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Google My Business: How to Claim Your Listing

Austin Heiberg — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 19:57:48 +0000

Running a local business has never been easy.

You have enough on your mind with day-to-day operations and small emergencies, so maintaining your online presence probably seems like a daunting challenge.

Google has taken steps toward making the process much more streamlined, though. With the suite of features collectively known as Google My Business, you can dramatically improve your odds of being found through organic search, boosting site traffic, and attracting customers with the intent to convert. Let’s look at how to get started on Google My Business.

Getting Started Is Free

To begin the process of claiming your Google My Business listing, all you need is a free Google account. If you use a Gmail address, good news – you’re already on your way. Head to google.com/business and click the “Manage Now” button. Start typing in the name of your business to see if it autocompletes. If it does so, then it’s ready to be claimed. If not, you’ll simply be creating a new listing.

You’ll then be asked for more details, such as your most recent, updated website, your phone number, and the category/industry your business falls into. Make sure these are all as accurate as possible, as any discrepancies can prompt the need to make changes down the line, which will then need to be re-verified. Ordinarily, this might not be a problem, but it’s important to note that in most cases, Google’s business verification policy contains an offline element that can be time-consuming.

When you finish the process of creating a listing or claiming an existing listing, Google’s verification code will most likely come to you in the form of a postcard, sent by Google to the address that you’ve listed for your business. Once the postcard arrives, you can log back into Google My Business and use the five-digit code on the card to confirm any changes to your listing. These postcards usually arrive within 14 days of being requested.

For a select few businesses, other verification options exist. When finishing your claim, you may see options to verify by phone or email. Additionally, if you’ve already verified your business website on Google Search Console, you may see an option to instantly verify your My Business claim.

What GMB Can Do For You

The Google My Business suite is packed with features that let you provide important details and customer engagement, even before a potential customer clicks through to your site. Here are just a few of the benefits:

Detail: Apart from the location of your business, you can also let customers know your hours of operation. This information is automatically integrated with Google Maps, meaning that local users will have an accurate idea of when and where to visit.
Search Visibility: When you search for a local product or service, you’ll often see a high-visibility panel at the top of the results page displaying a map and three relevant businesses. This panel is known as the “three-pack,” and it is populated with Google My Business information. Claiming your GMB listing and filling out detailed, relevant information can get your business into the three-pack, where it will be seen by many more users.
Photos: Need to show customers the interior of your restaurant, hair salon, or other local business? Adding images to your GMB listing will show users that your business is more than just an address. Show off the unique intricacies of your business and set yourself apart from the competition.
Reputation Management: There’s a dedicated section in the Google My Business suite for reviews, as well. Thank customers for their positive feedback, or respond directly to customers leaving bad reviews and offer to set things right.
Analytic Information: Google My Business also features an Insights section that lets business owners track visibility, engagement, and audience details. You’ll be able to see how your site is performing across demographics like age, gender, geographical area, and more.

In conclusion, local search traffic is driven by users with a high level of intent to convert.

In order to meet them halfway, you’ll need a fully realized business listing. Google My Business is a free and easy tool that increases search visibility and presents a more complete version of your business profile to interested searchers. If you haven’t claimed your GMB listing yet, you’re missing out on a lot.

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Fact or Fiction: SEO is Going to Die

Joseph Piñeiro — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 18:10:13 +0000

Let’s cut the suspense.

SEO is not dying.

As long as people want to search for queries on the internet, there will be search engines.

As long as search engines exist, webmasters will need to optimize for search engine algorithms.

With this being the case, why do you keep hearing that SEO is dying or dead?

One reason people tend to (mistakingly) think SEO is dying is that…

SEO is Ever-Evolving

What it takes to get content to rank has been evolving since the creation of search engines. As search engines get better, what they look for in a piece of good content has changed. Some take this to mean that, eventually, they’ll get so good that we’ll no longer need SEO.

There are a number of reasons why these assumptions are off base. The most obvious is that the number of internet searches continues to skyrocket. More internet searches only mean SEO will become even more important.

Search engines will keep changing. However, they will always need to rank their results based on metrics. With that being the case, we will always need to optimize our websites for those metrics, no matter what they are.

Webmasters will always need to optimize for the metrics search engines value.

The only way to have search engines without SEO is to feature results purely based off bids, meaning all results would be ads. No internet user wants that, and everyone would boycott any search engine that did.

Before we dive deep into why SEO won’t die anytime soon, let’s go over how it has evolved. Here are some SEO strategies that have died and some that have stood the test of time.

Which ones died and which lived was (and is) largely determined by which metrics Google placed the most value on.

Outdated SEO Strategies

Linkbuilding for Sheer Quantity

SEO strategies go in and out of practice every year. Linkbuilding for quantity alone, for example, was one of the most successful strategies only a few years ago. Now, it’s on Google’s list of black hat practices.

Today, if you simply try to get as many links as possible without caring about the quality, you more likely to do harm than good. You might even get a Google penalty and no longer be indexed. Quality now matters far more than quantity.

Quality links from authoritative, trustworthy sites are what matter most.

Keyword Stuffing

The same is true with keyword stuffing. A decade ago, you used to be able to rank on the first page just by putting in the keyword you wanted to rank for as many times as you could. Not anymore.

Now, it’s better to optimize your pages and posts for user experience and to increase the average time users spend on a page. If you have the top result and Google notices users are bouncing from your page and clicking on the result below you, that page will overtake yours in no time.

SEO Strategies That Aren’t Going Anywhere

Playing the Long Game

SEO experts agree that focusing on the long-term is the name of the game. Getting a page to rank on the first page of SERPs for any meaningful keyword takes time. Usually at least a year.

The internet as a whole getting older, and it’s almost inconceivable that page history will ever be devalued as a metric. It’s not going to get any easier to dethrone first page results that have been there for months or even years.

An excellent way to play the SEO long game is to write high-quality content that stays relevant.

Writing High-Quality Content

Readers can tell when content on your site isn’t written by experts. You used to be able to pay a freelancer 20 dollars to write a blog post that would rank on Google. Not anymore.

If you want your content to rank, it needs to be long (preferably over 1,000 words), well-written, and structured for great user experience. On top of that, you’ll probably have to share it via every channel you can think of.

This might be more work, but it will pay off in the long run. And the long run matters, because…

SEO Isn’t Going to Die

Search engines are getting better. This makes ranking well on them more difficult. You have to write content that’s high-quality, thorough, and user-friendly. All of this is good news. It means that, when searching, you’ll have a better user experience for the results you see on Google.

The fact that SEO changes as fast as any vertical doesn’t mean it’s on the way out. Does it mean SEO will continue to get more complicated? Probably. Does it mean it will die? Not in the near or distant future.

