Best Seo Company Houston - Archive - SEO Houston Experts & Search Engine Optimization Consultants

Houston SEO Experts Prioritize Based On Impact

January 11, 2019 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Prioritizing SEO Tasks Based On Impact Pt1

How can you really know if the content and SEO changes that you are making to your website will actually benefit it? In this article, we will be looking at various ways that your resources can be prioritized so that your bottom line is impacted and your business objectives are supported.

“What needs to be done to optimize our website?”

Every search engine optimization (SEO) expert is faced with this question, but unfortunately, there is no easy answer to it. After all, there has never been a website that only needs one single thing.

That is the problem with search engine optimization. It is comprised of numerous things so that when you are faced with that all-important question of what needs to be done, we tend to provide too many recommendations. Most teams, unfortunately, are not equipped with the necessary knowledge or resources for handling them and end up getting very little or nothing is done, instead of everything that needs to be completed.

So how can we guarantee that the necessary changes are being made by our teams in order to drive a successful outcome?

Throughout my career, I have faced this challenging time and time again, and fortunately, I have learned a couple of different ways to handle this. So let’s take a look at some of them.

Prioritize According To Impact

There are only so many hours in the day, meaning that you often can’t get everything done. So, if there are only one to two things that we can get to on our list, then we need to make sure we select the recommendations that will have the greatest impact on the overall website.

For example, let’s examine the technical SEO audit. With a technical audit, some of the things that we may recommend include image compression, heading tags, redirect updates, canonicalization, and 15 other different things. If a development team is bogged down already with their regular daily tasks, it won’t be able to fit all of these things in.

In order to ensure that something gets done, we need to look at what is actually holding the website back. Title tags might not appear to be the world’s highest priority, but if your website doesn’t have them, then just making that change could lead to some fairly significant improvements for your site.

When recommendations are being made, teams need to understand where they need to begin and what things can wait until later. Not everything will be a top priority.

Prioritize according to resources

When it comes to resource the exact same thing applies.

We recommended last year that a client transition their website over to HTTPS from HTTP. They were excited and completely on board, but then we realized the client didn’t have anybody for managing this process.

It is no small task to move a website to HTTPs. Errors can be made, it may be a difficult process, and several times now I have seen it result in the loss of significant amounts of organic traffic (thanks a lot, Google). We were unable to take on that risk. For nearly a year we held onto the recommendation until the right personnel was in place to guarantee a smooth transition. Now everything has been switched over properly, and the website is enjoying a nice increase in traffic.

Here is another example to look at. Other clients of ours needed help with writing content. However, they didn’t have anybody to approve, edit or manage the process, which would result in a backlog of blog posts that went unpublished. Unpublished blog posts help absolutely no one.

We decided instead to switch over to blog refreshes. What we did is identified some older blog posts that could use an update and began updating the content. It wasn’t necessary to have an extensive review for this, and we were able to implement these changes. It resulted in an increase in blog traffic, and improvements were made without having to have any new content.

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 article in this series.

Houston Seo Experts On Link Building

December 20, 2018 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Link Building and Houston SEO: What You Need to Know

There have been many changes in strategies in the world of search engine optimization, but there is one constant that has remained, and this is the importance of high-quality link building on search engine rankings and increasing brand recognition. If you run a small business or even a startup, you will need to have a Houston SEO campaign that includes inbound link building;

What is it?

In simple terms, inbound links are those links that are placed on external websites and they link back to your website. This can link to a specific page or a blog post.
It is one of the factors used in ranking, and this is why search engines will look at the inbound links of your website. It will use this information to determine how you are going to rank. But is not where they stop. They will go ahead and do an evaluation of the relevance and authority of the website linking to yours. Is the external website authoritative? Is the website trustworthy? Is it relevant in the industry it is in? In short, the website that you are using to link to yours must be of high-quality before it can have any impact on your Houston SEO.

What Are the Benefits?

