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What Is A Public Blog Network?

April 8, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Comprehensive Guide To Private Blog Networks

In this comprehensive guide, we will be taking a very close look at private blog networks.

Beginning with the absolute basics, we will guide you through the process of how to set up, use, and manage a private blog network in 2019

With thousands of words of step-by-step training, even advanced and intermediate SEO can learn something new from our guide.

Let’s get started.

What is a Private Blog Network?

A Private Blog Network (PBN) refers to a network of authoritative, established websites that are used for building backlinks to your money website(s) to rank higher within the major search engines like Google.

A money website is s site you are intending on ranking. It is the one that will earn money for you. These sites are also sometimes referred to as the client website.

PBSNS is short for a PBN Site, which refers to a website that is part of a private blog network.

There is one very important detail to note, which is each of the individual PBN websites is not linked in any way to each other. The concept behind a private blog network is these websites appear to be unrelated to one another, so that links appear to be natural ones, instead of somebody linking to their own websites from other websites that they own.

Is this against Google’s guidelines?

Yes, absolutely.

The only time that Google will tell you exactly what you need to do to rank is when they advise you to use Google AdWords. However, for ranking in the organic results, Google is the worst possible source for information.

If I were them I would do the same thing. Why tell people how to rank for free, when instead you can earn over $40 billion a year from your ad revenues?

Does this work?

If it did not work, then I am sure that Google would not be trying to target PBNs and trying to scare people away from using this strategy.

Yes, it is basically just a scare tactic, but there are people still continuing to build networks and are ranking just as easily as they ever have.

Why does this work?

The top ranking factor is links.

When Matt Cutts was asked about backlink relevancy being excluded from the algorithm, he replied that although there is lots of spam and some noise, it turns out that backlinks are still a very big win when it comes to the quality of the organic search results.

What makes the strategy so effective is that the websites that make up a PBN are considered to be authoritative by Google. You are not getting links from a spammy, untrustworthy site, or a brand new one. Instead, you are getting backlinks from a popular website that is loved by Google’s algorithm.

Here is an illustrative example to help you understand how it works.

In 2011 there was an initiative that was launched to help clean up Chicago’s streets. They set up a website under the name of cleanchicagostreets.com.

This initiative got a lot of publicity. It was featured on local news websites and local government websites.

Enough money and publicity were raised to follow through with the plan. They did so within one year.

Now that they no longer need the website, it has become an unnecessary cost to renew their domain and hosting. So they just let it expire.

The domain has links from local news websites and local government websites. And because the site has links from highly trustworthy websites, Google assumes this is a trustworthy website as well.

Fast forward to the present, and this domain is found by an SEO. The person can look up the site’s metrics to see how authoritative and trustworthy it is perceived to be, and the buy it from a domain registrar and use it as part of their PBN.

That is basically how domains are located.

Every day, 30,000 to 50,000 domains expire, with many of them having good metrics to use as a PBN site.

Introducing Metrics

There are four major metrics that can be used to measure domains. All of them can be used at the same time, however often 1 or 2 is sufficient.

They are:

Citation Flow (CF) by Majestic.com
Trust Flow (TF) by Majestic.com
Page Authority (PA) by Moz.com
Domain Authority (DA) by Moz.com

I don’t have enough technical knowledge to know exactly how they all work. However, here are the basics:

CF measures the power of a website’s links
TF measure the authority and trustworthiness of a website’s links.
PA measures how authoritative one page on a site is, based on its links. It is influenced as well by the website’s DA.
DA measures the authority of the entire domain, based on its links.

The following is a quick guide on what you should look for:

CF – 15+
TF – 13+
DA – 18+

I have purchased weaker domains than this many times, but it is the general guideline that I try to follow. You don’t have to worry about following this guide exactly.

The metrics represent the domain’s power that you are reviewing. However, there are a couple of more things that you should check before you buy a domain.

Referring Domains – This metric shows how many websites are linking to the domain that you are researching. Anything over 30 will be good enough.

Backlinks – This is how many links that a website has. If a website links to another site 2 times, that is 3 backlinks but just 1 referring domain. So be sure to check them before you buy a domain.

Anchor Text – The text that is used by people when linking to their website. See if a brand name is contained (which is normal), but avoid sites that heavily target keywords or have large brand names frequently associated with selling counterfeit goods, and some other obvious things such as adult-themed or viagra.

Metrics Checking Tool I recommend:

Ahrefs – Biggest and more reliable live backlinks index.

The only important metrics in 2019

Is Domain Authority BS? Is Trust Flow BS? Those comments have been trending within our community for quite some tie now, but who can you believe?

The real answer is:

What Google thinks is all that matters. Not Ahrefs, Mox, Majestic or anybody else.

From the time that Google announced that they didn’t have any plans to do more updates to PageRank, there hasn’t been any way of knowing precisely how domain quality is measured by Google.

This is where the metrics above come into play. They are not ideal, but they are third-party algorithms that measure domain quality, that are based on the tool’s theories of what Google considers to be important.

At times they provide great analysis, while at other times they are inaccurate.

Manually checking the backlinks is the most important thing you need to do. If the backlinks come from mainly directory listings, thousands of different blog comments, Chinese anchor text, or an automated backlink building tool, then that is not a good domain.

To take things further, the following is break down of metric checking:

Do the metrics meet your requirements?
(If no) Are there any links coming from super authority domains. Those may be worth buying anyway sometimes. I.e. BBC.co.uk backlinks
(If yes) Are the site’s backlinks low quality or spammy?
(If no) Is it indicated by the Wayback Machine that the domain was used for spam?