As long as there are search engines, there will be search engine optimization. Search engines want webmasters to know and execute SEO best practices. It makes search engines more efficient. Google even has SEO guides that outline how to, in their own words, “make it easier for search engines to crawl, index and understand your content.”

SEO won’t die. Search engines won’t let it.

Partner with Us for Your Search Engine Optimization

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What Is Schema Markup?

Austin Heiberg — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 19:00:51 +0000

When establishing online presence for yourself or your clients, one of the most important questions will always be “Are people going to be able to find this?”

After all, a beautifully designed website with engaging content means very little if it ends up kneecapped by improperly indexed pages and site errors. The devil is in the details when it comes to the visibility of a page, and one of these details is known as schema markup.

Schema Basics

Schema markup is a set of microdata that can be placed within the code of a website. Personnel from top search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex – collaborated on this form of microdata and introduced Schema.org in 2011. Once embedded, search engines read schema markup and return a richer, more detailed description of a site on search engine result pages (SERPs).

In essence, schema markup is a tool to provide context among the vast amount of information that search engines return. For example, let’s say a local restaurant and a local fitness studio have, by chance, ended up with very similar names. This is where schema markup comes in handy – it is the tool that search engines use to intelligently classify and separate entries, thereby delivering effectively tailored results.

No Detail Too Small

Continuing with the above example, good schema acts as a nametag where you can list as much identifying information as you like.

New listings are also introduced periodically. The more recent additions include job postings, recipes, movie times, and academic courses. In short, adding schema markup to your site is a relatively easy way to inform search engines what you and your site are all about. As far as the best practices of SEO optimization go, it’s a crucial step that often goes overlooked.

E.g. “This local business is a restaurant, it is located at ___________, and it is open seven days a week.” The major types of schema listings are as follows:

Local Business
Person
Product
Event
Organization
Website

The categories Local Business, Event, and Organization also have subcategories for greater detail. Additionally, you can list information about:

Street address
Latitude and longitude
Hours of operation
Phone number
Product rating/reviews
Company/organization logos

Easier Than You Might Think

Schema markup is certainly beneficial, but you may be wondering how much of a chore it is to implement. Fortunately, there are a good amount of online resources that do much of the legwork for you. Schema markup generators are tools that will essentially write code for you; all you have to do is enter the information you want listed, and the generator will return a block of code. Schema generators save considerable time and effort, especially if you find writing your own code to be tedious work.

Schema and Business Benefits

The contextualization of search results is helpful on its own, but when optimizing a business site, the rewards of using schema markup can go even deeper. Google actually gives priority to “rich results” (formerly known as “rich snippets” or “rich cards”) when returning information. And perhaps most critically, schema markup is proven to bolster the quality of user traffic. At the 2017 Google I/O conference, some impressive findings on the effects of schema were revealed. Across several websites in varying industries, effective schema markup results in higher time on page, lower bounce rates, and increased conversions.

Good schema markup also acts as a measure of futureproofing. The analytics company ComScore estimates that half of all search queries will be voice searches by 2020, which is approaching quicker than you might think. Luckily, Google automatically makes schema searchable by home assistant technology like Alexa. And furthermore, schema code is often used by chatbots to deliver more pertinent answers to users.

To summarize, schema markup is a quiet power player on your site. It provides context for search engines, improves the quality of your traffic, and leaves you well-prepared for future developments in the world of SEO. With all the benefits it provides, it’s truly a vital component of your website.

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Is Evergreen Content the Solution to Your SEO Problems?

Joseph Piñeiro — Mon, 12 Nov 2018 18:15:14 +0000

Content marketing is the most important piece of SEO. Creating evergreen content may be your most powerful content marketing tactic.

You’re likely familiar with content marketing. It’s a long-term content strategy that uses high-quality content published on a consistent basis to build a personal relationship with your target audience.

You might be less familiar with the phrase “evergreen content.”

What is Evergreen Content?

Most content doesn’t stay “fresh” forever. Not even close.

The vast majority of content vanishes into search engine obscurity.

It might lose relevance. Better content may outrank it. The content might become so outdated it’s no longer true. Whatever it may be, most content has an expiration date.

How do you make content that’s evergreen?

Around three million blog posts are published daily. Thankfully, most of these posts are absolute trash (technically speaking). They’re short posts, poorly written by non-experts about time-sensitive topics. This simplifies surpassing them in search engines.

The majority of content gets the most views right it’s published. Then, fewer and fewer people see it every day. This seems like a fool’s approach to content marketing. Wasn’t this supposed to be a long-term strategy?

In contrast, evergreen content generates more and more traffic every day. It does so by staying relevant longer than average content does.

Staying relevant for a while is one thing, but how do you stay relevant year after year?

How to Write Evergreen Content in 6 Simple Steps

1. Pick a Topic That’s Always in Style

Your topic and your headline are the most important decisions for your content. This is especially true when it comes to thinking of evergreen content ideas.

Many topics go in and out of fashion faster than you can say fidget spinner. Pick a topic that’s so classic it’s always relevant to your audience.

Avoid articles about news, trends, pop culture, and anything that tends to have an expiration date. It’s important to capitalize on trending topics with other articles, but they won’t work well as evergreen content.

When choosing your evergreen content topic, use your best judgment. Ask yourself the question, “Will this be relevant to my audience in six months?”

2. Choose a Format Conducive to Evergreen Content

Your audience prefers reading certain content formats over others.

Evergreen content tends to be certain formats more than others.

Choose formats that satisfy both of these criteria.

No matter your industry, people prefer formats such as “how to” tutorials, resource lists, product reviews, and reference guides time and time again.

Writing in these formats won’t automatically ensure your content retains relevancy. Evergreen content requires additional work. One of the most time-consuming aspects of this work is making it longer.

3. Create Long-form Blog Posts

You can’t produce much value for your readers in short, 300-word blog posts. To do that, you’ll need to create articles ten times as long. Long-form content ranks better than its shorter counterpart just about every time.

Fact: the average length of the top result Google is over 2,000 words.

This is largely because user intent for most search queries is for a comprehensive answer. A result that leaves no stone unturned.

You can’t write a comprehensive answer in 300 words. You also can’t use shortcuts to rank first on Google. That’s why evergreen content needs to be long-form.

4. Keep it Up to Date

Content maintenance is the most often neglected phase of content marketing. It’s not as sexy as writing a new article. You don’t get excited about revisiting old content as you would exploring a new topic.

Yet, evergreen content should be some of your top performing pages. If a page is that good at driving traffic, don’t you want it to be up to date?

You can save yourself a lot of time here by creating content that seldom needs to be updated. Using the formats we went through above should keep you in good shape.

Still, you should add to “how-to” guides and resource lists to make them even more comprehensive and up to date. This will help you in your rankings. Google prefers content that is fresh and accurate.

