(800) 689-1273
Facebook Twitter Youtube Linkedin
Prospect Genius logo

Prospect Genius

Menu
Log In
You are here: Home / Archives for SEO practices

Do You Know What to Ask When Hiring an SEO Company?

Last Updated: October 22, 2019

confused manTo ask the right questions of a prospective SEO company, you first need a baseline understanding of online advertising.

Unfortunately, if you’re a small, local business owner with little knowledge of online marketing strategies, then you probably don’t quite know what to ask.

That’s why Kim Lachance Shandrow’s article, “10 Questions to Ask When You’re Hiring an SEO Consultant,” is such a godsend.

In the article, Shandrow lists some of the big questions you should ask when on the hunt for a new SEO company or consultant. Even if you don’t necessarily know what these specific questions mean, exactly, she explains their significance and tells you what kind of answers are best.

Some of those questions are:

  • Do you follow Google’s best practices for webmasters?
  • Will you please explain your SEO strategies?
  • Are you specialized in local search?
  • How do you track or measure results?

And, for a real test, one trick question:

  • Do you guarantee number-one rankings? (If yes, RUN!)

To see the full list of questions and the rationale behind them, check out Shandrow’s article on Entrepreneur.com!

Important caveat: The last question in Shandrow’s list has to do with content ownership. She states that the business owner/client should be given full ownership of any web content the SEO company creates on their behalf. This is certainly true when that content is on the website owned by the client. However, if the content is created from scratch on a completely separate site owned and hosted by the SEO company, then this rule does not apply. So, make sure you’re clear on who owns the website URL and content.

And, for further reading, please check out the extensive research on SEO consultants from the pros at Ignite Visibility: “Hiring an SEO Consultant? 38 Questions & 12 Things to Look For”.

Armed with all this information, you’ll hunt down the ideal SEO company for your business in no time. Good luck!

One Major Reason Your Paid Ads Aren’t Getting You Results

Last Updated: April 26, 2019

Are you DIY-ing your company’s paid ads and getting frustrated by your lack of results? You probably started a campaign on Facebook or Google expecting to drive tons of visitors to your website—or, better yet, to generate a slew of new customers.

However, for some reason, you’re just not getting the results you were hoping for. Worst of all, the cost of your ads keeps going up! You feel like you’re dumping your business’s hard-earned cash down the drain.

Why is this happening?

To answer that, let’s first take a step back and examine why you’re using paid ads in the first place…

Paid Ads: Not as Easy as They Look

Honestly, starting your online marketing from scratch can feel like such a grind. If you take the organic SEO approach, it takes several months to get off the ground, and there are countless moving parts involved. As a result, a huge number of business owners throw up their hands and take the path of least resistance: paid ads.

Why paid ads? Because they promise a high ROI and instant, measurable results that make your upfront investment seem worthwhile. Moreover, you don’t have to know much about SEO to create an attractive, attention-grabbing ad. All you have to do is upload a high-quality image, come up with a snappy caption, and publish it to the audience of your choosing.

Doesn’t that sound MUCH easier than studying SEO best practices, executing a multipronged promotional strategy from the ground up, and waiting 3+ months for results?

In other words, it’s easy to see how the idea of using ads on Facebook, Google, Yelp, and other platforms to drive people to your website is immensely more appealing to most business owners.

But… People Don’t Know Who You Are Yet

Unfortunately, the allure of fast results and ease of use leads a lot of business owners to jump headfirst into paid ads before they’re ready. As a result, they pour a lot of money into ads that just aren’t generating the website traffic or leads they were hoping for.

This brings us to one major reason your ads aren’t performing:

The people who see your ads don’t know who you are!

Your ad’s audience has no prior experience or knowledge of your business. Therefore, they aren’t motivated to click, like, or share your posts and ads.

Most often, we see this happen when you approach online marketing by starting with paid ads first. As we explained above, this is an understandable move: Jumping into paid ads from the get-go is far more appealing than plugging away at organic SEO for months and months.

However, if you attempt a paid ad campaign without any prior exposure or visibility to your target audience, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Because people aren’t aware of your company, your products, or your services, they’re likely to ignore your ad and keep scrolling.

Now that we’ve shed some light on what causes your ads to get a low number of interactions, let’s look at why this leads to higher costs…

Less Engagement = Higher Costs

The relationship between a campaign’s engagement levels and costs can turn into a vicious cycle.

If this is your first time running a campaign on whatever platform you’re using, then you’ll already start out with a high cost-per-click (CPC). This is because the platform (Facebook, Google, Instagram, etc.) has no prior data on your company. Without confidence that your company will receive lots of engagement, they’re going to give you a higher CPC at first. Eventually, as your campaign goes on and your engagement rate improves, the platform will decrease your costs.

