is researching a product or service and needs a little more time to consider their purchase before they commit.

The user’s intent will affect the search terms they use, such as ‘how do I make chocolate cake’, ‘best men’s sneakers for basketball’ or ‘women’s jeans free shipping’.

Think about what type of search terms your target customers are likely to use at each stage of their journey.

Take Advantage of Tools

The right tools can make keyword research a little easier, especially if you’re new to the process.

You can use keyword research tools to find out what keywords competing websites use, for example, and they can help you turn your initial ideas into effective keywords. Free ones, such as Google Keyword Planner, are available, as well as paid platforms.

Work with SEO Pros for a Simpler Journey to Success

The most effective way to get your keywords right is to leave it to a professional team of SEO specialists.

They’ll handle every aspect of researching the best keywords for your business, whatever your industry and target audience. And you can leave everything else related to your SEO campaigns in their hands, too!

Our Orange County SEO experts are ready to boost your online visibility and help your business reach your ideal customers. Get in touch with our team to find out more and to receive your free Relevancy & Quality Score (RQS) Grader, packed with expert insights!

5 SEO Trends for 2022 You Need to Know About

01/20/2022 mwon

SEO evolves from year to year, and it’s crucial that you stay up to date with the latest trends to avoid falling behind. With 2022 here already, we thought it was time for our Orange County SEO specialists to share five top SEO trends for the year ahead.

Greater Focus On Website Accessibility

As the Internet becomes increasingly embedded in our lives, every website should be optimized for improved accessibility. Many people may struggle to use your site properly if you overlook this key issue: for example, around 12 million people in the U.S. have vision impairment and approximately 15% of adults experience some level of hearing difficulty.

Enhanced accessibility can provide all users with a high-quality browsing experience, regardless of their capabilities. It will also reduce the risk of dissatisfied visitors leaving your site with a negative impression of your brand.

More Websites Catering to Voice Search

Twenty-seven percent of the worldwide online population uses voice search on mobile devices. This trend will drive more and more businesses to optimize their websites for voice search in 2022, but what does that involve?

Incorporate keywords into questions users are likely to ask, especially on mobile devices, such as “where’s the nearest pizza restaurant to me?”
Implement long-tail keywords for accurate targeting.
Write in a conversational style.
Create FAQ pages packed with relevant, conversational questions and answers.

Increasing Popularity of Featured Snippets

Featured snippets appear on around 19% of SERPs, and they give users a faster way to access information. Ideally, a featured snippet will provide an answer but still compel users to click through for a more detailed insight instead of scrolling down.

In 2022 (and beyond), more brands will structure their content to earn featured snippets. One technique is to use more questions and answers in content, beginning with “who”, “what”, or “why”.

Mobile-friendly Websites Becoming More Prevalent

More than 92% of Internet users around the world went online via their mobile devices as of January 2021.So, it’s no surprise that brands will increasingly optimize their websites for mobile devices in 2022 and beyond.

Mobile-friendly websites are critical to deliver the best user experience and prevent frustrated users from leaving your site.

Combining Video and Long-form Content for Better Results

Brands will continue to embrace longer content in 2022. This typically gives readers more valuable information and encourages visitors to stay on your site for longer, unlike a short piece of content.

And video will remain a key part of SEO strategies the world over. Ninety-three percent of businesses win new customers thanks to videos they post on social media, and companies that use video grow revenue 49% faster than those that don’t. Combining long-form content and videos can help businesses improve SEO campaigns significantly.

Our Orange County SEO agency is here to help you achieve better results, whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to overhaul your current SEO strategy. Get in touch to find out how we can help you today!

Link Building: The Do’s and Don’ts You Need to Know

10/11/2021 mwon

Link building is one of the most important parts of any effective SEO strategy, and it looks set to stay that way: more than 90% of marketers expect links still to feature in Google’s ranking algorithms in 5 years. But getting external sites to link to yours can be tough, especially if you’re experimenting with link building for the first time. That’s why our Orange County SEO team has created the following list of 4 do’s and 4 don’ts for successful link building.

4 Link Building Do’s

Create High-Value Content Other Site-Owners Love

Good content is a must to generate links and boost your ranking — you need to give site-owners a reason to direct their visitors to your site.

This might be:

A thought leadership post that establishes you as an authority
A well-designed infographic featuring original research
A comprehensive white paper offering detailed tips or insights
A professional video featuring an interview with an industry leader, a tutorial, or anything else of value

Write Guest Posts for Relevant Sites With a Solid Audience

Creating guest posts for industry websites or blogs relevant to your business, products, or services is a simple but effective tactic. This will introduce your brand to an established audience likely to have an interest in your brand.