5. Write With Simplicity

Your readers aren’t experts.

You want your readers to comprehend your writing.

Don’t write for experts.

In general, people on the internet tend to enjoy reading content written at about a 9th-grade level. This means short sentences.

It also means you don’t need to use a lot of twenty-dollar words. You don’t need to use “superlative” when “great” or “excellent” will do just fine.

Getting your point across is more important than being clever. You have to kill your darlings. Some readers won’t understand the last sentence’s meaning. That proves the point.

It also helps to write short paragraphs. These help to break up your long-form content and make it more visually appealing. Try to keep your paragraphs no longer than four lines.

6. It Has to be the Best at Answering its Query

Google’s goal is always to provide users with the best result for their query. If you do everything else right but fail to produce quality content, it will still never rank well.

When someone clicks on your page and leaves immediately, Google is watching. This metric, known as bounce rate, is one of the most important factors in their rankings.

Popular topics in your industry have probably been covered already. They’ve probably been covered hundreds of times. Don’t worry. Do your keyword research and you’ll find a long-tail keyword with no standout result. Create an article for this keyword with your own unique spin, and you may have yourself an evergreen article.

Conclusion

Making evergreen content takes more work than your average, 300-500 word blog post. It involves more research, writing, and upkeep. Though it isn’t the easy way to create evergreen content, every extra second you spend pays off.

No other type of content yields more backlinks. This helps evergreen content to rank higher on Google and drive more traffic for your website.

The evergreen content strategy is killer for SEO. With a little patience and time, it will produce far better results than shorter content that fades away. If you want a sustainable, long-lasting content marketing strategy, write evergreen content.

Partner with Us for Your Content Strategy

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Your Organic Conversion Funnel Just Got Shorter

Linda Vasquez — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 21:56:08 +0000

Google is pushing booking and scheduling services through local search results.

In the spirit of making all of our searches quick and user-friendly, Google is now showing “book” or “schedule” buttons on some local search results. Businesses that offer online scheduling can integrate their software with the Reserve With Google feature.

Google’s been testing booking appointments through search since 2015. It’s unclear if this feature is still in beta or test at the moment but for now, it’s available.

Why It’s Useful

In an era where faster and relevant results are in demand, it’s important for businesses to stay ahead of the curve. Dominate your market and offer faster booking through local search. We already know more and more people are opting for mobile search and mobile-friendly search results.

With a couple of quick clicks, you’ve got users booking appointments and converting a lot faster than if they browsed your website or saw your ads.

You can dominate throughout Google’s ecosystem.

How It Works

Local search results, in both desktop and mobile, will show you either a Book or Schedule button that’ll take you straight to that result’s booking engine.

Janet St. Paul Studio’s listing has the scheduling feature.

Once you click this local hair salon listing, you’ll see options to choose what type of service and when to schedule it.

Select "schedule" where available

Choose your type of service

Select your desired date and time

How To Get This

If you currently have scheduling services through any one of Google’s partners (Full Slate, Genbook, Appointy — see if yours is on here), then you’re included. If not, stay in the loop because they have plenty more partners coming soon.

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Why is it Important to Switch to HTTPS?

James Yaria — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 17:35:10 +0000

Web security is a crucial element to the overall health of your site. Security ensures users can access your site safely, preferably through HTTPS instead of HTTP. HTTPS or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, adds a layer of protection to your website, making it harder to theoretically peer into your website and capture sensitive user information.

As of 2018, Google Chrome is taking security a step further by being more prominent about pointing out unsecure websites.

Think of it this way: HTTPS works by creating a secret between you and the website you’re trying to use.

What is HTTPS and How Does it Work?

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure uses a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate, to encrypt the data shared between you and the receiver. The SSL Certificate is a code that scrambles the information, so that information can only be viewed between a sender and recipient.

Confusing? Think of it this way: HTTPS works by creating a secret between you and the website you’re trying to use. No one other than you and the website knows this secret, so if anyone tries to look at what’s happening, it’ll come across as scrambled. This is extremely important not just when handling sensitive information like credit cards, but for general viewing safety.

What’s happening with Chrome?

Alphabet (Google’s parent company) recently announced that as of October 2017, Chrome version 62.x and higher will start displaying websites that aren’t secured with HTTPS with a “Not Secure” signifier next to the URL.
For now, this will only be shown when entering data during normal viewing, but will show at page load and when entering data for incognito viewing.

What about other browsers?

So far, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer/Edge currently aren’t displaying anything prominent when a page isn’t secure, but that doesn’t mean that won’t change in the future.
Each browser does display a padlock when a page has HTTPS and is secure, but they don’t show anything if using HTTP.

What do pages using only http: look like in Chrome?

In regular browser windows, non-secured HTTP pages will load normally, until someone interacts with the page. If you start typing in information, filling something out, checking on a button, the Not Secure signifier will appear. Refreshing the page removes this signifier until the page is interacted with again.
During incognito browsing, the Not Secure signifier will appear and stay immediately during page-load, and will remain for as long as you’re on the site.

Are HTTP security warnings happening on mobile? Android?

As of October 2017, this update has not gone live to chrome for Mobile, or for Android. Alphabet has not yet announced when/if this change will be pushed to Chrome for Mobile and Android.

Why you need to switch to HTTPS

If you’re not already using HTTPS, it’s time to get with the times. 71% of pages are loaded via HTTPS already according to Google’s HTTPS Transparency Report. Alphabet has made it clear that they plan on pushing the greater world-wide web to jump to HTTPS ASAP.

What does having HTTPS mean for your web traffic?

Although it’s currently not actively harming webpages, seeing a “Not Secure” pop-up when interacting with a web page can stop potential customers from filling out forms or buying something online. With HTTPS, your website delivers a better user experience.

How HTTPS Can Impact Your Digital Marketing

As of 2014, HTTPS is a ranking signal in Google. This means that having HTTPS can give your site a bit of a boost, especially when competing for top spots in competitive environments.
From an Adwords perspective, having HTTPS on your landing page can increase your quality score for ads in Adwords. Higher quality scores mean lower cost per conversions on average, which means that adding HTTPS can help lower the cost of your leads slightly long-term.

How do I switch to HTTPS?

Switching to HTTPS can often be done as part of most hosting packages, and can often be added for free or at a low cost through various methods. Before switching, make sure your hosting environment uses a dedicated IP address, and not a shared address. This is necessary to get an SSL certificate. To switch to HTTPS:

Acquire an SSL certificate. This can be done for free through sites like https://letsencrypt.org/ or can be paid for through most hosting providers.
Generate and Install a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) in your hosting control panel. This is necessary to create the public and private keys that compose the handshake that makes your SSL certificate. Your hosting provider may do this step for you, if you’re purchasing SSL through them.
Update your http to https sitewide. Now that you have an SSL certificate installed and working, you need to make sure that all of the unsecured links are updated sitewide to your secured links.
Ensure that all the elements on your page are secure. Linking to unsecure elements can negate website security, so in order to have your secure site be fully locked down, all the elements on the page, and associated links must be secure as well. If you’re having trouble with this step, https://www.whynopadlock.com/ is a great tool to help find anything that’s keeping your site from being totally secure.