What can you expect when you have effectively used inbound link building as part of the campaign?
Some of the benefits you can expect to get include:
Brand visibility: The brand name of the company will be used and this will help in improving your brand visibility.
Improve rankings: Links from external sites will help in boosting the domain authority of your website, and this will lead to improved rankings.
Long-term value: The impact it will have strengthens with time, and this means you can see the benefits for a long time to come.

Facts on Inbound Link Building

There is no doubt of the role played by inbound link building in your SEO plan. But this area can be a little confusing. It is not like the other SEO concepts such as picking specific keywords and publishing informative content, it is not a straightforward process.
Another fact that tends to confuse many people is that it will take some time before you see results. Even businesses using some of the best SEO link building strategies are not able to get immediate results. Inbound links will help in providing tremendous benefits both in building the domain authority of your website and improvement in rankings. Linking will be the backbone of your SEO plan.

Inbound Link Building Solutions With Houston SEO Experts

The volume of links you are able to get from an authoritative site will have a direct impact on your rankings. Give us a call because we are an experienced Houston SEO company ready to help you out with your campaign.

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!

Houston SEO Service On Voice Searching & SEO

December 20, 2018 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Voice Search and SEO: What You Need to Know

Voice-activated search was once thought as being a joke, but the growth it has been having in the recent months has proved otherwise. There are many experts who were surprised by this increase, and this has shown that voice search is not something that can be overlooked when it comes to Houston SEO strategies and web design.
Why has it become popular?

Users loved voice assistant when they first came out, but most of the results were a hit and miss thing. There were very few responses that were making sense. AI technology has become even more sophisticated, and this has led to improved accuracy. Google report showed that the accuracy of voice recognition had grown to 95 percent by 2017.

Many players in the industry such as Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon Alexa, and Google assistant started to release them because of the increased accuracy. Many mobile devices started coming with inbuilt voice activation, which added to the numbers.

What does it mean for SEO?

It is common for people to use it for things such as making calls, but it has started to be used by many people to search for things. What does the growth of voice search mean for Houston marketing strategy?

There was a recent survey done which showed that asking for directions was the most common voice request both in adults and teens. Some other information high on the list includes the location and store hours.

It also showed an increase in voice recognition searches for inquiries related to business, like customer support, sales and deals, and upcoming events. It is important to think about voice during your Houston SEO and web design plan.

What makes it Different?

Google has continued to do improvements on their algorithm so as to get rid of non-relevant results and filter out any spam. They have guidelines and penalties that ensure that the most accurate results are displayed. The area of voice search is still in its infancy, so it is not the same because the refined processes aren’t there yet.

People tend to use voice search in a different way than they would do text. With voice, people are more likely to use short questions and phrase inquires. You will need to use a different approach when optimizing for voice.

Why is Now the Best Time for Voice SEO?

Experts believe there will come a time when voice will overtake text. Time will tell, but the number of people using voice has been increasing fast. Many mobile phones are coming with voice assistants, and this has lead voice assistants to reach 420 million. Voice search should be part and parcel of any Houston SEO and web design.

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!

Digital Marketing Tips From Houston’s Best SEO

December 20, 2018 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Tips For Coming Up With An Effective Digital Marketing Plan

It is easy to talk about how important it is to develop a digital marketing strategy. Actually sitting down and figuring out how to reach your desired audience online, however, is a lot more complicated.

Most business owners have a lot of questions when it comes to digital marketing. Fortunately, this is the perfect time to start educating yourself about how to market your business online. Many industries are experiencing a bit of a lull right now, which means that you should have time to devote to your 2019 marketing plan. Prior to getting started, you should spend some time thinking about the following questions:

Exactly who are you targeting and where are they located?
Which online platforms are the most popular with your target market?
What options are available in terms of digital and social media marketing?