Using the Wayback Machine enables you to see precisely how the website looked in the past so that you can verify whether it has been used for spam.

Where To Locate Domains

Knowing what you should look for in a domain is just one part of the game. You also need to know where you can find them.

Before we discuss that, it is important for you to understand the kinds of domains that can be found.

Expiring Vs Expired Domains

Expired Domain – This is a domain that has been fully dropped and can be registered at any registrar at the standard registration cost for a domain.
Expiring Domain – This is a domain that has reached its expiration date but the registrar has held onto for selling or auctioning off. Those domains retain their age. So, for example, if the domain was registered 5 years ago by its previous owners, then it is still considered to be a domain that has been registered for 5 years.

There isn’t any conclusive data on which kind of domain does better. There are some individuals who think that more power is provided by expiring domains. However, many of them are biased due to the fact that they sell expiring domains.

The only thing that I can tell you for sure is that both kinds of work. However, you are a lot more likely to find an expiring domain that has high metrics, than you are an expired one. However, you will also have to pay for that privilege.

In terms of finding domains, there are several different strategies that can be used;
Locate a broker – Easy
Scraping – Not viable any longer
Auctions – Easy and Time-Consuming
Backordering – Advance and Time-Consuming

1. Find a Broker

The following are several broker websites that you can purchase domains from, either in bulk or 1 at a time.

Note that I haven’t used all of the brokers myself, but I’ve at least heard some good things about them from others.

TBSolutions
HighPADomains
PureQualityDomains

Lion Zeal Market Place – join this 4,000+ person FB group for purchasing and selling SEO-related items

2. Use Auction Websites

Most people used to purchase domains from auctions before scraping became popular. They are expiring domains that keep their age since the registrar is selling the domain off because the owner did not renew it.

Usually, you can find domains that are more powerful at auctions compared to scraping since the dropped (expired) domains are picked up quickly by the competition – if they are not bought already during the auction stages. The drawback to auction is you have to pay extra in order to get first dibs.

The following are some auction sites that you can check out:

NameCheap Auctions – Has thousands of domains available in its marketplace
GoDaddy Auctions – In the past was THE place for purchasing PBN domains
NameJet – Good potential for finding high-quality domains

3. Backordering

The last strategy for buying domains is the most advanced one. However, for the cost, it is the best domains that you can buy.

A back ordering company is a service that you pay to grab a domain for you as soon as its registration is dropped.

We discussed this early when we said that whenever a domain expires it actually does not expire. The registrar frequently keeps it, sometimes it is sold or auctioned, and usually isn’t dropped for about 2 months.

Scraping tools look for really old websites and try to purchase domains that are missed by individuals who are back ordering. However, the advent of selling and scraping domains as a type of business, and with the industry buying millions of dollars in domains each year, it is really hard to scrape high-quality domains these days.

However, with backorder, you can ask for domains that are expired but not yet dropped by using a backorder service. They check repeated to see if a domain may be registered yet. When it can be, they will try registering it for you. That is referred to as drop-catching.

How successful you are will depend on your competition ultimately. If everybody is attempting to get the domain, you might miss out. Also, some of these services are of high quality than others.

In order to increase your odds, it is possible to use multiple services to backorder, depending on how much you want a certain domain.

If somebody else has back ordered a domain using the same service, and this service catches it, then it will go into auction between the other person and you – and that can get expensive.
The following are some of the top back ordering services you can use:

Pheenix
NameJet
SnapNames
DropCatch

Many of the services above will give you a pending delete list, which is a list of domains about to drop that can be back ordered.

The following are some links that can help you:

SnapNames
NameJet
Dynadot
ExpiredDomains

This strategy is for advanced users and is definitely not simple. Also, you will need to have some tools to check the metrics of the domains in the above list to check their quality. However, that is the way you should do if you want to buy the best-expired domains.

Important Things To Be Aware Of When Buying Domains

The first word of PBN is Private.

You cannot hide from Google, and you will need them to crawl your websites in order to see the links and then pass the power on. However, you do need to ensure that there are no associated between your websites. They need to appear to be independently owned.

Whenever you are purchasing domains, that means you should mix up your registration dates and domain registrars. Don’t purchase from the same one all of the time. And don’t have your information and name in Whois on all of your domains.

You can try out the following domain registrars:

GoDaddy (beware of expensive renewal fees)
Dynadot (they show your name even when you buy whois protection)
Name
Internet.bs
NameCheap

How To Find Hosting For Your Domains

Once you have a domain(s) in your possession, hosting will need to be set up so that your websites can go live.

In order to avoid Google (or anybody else) knowing that you own all of the websites, they each need to be placed on different hosting accounts.

If you host them all on the same server, then it will be obvious that they are associated with one another.

The need for having separate hosting providers is what fueled the popularity of using SEO hosting services.

However, the problem that “SEO hosts” have is most of them come with footprints that show all of them are the same provider.

The best thing that you can do is hide them all in plain sight.

The way to do that is to use popular hosting services that real websites use.

The following are some examples:

Incapsula
CloudFlare
Amazon Web Services (technical)
DigitalOcean (technical)
HawkHost
GreenGeeks
HostGator
BlueHost
ASmallOrange
Premium Shared Hosts

When compared to cheap shared hosts or SEO hosts, most of them are expensive, but it is worth it to reduce the risk of losing your entire PBN network.

