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How to improve your website's ranking with off-page SEO

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 00:46:40 GMT

What is off-page SEO?

Just like on-page SEO , off-page AKA (off-site SEO) is the practice of optimizing a website to rank higher in search engine results. However, off-page SEO focuses on improving a site's authority and popularity, rather than its on-page content. There are a variety of tactics that can be used for off-page SEO, including link building, social media engagement, online citation building, optimizing your Google My Business (GMB) and Geo-tagging images. By mastering off-page SEO techniques balanced with on-Page SEO, business owners can improve their site's visibility and drive more qualified traffic to their pages.

In this article we are going to dive into what each of these tactics are and how you can start implementing them today into your website optimization.

Link building
Social media engagement
Online citations
Google My Business optimization
Geo-tagging

The power of quality links

Getting high quality backlinks from authoritative websites can be one of the most effective ways to boost your off-site SEO

Although Google does take into account how many backlinks a website has, quality is even more important. Trading or buying spammy links used to be an acceptable practice, but it is not anymore. You can determine which backlinks are of good quality by using SEO audit tools such as Majestic, UberSuggest and SEMrush.

Relevancy is also something important to consider when getting backlinks for your website. A backlink can be relevant in two different ways: location and niche. If you load your page with irrelevant links then this can actually hurt your search engine rankings rather than boost it.

Good Social Media Engagement

Being engaged with your audience is very important to your SEO optimization as well. When Google sees that you have a good amount of followers and have consistency in your posting habits then you will be rewarded for it.

Another way social media platforms can play a role in your SEO is that they are high quality backlinks and high quality citations for your site.

Consistency with Online Citations

Online citations are your name, address, and phone number (NAP) listed consistently across local

directories on the internet. When putting in your information in the directories make sure to double check that it is accurate. Google loves consistency and if you type in an address wrong or miss a number in your phone number this can actually hurt your rankings. Any misinformation entered can confuse Google's spiders when crawling your digital footprint.

It is also recommended that you keep track of all the citation sites, usernames and passwords in a Google spreadsheet to refer back to in case you need to change the information entered. This also helps you avoid duplicates. Having duplicate listings on directories can hurt your rankings as well.

Optimizing Your Google My Business

Your Google My Business (GMB) plays a very important role in your off-page SEO. This is normally something that most business owners don't pay enough attention to or don't know the proper strategies to optimize it.

Consistently adding more photos to your GMB regularly is one of many strategies that can be used for optimization. Be sure to not have duplicate photos because Google will see this as spam even though this is not your intention.

Posting updates about your business regularly is another great strategy to fully optimize your business profile. This is an opportunity to Incorporate keywords into your content and tell Google what your business is all about.

Having a Google My Business gives customers/clients the option to post reviews about your business. Positive reviews are more important than ever right now. The number of positive reviews you have, the better your rankings will be. Google sees reviews as votes. The more votes a business has, than the higher they are in the search rankings. Positive reviews are not only good for SEO but it also puts a good impression on your business and can motivate people to buy your products/services.

When optimizing your GMB, fill in as much information as possible and utilize all of the characters. i.e. Google My Business allows up to 720 characters in your business description. Use all 720 if you can, or as close as you can without stuffing keywords or repeating yourself.

These are just a few out of many strategies that are necessary for fully optimizing your GMB.

Boost Your Rankings By Adding Geotags

Geo-Tagging content is a more advanced SEO strategy but is necessary to get ahead of the competition in search rankings.

Geotagging is the process of adding geographic coordinates including latitude and longitude to media so it can be located on a mobile device. This could include photos, videos, websites, QR codes and other contextual information.

Having your website optimized for both on-page and off-page SEO is essential for any business looking to rank higher in search engine results. By using these strategies and other techniques, you can increase your website’s authority and drive more traffic to your website.

If you want to make sure your SEO is done properly, contact Dark Matter Strategic today for a FREE strategy session. We’ll work with you to create a comprehensive plan that will get your website ranking high and generate a more consistent flow of qualified leads to your business.