With the growing ease and availability of HTTPS, there’s no reason not to secure your website immediately. Get started today.

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Why Your Business Needs a Technical SEO Audit

James Yaria — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 21:48:17 +0000

A technical SEO audit is one of the most powerful resources you can invest in for your website.

In today’s evolving digital ecosystem, it’s important to keep your website aligned with the current best practices and industry standards. The goal of a comprehensive SEO technical audit is just that – to analyze your site’s architecture, evaluate its current standing, and provide recommendations to bring your site in line with current standards. Objectively, this will yield recovery and growth of your site’s organic traffic, achieve quick wins, establish healthy fundamentals, create a baseline, and uncover obstructions to conversion. A technical SEO audit will allow for the identification of issues that could work against future SEO initiatives, and as a result, hinder business growth.

The ultimate goal is to provide a technically sound website with content that search spiders can easily crawl, and consumers can easily find in organic search.

For our site audits, we have developed a formulaic methodology that evaluates seven key dimensions:

Content quality
Technical and UX quality
Link analysis
Social quality
Analytics
Local search
Mobile

Each of these dimensions are evaluated and scored based on a statistical model where scores are weighted for overall importance and potential negative impact, then an overall score for each section is calculated.

Once the audit is complete, we deliver a summarized presentation of our insights and analysis, with actionable and prioritized next steps. This deliverable serves as a great starting point for creating a holistic digital strategy, yet also serves as a great tool for routine maintenance checks on your website by dissecting the innermost layers of your business’ online presence.

Content Quality

Good, quality content is key to building a website with strong SEO. Making sure a site’s content is rich and valuable for users plays a strong role in your overall rankings and website health. Additional factors include your meta descriptions, and keyword structure. Keywords can have a negative impact if overused or used too loosely, and the difference between rich and thin content can rely on keyword use. Combing through content with a strong editorial eye can set your site up for continued future success.

Technical and UX Quality

Apart from the content, it’s important that your website is technically sound and can deliver a good user experience, while still maintaining search engine crawlability. This dimension looks for how technically optimized a website is, as well as for any manual penalties on the site. Diving into sitemaps, proper redirects, canonical tags, and many other factors can uncover how strong the technical quality of a website is.

Link Analysis

What kind of websites does your site have linking to it? Is it a healthy, colorful gamut of different links across your vertical, or is it filled with spam and poor quality links? Links play such a vital role in search engine rankings and overall site authority, it’s important to take a thorough, deep look at links to see if there’s any that may be dragging your site down.

Your brand’s place in social media can offer good signals as to the total health of your site. Making sure your Facebook, Twitter and other channels are up-to-date, and engaging with your audience is important to maintaining a quality web presence. Ensuring every social platform matches your website and brand creates a more thorough, diverse space for people to find and interact with you.

Analytics

How much do you really know about how your site is performing if you’re not using Google Analytics to track every detail of your site? Diving into your analytics can help find weak points and track trends, which can help bolster a strong SEO strategy. Seeing historical data can show growth, and find areas of improvement on your site, so future campaigns can fully realize expectations.

Local Search

If your business has physical locations, showing up in local search results makes it easier to be found, and for people nearby to use your services. Ensuring your address is in the map pack, and taking a close look on what your local profile and engagement looks like can really drive new and recurring business.

Mobile Design

Now that over half of searches occur from smartphones, auditing website responsiveness and mobile-readiness can help take a detailed look at how people are viewing your site on the go. Making sure that a site is designed for mobile first is a tell-tale indicator that a site is prepared for the future in our rapidly mobilizing search world.

Through deep-diving into these seven key areas, a technical SEO audit can help find where your website is succeeding, what areas can be improved, and find new campaigns and opportunities for future growth.

Developing your online business model is an extremely lucrative investment in the future of your business.

Get started by filling out our form today!

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The Ultimate Guide to Using Yelp for Small Businesses (Updated Aug. 2017)

James Yaria — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 12:55:52 +0000

Introduction

Gathering reviews from your customers has become a crucial part of maintaining a successful business. As a potential customer starts looking with intent at different businesses, it’s likely that they’ll see and browse through reviews to help make a better informed decision about the service they’re looking for. There’s a power involved with reviews for businesses that makes it integral for businesses to flourish.

Enter Yelp. Yelp is one of the largest review platforms on the internet (along with Facebook and Google) and certainly the largest website to focus on reviews specifically. If you’re having trouble finding a restaurant, service, or niche business, Yelp is a powerful website to find the right business for a customer’s needs.

Table of contents

Introduction
Why are reviews important?
How to claim your business page
What if my business is already claimed?
What are reviews that are not recommended?
How to respond to a yelp review
When to add public comments and when to use direct message
Dos and Don’ts of Responding to Reviews
How to remove a review
How to get more Yelp reviews
Dos and Don’ts of Acquiring Reviews
How to write a review
How do reviews help SEO?

Why Are Yelp Reviews So Important?

Having good customer reviews is important because it builds trust with your audience. If your website and promotions say that you’re the best in town and the best value in the industry but your reviews online say consistently otherwise, your business will suffer. Businesses with overwhelmingly negative reviews online simply do not perform as well as competitors with better reviews. In addition, reviews are correlated with improvements in local SEO.

That’s not to say every single review needs to be a bright, glowing review. Experiences vary user to user, and showing this with a complete review profile of real reviews is very powerful.

Fun fact: Some people have argued that having one or a few bad reviews mixed in with your good reviews can be a good thing, since it makes your business appear more “authentic”.

Businesses with overwhelmingly negative reviews online simply do not perform as well as competitors with better reviews.

How to claim your Business Page on Yelp

The first step towards improving your review presence is making sure you have a Yelp page that accurately represents your business. The business side of Yelp has it’s own subdomain and login for you as a business owner or representative to use. Once you claim your business, you can see info about the people looking at your business, and manage reviews.
To claim your Business Page:

Start by going to biz.yelp.com
Create a business account. This is different than a user account, so you may wish to choose different login information than your user account
You can then claim your business by searching for it here:
Yelp will prompt you to follow instructions, and may require giving you a quick verification call to your business call to ensure it’s you. You must be by your business phone to verify your Yelp business account

What if my business is already claimed?

