This Blue Root blog will help you navigate the virtual Blue Route of web marketing and SEO, along with paid search advertising, content marketing and other related topics. The web marketing world, like the real Blue Route, can be navigated a little more easily with a few good tips from those who are traveling that roadway on a daily basis. Blue Horseradish’s consultants will post tips on how to better navigate the information highway, and occasionally flag an area to avoid.

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Getting your content to rank as a featured snippet will boost your website traffic, help establish your website as a trusted resource for expert content, and make your content stand out among your competitors. See below for an example from one of our clients, Strainsert, who designs and manufactures custom force sensors for research, control and testing applications used in the Aerospace, Military, Marine and Automotive industries. Strainsert not only has the featured snippet for the keyphrase “force sensing tension links”, but also the #1 ranking right below that. This search prime real estate positioning helps drive traffic to their site and lead opportunities for their business.

Definition of Featured Snippets

A featured snippet is defined as a search result that provides an answer to the search query with a short paragraph or list and may include a table, chart, or graphic. This information is usually displayed first at the top of the page of search results and typically takes up more space on the page compared to each of the remaining results.

Featured snippets were created by Google to provide what they consider the best source of information for the keyword search, giving the best source the most prominent and largest space on the results page. Featured snippets often gain more clicks than the #1 keyword result and are usually placed above the #1 ranking and below the paid ads on the page.

Different Types of Featured Snippets

Types of featured snippets are named for the format in which the information is displayed. The most common type of featured snippet is the paragraph, which offers an answer to the search in the form of a short block of text.

Paragraph featured snippets are usually between 40 and 50 words, as this is the sweet spot Google chooses. This length provides enough information to answer the question in a short, quickly read snippet. Paragraphs can include an image if there is one featured on the page.

List featured snippets offer an answer to the search in the form of a numbered or bulleted list. The list directly addresses the search with short, brief sentences that make up the steps of an answer. Lists may include an image, such as a recipe with a photo.

Table featured snippets offer an answer in the form of a chart or table displaying relevant information. This method provides an answer visually and should be easy to scan quickly for the important data. Tables are not as popular as paragraphs or lists but are useful in delivering specific numerical information.

Advantages of Featured Snippets

The biggest advantage to featured snippets is they drive traffic to your website for target keyphrase searches highly relevant to your business. Pages that are displayed in search results as featured snippets get almost twice the click-through rate compared to the search results that are not featured snippets. Increasing your website’s click through rate drives traffic to your website and keeps them away from your competitors.

Featured snippets also increase your exposure by ranking your page higher in the search results compared to your competitors. A featured snippet is at the top of the search results and takes up more space compared to other results. This means that your page will stand out by appearing larger and more enticing, as it delivers information immediately.

Another advantage of featured snippets is that they increase your credibility. Featured snippets are viewed as expert, quality content, as they appear first on the search results page and stand out in a larger box highlighting how the content answers the search question. This shows that your website delivers more useful information and expertise compared to the rest of the search results.

The SEO gold scenario includes having your paid ad, your featured snippet and a high organic result all show up together for your target keyword phrases. This trifecta gives your company a huge advantage by dominating the search engine results top-of-the-page “real estate” people look at and click on the most.

How to Research Competitors’ Featured Snippets

To rank higher and have more of your content considered for featured snippets, you have to research and learn from your search results competitors. The best way to do this is to utilize simple Google searches to compile information and then use that information to adjust your content for your target audience.

Using Google to research your competitors is straight forward. Run searches to see which queries your competitors are answering with their content or what products/services Google ranks them well on. Then consider ways to craft your content to beat them out of those spots. With insight into your competition, you can improve your content to match what your target audience is most interested in.

Keyword research is also essential to researching your competitors. Start by considering where your content ranks for specific keyphrases and look at which featured snippets Google is providing for these keyphrases. From there you can optimize your content in a tailored fashion to improve your chances of being chosen for featured snippets. This is a great way to polish the content you are already providing to increase your chances of being featured.

Lastly, you can work on answering potential search questions with your keyphrases. Doing research in this area, such as using the site Answer the Public, will allow you to explore how your current keyphrases are being used by searchers. This also helps you apply the keywords you’re ranking for in more content by answering more questions, which increases your chances of becoming a featured snippet.