Fortunately, there is a less expensive option that is available.

My friend Kevin has purchased reseller accounts from all of the leading shared hosting companies and will host all of your PBN websites on them at a much lower rate (starting at just $1.82/month per website).

Learn more about the services offered by Kevin here

There are costs associated with getting all of this setup, and for beginners can be scary. However, the overall ROI to having top rankings for multiple websites can justify the costs easily.

Later in this guide, I will be covering clustering, which is an advanced strategy. That will enable you to host multiple PBN websites on the same hosting account without any risk. However, you can only do this if it is allowed by your hosting plan. So be sure to purchase packages that allow MySQL databases and multiple domains.

For now, just realize that the safest method is to just host 1 website on each host, and to always use high-quality hosts.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston!

Lead Generation Tips From SEO Experts SEO Houston Pros

March 4, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Everything Important That You Need To Know About The Lead Generation Process

Part 1

The Basics Of Lead Generation

When it comes to lead generation, there is so much to know about the process. However, basically, it is a type of marketing process for energizing and capturing interest for a specific service or product, and then leverage them to develop a sales pipeline. Digital channels are critical for generating leads, and the techniques that are applied to the changes that have continued to evolve over the years. Today we have modern social and online techniques that are available. One notable development is the rise of a “self-directed buyer,” who thrives on the degree of information that is available online. Now we have modern social and online techniques. These new techniques help to create and evaluate prospective leads before they are converted into sales.

Here Is Why Lead Generation Is So Important

The buying process’s new face calls on marketers to come up with fresh ways of getting their messages across to prospective buyers. Up until now mass advertisements and email blasts were acceptable ways to advertise. However, marketers have the new now to do more in order to remain on the radar screen and increase their chances every day of customers being able to find them. After they are discovered, they need to develop close working relationships with customers.

Attention Economics And The Abundance Of Information

The rise of the internet has caused information to be more abundant. Although it is great to have so much information available, it also comes with a challenge. An abundance of information results in the security of attention: this is a basic principle associated with attention economics. Herbert Simon, a pioneer of attention economics and a social scientist, says that in the economic sense, that information obviously consumes its recipients’ attention. And it has changed the buying process. Now, buyers have so much information that is available to them, and in an attempt to not be influenced, buyers are continuing to ignore or reject a majority of these messages. They instead rely on personal research in order to learn more about a topic that interests them.

The New Buying Process

IN the past, in the age of information scarcity, lead generation involved marketing, which was the process of finding out the name of prospective buyers and then converting the information into sales. Buyers then relied on engaging with sales agents to assist them with making a decision. On the other hand, the sales agent might be lacking in the knowledge that is needed to convince early stage, uneducated buyers.

The new buying process, by contrast, the new buying process involves buyers doing their own prospective research online where they search for resources that can help them make the right decisions. They rely on search engines, other online channels, and social media for obtaining more information on a specific service or products. They are well-equipped before they ever engage with a sales person.

That is why businesses need to ensure that have a solid digital presence. This new buying process puts the vendor on the tail end of the buyer journey of the consumer since they have obtained the information that would have received when they were in contract earlier with the seller. So they are more of their own experts.

Any business that has a well-developed lead generation strategy will stand a much better chance of earning a potential buyer’s total trust and sparking their interests before reaching the final stage of meeting with the vendor. This also saves stress and the waste of time for the sales team with a reduced need for cold-calling. It is an easier process when you have solid leads for your sales, and you ultimately will get faster and higher conversations of the leads into revenue.

Rented Attention and Owned Attention

Currently, the buying process is experiencing a shift away from “renter attention” and over to “owned attention” instead, due to attention scarcity. Before now the common practice was to apply a marketing strategy that thrived on rental attention, i.e. attention that is built by other individuals. For example. renting a space at a tradeshow or purchasing an aad in a magazine. however, those are less expensive now, due to information overload. So more needs to be done to gain the buyers’ attention, maybe a combination of refined attention and owned attention – to archive results from the lead generation efforts that you make.

IN order to build attention for yourself, the only way to do that now is to establish yourself as a trustor advisor for your prospective buyers. This can be done through constantly creating and disseminating thought leadership and valuable content. When done correctly, it will help to increase your chances of your lead generating success instead of being a very complex buying environment that we are in now.

Leading Down The Sales Funnel

It is critical that you understand that the current process demands you do more than simply convert a new lead into a sale. A business needs to go beyond marketing at the Top of the Funnel. If you consider that noo every new lead will purchase something tat the moment, then you will understand that there is the need to retain your leads, so that they don’t get ignored, lost, or snapped up y the competition.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston! Click here for the second installment of this article!

SEO, SEM, PPC… What In The Digital Marketing Is The Difference?!

February 5, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

What Makes SEO, SEM, And PPC Different From Each Other?

The realm of digital marketing has quite a few acronyms being thrown about, and trying to keep up with it all can make your head hurt. What do all these acronyms mean? Are they really that important? Do you really need to know them? All of these are great questions, but based on what you personally do or how you do things, then it might be really important for you to find such answers. With that being said, keep reading to learn three of some of the most-frequent acronyms you come across a bunch and find out how they can apply to you.

SEO: What Is It?

The acronym of SEO stands for search engine optimization. In short, SEO is a bucket of various strategies people use to make websites rank higher in search engines. This is crucial, because when online users type keywords or search phrases that relate to your niche, then you’d like them to come across your site. When your business is more visible to search engines, then you get more unpaid and organic traffic directed towards your site from the search engines.