Source Links from Satisfied Clients

If you run a B2B business, ask satisfied clients to link to you: for example, they may mention that your web design agency built their site or that you supplied IT hardware for a key project. A reputable company endorsing your services helps build trust and credibility.

Focus on Quality First

Prioritize building links from respectable sites that have good reason to connect to yours — even if this means a slow-and-steady approach. Set a realistic target for building good links and stick to it.

4 Link Building Don’ts

Don’t Write Content for Irrelevant Sites

Remember when we recommended writing guest posts for relevant sites? That’s crucial to reach prospects likely to visit your site, but don’t write for sites with no relation to your products or services just to place a link. If your business specializes in men’s shoes and you publish a post for a blog covering French cuisine, readers won’t be fooled. You may waste your time and energy on a task that leads nowhere.

Don’t Experiment With Black Hat Tactics

Engaging in black hat schemes to build links and climb the SERPs is always a bad idea. Avoid paid links, cloaking, injecting links, and anything else that could put you in Google’s bad books.

Don’t Give Up Before You See Results

Link building for SEO takes time, commitment, and patience. You can’t expect your ranking to improve instantly. Stick with it and be willing to adjust your strategy as new opportunities arise.

Don’t Spam Blog Posts or Forums with Links

Never write comments on blogs or forums just to leave a link. Users and search engines will see right through it. You could damage your reputation and face penalization.

Follow these 8 tips to hone your link building strategy and achieve better results. Want to know more? Have no idea how to build a better linking plan? Our Orange County SEO specialists are here to help — get in touch now!

How to Use Videos on Your Website to Improve Engagement

07/19/202107/19/2021 mwon

Videos are one of the most common, popular forms of online content — and it’s easy to see why:

Around 65% of users are more likely to purchase an item online after watching a video
Businesses that use video achieve 41% more traffic than those that don’t
Video posts have 135% better organic reach on Facebook than posts featuring photos only

But with so many videos online, yours have to be good if they’re going to attract visitors, engage them, and keep them on your site.

Below, our Orange County SEO team explores four simple ideas to help you get started.

Introduce your business with a concise video

Yes, you already have an About Us page and pictures of your team at work on your website. But an introductory video can summarize your mission and values in a more dynamic way.

Show us footage of:

your products in action
your employees working together
your customers using your services

Present the human side of your business in an honest, straightforward way to earn trust and build credibility.

Help customers get more out of your products with tutorials

Product tutorials or demonstrations can help existing customers get more out of their purchase and entice prospects to try an item for themselves.

The video might involve a member of your team showing how to navigate a software product or use a gadget properly. Users may prefer to watch this instead of flipping through a manual or contacting support for advice.

But product tutorial or demonstration videos should be easy to understand — avoid confusing jargon or unclear progressions from one action to the next.

Include customer testimonials for effective social proof

Text testimonials lend your business credibility and reassure new customers that they’re paying for legitimate, quality goods or solutions.

But video testimonials take it further. You can present visitors with first-hand insights into how your products/services have benefited existing customers for added authenticity.

Keep these brief and to the point. Include the customer’s name, city of residence, and the name of their business (if necessary).

And consider adding a customer testimonial video to a relevant landing page — videos on landing pages can boost conversions by more than 85%.

Demonstrate thought leadership to help your business stand out

Thought leadership content has grown increasingly important in the past few years, especially for B2B brands. Amazingly, around 60% of decision makers claim that thought leadership content led them to do business with a company.

But while we tend to associate thought leadership content with blog posts and articles, it can include videos too.

Consider interviewing a thought leader in your sector for a video on your homepage or relevant product/service page. Or a member of your team could create a detailed presentation on a specific issue, including original research and statistics.

Both can help to establish your business as an authority to be trusted.

Engaging visitors and converting them into customers can be difficult — so leave it to the experts instead!

Our Orange County SEO team is here to help your business with a tailored strategy. Get in touch to find out what we can do for you!

Mobile-friendly Websites: What are the Most Important Elements?

05/14/202105/14/2021 nettsolutions

With more than 60 percent of Google searches originating from mobile devices, your website must be optimized to deliver a quality user experience on smartphones and tablets.

Otherwise, visitors might find browsing your site so frustrating they give up and try another. And one of your competitors could win their business instead.

But what makes a website mobile-friendly?

Let’s explore five of the most important elements.

Simple navigation

Navigating the best mobile-friendly websites is a breeze.

One of the most common setups is a hamburger icon (a stack of three short horizontal bars) in a corner of the page. Users can tap this to open a vertical menu.

And every page should feature plenty of space — clutter will only confuse and irritate users on smaller screens.