On-page SEO: Why it is important

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 20:02:30 GMT

What is On-page SEO and How to Use it Correctly

Your potential customers are out there, right now, intentionally searching for what you have to offer. This is your best customer, in the buyer’s journey, money in hand, wanting to get a problem solved.

This is described as “Intent Search” so “Intent Marketing” is about putting your business in front of those individuals, whose behavior dictates that they are more likely to take a certain action or make a certain purchase.

Is your SEO optimized, so you're the one they see when they type in “your product/service near me”?

80% of the calls come from page one

15% come from page two

5% come from page 3 and beyond

Does your business show up in the map pack or on page one for keywords relevant to your business?

If not, you’re missing out on easy sales and why your website needs to be optimized.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your website to improve your rankings in search engines, perfectly positioning your business to take advantage of what your potential customers are already searching for (again, “product/service near me”).

There are two main types of SEO: On-page and Off-page. On-page SEO is the process of optimizing your website’s content, structure, and URLs. Off-page SEO is the process of improving your website’s reputation and visibility by building links from other websites. In order to improve your website’s ranking, you need to understand both on-page and off-page SEO.

There is a lot to cover on each topic, so In this article we will break down what on-page SEO is and how it is important for your online visibility. Having the knowledge of these two types, leveraging them both, and doing them correctly, can create massive exposure for your business and can bring massive amounts of traffic to your website.

Stay tuned for the next article on what off-page SEO is! Let’s get started…

What is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO (AKA On-site SEO) uses content on both your website and technical elements to increase the quality of a particular page. Here are the some of the major things that google looks at when crawling your website:

Content
URL Structure
Meta descriptions
Title tags
Page loading speed
Interlinks
Image alt text
Headings

Content:

Content is the most important factor Google looks for in determining the quality of your site and where your page ranks relative to the competition. We recommend having at least 2,500 words on the home page and 500 words on all other pages, except for maybe the "contact us" page.

Not just any content will do though. The content you have on your website must be relevant to the product or services you are selling and what the prospect is already searching for on the internet. It has to be content that the web user wants to consume.

On the flip side, Google does not like repetitive or "similar" content. It likes fresh, original, new content. Content that will keep the visitor on your site and improve their experience. The longer they stay on your site, the better Google likes it.

Correctly incorporating relevant keywords into your content is extremely important as well. If you are “keyword stuffing” (i.e. use a keyword too many times on a page), it doesn’t sound like “natural language”, so it will negatively affect your rankings. Making it hard to rank for those keywords.

Do your research . Put in the time and research the most popular keywords in your industry and incorporate that into your content on your website.

This can be easily accomplished by using tools like AskThePublic.com or typing the keyword into Google and seeing what other suggestions come up (i.e. type in “content creation” and you will get content creation tools, …jobs, …software, …platforms, …ideas and a host of others).

URL Structure:

The way you structure your URL is important. Make sure when you are structuring your URL for each page that you incorporate major keywords. Using a different keyword in each URL you have on your site will prevent keyword stuffing, and can allow your site to rank higher in multiple search terms.

Try to keep your URLs shorter in length. Keep it simple

Meta Descriptions:

A meta description is the snippet that you see on a search engine result that briefly describes what that page is all about. Refer to the image below:

To fully optimize your meta description we recommend keeping this to a limit of 160 characters in length. If it is too long, it can hurt your search rankings and it will be considered an on-site SEO error.

Your meta description is a good opportunity for you to use keywords as well. Again, we caution you to avoid keyword stuffing here also.

Title Tags:

A title tag is the big, bold, one line description that shows up on a search engine search result. It will also show up in your tabs when hovered over it above your browser. A good example is in the image below:

Keeping it brief, under 130 characters in length, using the proper keyword, to help with your On-site optimization.

Page Load Speed:

Page loading speed is a web design issue that is important to search engines because people expect a page to load quickly. Often, if it takes any longer than about 3 seconds to load, users will leave your website. One of the main goals for a search engine is to “create the best user experience possible”, this helps to enhance the user experience.