Perhaps a long time ago, you or another marketing agency created a Yelp Business account, and have since changed emails, forgotten your password, or otherwise. If this happens, you’ll need to submit a support ticket with Yelp to verify the update. This process can take hours to weeks depending on the complexity.

What Are “Reviews that are not currently recommended?”

Now that your business page is claimed, you might notice that you’ve already gotten some reviews. This can happen when Yelp knows about your business before you’ve claimed your page. In addition to 1-through-5 star reviews, you may also see a section for “not recommended” reviews. Not to worry! Many businesses have this section on their pages. Here’s what it means.

Just like Google has algorithms that rank websites for keywords, Yelp also has an algorithm that filters out recommended reviews from not recommended reviews. Not recommended reviews are often reviews that are faked by the owner, contain a review from someone new to Yelp, or someone who may be reviewing for dubious reasons. Not recommended reviews can also be filtered out from recommended reviews simply due to the content.

Yelp reviews are filtered out by quality, reliability and user activity. While you can still see all not recommended reviews by clicking the link towards the bottom of each review page, they do not count towards Yelp’s overall rating of a business.

Learn more about “Not Currently Recommended” reviews in this video.

How to Respond to a Yelp Review

It’s possible that your page has some unfavorable reviews that you’re coming across for the first time. Within the lifespan of a business, eventually, someone won’t have the best experience. In today’s age, that person is more than likely going to write about it on Yelp. That’s okay, because less than perfect reviews are a fantastic opportunity to show how your company can improve, and how you manage negative responses.

When you see a less than positive review come in for your business on Yelp, as a business owner, you have an opportunity to respond. Hopefully, you’ll be able to sort through any issues the reviewer may have had with your business or service. In the best case scenario, the reviewer might even change their review from negative to positive.

To respond to a review as your business:

Log in to your business account (https://biz.yelp.com/)
In the dashboard on the left, navigate to the reviews panel
Respond to a review by selecting to either “Add Public Comment” or “Send Direct Message”

When to add a public comment, and when to send a direct message

Public Comments are responses that you’ll want anyone visiting your Yelp page to see. Public responses allow you to address the customer’s concerns or address any specific points that may not reflect your business accurately. They also allow you to engage with positive reviews, by thanking the reviewer for their patronage, or following up with customers you would like to see again.

Direct messages are better for getting more information from a reviewer, which should be done when the reviewer discusses a very specific case within your business. Direct messages can also be used to extend one-on-one support with reviewer, and for offering specials.

The Do’s and Don’ts of responding to Yelp Reviews

Do: Respond. Try to respond to every negative review, and every review of 3 stars (out of 5) and less, when appropriate. It’s also nice to occasionally respond to 4 and 5 star reviews to thank reviewers for kind words.

Don’t: Respond to Review Spam. Review spam are reviews that are made maliciously in order to cause damage to your company. They differ from a negative review, because these reviews are meant to harm your company, not to relay a bad experience with your company. These reviews should be properly removed, which we discuss here.

Do: Keep all responses positive, professional and informative. It’s OK if not everyone had the best experience with your business, but it’s extremely important to maintain a professional attitude when talking to customers. Remember, you have nothing to lose but your reputation, and responding improperly might cause more damage than the negative review alone. It’s also worth noting that a good response can actually prompt a change in the reviewers report to more (or fewer) stars.

Here’s a great example of a good, positive response:

Don’t: Be negative, insult, or offer excuses. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. The best businesses all pride themselves on excellent customer service and engagement, so every experience a reviewer has with you must be positive. Negative responses to reviews can only hurt your brand. If you have nothing nice to say when responding to a review, then it’s best to not respond at all.

Here’s an example of what not to do:

Do: Be genuine. Use the reviewers name, be empathetic of their needs, and write your response specifically to that reviewer. Try to make notes of problems or issues the reviewer had and address them individually.

Don’t: Use templates to respond. It’s robotic, and it will be noticed by users visiting your Yelp page to read reviews.

How to Remove a Review as a Business Owner

In some rare cases, the best course of action is actually to get a review removed entirely. If your business has fallen victim to review spam, or if someone posted a review to your business page that’s not actually about your business, you can flag the review in question to be removed.

In the reviews tab, on the right by the response options, there’s a marker for a flag. Select this flag to flag the review for removal.
Select the best reason and a Yelp moderator will analyze the review. If the review warrants a takedown, Yelp will remove the review.

Remember, this tactic is to be used sparingly. Negative reviews are less harmful than a completely sterilized reviews page – users want to be able to read a variety of experiences, as it makes them feel like they’re getting the full picture, not just what you want them to see.

How To Get More Yelp Reviews

Now that we know how important a large variety of reviews is, let’s try to increase the number of reviews on your business page. Per Yelp’s guidelines, Yelp does not want your business to solicit or ask for reviews. Reviews should come naturally, and at the will of each reviewer. This does not mean that you can’t make it easy on your site and in your storefront for people to leave reviews. The difference is subtle, but important.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Acquiring Yelp Reviews

Do: Give a heads up. Phrases like “Find us on Yelp,” “Check us out on Yelp,” or “See what our customers have to say” with links to your Yelp page are encouraged.

Don’t: Specifically ask for a review. Yelp can, has, and will continue to penalize businesses specifically asking for reviews.

Do: Make it easy. Having easy-to-follow links to Yelp will generate more review opportunities.

Don’t: Write fake reviews. Businesses that use this risky tactic are nearly always penalized in the long run.

Do: Send an email thanking a customer for their business with a link to your Yelp page. Don’t ask for a review, but perhaps say something like, “Thank you for your business. See what our other happy customers have to say.” This follows Yelp guidelines, and promotes healthy review generation.

Don’t: Pay people to write reviews, or offer incentives for reviews. This is against Yelp Guidelines, and possibly illegal. Again, Yelp can and will penalize this behavior.

Do: Have a Yelp Sticker on your storefront to encourage reviews. Geek Powered Studios has created a Yelp sticker ordering form for signage at your business.

Don’t: Pick and choose which customers you should send review opportunities to. If you’re sending a follow up thanking a customer for your business, don’t exclude grumpy customers.

Do: Share your reviews on other social media. Once someone submits a review for your business, Yelp makes it easy to share that review on Facebook and Twitter. Share some of your favorite reviews and others may want to review you as well.

Don’t: Try to discourage people from seeing bad reviews. Bad reviews happen. It’s how your business deals with bad reviews that can make a world of difference.

How to Write a Yelp Review

As you’re working to make it easy for your customers to review you, you might get some questions about how writing reviews works. Writing a review on Yelp is easy, and it helps build the community of reviewing that Yelp was founded on. To write a review:

Log in or create an account
Search for the business you want to review
In the top right side of the business page, select the button to write a review
You will be prompted to rate with stars, then to write your review
Once you’ve finished, select “post review”

On Mobile, the process is just as easy

Download the Yelp App
Log in or create an account
Search for the business you want to review
To start a review, on the business page, simply tap the amount of stars you want to give.
Post any comments you have
Once you’ve finished, select “post review”

How Do Yelp Reviews Help SEO?