SEM: What Is It?

The acronym of SEM is short for search engine marketing. In essence, it’s how you use paid digital advertising online to get traffic. SEM is also sometimes just called paid search, but whatever you call it, it can involve a number of various digital advertising activities, like paid search ads and PPC, which can be called pay-per-call or pay-per-click. Google AdWords is probably the most highly visible SEM engine, but there are also Yahoo Search Ads and Bing Ads among other options.

PPC: What Is It?

The acronym of PPC is short for pay-per-click, and sometimes pay-per-call if a phone call is what winds up being taken. It can also be known as cost-per-click or CPC, which is a method wherein the advertiser pays for any results generated by its digital advertising. In such cases, you only get charged when users actually click on ads.

PPC ads get served based off of bids which you determine, as you pick the keywords you’d like to rank for whenever you set up your ad. That just means that you aren’t able to pay more for your ads just to have it served extra times over your competition. You put your bid in, and then the search engine will decide the relevance and validity of your ads in terms of search queries.

SEO, SEM, And PPC: Similarities And Differences

The one thing that all three of them share is that each is a great way to get traffic coming to your website and building up your brand. All of them are online marketing techniques, so they all land under the same broad umbrella. The biggest differences between them is that while SEO is always unpaid advertising, it technically falls under the purview of SEM, even though SEM usually refers to actually paid marketing efforts. PPC is just a kind of paid advertising technique. All three of them work well with one another, but SEO is the basis which brings them all together. If you don’t have good SEO, then your paid efforts are going to deliver results which you need to be viable or bring you a good ROI.

How’s Your Website Doing?

If your current online presence isn’t living up to your hopes and dreams, then SEO, SEM, and even PPC can bring you a lot of improvement. We’re an industry-leading SEO agency, and we’d relish the chance to demonstrate what we might do for your website. Contact us right away to arrange for your SEO consultation and evaluation, free of both cost and obligation.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston!

Can Social Media Sites Boost My SEO?

October 22, 2018 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Social Media’s Role In Houston SEO: Facebook

What I’d like to do with this article is show you how Facebook can become a powerful SEO tool to improve the results you get from search engines. My discussion will mainly concentrate on Google, but rest assured that the general ideas I present here are equally effective for other search engines (Bing etc.). Even if you’re concentrating your SEO efforts in other directions besides Google, I’m hoping you’ll find this information useful! I’ll also take a little time to talk about Facebook’s Graph Search function and how you can optimize your presence to take advantage of it.

Does Google Even Pay Attention to Facebook? What Impact Can Facebook Optimization Have?

It’s always reasonable to start any SEO discussion by examining the evidence that says a potential strategy change will actually be useful. To that end, you’ll probably want to know what, if anything, Google’s current ranking algorithms do with data from Facebook. This gets into what we call “signals.” If Google reads social media signals from Facebook, that means it increases the ranking of Facebook posts if those posts grab a lot of likes on the social network. I’m constantly surprised by the many “experts” who are already shouting about the relationship between Google and Facebook before they’ve answered this very basic question about whether or not the search engine actually picks up on social signals.

These are the most dangerous bits of misinformation you should take with a huge grain of salt:

We know Google weighs social signals because heavily-liked and shared social content tends to rank well on the Google results page. There’s even data to back this claim up; Searchmetrics and Moz have both verified the correlation. But as this information gets re-re-re-hashed, overeager commenters make the classic mistake of confusing correlation and causation. Yes, social signals and search engine performance tend to go hand-in-hand. That DOESN’T means that the former is responsible for the latter.
Google’s flat out admitted that it uses social signals. This is another tricky bit of information that gets snatched out of its proper context. The “smoking gun” here is a video from former Google SEO guru Matt Cuts. Cutts said the search engine was using Facebook social signals … in 2010. It would be something between naive and foolhardy to believe that the Google algorithm hasn’t evolved in all the years since then.

So, am I saying that there’s no firm evidence that Google uses Facebook signals to adjust the way it ranks results? In a word, yes. There’s certainly not enough hard evidence to take to court.

And here are two rock-solid pieces of evidence I tend to trust:

Matt Cutts released another video – this one in 2014 – clarifying that Google was starting to index content from social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter. This time around, Cutts stressed the fact that the search engine does NOT take any steps to collect and use social signals to adjust its rankings. Social Media content gets ranked just like any other page. This video is definitely worth taking the time to watch.
In December 2013, Stone Temple Consulting conducted an exhaustive investigation on the impact of Facebook activity on web optimization. Eric Enge scrupulously documented and supported one simple conclusion: Google results aren’t affected in any way by Facebook posts. This, too, is worth taking a closer look at.

Well, Then, What Can Facebook Do For SEO?