Interlinks:

An Interlink is basically one page that links to another inside your website through an anchor text or a “Hyper-link”. This can also be an element that is clickable within the page.

In the eyes of the search engines, this makes it easier to crawl and creates a better user experience by allowing site visitors to easily navigate your site.

Another reason why this is important for SEO is that it makes the visitor stay on the website longer. The longer someone is on your website, from you having lots of good, relevant content, then the higher ranked you site will be in the search engines.

Using high volume keywords for your anchor text is another great opportunity to increase your rankings in multiple search terms.

Image Alt Text:

An image alt text (alternative text) is content used to describe images and are very helpful for visually impaired users. The search engines like you to be as descriptive as possible when filling this out.

We recommend 125 characters or less, incorporating keywords to appropriately describe the image and/or your services or products. This is another opportunity to feed the Google Spiders relevant keywords about your business and what you offer your target market.

Headings:

Headings range from H1-H6. H1 being the main title of that page. It is strongly recommended to use a keyword or phrase as your H1 header. If this is being used correctly there should only be one H1 header on each page.

H2 is normally the “sub-title” of the page. There should only be no more than 2 on your page or it not being used correctly.

The level of importance is as listed. Not all headers may be necessary depending upon what your content is all about. (*Note: Just because it has a large font doesn’t mean it is set up to be a header.)

On-page SEO is one of the most important aspects to get your website seen by prospective customers especially leveraged with Off-page SEO. It’s what helps Google and other search engines determine the relevance of your site for certain keywords or phrases and why it’s so important to have a highly optimized website with great on-page SEO.

Doing these strategies will help you rank higher and stand out from your competition on the search engines, resulting in more prospects calling your phone, visiting your site, or walking through your door, wanting to do business with you.

If you want to make sure your SEO is done properly, or just don't have the time to learn it, contact Dark Matter Strategic today at (208) 810-4600 or by email at hello@darkmatterstrategic.com

Our team of experts will be happy to help you get the results you need and deserve from your online marketing efforts.

Read our next article to learn about Off-page SEO and what it can do for your website rankings.

SEO vs. Paid Ads

KYLE@MASSIVEACTIONGLOBAL.COM (KYLE CAMPBELL) — Wed, 29 Jun 2022 21:29:16 GMT

Optimization Strategies Are Powerful for a Business

Google and the other search engines are very big on having the right content on your site - content relevant to what your prospective customers are searching for - to improve the user experience.

Balancing SEO with effective active marketing - paid ads , email, sales efforts, campaigns, etc. - can be a challenge for many businesses. Follow Google’s recommendations and you will be handsomely rewarded. Violate them and it can be detrimental to your online strategy.

Paid ads, while they can get quicker results, depending on the quality of your copy, the competition for the relevant keywords, your offer, etc., is "Interruption Marketing" .

In most cases, the prospect is not actively (or intentionally) searching for you or your product or service. They are just casually scrolling through Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, on ESPN or Cat Fancy, or perusing a news site, like CNN, Fox “News” or The Food Network and your ad, hopefully , catches their eye, making them stop and click on the ad.

With paid advertising we, LITERALLY , have to interrupt what they are doing and generate enough interest to get them to act (i.e. click on your ad).

It obviously works, but it can be expensive and, with all the changes to Google and Facebook’s ad policies, it’s getting tougher all the time to be cost-effective. Even for the best marketers, the current advertising environment is challenging and frustrating.

SEO, on the other hand, can take time to see consistent, significant results (6 to 18 months) depending on where you are currently in the rankings, how competitive your industry is, and how optimized and how long your website has been active.

When done correctly, SEO positions you to be in front of your best, most qualified customers and clients. Prospects that are Actively and INTENTIONALLY , searching for what you have to offer (i.e. Intent Targeting/Marketing) .

When a prospect types in keywords relevant to what your business does, they are in the buyer journey, money in hand, looking to do business with someone in your niche and/or industry.

And, again, if you are positioned right, and your SEO is optimized, YOUR business could benefit from all that high-quality search traffic (i.e. a highly qualified prospect in the middle of the buyer’s journey…).