In competitive markets, it’s likely that Yelp will be ranking towards the top of Google’s page one for localized keywords you’d like your business to target. That’s because customers often want an easy opportunity to explore the competition, and can easily achieve this by checking Yelp for a list of the best reviewed businesses in a particular vertical.Having an optimized Yelp business page will have you ranking higher in Yelp, which can help you generate more leads. Having an optimized Yelp business page will have you ranking higher in Yelp, which can help you generate more leads.

In addition, Google has improved their ability to crawl external sites like Yelp and associate them with your business. The more reviews your business has on platforms like Yelp (and the higher overall rating), the more likely Google is to perceive your business as a good fit for search users. This typically results in rankings improvements for businesses with large and diverse review pages.

Once your Yelp business account is running efficiently, it can lead to drastic improvement in your brand and the health of your business. By organically garnering more reviews from your current customers, you can build trust and gain future business, all while improving your overall brand recognition.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Using Yelp for Small Businesses (Updated Aug. 2017) appeared first on Geek Powered Studios.

Google Just Axed Dynamic Search Results

Geek Powered — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 16:54:50 +0000

Google announced that they have killed the dynamic version of their desktop search results known as “Instant Search.”

Rolled out in 2010, Instant Search was a feature that would dynamically change the search results in Google as you typed, without the user needing to press “Enter”. For example, if you typed “taco” into the search bar (and didn’t hit “Enter”), search results might automatically show taco recipes, but as you continued to type, and you added “restaurants” to your search, the results would dynamically change to show restaurant listings in your area, as Google automatically adjusted the search results to better match your query.

_{Image courtesy of PMG}While Google touted Instant Search as revolutionary, some users are happy that it has been removed, as many found it annoying to see the screen flicker and change as they typed in the search bar.

Note: Some are confusing Instant Search with Google’s Auto Suggest feature, but they are not the same thing. Auto Suggest, which shows suggested keywords as you type, will still be available. The removal of Instant Search just means that the search results won’t render in real-time, you will need to press “Enter” or click “Search” to generate the search results.

Why Did Google Kill Instant Search?

Google killed the Instant Search feature because the majority of Google searches now happen on mobile devices, and Instant Search is not useful on small screens. Google gave the following statement to Search Engine Land to explain the change:

We launched Google Instant back in 2010 with the goal to provide users with the information they need as quickly as possible, even as they typed their searches on desktop devices. Since then, many more of our searches happen on mobile, with very different input and interaction and screen constraints. With this in mind, we have decided to remove Google Instant, so we can focus on ways to make Search even faster and more fluid on all devices.

The post Google Just Axed Dynamic Search Results appeared first on Geek Powered Studios.

Digital Marketing Glossary: 177 Popular Terms Defined

Geek Powered — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 18:10:24 +0000

The Ultimate List of Digital Marketing Terms

This digital marketing glossary is the most extensive list of marketing terminology, lingo, acronyms, and buzzwords available on the web. It is the culmination of years of studying and learning the industry, and it took over 3 months to put together. Below you will find a some of the most common digital marketing terms, many of which are specific to SEO, PPC, and web design specialties. Did I miss any key terms? If so email me at john[at]geekpoweredstudios.com and I will add them!

Quick links

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To search this page, press CTRL+F, or if you are on a mac use Command+F

#

301 Redirect – A method of redirecting a visitor from one web page to another web page. This type of redirect is to be used for permanent redirects (example: you own websiteA.com and websiteB.com but you only want one website. You would 301 redirect all of the traffic from websiteB.com to websiteA.com so that all visitors end up on websiteA.com)

302 Redirect – A method of redirecting a visitor from one page to another web page, used for temporary situations only. For permanent redirects, instead use a 301.

404 Error – The error message that appears when a visitor tries to go to a web page that does not exist.

A

Ad Extensions – Additional pieces of information that can be added to Google Adwords ads, including reviews, address, pricing, callouts, app downloads, sitelinks, and click-to-call. Ad extensions help advertisers create richer, more informative ads that take up more on-page real estate, which generally lead to higher Click Through Rates.

Ad Manager Account – An advertising account on Facebook that allows you to run ads on the Facebook Ad Network.

Ad Network – A grouping of websites or digital properties (like apps) where ads can appear. For example, Google has 2 ad networks: the search network (text ads that appear in search results) and the display network (image ads that appear on millions of websites that have partnered with Google).

Adwords (Google Adwords) – A Google owned program that is used by advertisers to place ads on Google search results pages, on Youtube, and on Google ad network sites. Adwords is the primary platform for PPC advertising.

Alt Text (or Alternative Text) – An attribute added to HTML code for images, used to provide vision impaired website visitors with information about the contents of a picture. Best practice dictates that all images on a website should have alt text, and that the text should be descriptive of the image.

Analytics (or Google Analytics) – A Google platform that allows webmasters to collect statistics and data about website visitors. Google Analytics (sometimes abbreviated as GA) allows webmasters to see where web traffic comes from and how visitors behave once on the site.

Anchor Text – The clickable words in a hyperlink. In SEO, anchor text is a ranking signal to Google, as it provides context about the destination site. For example, if many websites link to one particular website using the anchor text “free stock photos”, Google uses that information to understand the destination site is likely a resource with free stock photos. Theoretically, that could help the stock photos website rank in Google for keywords related to stock photography.

Adsense (Google Adsense) – A Google platform that allows websites to earn money by publishing Google network ads on their website.

Algorithm – A process or set of rules that computers follow to perform a task. In digital marketing, algorithm usually refers the the sets of processes Google uses to order and rank websites in search results. The SEO industry gives various Google algorithms their own nicknames like Penguin (which analyzes the quality of links pointing to a website) and Panda (which assesses the quality of the content on a website). The main ranking algorithm is SEO is referred to as “The core algorithm”.

Algorithm Update – A change made to a Google algorithm. Updates typically affect the rankings of websites. Google makes hundreds of adjustments to their algorithms throughout the year, as well as several major updates each year.

Alexa (Amazon Alexa) – Amazon’s home assistant device that uses voice commands to do various things like: play music, answer questions, give weather updates, and more. Voice search is becoming more interesting to the SEO industry as more people use devices like Alexa in place of computers for searches.

Automation – Using computer programs to perform tasks that are repetitive, that would normally be completed by a human. Email programs can use automation to send email messages to people based on certain triggers (new customers, did or did not open the last email, etc). Marketers also use automation to nurture leads by sending relevant content to previous visitors of a website, in an attempt to get the visitor back to convert into a sale.