Even without a causative relationship between social signals and search engine ranking, Facebook still has tremendous potential as an optimization tool. Just like Twitter, it can serve as an ancillary promotional medium – a place to collect traffic and send it to your website. Professional online marketers all agree that this sort of cross-promotion is worth doing. Facebook is worth another look as an optimization resource for one big new reason: Graph Search. The platform launched this internal search engine in 2013, and it’s becoming more and more popular. Graph Search may even one day threaten the market supremacy of Google. That’s not just idle speculation, either; Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has explicitly stated the company’s interested in aiming for that goal. Graph Search is a semantic search engine. It’s built to deliver relevant results to relatively complex queries, and it has the ability to parse natural language rather than just hunting for keywords. Graph Search also uses a partnership with Bing to deliver wider results if it can’t find enough material inside the Facebook ecosphere. Graph Search is built to deliver uniquely relevant results by making full use of what Facebook knows about individual users and the friends they’re connected to. Its results are dramatically different when compared to other search engines. The big question is whether or not users will embrace it in the way they currently do Google. The sheer potential of the new search tool definitely makes it worth a little optimization thought. You can get Graph Search to do at least two helpful things for you. For a start, it’s a potent research tool for learning about your audience. You can examine individual users with remarkable granularity. Graph Search also teaches you plenty about what your competitors are doing and how their efforts play with customers. The second thing you can do with Graph Search is improving your visibility within Facebook. Zuckerberg’s admitted that it will likely take five or even 10 years to get Graph Search where he wants it to be. That certainly doesn’t mean that buying in early would hurt you! Ready to get started? Just keep reading. The single common strategy that works equally well on Google, Bing, and Facebook Graph Search is engagement. Shape your content with an eye towards making it easy to like and share. Even if social signals don’t influence a page’s ranking on the search engines, it still shows up on their results pages. Engagement helps your overall optimization efforts because stronger reader relationships and active participation build the sort of connections to your website (links as well as likes) that search engines love.

Simple Steps To Take:

Customize Your Facebook URL. Use your brand or company name.
Put as much information as possible into your Facebook profile. Use the same keywords you’re using in your other SEO efforts.
Reach out to customers and learn about competitors using Graph Search.
Link Your Facebook Page To Your Other Online Presences.

In conclusion

You need to understand that encouraging more Facebook activity doesn’t directly improve your Google search results. However, building stronger links with your audience and driving traffic to other online properties will definitely help your optimization. Don’t neglect the research opportunities offered to you by Graph Search; Facebook’s internal search service can teach you a great deal about both customers and competitors. And keep a close eye on Graph Search; if it does grow into a viable alternative to Google, it’ll deserve that much more of your attention.

Call us or contact us today for your free consultation. Visit our blog for more related articles on how to execute the best SEO in Houston!

SEO Houston Expert: How To Get Mortgage Leads On Social Media

June 20, 2018 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Houston SEO Expert: Using Social Media To Acquire Mortgage Leads

Perhaps you have heard talk about using social media to garner mortgage leads. Maybe you scour the social media accounts of others in the industry to learn what they do to achieve marketing success. Sales funnels can be great for meeting revenue objectives, but the following paragraphs will concentrate on using social media as a means to secure strong leads. A sales funnel is a way to describe how an enterprise helps guide a customer toward a purchase decision. From the first bite through the final sale (or mortgage lead conversion), sales funnels are useful methods for bringing in new clients.

First Step: Boosting Recognition On Your Social Media Platforms

Start working to generate broader awareness of your enterprise, what you have to offer and what sets you apart from the competition. Go for as many facets as you wish, but it is worth noting that it may be better to hone in on a small number and perfect them instead of trying to be a jack of all trades, but master of none.

A. Natural Social Media Techniques

Start taking part in LinkedIn and Facebook groups as well as Twitter-based chats.
Make routine shares of blog posts on social media, making certain that the content is useful and appealing to the desired buying audience.
Utilize visual elements including GIFs, charts, infographics and the like that offer helpful mortgage tips.
Use strong hashtags in conjunction with postings, possibly using a free tool to help select them.
Produce video clips for use on social media and YouTube.

B. Pay-To-Play Methods

Paid Advertising options include paid placements on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
It is also worth collaborating with influences to spark interest and get messages to larger audience groups.

Second Step: Engagement And Visibility Work

Boost and maintain a visible presence by utilizing the aforementioned methods and then adding in a couple of those that follow. There is no substitute for engagement, regardless of your potential customer’s current stage in the decision process. The techniques below will help drive them forward to the next one.

A. Methods Of An Organic Nature

Engage in sharing of “insider” posts that describe the home loan process and your specific business.
Try sharing actual client testimonials and positive reviews.
Utilize images of real clients and their new homes.
Make use of live video exchanges in which questions are answered.
Provide a complimentary guidebook to those who provide an email address that can be used in a subsequent marketing initiative.
Make an offer of a no-cost educational course on mortgages to those who give an email address.
Host a timely and topical Twitter chat.

B. Paid Options

Make use of remarketing advertisements on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook designed to show your competitive advantage and availability.
Develop Messenger ads.
Work with a digital influencer on sponsored content and social media postings to advance engagement efforts.

Third Step: Converting Leads Into Mortgage Success

Here we have the last stage in converting a prospect into a customer. This is a point at which multiple contacts have been made, your business has been explained and trust has been developed about the services you provide. Now is when a prospect becomes ready to get in touch, and it is important to give them a pathway to do just that.

A. Organically-Based Techniques

Send social media visitors to the landing page by using a “apply now” or “quick quote” option.
For those who utilize the above lead capture options, make prompt contact and place them on the email marketing list.
Urge phone contact by placing a relevant Facebook post.
Let Instagram viewers known that instant contact can be made by utilizing the “call” option on the company profile.

B. Paid Methods

Make use of remarketing advertisements on social media that include strong calls to action that send prospects to the mortgage loan landing page that includes a lead capture or online lending application.

That about covers it! According to the Houston SEO expert that business owners trust, following these steps can help you produce a winning lead funnel via social media. For more information on SEO Houston Pros and the services we provide, contact us by giving us a call today.