SEO is a long-term commitment. It requires a consistent effort and a significant investment of time and resources to see above average results. A business has to understand that this is NOT a cost or a luxury but a Long Term Investment into Your Business.

Often we work with clients to make sure their site has enough content (2,500+ words on the home and 500+ on the other pages), regularly updated with relevant content and images, their page and title descriptions are accurate, the H1-H6 and meta tags are correct and that it is getting crawled by Google’s “spiders”.

Our team makes sure they have quality, relevant backlinks from powerful sites with good “juice”, including press releases and high quality niche and silo articles. We ensure their Name, Address & Phone Number (NAP) on their website, GMB and directories all across the internet is consistent (Google does not like being confused so this is very important).

Most business owners don't know what they need to do to optimize their website and effectively grow their organic traffic. Heck, most of us don't have the time nor should we be trying to learn all the strategies and processes required to fully optimize our website.

Your efforts are better served in other areas of your business - strategic planning, income producing activities like marketing, sales and customer acquisition , operations, and finance - to help it grow.

If this sounds like you & you need a better quality prospect calling your business or visiting your website, let's set up a FREE strategy session, where we’ll give you 3-7 strategies you can put into action to increase the number of prospects you talk to each day. Contact us today at 208-810-4600 or by email at kyle@darkmatterstrategic.com

From Facebook to TikTok: A Comprehensive Guide to Social Media Content Optimization

KYLE@MASSIVEACTIONGLOBAL.COM (KYLE CAMPBELL) — Sat, 18 Jun 2022 00:42:06 GMT

Tips On Social Media Content Optimization:

Promoting and advertising on social networks may seem easy. But, are your posts really working? That’s the tricky thing about marketing through these channels: what may seem like a clever or interesting post to you might not appeal so much to your audience.

To create a successful social media campaign, you need to think about content types, imagery, tone and messaging. You need a marketing plan that targets the right people with the right content at just-the perfect time and the right platform in order to maximize your reach.

1.Create Humor and Pull the Heartstrings

Humanizing your brand is important in 2022 as consumers seek out brands that take a stand on social issues and show they care about key values. Whether it’s funny memes or touching videos, evoking emotion will help establish empathy with potential customers.

Companies that connect with their followers on a deeper level are more likely see repeat comments and shares, and likes - even if it is just a silly GIF or meme!

2. Invite Followers Into the Business

Humanized content is the best way to show customers that you are real people. Stories and videos of management and staff will help them relate more with your brand. You don't want to your brand to appear corporate and stiff. Doing this will make your brand appear as a thing and won't have human authenticity.

These are tactics that will give your audience an insight into your brand:

Content that is posted by individual staffers on rotation to show your different departments and their personalities.
Do a live demonstration of your services or products
A ‘day in the life’ video
Post goofy photos or memes of the week from inside the office/work space
Create a company podcast that feature your staff members/employees
Give your audience a tour of the workplace
How-to tutorials/videos - for example, if your business sells cosmetics or skin care products, show people how to use it properly.

3. Be sure to reply/respond to comments

It is well-known that reaching out and replying to customers in comments can be an effective strategy. Many businesses are guilty of sitting back and waiting for the consumers to come to them. This should never be a strategy because of it's lack of effectiveness. Social media is now considered a customer service channel so it's more important than ever to communicate with your customers in real-time.

Reach out, like and comment. It looks good to other potential customers when they see that you are engaging. This is a great way to increase the chance of getting comments of your own.

Social media is a powerful tool to reach potential customers and drive sales. By using the strategies we’ve outlined in this blog post, you can create content that engages your audience and encourages them to act. Want help putting these tips into action? Dark Matter Strategic would be happy to assist! We offer free strategy sessions so that we can get to know your business and create a plan tailored specifically for you. Contact us today to get started!

The Benefits Of Digital Marketing

KYLE@MASSIVEACTIONGLOBAL.COM (KYLE CAMPBELL) — Fri, 27 May 2022 18:20:29 GMT

There Are Many Benefits To Digital Marketing

�� Digital marketing is vital to your business because it allows you to track your marketing efforts and can see how things need to be tweaked up. YOU CAN'T FIX WHAT YOU DON'T MEASURE. Digital Marketing is data driven and gives us more insight on which strategies are most effective.