Average Position – A metric in Google Adwords that helps advertisers understand where, on average, their ads are showing in Google search results pages. There are usually 4 available ad slots at the top of a search result page (where 1 is the first ad, 2 is the second ad, etc), so for the best results advertisers typically want an average position between 1-4. Average position 5+ indicates that your ads are showing at the bottom of the search results page.

B

Backlink – Also known more plainly as a “link”, this is when one website hyperlinks to another website using html href code. Backlinks are used by Google in their SEO ranking factors, with the basic idea being that if “website A” has incoming backlinks from other strong websites (websites B, C, and D), the links are votes of trust for website A, and website A gains some authority from B, C, and D through the links.

Banner Ad – A popular type of digital image ad that can be placed across various websites. The largest and most popular image ad network is run by Google, and allows ads in the following common sizes:
250 x 250 – Square
200 x 200 – Small Square
468 x 60 – Banner
728 x 90 – Leaderboard
300 x 250 – Inline Rectangle
336 x 280 – Large Rectangle
120 x 600 – Skyscraper
160 x 600 – Wide Skyscraper
300 x 600 – Half-Page Ad
970 x 90 – Large Leaderboard

Bing – A web search engine that provides search services for web, video, image and map search products. Bing is owned and operated by Microsoft, and is powers Yahoo! Search. Bing now controls approximately 20% of the search share.

Bing Ads – A platform that provides pay-per-click advertising on both the Bing and Yahoo! search engines. The service allows businesses to create ads, and subsequently serve the ads to consumers who search for keyword that the businesses bid on. This platform also offers targeting options such as location, demographic, and device targeting.

Black Hat – Slang for an unethical digital marketer or SEO who uses spammy tactics to rank websites, like article spinning, mass directory link building, or negative SEO.

Blog – Short for “web log”, a blog is a web page or a website that is regularly updated with new written content. Blogs are an important section of a website in digital marketing, as they offer fresh new content on a regular basis which can help attract new visitors, engage existing visitors, and give authority signals to Google.

Bot – An automated program that visits websites, sometimes also referred to as a “crawler” or a “spider”. A spam bot visits websites for nefarious reasons, often showing in Google Analytics as junk traffic. However, Google uses a bot to crawl websites so that they can be ranked and added to Google search.

Bounce Rate – The percentage of visitors to a website that leave immediately without clicking or interacting with any portion of the page. For example, if 100 people visit a website, and 50 of them immediately leave, the website has a bounce rate of 50%. Websites aim to have as low of a bounce rate as possible, and averages tend to be anywhere between 40-60%.

Bread Crumbs – Navigation links at the top of a webpage that better help the user understand where on the website they are. These links often appear near the web page’s title and look something like this: Home > Services > Specific Service

Business Manager – A Facebook platform that allows marketers to manage multiple pages and ad accounts in one central location.

C

Campaign – A series of advertising messages that share a theme, and market a product or service. In the context of digital marketing, campaigns can be run through search and display network advertising platforms (i.e. Google, Bing), social media, email, or other online platforms.

Canonical (rel=canonical) – A piece of code that is added into the html head of a webpage to indicate to Google whether a piece of content is original or duplicated from somewhere else. Original content should canonical to itself, and content taken from other places should point the canonical to the original source URL. Canonicals can also be used to avoid duplicate content issues within a website.

Click-Through-Rate – A metric showing how often people click on an ad after they see it. It can be calculated by dividing the number of clicks on the ad divided by the number of impressions (how many times it was seen). This ratio can be useful when determining whether an ad’s messaging matches what the consumer is searching for, and if it resonates with them.

Code – The languages used to build a website. The most commonly used languages in web design are HTML, CSS, JS, and PHP.

Contact Form – A section on a website with fillable fields for visitors to contact the website owner, most commonly used to collect name, phone number, and email address of potential customers.

Content – Any form of media online that can be read, watched, or interacted with. Content commonly refers specifically to written material, but can also include images and videos.
Conversion – The completion of a predefined goal. This is often used to track the number of site visitors that have been “converted” into paying customers, though sales are not always chosen as the metric. Other common goals are newsletter subscriptions and downloads of content from the website.

Conversion Rate – The rate at which visitors to a website complete the predefined goal. It is calculated by dividing the number of goal achievements by the total number of visitors. For example, if 100 people visit a website and 10 of them complete the conversion goal (like filling out a contact form) then the conversion rate is 10%.

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) – A metric in paid advertising platforms that measures how much money is spent in order to acquire a new lead or customer. It can be calculated by dividing the total spend by the number of conversions, for a given period of time. For example, if in a month a PPC account spends $1000 dollars and gets 10 conversions (leads), then the cost per acquisition is $100.

CPC (Cost Per Click) – The amount of money spent for a click on an ad in a Pay-Per-Click campaign. In the Adwords platform, each keyword will have an estimated click cost, but the prices change in real time as advertisers bid against each other for each keyword. Average CPCs can range from less than $1 dollar for longtail or low-competition keywords, to upwards of $100 per click for competitive terms, primarily in legal, insurance, and water damage restoration industries.

CPM – Stands for “Cost Per Thousand” (M is the roman numeral for 1,000). This is the amount an advertiser pays for 1,000 impressions of their ad. For example, if a publisher charges $10 CPM, and your ad shows 2000 times, you will pay $20 for the campaign ($10 x 1000 impressions) x 2. Measuring ad success with CPM is most common in awareness campaigns, where impressions are more important than conversions or clicks.

Crawler – An automated piece of software that scans websites. The name reflects how the software “crawls” through the code, which is why they are sometimes also referred to as “spiders”. Crawlers are used by Google to find new content and to evaluate the quality of webpages for their index.

CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) – a branch of digital marketing that aims to improve the conversion rate of web pages, thus making the pages more profitable. Conversion rate optimization combines psychology with marketing and web design in order to influence the behavior of the web page visitor. CRO uses a type of testing called “A/B split testing” to determine which version of a page (version A or version B) is more successful.

CSS – stands for “Cascading Style Sheets”. CSS a document of code that tells the website’s HTML how it should be appear on screen. CSS is a time saving document for web designers as they can style batched-sections of HTML code, rather than styling individual lines of code one-at-a-time.

CTA (Call to Action) – an element on a web page used to push visitors towards a specific action or conversion. A CTA can be a clickable button with text, an image, or text, and typically uses an imperative verb phrase like: “call today” or “buy now”.

CTR (Click Through Rate) – the ratio of how many times an advertisement was clicked on, versus how many times it was shown. It is calculated by dividing the ad’s clicks by the ad’s impressions. For example, if an ad is shown to 100 people, and 10 of them click the ad, then it has a click through rate of 10% (10 clicks / 100 impressions = 10%)

D

Dashboard – A web page that contains and displays aggregate data about the performance of a website or digital marketing campaign. A dashboard pulls information from various data sources and displays the info in an easy-to-read format.