A good way to get started is by thinking about the people that you know and interact with on a daily basis. Where do your friends, business associates, and family members discuss local businesses on the Internet? Typically, these are great places to promote your business. If people are already talking about their favorite businesses on a particular platform, it is a lot easier to get them to interact with your content.

Digital Marketing On Facebook

Do you already have a Facebook page set up for your business? If not, that is something that you should do right away. Setting up a page is easy, although it can be a little bit time-consuming. During the process, you will have to put together a lot of information about your business and you may need to spend time gathering high-quality photos so that you can create a page that makes a good first impression.

The process itself is quite easy. All that you have to do is log into your personal account and click on the ‘Create a Page’ link. Even though your personal account and your business page are linked behind-the-scenes, they will never appear together or overlap with one another publicly unless you want them to. You can easily switch between accounts when making comments or performing other actions on Facebook simply by choosing your desired account near the profile picture in the comment area.

Once your page is set up, it is time to start thinking about how to put it to use. If you were one of your customers or clients, what type of information would you be interested in seeing? For instance, if you have a physical office or retail store, you may want to start by providing directions to your place of business. You could also do something like review one of the products that you sell or provide a demonstration showing how to use one of the items that you carry.

Until you get a few people following your page, you won’t be able to set up a custom URL. The number of followers required can vary. Usually, it is anywhere between 15 and 30 followers. The key to gaining more followers is to create great content. Make sure that you always use proper spelling and grammar in your posts. Find high-quality, interesting images and videos to share, as well, since visual content tends to get more interaction. If you want, you can even look into paying to boost your post. We will talk about paid advertising on Facebook in a future post.

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!

Having An Issue Ranking? Houston’s Best SEO Firm Tells You Why Pt3

December 20, 2018 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Why Won’t My Website Rank Pt 3

You Treat Your Website Like It Lives in a Vacuum

The problem with this is that SEO does not live in a vacuum. It exists with web content, social media, pay-per-click, and other online components.

You are not being sold on a host of our other services. We are simply pointing out that online marketing is more holistic than ever before.

All elements are important to rank including the time visitors stay on your site, how often people click through it, the number of times it is mentioned online and how much engagement you get on social media.

Some things will impact your rank more directly than others, but every component is important.

Google looks at more than the signals that are being put forth from your website.

This is not to say that posting consistently on Facebook equals better ranking. We are saying that if you build a community on Facebook and on other platforms, more people will visit your website, read your content and click your links.

All these things lead to more than higher rankings.

Today, the most common reason for not getting a website to rank is:

Competitors Are Doing More Than You
You are doing SEO in a vacuum.
Search engine optimization is not a secret to the competition like it was years ago. It is a crucial part of today’s marketing. For every link you don’t build and for every blog you don’t publish you are falling behind your competitors.
If you think you do not need SEO or that you have done enough, someone out there will prove you wrong.
If you have been testing the SEO waters, you should start to see your website go up in rank. If you don’ t jump in, you will find that other companies have beat you to the results you want to get.
Bear in mind that when you start implementing SEO strategies it is not about you against Google. It is you against your competitors. All these competitors are vying for a top spot in a limited arena. competition. And you’re all aiming to set up shop in a very limited space.
Small Changes Make Big Differences

By now, you are thinking there is a lot to do to climb up to the search engine ranks.

And you’re right.

But, that’s all the more reason to start now. Begin by thinking of the small changes that you can make to your site. Do this before you decide to either hire an SEO company or stick with in-house experts.

If your site has not ranked yet, give it a little more time.

If this does not work, you will need to overhaul your site completely.

Whichever it is, look at your situation carefully and start small.

You will be surprised how much simple changes will help.

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 First installment of this article, And here for the second.