Conclusion

Featured snippets are a great way to boost your traffic and be shown on Google’s search results as an established expert in your field. By researching your competition, exploring which content is being chosen as a featured snippet, and adjusting your content, you will increase your chances of landing featured snippets in future results. If you are already ranking high in search results, this is the best next step to continue increasing traffic and staying on top of the competition.

Please contact Blue Horseradish for help with gaining and retaining featured snippets for your company’s target keyphrases.

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• Ever wonder why you keep losing business to competitors?
• Or why your company website does not generate any or enough sales or leads?
• Or why there are internal complaints about the quality of the leads?
• Or why your company is always scrambling last minute to react to market and buyer changes?

The online market trend has been clear for years: If you are still unsure what a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert can do for your business, you are behind the curve and, likely, your website’s performance is too. That hurts your business.

Online sales and the amount of people researching and buying products/services continues to rise every year – this includes regular research and e-commerce activity using a computer, but also the growing m-commerce buyers using mobile devices.

The number of purchases made through a mobile device (smartphone and tablet) are expected to rise to roughly 45% of total e-commerce spending in 2020 according to The Business Insider.

In our current pandemic world, that activity has the chance to increase even faster since many are working from home, cannot go to closed stores and do not necessarily want to risk visiting open stores either. Your company needs to be, as the old saying goes, “fishing where the fish are” with plenty of attractive content bait and a website optimized to land them.

The practice of researching/buying online and using many devices to do so has now been ingrained into every aspect of our lives and behavior.  As a fundamental aspect of that process, SEO cannot be ignored.

The best usage of an SEO company is before you start planning your existing website’s re-design or during the planning of a new website. “Baking in the SEO” as part of the site’s foundation is the concept we at Blue Horseradish use with clients – websites can be optimized after they have already been launched, but SEO is much more effective when done from the beginning. Think of it in terms of building a new house – would you ever start construction without having the architecture drawings done so the builder knows what to do? No, of course not. Therefore, follow the same logic for your company website.

This is not just us talking: Google also recommends the use of an SEO resource to help businesses maximize the potential of their websites.

“If you’re thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you’re considering a site redesign or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up.” Source: Google Search Console Help:

Here are multiple ways SEO can benefit your business:

Site Traffic

One of the functions that SEO is directly associated with is website traffic generation. The more people you get to your website, the more opportunity for sales and leads i.e. more business.

An SEO company will help to identify the major content, architecture, usability and technical opportunities for a new or existing website.

Search Engine Presence

To achieve the generation of more site traffic, you need to earn top positions in and leverage search engine results.

You can increase the traffic your site receives by creating and optimizing content to appear in the search results that will benefit your business.

Target Audiences

The traffic you drive to your site needs to be qualified and interested in your content, products or services. Keyword research is a vital component of SEO because the data exposes what your buyer audience is searching for, what they are interested in and topics to provide on your website to attract them.

Keyword research results in establishing a keyword strategy that is used to drive traffic at multiple stages of the buyer journey.

Adapting to Change

Google implements minor algorithm changes every day. Larger updates are also consistent every 3-6 months. Any active business in the aftermath of the Panda and Penguin updates knows some of the larger updates can severely impact businesses that are doing the wrong things or not staying up to date.

A good SEO company continually adjusts to the latest changes that improve search visibility and businesses dedicated to growing and sustaining their companies understand the positive value of such an approach.

Protect Search Results

Many people initially hire SEO companies to be on the offence. Strategies are laid out to make gains in ranking and traffic generation. However, upon achieving some of the goals, you want to protect those ranking positions from competitors trying to leapfrog or replace your company in the results.

Strategic Approach to Growth

Every website should have an established keyword and content strategy with goals to accomplish. Those plans allow your company to budget time and resources to achieve the desired results.

This also gives you a working model for identifying where things work well and where they can be improved. Without measuring performance it’s difficult to ascertain the true impact of your SEO efforts.

Earn More Money

For your company to make more money requires multiple investments: time, resources and funding focused on that goal.  SEO is a critical component of that formula. If you want your company to increase sales, you need to increase the number of leads or sales your website generates.