��Digital marketing allows us to invest into our business without throwing large amounts of money down the drain. It is a more cost effective way of marketing instead of just blindly throwing our money at something and hoping it will work out. HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY.

��Marketing digitally allows us to know our ROI (Return on investment). It is hard to make decisions and plan strategy for our business if we have no clue if we are getting a positive ROI. Just doing paid ads and hoping it works is not a good strategy and could lead you to losing money on each campaign...or worse not getting any results (i.e. no new customers).

As if that wasn't enough...

��Marketing Digitally allows us for more exposure, and can greatly expand our market. You are not limited to just the city you're located in and the surrounding areas. Getting visibility online allows you to expand your value and can serve so many more individuals all over the word... Pretty cool Huh? ��

To find out how you can get more visibility online and improve your digital footprint, contact us at Dark Matter Strategic.

��(208) 810-4600

�� Hello@darkmatterstrategic.com

Positive Google Reviews Are More Important Than Ever

Mon, 23 May 2022 18:18:17 GMT

Google Reviews

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️You may not think it’s much, but a simple review on the world's top search engine site can be what puts you on page one when internet users are looking for companies in your vertical.

Google reviews are a great way to not only increase your visibility, but also the ROI. Here are reasons why you should be focused on getting more of them:

⭐️Helps your visibility and search engine optimization

Google has a good way of tracking the activity of ratings and give businesses a boost with a large number of high ratings.

⭐️Having a large amount of good reviews can influence potential customers

A recent study found out 91% percent use online customer reviews to determine the quality of a local business?

⭐️Improves click-through rates on your website

When people read reviews about your business, they are more likely to click on the website and see what your business is all about. This makes potential customers aware of your business.

This is just the beginning with the benefits of google reviews. Getting reviews for your business can immensely help with your digital footprint.

Reach out to Dark Matter Strategic today if your business could use more positive google reviews.

(208) 810-4600

hello@darkmatterstrategic.com

What Is Digital Marketing?

Fri, 06 May 2022 20:29:22 GMT

Digital marketing can be broken down into 7 main categories

Digital marketing professionals

Digital marketing can be broken down into 7 main categories: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Social Media Marketing on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Tik Toc, and Twitter, Content Creation/Marketing with blogs or videos, Email Marketing campaigns, Mobile Marketing - text and notifications - and optimizing your campaigns using Marketing Analytics and Metrics.

Digital marketing is more than just an advertising campaign. Presently it’s the future of marketing and a cost-effective way to reach potential customers and keep existing customers coming back in the digital age. Because it allows marketers to tailor messages that are relevant and interesting for their target market, the impact can be huge to a company’s bottom line. Using various platforms, an organization can target specific demographics and psychographics with the right message, in the right market, using the right media to effectively reach their ideal client and customer.

Although digital marketing can seem confusing and complex at times, it is based on sound principles from direct sales and traditional marketing. Therefore, to be effective it requires a good understanding of marketing, human behavior, and tech to create effective campaigns.

As I said above, these three disciplines serve to connect the right message, with the right consumer, in the right market. Traditional marketing is a great way to reach a large audience, whereas digital marketing has the advantage of being able to reach very large, very specific audiences. Understanding how people tick and what motivates their behavior helps marketers to create a targeted message that gets potential customers to take action or, at least, stop scrolling through their Facebook feed and look at your post or ad.

The key point being that depending on the target market, and your ideal client, some media channels are more effective than others when combined with the correct message.

Dark Matter Strategic is a Digital Marketing Agency that uses multi-channel client acquisition strategies to get qualified prospects to book on your calendar or call your phone.

We help 6 and 7 figure professional service businesses add 20 - 40 new clients every month without spending 5 figures on paid ads with our Done For You Multi-Channel, Wallet Out Client Acquisition Campaigns.

Hello@darkmatterstrategic.com

(208) 810-4600