Having An Issue Ranking? Houston’s Best SEO Firm Tells You Why Pt2

December 6, 2018 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Why Isn’t My Website ranking? Pt 2

The truth is that there could be a number of things holding you back. They may include:

Unsatisfactory content
Plagiarized content
Untouched, old content
Poor navigation
Split keyword focus
Incomplete basics such as schema markup, alt tags, and metas
No links (even though there are many ways to get them, not all are worth having and others could prove fatal)
No blog (no way of continually refreshing content)
You have not marketed the website

The bottom line is that you need a good portfolio of links from different sources. Well, even though this is the case, there are some links that are not good for a website. At the same time, you should never think of buying links. Link schemes are also bad for you. Therefore, the best way to do this is a natural way and avoid those that might raise flags.

And of course, there are bad links. For example:

If you get targeted by someone with ill intent. What does this mean? Well, some people may begin using unethical tactics on your website.

Such people do not actually have a reason to do this. They simply target a website and choose to inject malicious codes. Other may start scraping your blogs and republishing all of your contents. Others choose to build several links to your website from questionable websites.

Remember, Google is very good at spotting negative SEO attacks. Nevertheless, you do not want to risk your website and the penalties that may come because of the issue. Therefore, it is wise to always stay on guard.

Google’s Penalty

This is another factor why your website is not ranking. Because of some unprofessionalism, Google may decide to penalize your website. Often, the manual action to penalties is a complete removal of your website from Google’s search engine result page.

Therefore, if you were ranked very well on the result page and then you notice a huge drop in rank (if not completely out of the rankings), then automatically know that you are on the wrong side. This simply means that there is something wrong with your website and you are being penalized.

With this problem, the only thing you can do is to check the Google Manual Action report, and then start correcting the issue(s). The moment you receive such a report, it simply means that Google’s personnel (not robots) has reviewed your website and determined that it is no longer complying with Google’s Guidelines.

What Factors Could Cause Such Actions To My Local Houston SEO?

Well, Google can penalize your website if the person reviewing it finds that you have:

A hacked Website This simply means that a person hacked your website and hidden or uploaded hateful information on the website
Has User Created Spam The Website uses spam comments on the blog or forum
Spammy Structured Markup This means using markups on a page that are outside the guidelines. For examples, making certain contents invisible to users.
Spammy Freehosts This means pages that are hosted on spammy services
Unnatural Links from the Website This means having unnatural links coming from your website
Unnatural Links to the website Just like the above but vice vasa.
Content with No Added value The pages must offer help or add value to users.
Sneaky or Clocking Redirects This simply means showing different pages to users and Google.
Clocked Images Manipulating images with the aim of getting more clicks.
Keyword Stuffing and Hidden texts These techniques worked in the past, but Google does not recommend using them anymore.

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 First installment of this article!

Having An Issue Ranking? Houston’s Best SEO Firm Tells You Why

December 6, 2018 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

WHY ISN’T MY WEBSITE RANKING? Pt1

You can improve your business’s exposure, enjoy the sort of ROI you would like to see and establish yourself as an industry authority by simply ranking at the search engine results top spots.

The question, therefore, becomes, why is your site not at the top of search engine result pages?

Every company, at one point or the other, has asked itself this million dollar question. The absence of a matching million dollar answer is, however, unfortunate.

To rephrase this, there’s is no single answer to this question.

There are many reasons why your company may be finding it hard to get to the top. Consider the following possibilities if you feel as if you have not been getting the best outcome even after trying for so long.

You Have Not Been Patient Enough

There are no shortcuts. It takes more than one night to get Search Engine Optimization right.

You must follow the correct order when it comes to implementing your strategy. For instance, if your website is not able to convert traffic, building a huge amount of links will be of no use.

Researching, creating and implementing an SEO strategy as well as building content takes a lot of time.

Google will also take their time when it comes to discovering the changes you make; on top of that, you need to wait for the search engine to determine your relevance.

Whenever possible we like to back up our claims and have linked to the video above in the past.

According to the speaker in the video, for you to see any results, it generally takes anything from 4 to 12 months to conduct any positive changes.