However, if you don’t get good engagement (primarily measured by click-through rates and conversion rates), then your costs will remain high. In some cases, if your engagement is low enough, your costs may even increase. As you can guess, this is how you can get yourself into trouble.

Make Yourself Known First

What does all of this tell you? It tells you that you need to establish familiarity with your audience before you attempt a paid advertising campaign. We know this isn’t what you want to hear—after all, you skipped ahead to paid ads for a reason! However, if you want to actually get a good ROI from your ads, then you need to get your business name out there first.

Here are some ways you can do that:

  • Invest in SEO so your business is more visible online in general.
    • This way, when someone who’s unfamiliar with your company sees your ad, they can do a quick search for your company name and immediately find you on multiple, high-quality listings. This builds your credibility and gives you an air of legitimacy (as opposed to if they googled your company name and found nothing).
  • Build your company’s brand. Read this blog post on branding to see how!
  • Participate in real-life promotions like local fairs, trade shows, partnerships, and sponsorships.
  • Put your business name and logo on your vehicles to increase visibility while you’re driving around town.
  • Ask your existing customers to spread the word.

Of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the other factors that can affect your ad campaign’s engagement, as well. For example, things like ad formatting, call-to-action strength, and image quality are certainly important to consider when creating an ad campaign. However, these considerations are secondary. Unless you’re placing your ad in front of people who recognize your brand in the first place, these extra factors won’t make a difference.

So, bottom line? Make sure your company has some brand recognition before you waste your money on paid ads!

As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to our specialists if you have any questions. Good luck!

How Voice Search Is Changing the Way You Need to Write

Last Updated: September 21, 2017

Are you one of the millions of Americans who own a smartphone? Then you’re probably aware of voice search. You hold down a button on your phone, ask a question out loud, and voilà! In a matter of seconds, your phone gives you an answer.

The New Language of Voice Search

However, Siri doesn’t just magically have all the answers. Instead, your phone’s virtual assistant transmits your question directly to a search engine (most likely Google or Bing, but we’ll refer to Google from now on for simplicity). Then, the search engine bases its search on the exact words you spoke: “Where can I find someone to fix my fridge overnight?” Google can’t just plug in a keyword and a town name anymore and find matching webpages, because that’s not how people are searching. Now, due to the natural, human language of voice searches, it has to focus on context, synonyms, and the overall relevance of a page’s contents. (For our fellow nerds, this process is called Latent Semantic Indexing, or LSI.)
This is a major shift in the way search engines operate. We’ve written about the growth of voice searches before, and the issue is only becoming more urgent. Today, fewer and fewer people manually type in the old “[keyword] + [location]” formula to find local businesses. Instead, more people are using their phone’s voice search for complex requests. And it doesn’t even have to technically be a question anymore. Your search could be a casual statement like, “Hey Siri, I need a plumber in Ann Arbor who’s not that expensive.” You can just start talking to your phone’s virtual assistant, and it will find what you need. What a time to be alive, as they say!
But what does any of this have to do with your local business? Let’s just say, you may want to rewrite your website ASAP. Keep reading to see what we mean!

Get Used to Voice Search. It’s Here to Stay.

As flashy and trendy as voice search may seem to some of us, the majority of experts assert it’s not going anywhere. On the contrary, they believe it’s the “next big era of computing.” As marketing specialist Simon Penson recently wrote:

“My view is that voice is not just an add-on, but an entirely new way of interacting with the machines that add value to our lives. It is the next big era of computing.”

So, as exciting as these advances may be, you can’t ignore what voice search means for your business’s website and web presence. Google wants to satisfy its users who rely on voice searches, so it now favors websites that meet new requirements. If you want your website to rank highly in local searches, it must be:

  • Well written
  • Informative
  • Chock full of content

Truthfully, Prospect Genius has always viewed well written content as a non-negotiable trait for high-ranking websites. However, in reality, there used to be some wiggle room. Those days are over. Today, if your website’s content is sparse and only written for a few, basic search terms, you’ll get a fraction of your potential traffic. You simply won’t have the right language to match natural voice searches.

How to Evolve Your Site for Voice Searches

This begs the question: What does the “right language” look like?
Here’s where things get interesting. Ten or twelve years ago, SEO was easy. All you had to do was stuff as many industry keywords, town names, and zip codes into your website’s footers as possible. Then, you could just write a sentence or two on each page with some bare-bones information about your company. If you did those two things, you had a decent chance of ranking. While the keyword-stuffing looked sloppy and spammy to the human eye, it didn’t matter because it appealed to search engines. It was a lazy way to work, but it was often enough to let you squeak by.
However, thanks to the rise of voice search, today’s SEO writing is far more complicated. The language search engines speak is becoming remarkably similar to the language we humans speak. You also get penalized for spam tactics like keyword-stuffing. So, you know that well-written content our team has always prioritized? Well, it’s no longer a bonus—it’s a requirement.
Today, your website must have lots of content that clearly spells out:

  • What your company does
  • Where you’re located
  • How you differ from competitors
  • What your products and/or services entail
  • And much more

Furthermore, each page has to be fully fleshed out (we recommend a 350-word minimum) so it contains as many related words and details as possible. Think of it this way: The more you write, the more opportunities for Google’s natural language processor to find your site.
For example, let’s say you want to show up in the search results for someone’s “overnight fridge repair.” Your content should contain related phrases like “available for emergencies,” “same-day service,” “after-hours appointments,” and so on. You can’t always predict the exact phrasing people will use in their voice searches, but you can vary your language enough that Google picks up on all those helpful synonyms.