Despite cutbacks in spending, businesses still invest in SEO. In fact, the interest in and value of SEO is rising due to the pandemic, economic fallout from the virus and, on the flip side, new opportunities for companies to seize. The future may be uncertain, but many companies are changing vendors, previously restricted markets are opening and new industries are being created overnight to meet our challenges.

Search engine optimization puts your website in front of more people, more often. To capitalize on the increasing number of people searching, your site needs to be competitive online to maximize your ability to earn more money and credibility.

SEO Requires Investment and Collaboration

The need to optimize and sustain your website’s performance is obvious and urgent.

If you are serious about the short and long term growth of your business, invest in the performance of your website. To do that most effectively, you need a SEO company to help you plan, make decisions and execute effectively.

Please contact us for assistance with any of your SEO service needs.

The post Why Does Your Business Need SEO? appeared first on Blue Horseradish.

Best Practices for Optimizing Page Load Speed
Google has signaled page load speed is a ranking factor used by its algorithm. Research has surfaced indicating Google might be specifically measuring time to first byte to evaluate a website’s page load speed. If your website performs poorly for page load speed, it can impact everything from indexing and ranking your pages on the search engines, but also how visitors engage with your content and the effectiveness of your lead generation and e-commerce programs.

Studies ranging from internet user feedback to technical examinations of back end processes have pretty consistently highlighted how poor page load speed can turn people off, make them stay away and hurt business growth. The following are Neil Patel nuggets from a recent article:

A one second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.

If an e-commerce site is making $100,000 per day, a one second page delay could potentially cost you $2.5 million in lost sales every year.

73% of mobile internet users say that they’ve encountered a website that was too slow to load.
51% of mobile internet users say that they’ve encountered a website that froze or received an error.
38% of mobile internet users say that they’ve encountered a website that wasn’t available.
47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.
40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.

As you can see, some hair raising data on the importance of optimizing and keeping optimized your website’s page load speed. Other user experience issues can also be impacted: pages with a longer load time tend to have higher bounce rates and lower average time on page.

Tips to improve your page load speed:

Enable compression
Use Gzip, a software application for file compression, to reduce the size of your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files larger than 150 bytes.

Do not use gzip on image files. Instead, compress these in a program like Photoshop where you can retain control over the quality of the image.

Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
By optimizing your code (including removing spaces, commas, and other unnecessary characters), you can dramatically increase your page speed. Also remove code comments, formatting, and unused code.

Reduce unnecessary page redirects
Each time a page redirects to another page, your visitor has to wait for the HTTP request to be completed. 301 redirects are necessary for good SEO so this process requires a balancing act, but each extreme (too many redirects or not enough to avoid site errors) is not recommended.

Remove render-blocking JavaScript
Browsers have to build a DOM tree by parsing HTML before they can render a page. If your browser encounters a script during this process, it has to stop and execute it before it can continue.

Google suggests avoiding and minimizing the use of blocking JavaScript.

Leverage browser caching
Browsers cache a lot of information (stylesheets, images, JavaScript files, and more) so that when a visitor comes back to your site, the browser doesn’t have to reload the entire page. Then set your “expires” header for how long you want that information to be cached. In many cases, unless your site design changes frequently, a year is a reasonable time period.

Improve server response time
Your server response time is affected by the amount of traffic you receive, the resources each page uses, the software your server uses, and the hosting solution you use. To improve your server response time, look for performance bottlenecks like slow database queries, slow routing, or a lack of adequate memory and fix them. The optimal server response time is under 200ms.

Use a content distribution network
Content distribution networks (CDNs), also called content delivery networks, are networks of servers that are used to distribute the load of delivering content. Essentially, copies of your site are stored at multiple, geographically diverse data centers so that users have faster and more reliable access to your site.

Optimize images
Be sure that your images are no larger than they need to be, that they are in the right file format (PNGs are generally better for graphics with fewer than 16 colors while JPEGs are generally better for photographs) and that they are compressed for the web.

Use CSS sprites to create a template for images that you use frequently on your site like buttons and icons. CSS sprites combine your images into one large image that loads all at once (which means fewer HTTP requests) and then display only the sections that you want to show. This means that you are saving load time by not making users wait for multiple images to load.