Bidding your time is necessary, in other words. SEO requires a lot of patience, as hard as it might be.

The Meaning Of Your Chosen Keyword May Not Be What You Think It Is

When it comes to the term “SEO” this is what we have seen.

For us, that keyword has been essential in our blog about boosting traffic by more than 200 percent we discussed this. However, our homepage wasn’t at all visible for that keyword at one point. One day the page simply disappeared from the rankings, without us doing anything to cause it.

Consequently, we began to scour through search result pages for the keyword.

For a long time, we had been ranking on the 2nd page, having made it to tenth every now and then. Then all of a sudden it was gone!

However, our blog page remained.

It’s clear to see that Google doesn’t believe that internet users are looking for an SEO company when they use the keyword “SEO” when making a search, when you really go through that first page, as it turns out.

The search engine is trying to offer users all the information it possibly can on the definition of SEO and how it is done, instead.

Excluding paid results, this is why nearly all entries in the first page, in one way or the other, cover a description of SEO, the SEO process and whether it can help you.

On the front page, Google itself is hogging a couple of entries.

We believed for a while therefore that we could not rank our homepage on the first page any longer. With regard to a query of the term “SEO”, Google simply didn’t consider it as the most appropriate answer.

Google started ranking our homepage again; just to prove us wrong of course! As it stands, ours is the sole agency website on the first page of their search rankings.

The main lesson to take home is that even though you may aim to rank highly for a given keyword, it might not work out for you because the term has a different meaning to Google than it does to you, despite all the positive SEO work you conduct.

As such, go through the results displayed by Google on their first page and find out whether what you are offering is different from what they want users to see.

Your Website’s Appealing Look is Only Superficial

To get a modern and well-designed website you must have paid a handsome amount. It looks awesome from every angle. In fact, just to appreciate the design more, not a day goes by without you looking at it.

Google doesn’t seem to share your level of appreciation, why?

It’s likely that your design missed a few important SEO angles, as appealing as it might look.

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!

The Best Houston SEO Firm Tells You Which Risks Are Safe Bets And Which To Run From Pt.2

December 5, 2018 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

Which SEO Risks To Avoid

There are certain SEO risks that are worth taking; however, there are other risks that should not be taken as they can damage your business and your bottom line. Let’s take a look at the risks that you should avoid.

1. Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are easy to make and are used for specific keywords or keyword phrases. Expert SEO experts typically avoid using doorway pages because Google does not like doorway pages and often penalizes websites that use doorway pages. For this reason alone, you should avoid using doorway pages.

The only reason that Google will not penalize a doorway page is when it offers clear, unique and valuable information or content to its visitors. This type of doorway page is similar to the other content on your site and is viewed as such by Google.

Because of Google’s negative view of doorway pages, they should be avoided and not used on your website.

2. Neutral Backlinks

Although you want high-quality backlinks on your site, you do not want poor-quality backlinks. But, what about neutral backlinks? Neutral backlinks are those that do not help or hurt your website’s page ranking. Neutral backlinks do not boost your website; however, Google no longer penalizes you for including neutral backlinks on your website.

With Google’s latest update, Penguin, it was determined that websites often do not have control to sites that link to the website. This is beneficial to website owners because they will no longer be punished for backlinks due to the owner not necessarily having control over the backlinks created to their website.

The only way you will know if a backlink on your website is bad is if is low-quality and spammy. Google may take action against these backlinks and remove them from your website manually.

If Google does not take any action, then you can assume that the backlinks on your site are safe, even if they are not high-quality backlinks that can boost your page ranking on internet searches.

Although you can disallow certain backlinks, you need to take care. If you disallow the neutral backlinks on your website, you may risk blocking websites that can help to improve your page rank.

3. Condensing or Deleting Content on Your Website or Removing Entire Pages

You may assume that removing content or deleting an entire page off your website about a service or product that is discontinued. However, when the page is deleted, the keywords that helped to rank your site are gone. Furthermore, the URL of the page, including page-specific keywords and keyword phrases vanish.