To DIY or Hire Professional Writers?

We’ll be totally honest here. These new writing requirements are a lot of work. If you are comfortable with writing, know how to do keyword research, and are fairly confident in your language skills, then you’re probably in good shape to write your own website content.
However, if you’re like most local service providers, you spend your time either honing your trade or hanging out with your family. You likely don’t have the 8+ hours it will take to write your entire website from scratch—never mind the extra time it takes to research local keywords and learn best practices for SEO. That’s why many local businesses hire professionals to build their website or to do ghost writing for their existing site.

Get Writing Services From Prospect Genius

At Prospect Genius, well-written, human-optimized content has been our trademark since day one. When we started 10 years ago, we could’ve taken the easy way out and relied on keyword-stuffing, which is what a lot of our competitors did. But we took the extra time and did the extra work to optimize our content for real people, not just search engines.
The result is that all of our current clients are already in terrific shape for the takeover of voice search. If you don’t have lots of good-quality content on your site yet, give us a call and see how we can help!

Meet the Bulldog That Can Predict SEO!

Last Updated: April 1, 2017

You’ve heard of Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog who predicts how long winter will last.
You’ve heard of Paul the Octopus, who correctly predicted the outcome of the 2010 World Cup.
Now you’ve heard of Al the Bulldog, who can predict the SEO quality of websites. Prospect Genius uses him to assess the future performance of all of the websites we build.
Inspired by the many famous animals that are able to predict future events, we wanted to see if we could use that same animal intuition in our own line of work. So we trained an American bulldog named Al to evaluate and predict the SEO quality and potential performance of websites.
Whenever we build a new website for a client, we show it to Al. He stares at it for a minute or two, then makes his decision. He paws at the screen if he likes the website; if he doesn’t like it, he turns around in a circle and walks away. He makes predictions with 94% accuracy, so if he shows us that a website is bad, we get right to work fixing it. This is just another way Prospect Genius is committed to delivering top-quality results for our clients!
Watch the video below to see Al in action:

How Blogs Help Your SEO More Than You Think

Last Updated: February 24, 2017

You already understand the fundamental purpose of blogs: to share information and ideas with your audience. But there’s a more practical reason to blog, too. Evidence shows well maintained and updated blogs can actually strengthen your SEO and improve your rankings over time.

Blogs, Keywords, and SEO

Stephanie LeVonne explains the SEO benefits of a blog in her recent article on Search Engine Land, “Will My Organic Rankings Suffer If I Don’t Have a Blog?”
According to LeVonne, a blog is a useful tool for expanding your content so you can cast a wider net for popular keywords. For example, if you’re an appliance repair company, you can use your blog to cover topics specifically related to appliance malfunctions, as well as tangential topics like household cleaning techniques and kitchen renovations. Just make sure you choose topics you know your target audience will be interested in. By covering brand-specific topics and loosely related topics in equal measure, you’ll increase your keyword base all around.
LeVonne also points out that, beyond keywords, blogs boost your SEO score on the merits of fresh content creation alone:

As an added benefit, an influx of fresh content requires Google to regularly crawl and index your site, and fresh content is a consideration when Google ranks your page in search results.

Blogs Help Sales

Of course, the ultimate goal of SEO is to create more brand awareness and increase sales.
Blog posts help you achieve this by giving you more content and making it possible for you to appear more often in the search engine results pages (SERPs). As a result, you’ll increase your click-through rate. Obviously, driving more traffic to your site is the first step in educating prospective customers about your company. And, as LeVonne notes, your audience enters the sales conversion funnel the minute they start reading your blog—before they even realize they might want to make a purchase down the road. Soon, your readers could become paying customers.
To sum up, blogs:

  • Give you more topics to draw in a wider range of prospective customers.
  • Improve your SEO and Google rankings thanks to more keywords and fresher content.
  • Put more prospective customers into your sales funnel.

If you haven’t created a blog on your website yet, how much more convincing do you need?
Be sure to read Stephanie LeVonne’s full article for more details, strategies, and helpful suggestions!

Sign up for our newsletter!

Join our mailing list and receive regular updates on how to effectively market your small business, along with exclusive service promotions.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.