Unclear page titles and illegible text can also make browsing your site more trouble than it’s worth.

Straightforward CTAs to guide users

A call-to-action (CTA) tells users what you want them to do next. They should be simple to spot and easy to follow, e.g. “get your free quote”, “sign up now”.

Lead customers to your CTAs with concise content that explains why they need to take the specified action.

How can you draw attention to CTAs? Display text in eye-catching colors, make the buttons big, and use a font that visitors can read without needing to pinch-zoom.

Responsive design suited to all devices

Responsive design ensures your site will adapt to fit any screen, across all devices. Pages will reformat automatically to avoid poor layouts and cluttered content.

Your customers will enjoy a seamless experience no matter how many devices they switch between.

Click-to-call buttons for direct communication

Click-to-call buttons empower visitors with a fast, direct way to contact your business.

This saves them the time and potential irritation of scouring your website for a number/email address or completing a form.

Let’s say you run a local Italian restaurant. A hungry customer is in the mood for a pizza, so they use voice search to find businesses like yours. They try your site, and find a click-to-call button on your homepage.

This makes it incredibly easy for them to book a table within seconds of discovering your restaurant, without trying to find your contact page while they’re standing on the street.

Images optimized for mobile

Images that work fine on your desktop site may cause issues on mobile devices if they’re too big. They’ll increase load times and leave users waiting longer than they should to browse.

And that’s a real risk when more than half of mobile site visits will be abandoned if a page takes more than three seconds to load.

Resizing and compression will bring images down to a more manageable level for mobile devices. Prioritize speed and convenience over visual flair.

These five elements are essential in mobile-friendly websites, so frequently check your site’s performance to identify improvement opportunities.

Want to learn more about how a fantastic mobile site can help your business? Get in touch with our Orange County SEO specialists!

6 Tips to Enhance Your SEO Performance with Images

05/14/202105/14/2021 nettsolutions

Do you optimize images to improve your SEO performance? Or do you never consider their impact on your ranking?

If you aren’t taking the time to optimize your images, you could be missing an opportunity to drive more traffic to your site and boost your SERP position.

With the ongoing rise of visual search, images are returned for around 20 percent of Google searches. That’s why we named it one of our top SEO trends for 2021.

But what can you actually do to improve your SEO performance with images?

Be clear when naming image files

Descriptive file names are a must. Vague or generic names (e.g. “image001”) won’t help Google understand exactly what an image shows.

Think carefully about how a file name can help a search engine recognize the contents of an image. Be specific, descriptive, and include keywords (such as “men’s-black-Nike-sneakers”).

Take advantage of alt text

On a similar note, alt text brings a wealth of opportunities to increase an image’s visibility. Alt text is required under the American Disabilities Act (ADA) to ensure users with visual impairments understand what images contain (via screen readers or text-to-speech solutions).

But alt text also helps search engines clarify the contents of an image and the page it’s on. As with image file names, focus on clarity and precision. Include relevant keywords but be subtle (i.e. no stuffing).

Pick your image format carefully

JPEG and PNG are two of the most common image formats online (along with GIF and TIFF). But each has its advantages and drawbacks.

JPEG images tend to be of a lower quality but load faster than PNG. And with PNG, quality is higher but file sizes are bigger. So, choose carefully.

Always compress images before you publish

Uploading uncompressed images can have a serious impact on user experience: images, and the pages they’re on, will take longer to load. And users are more likely to abandon your site if they’re waiting too long — bounce probability rises 32 percent when page load jumps from one second to three seconds.

Various tools and plugins can compress images for you. Aim to keep images below 100kb to reduce the risk of performance issues.

Incorporate images into sitemaps

Sitemaps are crucial for good SEO, as they help search engines discover a site’s pages.

Including images in your sitemap will increase the likelihood of a search engine indexing your images. And that could bring more traffic your way.

Either add images to your existing sitemap or create a new one just for your pictures.

Keep images mobile-friendly for smartphone users

Responsive images will scale to align with your site’s size on any device. This is so important when so many of us use smartphones to find products or services. For example, half of mobile users are more likely to use a business’s mobile site when shopping instead of downloading their app.

If you overlook responsiveness, you could chase users away with slow load times and poor overall performance.

Nett Solutions is an Orange County SEO agency with years of experience helping businesses just like yours rank higher through tailored campaigns. To find out how we’ll optimize your site and increase your visibility, get in touch today!

7 Possible Reasons Why Your Search Rankings Have Dropped

03/10/202103/10/2021 mwon

Your site’s search rankings have plummeted?

You’re not pulling in the same traffic you once were?