Tools to evaluate page load speed

You can evaluate your page speed with Google’s PageSpeed Insights. I also recommend GT Metrix and Pingdom Tools to gather recommendations and figure out how to address these issues.

Please contact us for any assistance with optimizing your company’s website performance or with questions of any of our other internet marketing services.

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Similar to the migration to https and other Google initiatives, this process has been years in the making. Google started the mobile first indexing process in 2016 and has been implementing the transition in stages since then. The end is now finally in sight.

Google stated, “To simplify, we’ll be switching to mobile-first indexing for all websites starting September 2020.” Confirmation of whether your site has been moved already can be done by using Google Search Console’s reporting feature.

Furthermore, Google also stated, “From our analysis, most sites shown in search results are good to go for mobile-first indexing, and 70% of those shown in our search results have already shifted over,” This means most sites have likely already been moved over to mobile first indexing.

If your site has not been transitioned yet, you may receive a notice from Google with more information. Below is a screen shot of a standard notice:

This is important because now there is a true deadline: September 2020. If you get one of these notices, be prepared to take action. If Google has issues with accessing your site with their mobile crawler, that could impact your indexing and ranking of your website pages.

Please contact us for assistance with your SEO and internet marketing needs.

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Credit cards need to be updated or changed for many reasons, ranging from simple expiration to the increase in security and fraud issues. The company may get a call from the bank or card company stating there has been suspicious activity or the company may notice bogus charges and contact them. Either way, the common action is to deactivate the old card, issue a new card and hopefully stay one step ahead. Sounds reasonable, right?

Absolutely reasonable, but most overlook and have not kept track of what services, accounts, tools etc. that credit card was used on and thus what will now be BROKEN due to changing the card. The longer the credit card has been utilized, the more things it was likely used for and the more things that need to be updated.

In the web marketing realm specifically, some of the common services painfully affected by a company credit card change can include:

• Web Site Hosting Accounts
• Paid Advertising Accounts
• Domain Name Registration Accounts

These are all vital to marketing and sales – if the regular monthly hosting payments cannot be processed by the host due to the deactivated card and no new card has been provided, the site may be taken down until payment is completed. I think we can all imagine the consequences of a company website not being available to current and prospective customers – the potential revenue and public relations losses alone should make people hyper aware. The potential loss of a company’s domain name is even worse. If the domain name expires and is scooped up by another party or, heaven forbid, a competitor, due to a credit card change, there could be significant damage to the company.

Writing from first hand experience, we recently had to assist a client who had changed their company card connected to both the domain name registration and web site hosting accounts. The change was not communicated to us until considerable time had passed and problems started to arise. As we looked into the situation, we discovered the site had been taken down due to non-payment, the domain name registration was days away from expiration and they also urgently needed to renew their SSL certificate for their online store. Thankfully, we were able to rectify those issues and save them from substantial damage, but it reminded us of how a simple action such as changing a company credit card can have far reaching repercussions and how many do not fully appreciate that reality. We highly recommend keeping records on how company credit cards are used and make sure someone is responsible for following through on updating the credit card on all the relevant sources immediately.

Please contact us for help with your SEO, paid search advertising and any other internet marketing programs. 

The post Overlooked Business Consequences When Changing Company Credit Cards appeared first on Blue Horseradish.

Each audience have different purposes for visiting a website, but the common theme is both look for relevant and valuable information that convinces them a particular company is a good resource and offers valid products or services within a certain niche.

People want to find the best solution for the problem or need they are trying to address and the search engines work to reward the company websites that provide those best solutions by ranking them highly for the relevant keyword searches.

The SEO copywriter must satisfy these needs by providing that relevant and natural information in a persuasive yet soft-handed manner for both audiences. Very few appreciate a hard sales pitch anymore especially when the information presented leaves out important details or is focused primarily on the marketing aspect. At Blue Horseradish, we recommend copywriting focused on people and the educational aspect primarily and believe writing in a natural way works best for the search engines as well.

A recent interview by Karon Thackston, president of the Marketing Words, Inc. web and SEO copywriting agency and author of the Step-By-Step Copywriting Course, with Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam Team, reinforces this approach. Previously, a popular practice for keyword optimization focused on repeating exact keyword phrases throughout the page copy to match the specific phrase a person used and achieve a high ranking on the search engines.