How To Gain Google’s Trust So Youre SEO Houston Company Can Rank Higher

April 6, 2018 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

How To Use SEO To Prove Your Websites Worth To Google

An Introduction To SEO

Search engine optimization isn’t anything mystical. You may have heard about SEO before and some discussion about the way it works within the Google Algorithm. Basically, it is a repeatable and measurable process that send the search engines signals to demonstrate that your pages are worthy of being displayed in Google’s index.

A complex mathematical formula is basically used by Google. It is referred to an algorithm, and it provides every website with a score and all searches that are done on Google by people in order to determine which website should rank on top for what individuals are searching for. The algorithm can be thought of as a set of empty buckets. When it comes to SEO, your task is filling up more algorithm buckets compared to all of the other websites that you are competing with. You can help to affect the search engine rankings of your website by achieving the highest scores for your website’s quality, authority and being the most trusted store when people are looking for what you have to offer. If you need help with this, you can search for an SEO company Houston to assist you.

Some buckets are given more weight compared to other ones. There are three major buckets you need to thoroughly understand when it comes to search rankings. Those buckets are an authority, trust, and quality. In terms of quality, the thing that Google is attempting to measure when it is trying to determine which websites should rank is those that offer something interesting, unique, or valuable to Google searchers. One example of this is good content. So if you sell t-shirts, and you use the same exact description that all of the other t-shirt sellers use on their sites, then you aren’t providing anything that is unique for the searchers on Google. Although your t-shirts may look cool, you have the same exact content that all of the other sites have. So what you need to offer instead is interesting content that people will enjoy. For example, you can make it possible for people to personalize their shirts. Provide people with valuable information. You can get even more creative than that. Having people take pictures of themselves wearing your t-shirt is one great idea. Get a community created by individuals who love your products. Have a celebrity wear one of your t-shirts and get them to share photos online. Try to do something that is unique or something that is different. If you are able to show Google that your company is unique and interesting then it will start to be reflected in your search engine rankings.

Does Google Trust your Site?

Another very important bucket is trust. You need to be sure that you thoroughly understand this when you are attempting to rank your site in Google’s search results. Google really doesn’t want to display just any old website to their searchers. Instead, they would like to show searchers the best website, and Google needs to know your site is trustworthy in order to show it. Google had indicated that one thing it does is penalize companies or stores or websites that get poor reviews on a consistent basis. So if you have lots of poor reviews, sooner or later Google will stop showing your website within their search results since it doesn’t like showing their searchers those kinds of sites. So prove to the Google algorithm that your website is trustworthy. Find some authoritative websites that will link back to your site. Get industry links, newspaper links, have trusted websites link to your site: happy customers, vendors, business partners – have them link back to your site so that you can demonstrate that you are highly trustworthy and credible.

The final important bucket that you need to be aware of is an authority. Google likes displaying popular websites. If the most popular of all t-shirt websites can be shown to individuals searching for t-shirts online to buy, then that is the website that Google wants to show to its searchers. You need to convince Google by sending them signals that your website is the most popular one die the type of t-shirts you are selling. Build a strong fan base. Get a social network built. Have people link to your site, have people share pages from your website on their social networks. Get as many people as you can to show photos of themselves using or wearing your products, get them to leave testimonials and make connections with them. Get a fan base created and ga e they rally behind you to talk about your company and link to your site. Prove to Google how authoritative and trustworthy you are.

If you really think about it, SEO is simply the process if providing the search engines with proof that your website is the best, the most interesting and unique site, the most trusted, the most authoritative, that their customer – the search – can be offered. Do everything that you can to get customers to talk about your products and your company, and produce lots of great content, get links. If you do all of that Google will have more confidence that your website provides the best result that can be offered to their searchers, and your website will start to rank on Google’s first page.

To get started, call us or contact SEO Houston Pros. We invite you to visit our blog for more SEO tips and tricks!

Be A Pro At Social Media Marketing in Houston

December 14, 2017 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Ways To Increase Your Reach With Houston Social Media Marketing

Every business has a core audience they are trying to reach. In most cases, the bulk of your desired audience is active on social media, interacting with various brands and consuming their marketing messages. If your brand is not active on social media, you are missing valuable opportunities to grow your following. Merely creating social media accounts won’t cut it, though, with a considered strategy necessary to keep people engaged. The following methods can be used to increase your social media reach and grow a devoted audience who stick with your brand.

Create a Branded Hashtag

It can be tempting to use common hashtags in an attempt to gain attention. In most cases, though, this won’t help your brand and can feel desperate. However, creating your own branded hashtag lets fans easily find your content in one place. Your hashtag could be a short slogan or motto, but it should be memorable and unique.

Build Anticipation for New Products

Rather than just posting new products as they are released, you should look to build some initial anticipation. Creating teaser images and videos can excite followers, leading to shares and comments that add to the buzz. When you eventually release the product, followers will be keen to make a purchase and post it.

Use Eye-Catching Web Design

Most of the popular social networks rely heavily on robust visual design. If you post generic images, followers will be unlikely to share your content in significant numbers. it can be worth using professional photographers and graphic designers to make your imagery pop off the page. Also, tools like Canva offer various templates that improve a standard picture.

Use Various Media Types

Even though you may be most active in one area, using various types of media offers something for all your followers. The different social sites have different strengths, but the most popular ones let you post in multiple ways. Try to integrate videos, photographs, live feeds, graphics, and text into your rotation.