Don’t panic!

There are plenty of possible reasons why your figures have changed. And here are seven of them to get you started.

Making big changes to your existing content

Removing blog posts, articles, or other types of traffic-fueling content may contribute to a dip in your rankings. This could be the result of trying to reduce the number of older posts on your site, particularly if they no longer align with your products, services, or values as they used to.

Check the performance of a piece of content before you remove it, and replace it with something likely to perform just as well (if not better).

Your pages are too slow

New or older pages on your site could be to blame for a drop in rankings. For example, if you’ve added multiple videos or lots of large images to a blog post or service page, this could noticeably reduce its speed.

Bounce rates are higher on slower pages: the probability of a bounce rises 90 percent when a page takes from up to five seconds to load. So the sooner you resolve the issue, the better.

Search engine algorithms have been updated

Algorithm changes can disrupt rankings in some cases (remember Mobilegeddon?). That’s why it’s so important to keep your digital marketing campaign spread across multiple channels, including Facebook, YouTube, etc.

Your competitors are reigning supreme

Your site’s search rankings could drop if your competitors start offering users a superior experience, utilize more effective marketing techniques, or enjoy a sudden spike in traffic through successful promotional events.

Keep track of your competitors’ marketing activities and performance to reduce your risk of becoming inferior without warning.

Your website needs updates, fast

Updating your content on a regular basis will help you maintain or improve your rankings. And if you leave too much time between updates, your visibility may start to fall before you realize.

Create a realistic content calendar and focus on publishing valuable pieces multiple times per week.

Sites linked to yours are no longer online

You might notice a change in your rankings when sites linking to yours, such as those on which you published guest posts, go down. This can be frustrating if you worked hard to secure a spot on an authority site and are no longer receiving the traffic you expected.

If the linked site is down temporarily, you may start to creep further up the results pages again when it returns. But if it’s permanent, you might need to look elsewhere for quality links.

You have server issues

Your server could be to blame for sinking rankings. For example, a sudden spike in traffic may push the server too hard and trigger a crash, whether related to your site or one on a shared server.

If this happens more than once within a short space of time, it may be time to reassess your hosting situation.

Our Orange County SEO experts are dedicated to helping businesses just like yours improve your rankings and gain greater online visibility. How can we make this happen for you?

SEO Trends 2021: What can You Expect to See?

12/22/202012/22/2020 mwon

New SEO trends emerge each year, but what can you expect to see in 2021?

Our Orange County SEO specialists have picked five of the SEO trends you need to know about as we enter a new year.

Greater focus on analytics to understand customer behavior

A deeper dive into analytics is just one of the biggest SEO trends 2021 is set to bring.

Sure, it’s been crucial to study user/customer data for some time now, but intensive analytical research is likely to become increasingly prevalent. Businesses will delve deeper into:

what users/customers are doing
how they’re behaving
how products/services can improve their lives

This will help teams create more relevant, engaging content, and deliver a more tailored service overall.

Voice search optimization will help brands rank for hands-free queries

Smartphones, virtual assistants, and smart speakers have transformed search across the past couple of years. Users can get the number for their nearest Mexican restaurant, find local shoe stores, and browse media without having to physically interact with their devices.

And this is expected to grow even more popular in 2021, with around one in four American adults owning a smart speaker. That means businesses of all sizes will need to optimize content for voice search more effectively.

It’s not just voice search optimization that will matter more in the new year, either …

More detailed image search optimization to increase visibility

Many consumers may not even realize image search exists, let alone use it regularly. But images are returned for around 20 percent of Google searches. It’s also believed that brands redesigning websites to support visual search (along with voice search) could boost their revenue by 30 percent.

That’s why brands should be optimizing their images to help increase their visibility in 2021.

Featured snippets will become a more competitive SEO technique

Featured snippets are a common sight, and they’re an effective way to achieve first-page results. But only if you have the right information for the right query.

Brands should start to optimize content to answer questions and provide clear directions or advice when relevant. This increases the chance of displaying a featured snippet and, potentially, securing the user’s click.

Increasingly comprehensive mobile SEO for a better user experience

Mobile sites are the first port of call for countless users, with mobile accounting for around 50 percent of global internet traffic in 2020’s third quarter. This is likely to keep increasing as smartphones become more advanced and capable of delivering a better user experience.

Brands will need to focus more on creating the most user-friendly mobile site they can, rather than simply making it functional on smartphones. That means understanding what visitors want out of your site and how your web design can make that as easy as possible on any device.

Refining your SEO strategy to align with new trends or even starting from scratch can be a challenge for any business or organization. But our Orange County SEO experts are here to help you boost your rankings, visibility, and engagement through tailored campaigns.