For instance, if a person searched for ”marine force sensors” the copy would include that phrase multiple times and in multiple places on the web page. Now, Matt Cutts states including the exact phrase is not as necessary and that page copy that naturally includes the exact phrase and “marine”, “force” and “sensors” separately would be optimal matches and could receive positive results.

Karon Thackston asked several very relevant questions that get to the heart of this approach in her interview:

KARON: Can you confirm and/or comment on whether keyphrases always need to be used in their original form and if it helps or hurts to also use the words within the phrase?

MATT: Keyphrases don’t have to be in their original form. We do a lot of synonym work so that we can find good pages that don’t happen to use the same words as the user typed.

In general, though, if the words are on the web page (not in a spammy way, of course), that makes our job easier because we don’t have to rely on synonym matches to find good documents.

KARON: Has proximity of the keywords on the page also gone by the wayside? And, while we’re on the topic, is it still best practice to include keywords in certain locations on the page? For instance:

1. Headline 2. Subheads 3. Alt tags 4. Anchor text link Etc.

MATT: People can overdo it to the point that we consider it keyword stuffing, and it hurts. I would just make sure you do it in natural ways where regular people aren’t going to find it stiff or artificial. That tends to be what works best.

KARON: So, then, you’re saying perhaps put the original keyphrase on the page once or twice (to help Google out), and then just use the individual words within the phrase throughout the rest of the copy? If so, that’s what I’ve been suggesting for years.

In light of all the recent changes with Google, would using the keyphrase numerous times (which is what everybody has gotten used to doing over time) hurt the page’s ability to rank? I’m not talking about the infamous keyword density. For years most people have been taught that you do keyword research to find what people are searching for, and then you use those phrases (provided they are relevant) within your copy, within anchor text links, etc., etc. Still true or…?

MATT: Correct, as long as it’s done naturally, not artificially or in a spammy way.

As I’ve always said, “Never sacrifice the quality of your copy for the sake of the search engines.” It’s just not necessary. The next time you write a new page of copy, test this approach to writing for the engines and see if you get as good (or better) results than before. I’m betting you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

That last quote by Matt Cutts tells the tale in a nutshell. Write natural and relevant copy for people and the value will be obvious to them and the search engines. Contact us for any help with your SEO copywriting needs.

The post SEO Copywriting for Google: Natural & Relevant is Best appeared first on Blue Horseradish.

How does this relate to B2B marketing and Pinterest in particular? Because Pinterest presents visuals extremely well and images, videos, infographics etc. are only becoming more important as marketing tools for all businesses including B2B. I wanted to provide several ways B2B companies can utilize Pinterest to help with website traffic, lead generation, social networking and branding while also having some fun along the way.

First, what is Pinterest? Pinterest is a platform that allows companies and users to organize and share visual content they either developed themselves or gathered from another source to share. This content can range from graphics to photos to videos to infographics to book covers to Excel charts and everything in between. Each visual item is added or “pinned” on virtual boards based around specific topics.

For example, manufacturers or other B2B companies could pin pictures, videos and infographics to promote their products and services in multiple ways:

• As part of a regular sales pitch to prospects for a specific product or service
• To introduce a new product or service offering
• To highlight a special limited time promotion

However, Pinterest can also be used to assist in recruiting and human resources efforts. Many talk about how a particular company culture was one of the things that helped convince them to work for their employer. Pinterest, since it is based on visuals, is a great tool to provide insights into a company’s culture. The visuals can show how people work and celebrate together, what values are important to a company and why working there could be beneficial. Companies that genuinely express their values visually can engage prospective candidates quickly and even make contacts with talent they did not know was available.

Like all social media outlets, Pinterest’s value to a manufacturer or B2B company depends on how it is utilized to showcase the company’s strengths, reinforce the brand and communicate how they are the best resource in their particular field or industry. What is put in does impact what a company gets out of Pinterest – if a company puts little effort into creating a community, it will likely not happen on its own whereas if a sincere and consistent effort is undertaken, the chances of realizing value increases. In addition, more and more people see visuals (pictures, videos etc.) as important in their decision making process. That should place Pinterest on any sales or marketing person’s radar.

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