Instead of taking a hit on your page ranking, you may want to keep the webpage, even if you have discontinued the service or product. Leave a message on the page that informs your visitors that you have another product or service that is similar and leave a redirect link.

If you are condensing or merging pages into one page, ensure that the 301 redirects are included to ensure that the links and the traffic continues.

4. Avoid Exact Match Keywords in Your Anchor Text

You may think that including your targeted keywords as the anchor text for your website is a good idea. You want your website to rank using those targeted keywords or keyword phrases.

This practice was popular in the past when SEO experts followed the same logic. Unfortunately, black hat SEO professionals began using the technique of using exact matching keywords as links for their websites excessively. Furthermore, these links were not from high-quality websites.

Google has since cracked down on exact match keywords as anchor text. Those who use this technique will be punished and their page rank can slip. Therefore, you should avoid using this technique. Instead, look for a natural way to create a diverse backlink portfolio and quality sites to link to your website.

5. Avoid Making A Lot of Small Changes to Your Site

Updating content on your site is typically a great idea and Google prefers updated and fresh content. However, if you constantly change the content or the look of your website, it can negatively impact your page rank and can make website visitors feel uncomfortable.

Making a lot of changes or making them too often can flag your website as suspicious. Google often penalizes websites that make a lot of changes or make changes often. Therefore, you should limit the number of changes that you make to your site.

Additionally, regular site visitors will notice the changes that you make to your site, especially if these changes were made to improve page ranking rather than delivering more high-quality content for your visitors. Furthermore, these changes can make your website more difficult to navigate and can make your site visitors suspicious of your website.

How to Balance Reward and Risk

In order for your business to succeed, you need to perform expert SEO. However, there are many risky practices that can damage your page rank. Alternatively, there are certain risks that can improve your page ranking. You must learn which SEO risks to take and which ones to avoid.

Although certain risks are associated with SEO, not performing search engine optimization is the riskiest thing you can do.

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 first installment of this article!

The Best Houston SEO Firm Tells You Which Risks Are Safe Bets And Which To Run From Pt.1

November 6, 2018 By SEO Houston Pros Leave a Comment

SEO Risks That Are Worth Taking

Business owners often struggle to understand the benefits of SEO. That is completely understandable especially when you consider that a lot of the information that has been published about search engine optimization is highly technical, inaccurate, or otherwise flawed.

Even though the results of implementing an SEO strategy don’t happen overnight, search engine optimization can prove extremely beneficial in terms of increasing traffic and boosting a company’s bottom line.

Anytime business owners are dealing with the unknown, it is only natural to feel a little bit uneasy. It is important to remember, however, that all business decisions have some level of risk. With SEO, the risks are relatively low while the potential rewards are exceptionally high, often leading to tremendous growth online.

One of the most important things to do before implementing an SEO strategy is to analyze the risks to figure out which ones are worth taking.

Prior to jumping in and getting started, there is one thing that should be addressed. The biggest risk for any company when it comes to SEO is failing to implement a search engine optimization strategy. The potential rewards are far too great to skip out on search engine optimization altogether.

Acceptable Risks With SEO Houston Pros

1. Testing And Tweaking

Ultimately, the objective of any SEO campaign is to increase your sales or leads by allowing you to get more traffic to your website.

The only way that you can get more traffic, however, is if people actually click on the link to your site. Even if your site ranks at the top of the search results, it won’t matter if nobody is clicking on it.

This can happen for quite a few different reasons. Sometimes, it is difficult to figure out exactly why people aren’t clicking on your link.

In most cases, the only way to come up with an answer is by testing out different changes to see what impact they have. With this type of testing, you should only change one thing at a time. For instance, for your first test, you could try changing the title of the link. With the next test, you could then change the description, etc. As you try out different combinations, track your results to see which ones are the most effective.