Follow a Schedule

Social media is not something you can dip in and out of if you want to maintain interest. Following a consistent posting schedule ensures you gradually increase the number of shares and followers you gain, helping your business to grow. While there are exceptions, most social accounts do not grow suddenly. Consistently posting and maintaining a quality output will ensure your reach expands.

Engage with Followers

Social media is about engagement, so it is essential you interact with followers. For businesses, having conversations with individuals might not be a good use of time and resources. However, responding to questions, reposting compelling content, and asking for opinions can help followers to feel they are involved and appreciated.

Hold Contests

Social media Contests are a common sight, but they continue to work well. A simple contest might involve tagging a friend or be posting a hashtag, helping to increase reach as you draw more people to your profile. If you want to go further, though, there are tools that can award points depending on how widely a user shares your contest.

Use Advertising

The need to use advertising on social media has grown in recent years. You can still develop a following organically, but it is far quicker when you are willing to pay for exposure. Sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter can ensure your content appears in front of a highly targeted audience. As long as you monitor your spending and ROI, social advertising can be beneficial.

It is virtually impossible for businesses to ignore social media, with so many potential customers to discover. Houston social media marketing is not something to be taken lightly, though, as there is the potential to damage your brand. However, with a considered approach, it is possible to find your desired audience and promote to them in a way that creates sustainable interest. Social media may not be where most of your customer base is, but you could find relationships are strongest when nurtured via the major social platforms.

Contact or call the Pros today!

Utilizing Instagram For Social Media Marketing In Houston

November 27, 2017 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Using Instagram To Increase Engagement With Your Consumers

With Instagram on track to reach one billion monthly users over the next year, businesses avoiding the platform are likely missing a useful traffic and branding source. Plenty of companies are using Instagram to reach targeted audiences, helping to showcase products and find new leads. However, merely posting images without a plan is not a valid strategy. It is rare for a business post to go viral, but a consistent approach can gradually increase followers, likes, and overall engagement. The following methods can benefit an entire social media campaign but work particularly well on Instagram.

Define Your Style

Popular Instagram accounts have defined themes that let followers know what to expect. If a business posts a broad range of images, from beautiful product images to candid staff photos, it can be confusing. Before you start posting, think about the style that would best define your business on the platform. Various enterprises have got results from using broad themes like humor, memes, locations, aspirational imagery, motivation, and more.

Use Hashtags

Hashtags are used to label your images, enabling interested searchers to stumble upon your page. Search for the general themes your business covers, focusing on the relevance and popularity of the hashtags. Ideally, the hashtags you include would be searched for regularly and have users who might be interested in your brand. However, avoid spamming with a long list of hashtags as this can give a negative impression to your followers.

Post User-Generated Content

Your users can produce some of the best content. For example, a clothing or makeup brand might have numerous examples of users posting with their products. User-generated content has a snowball effect when other followers see they could appear on your page. This style of posting also follows the spirit of social media, helping people to feel more engaged with your page.

Like and Comment

It is difficult to increase engagement levels without taking an active role. Major brands and celebrities might be able to gain success from merely posting images, but the majority of users will need to engage with followers. Instagram lets you like individual comments on your posts, but it is also worth commenting back on any interesting responses and questions. When people see you are actively involved in the account, like and mentions numbers should increase.

Run Contests

Contests are a proven way of engaging people across social media, with Instagram offering the same benefits. If followers are interested in your products and services, providing a prize giveaway will lead to higher interest. Offering an unrelated product, though, will lead to more followers who have no real interest in your business, so focus on relevance.

Create Videos

The introduction of video offered a new dimension to Instagram. You can post short videos to your feed or use the Stories feature to add videos removed after 24 hours. If your business is personality-driven, you can design videos around direct interactions with users and business updates. However, companies without personalities can still benefit by showcasing products, giving special offers, and broadcasting live events and launches.

Instagram is one of the major web platforms, so should be central to any social media marketing in Houston strategy. Posting images won’t be enough to gain any serious engagement, though, with a high level of mature competition. While it is advisable not simply to copy other accounts, you can learn a lot from monitoring successful posters. Ultimately, you gain the best results by finding a style that suits your business and the audience you are attempting to reach.

Social Media Marketing Mistakes Houston Businesses Make

November 27, 2017 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Houston Social Media Marketing Mistakes Your Business Could Be Making

Social media marketing can help any business reach into a new, engaging customer base that previously was not possible. It has become an essential piece of interaction, branding, and customer service, to the point that not using it is detrimental to continued business growth. Sadly, most businesses fail to utilize social media marketing. Doing so can leave them crippled when compared with other companies in the same industry or niche. Understanding these mistakes is the first step in making the most out of social media’s many benefits. Learn what they are, know how to avoid them, and create a social media presence that leads to maximum conversion and a stronger, more dedicated following. Leveraging social media marketing is not only possible, but anyone can do it regardless of their business or industry.

Not Using Social Media At All

The most significant mistake is ignoring social media altogether. Some business owners see social media as unnecessary, wasteful or non-profitable. For them, it is just a way to post photos or talk with customers. For those who run things using the old-school style, social media is not worth the time or effort. In today’s new-school atmosphere, you have to do more than have a great looking storefront, offering exceptional services. People are far too attached to the online world to rely on word of mouth alone. If they want something, they are going to look for it online first. If they can’t find it, they may overlook the business entirely. Social media marketing is as effective (if not more so) as any other type of advertisement. It connects with potential customers, helps to spread information, maintain customer connections, and deal with current issues in real time. Social media marketing is a unique system that can massively benefit any business.