Get in touch now to learn more!

4 Simple SEO Tips to Optimize Your Site

10/21/202010/13/2020 mwon

A solid SEO strategy can increase your busines’s visibility and drive traffic to your site. But actually putting one together can be tough if you’re new to search engine optimization.

In this post, our Orange County SEO experts explore four simple SEO tips to help you optimize your site and reach a bigger audience.

Take Advantage of Video

Video is a key element of most successful marketing campaigns today, and you can utilize it to boost your SEO. It’s estimated that 80 percent of all online traffic will be video by 2021, and it’s an easy way to increase a page’s ability to engage visitors.

Try to create how-to videos, product demonstrations, roundtable discussions with industry experts — content that offers real value. Just make sure you keep the quality high.

Optimize your video content by creating keyword-rich meta titles and descriptions. And don’t just upload them to your site: share them on social media and create a YouTube channel too.

Keep your content well-organized and easy to read

One of the most important parts of any effective SEO campaign is getting your content’s structure right.

Keep your content easy to read and scan. Users don’t want to wade through blocks of dense text, and they’ll click away if they can’t find the information they’re looking for.

Use plenty of whitespace and make paragraphs short, usually just four of five sentences each. Headers (H1, H2, H3) create a clear hierarchy and enable search engines to understand your content better.

To return to our first point, include videos to elaborate on text content in a more dynamic way (e.g. showcasing a product you’ve described).

Optimize Your Content for Voice Search

Voice search is increasingly important as more and more people use their mobile devices to find products or services. It’s actually the second-most popular way to conduct searches on a mobile device.

These are often phrased as questions, such as “where is the nearest Mexican restaurant?”. So, implement questions and answers into your content to increase your visibility.

If you run a local business, include geo-targeted terms to target prospects who might be looking for the exact products or services you offer. They could be around the corner from your company with big money to spend!

Target Mobile Users

Google’s mobile-first indexing means websites optimized for smartphones and tablets are more likely to rank higher than those that aren’t.

That’s no surprise: think how often you use your own mobile device to shop, find information, etc. Make sure you use a responsive web design to provide visitors with a positive user experience on any device, and run regular speed tests to understand how long users need to wait before pages load.

Follow these four simple SEO tips to optimize your website and boost your visibility. Want to work with Orange County SEO experts and discover the benefits of a tailored search engine optimization campaign?

Contact our team today to learn more!

How to Optimize Your Content for Voice Search

10/13/202010/13/2020 mwon

How often do you use voice search on your mobile device?

Chances are, you do it regularly. Half of all searches are expected to be voice-based by the end of 2020, and 30 percent of people browse the web without using a screen at all.

That means businesses and organizations need to make sure their content targets voice searches effectively, but how?

Structure keywords to fit phrases

The proliferation of voice search is driving an increase in content designed to answer questions and suit specific types of phrases.

For example, you might unlock your phone and ask Siri where the nearest vegan restaurant or movie theater is. You’re looking for a fast answer for an immediate issue, rather than a specific product or service. Content intended to suit voice search should be written with question-focused searches in mind.

Pay more attention to local SEO

If you operate a business that caters to the local community primarily, take advantage of local seo techniques to increase your reach. So, if a user asks “what time does Local Coffee Shop open on Saturday?”, your content should help them find your business hours within moments.

Make sure your company profile’s details are correct on Google and cover all the information customers might need to know.

Optimize your site for mobile devices

Your site should be optimized to be mobile-friendly across devices. Otherwise, people may click through but leave when they realize half the content is missing. Even if a page takes too long to load, prospects might lose interest and try a competitor — the probability of users bouncing rises 123 percent when a mobile page takes 10 seconds to load.

Mobile pages should load quickly, be easy to browse on small screens, and display all media properly. Your content must be easy to scan, allowing users to scroll down to find relevant details easily. Follow proper content hierarchy and position the most important information at the top of the page.

Incorporate FAQs into your content

As question-based searches are increasingly common, one simple but effective way to boost your content’s compatibility with voice queries is to add FAQs.

These should answer questions directly and concisely, so anyone who navigates to your site to read them finds the information they’re looking for. While there, they might be impressed by what they see and decide to stay longer. This could translate into conversions, whether that’s a purchase or registration for a newsletter.

Think about the sort of questions prospective and existing customers may have about your business, products, services, etc. For a little inspiration, check out your leading competitors’ websites to see what they’re addressing in their FAQ pages.

Follow these simple tips to optimize your content for voice search and increase your visibility.

Want some expert help to achieve better results? Find out how our Orange County SEO agency can help your business succeed today!