The risky part of conducting this type of testing is that you usually will have to go through a lot of different combinations before you find one that gives you good results. Throughout the testing process, you may experience decreases in your traffic volume when you try certain combinations that don’t work. Typically, these drops in traffic are temporary, only lasting as long as the changes are left in place.

All in all, however, this is an acceptable risk since it helps you discover which combinations will allow you to maximize your traffic and make more sales.

2. Posting Backlinks To Other Sites

A lot of times, people are hesitant to provide backlinks to other websites. After all, why would they want to send their traffic to another site?

As it turns out, backlinks are actually a very important aspect of SEO. Your goal should be to get as many incoming links from high-quality, relevant websites as possible since these links can help increase your site’s authority, allowing it to obtain a higher ranking.

Getting links to your own site is only one part of the equation. You also should provide outgoing links that point to other high-quality sites in your industry.

Even though it may seem like you are shooting yourself in the foot by posting links to other sites, it actually can benefit your business by allowing Google to see that you are referencing well-established sites that have a lot of authority.

One thing you should avoid, however, is linking to low-quality sites that don’t have good content. If Google finds too many connections between your site and these low-quality sites, it could negatively impact your ranking.

3. Cleaning Up Your URLs

The URL to the main page of your site should be as short as possible. Ideally, it should be your exact domain name, which should match the name of your company.

For other pages on your site, you should include keywords in the URL that help the search engines understand what the content is about.

A word of warning, however: you should avoid exceptionally long URLs. Try to limit their length. Otherwise, excess characters beyond a certain point will be cut off and replaced with an ellipsis (…) in the browser bar.

If you are in the process of revamping your site, take a look at your URLs to see if you can improve them.

Always proceed with caution when doing this, however. There is a risk of losing your traffic if you change your URLs. Even if you properly redirect your URLs using 301 redirects, you still may see an initial decline in traffic.

Ultimately, however, the change is worth it since it makes it easier for both the search engines and your users to find, share, and understand your content.

4. Revamping Your Website

If you never update your website, it will become dated looking. Periodic redesigns are essential. Unfortunately, they can take a lot of time. They can also cost a lot of money and can be somewhat risky.

There comes a time, however, when you have no choice but to update your site. Perhaps your design looks like it hasn’t evolved since the start of the Internet. Maybe you have a well-optimized site but the people who visit it struggle to find their way around. There are countless reasons why a redesign may be necessary.

Even though these changes will ultimately make your site more effective and easier to use, you do run the risk of seeing an initial decline in traffic. When you do a redesign, Google and the other major search engines have to evaluate all of your content again. Customers who have been using your site for a long time may also require an adjustment period to get used to the new design.

In the long run, however, your original rankings should return. Your customers will also quickly adapt to the changes. In fact, they may even find them beneficial the more that they use them. The most important thing to remember, however, is that an updated site that is fresh, modern, and easy to use will help you attract new customers and clients.

5. Taking Advantage Of Expired Domains

Every day, tons of domain names expire when their owners fail to renew them. After a domain expires, it becomes available for purchase.

Purchasing expired domains and pointing them at your website is a good way to give your site a boost. Chances are, the domains that you buy will already have some backlinks. When you redirect the domains to your site, you can benefit from those backlinks.

This is another area where there is a lot of risks, however. It is important to fully understand the process before proceeding.

If you purchase an expired domain, it should be extremely relevant to your business. Keep in mind, many of these domain names are still getting traffic. If you point the domains at your site, visitors will be redirected there when they try to go to the original site. If your site is completely unrelated to the original topic, you will just wind up irritating them.

If you purchase a site that was previously penalized by Google for having a lot of spam, it can also negatively impact your website’s ranking. You need to make sure that any domains that you purchase were used for legitimate sites to avoid accidentally getting your site penalized.

When done correctly, however, buying expired domains is a highly effective way to deliver more traffic to your site.

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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.

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