Negative Reactions

In the past, when a customer had a problem with a product or service, they returned it and worked out an exchange or received a refund. Today, they take to social media with a passion rivaled by none. They do not have to be justified in their passion; all they have to do is complain, and the company receives a virtual black eye. Now, for a company that is active in social media marketing, this is a great chance to possibly meet the angered customer’s need and also maybe earn a few new customers in the process. At this moment, countering the customer with more negativity will not help; in fact, it will make it worse. It might feel good for a moment, but it is unprofessional, and it could cause others to view the business unfavorably. Instead, use the social media platform to respond positively, acknowledging the unhappy customer, apologizing that their needs were not met, stating facts, and then helping them to feel you are doing all you can to find a reasonable solution that will satisfy them. Also, do not delete previous conversations as this can look like you are trying to hide something from the public eye. Social media marketing is all about perception, and virtual black eyes are hard to fix.

Not Knowing the Differences Between Platforms

Each social media platform is different. Instagram is best for photos, while Twitter is perfect for small snips of information and Conversations. Facebook does a little of both while going more in-depth. Beyond all of that, the way one interacts with customers is unique. Building content on a specific platform requires its own plan. A plan for Instagram is not going to work on Twitter, nor will it work on Facebook or any other social media site. Learning these differences is necessary for managing a successful social media marketing plan. Using the same content on all of the platforms will not work. The audiences for each are different, and the same goes for the connection possibilities with each of them. To see the best results, work with the platforms on an individual level. See what strategies work best and implement them.

Failing To Personalize

When people visit social media platforms, they expect personalized interactions and content. They want to see something that they are not going to see anywhere else, and they want the brand to deliver it in their own way. Sadly, automated and plain responses and posts are all too common. Businesses will use an automated system or follow some set framework for their posts, failing to do anything outside of that. That can help to spread information, but it fails to engage or interest an audience. Ultimately the message for the company will be empty and will get overlooked, wasting time and money. Giving each post its own image, connecting it with the brand, can make a massive difference in the virtual perception. It helps to differentiate the business, giving it a voice, making it personable and connecting the customer on a more intimate level. That might not seem like much, but, to customers and clients, it can make the business stand out. It creates an appeal and loyalty that is hard to find.

Having No Plan

Just randomly posting on social media platforms is not going to be successful. Like any other type of marketing, a strategy is important to succeed. Developing an effective plan relies on current knowledge of each platform, knowing your customer base, and strategic content aimed to meet their needs accordingly. Working without a plan is a recipe for failure. Instead of attracting new audiences and retaining current ones, nothing may happen. People may ignore the page entirely, or it may receive negative attention. Plans are the building blocks of success. Planning is the best way to avoid unnecessary risks and help you stay focused on the task at hand. Yes, things may not go according to plan every time, but the chance of succeeding is higher than going in without a plan.

Ultimately, remember that every plan is different. A method for one business may not work for another. For that reason, every company needs to create a plan around who they are, what they want to achieve, and what their customer base needs. A successful strategy can work as a layout, but it has to change to fit the individual business. Every business can learn from these five social media marketing mistakes. These are the most common, and each of them is entirely avoidable. If you want to see the best results from social media, it is essential to know how each platform works, who uses the platforms, how to use the platform efficiently, and then following a plan of action. Any business can use social media to help boost their marketing efforts; for some, they will find that social media marketing is more useful than almost every other marketing plan.

And finally, connecting with customers has become easier than ever as most everyone has a phone with them throughout the day. It is time to embrace the change and make social media marketing part of your business plan. Avoiding these five social media marketing mistakes will help keep you ahead of the other businesses and make you relevant to your customers.

Call or contact SEO Houston Pros to learn more about starting a social media marketing campaign.

5 Social Media Marketing Tips for Businesses in Houston

October 23, 2017 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

A Short Guide To Better Social Media Marketing in Houston

Do you want to make small adjustments to your social media presence or are you just started doing business in social media? If the answer is a big yes, then this article was written with you in mind. Below are 5 social media tips that will help you enhance your brand’s social media presence.

1. Set Social Media Goals

Even though each and every business out there has to define the specific goals of their social media strategy, there are some common goals that can help businesses when it comes to social media presence including:

Customer loyalty
Brand awareness
Recruiting new employees
Introducing a new product
Generating online traffic
Customer support
Generation of physical traffic
Demonstrating industry authority
Improving public goodwill
Crisis preparation

Social media goals usually change and develop as the business’s social media presence grows and matures.

2. Create A Voice

Each business has its own corporate culture or personality. This is something you should consider when coming up with a “voice” for your business on social media. You should ensure that the “voice” is consistent and represents the authority and personality of your brand in the best way possible. The voice should also ring true or sound authentic to your customers.

3. Listen and Engage

Engagement, in this case, describes the communication that takes on social media networks. Keep in mind that social media is not a place to push a brand’s message but a place to engage with customers, industry professionals, potential clients and thought leaders.

The dialogue that usually takes place on social media is very important as it builds a foundation for business relationships both physically and online.

4. Be Consistently Present

This is a key detail where many businesses go wrong. Most businesses create social media profiles, post on them for some time and then stop. To actively participate on social media and meet any of your social media goals, be present in your social media networks on a regular basis.

5. Target Your Demographic Group

Each and every social media network represent a segment of the online society. This is why it is important to know who your customers are, where they are and know a network that works best to reach them. Always remember that not every network will be a natural fit for every brand.

Contact SEO Houston Pros or call us today for more information!