Digital Marketing – A catchall term for online work that includes specialized marketing practices like SEO, PPC, CRO, web design, blogging, content, and any other form of advertising on a internet-connected device with a screen. Traditionally, television was not considered digital marketing, however the shift from cable television to internet streaming means that digital advertising can now be served to online TV viewers.

Directory – A website that categorically lists websites with similar themes. Some directories like chambers of commerce (a list of businesses in one geographic area) can be helpful for SEO, however widespread abuse of spam directories led Google to discount links from directories whose sole purpose was selling links.

Display Ads – Ads on a display network which include many different formats such as: images, flash, video, and audio. Also commonly known as banner ads, these are the advertisements that are seen around the web on news sites, blogs, and social media.

Display Network – a network of websites and apps that show display ads on their web pages. Google’s display network spans over 2 million websites that reach over 90% of people on the internet. Businesses can target consumers on the display network based on keywords/topics, placement on specific webpages, and through remarketing.

DNS – Stands for Domain Name System, it is a protocol that translates website URLs (which use alphabetic characters) into IP addresses (that use numeric characters). DNS exists because it is more useful for internet users to remember letters and words in website URLs, but the world wide web communicates in numbers with IP addresses. Without DNS, every website would just be a string of numbers rather than a traditional URL.

Dofollow – A phrase that denotes a hyperlink absent of a “nofollow” tag. By default, a hyperlink is a dofollow link until a “nofollow” piece of code is added to it. Dofollow links pass SEO equity to the destination URL, while “nofollow” links do not.

Duplicate Content – Refers to instances where portions of text are found in 2 different places on the web. When the same content is found on multiple websites, it can cause ranking issues for one or all of the websites, as Google does not want to show multiple websites in search results that have the exact same information. This type of duplicate content can occur because of can result from plagiarism, automated content scrapers, or lazy web design. Duplicate content can also be a problem within one website — if multiple versions of a page exists, Google may not understand which version to show in search results, and the pages are competing against each other. This can occur when new versions of pages are added without deleting or forwarding the old version, or through poor URL structures.

E

Ecommerce (or E-Commerce) – Stands for Electronic Commerce, it is a classification for businesses that conduct business online. The most common form of e commerce business is an online retailer that sells products direct to the consumer.

Email Automation – A marketing system that uses software to automatically send emails based on defined triggers. Multiple automated emails in a sequence are used create user funnels and segment users based on behavior. For example, an automation funnel could be set to send email 1 when a person provides their email address, then either email 2a or 2b would be sent based on whether or not the person clicked on the first email.

Email List – A collection of email addresses that can be used to send targeted email marketing campaigns. Lists are typically segmented by user classification so a list of existing customers can receive one type of communication, while potential customers can receive more promotional communication.

Email Marketing – The use of email with the goal of acquiring sales, customers, or any other type of conversion.

F

Featured Snippet – a summarized piece of information that Google pulls from a website and places directly into search results, in order to show quick answers to common and simple queries. Featured snippets appear in a block at the top of search results with a link to the source. Featured Snippets cannot be created by webmasters; Google programmatically pulls the most relevant information from an authoritative site. Most featured snippets are shown for question queries like “what is _____” or “who invented _____”.

Facebook Advertising – Facebook allows advertisers to reach its users through their ad network. A range of ad types can be created to reach various goals set by companies. Facebook advertising is unique in that audiences are set up based on vast demographic information that Facebook has about their users, as compared to Google advertising that uses keywords.

Facebook Profile – A personal Facebook account. Profiles are automatically created when a user signs up.

Facebook Business Page – A public webpage on Facebook created to represent a company. Using a business page gives users access to Facebook Ads Manager. It also allows businesses to engage with users (i.e. page likes, message responses, post content).

Facebook Ads Manager – Ads Manager is a tool for creating Facebook ads, managing when and where they’ll run, and tracking how well campaigns are performing on Facebook, Instagram or their Audience Network.

Form Fill – When a visitor has filled out a contact form on a website, commonly used as a noun to refer to a conversion. “This month our marketing campaign generated 20 phone calls and 8 form fills.”

G

Google – Company behind the search engine giant Google.com. Founded in 1998, Google now controls approximately 80% of the search market. Google has also expanded to include many software services, both directly related to search, and targeted towards consumers outside of the search marketing industry like Google Chrome (a web browser), Google Fiber (internet service), Gmail (email client), and Google Drive (a file storing platform). Google is owned by parent company Alphabet.

Google+ – Google’s own social media platform. Google+ has been used to varying success by the company, and is still receiving updates that change functionality in a variety of ways. Google+ can also be used for business pages (Google My Business), which can feature information, company events, updates, and more.

Google Analytics – A free software platform created by Google, which is used to analyze nearly every aspect of users accessing a website. Website traffic, conversions, user metrics, historical data comparisons, and effectiveness of each channel of marketing can all be managed using this tool.

Google Adwords – Google’s online advertising service. This system allows advertisers to reach customers through their search and display networks. AdWords offers several cost models which vary by bidding strategy and company goals. Advertisers can bid on keywords which allows their ads to show in Google search results and on Google’s network of partner websites.

Google My Business – The platform on which businesses can input information to appear in search results, map packs, location searches, and more. Name, address, phone number, website link, hours of operation, and reviews can all be managed through this platform. GMB is crucial to local SEO campaigns, as this is directly related to location-based searches.

Google Partner Agency – An agency that is certified by Google for meeting certain requirements. To be a Google Partner, an agency must have an Adwords certified employee affiliated to the company profile, meet spend requirements, and Meet the performance requirement by delivering overall ad revenue and growth, and maintaining and growing the customer base.

Google Hummingbird – The industry nickname for one of the first major overhauls to the main Google search algorithm. In contrast to algorithm updates like Panda or Penguin, Hummingbird was intended to completely update the way Google interpreted user search queries. Previous to this update, Google results were mostly provided based on specific keyword matching within the user query. Now, a search for “Cheapest way to build birdhouse without using wood” will show results directly related to that query. Previously, users might see results that included wood as a building material.
(See also: Google Algorithm, Google Panda, Google Penguin)

Google Home – A device for consumers that connects to their home network and can perform many basic tasks through voice commands. Typical uses for Google Home include asking basic questions, making Google searches, scheduling appointments, playing music, or setting alarms.

Google Maps – The location and navigation service provided by Google. Using maps.google.com, users can search for stores, restaurants, businesses, and landmarks anywhere in the world. Typically, users will find routes to nearby establishments including local businesses using Maps.

Google Panda – A Google algorithm update focused on analyzing the quality of a website’s on-page content. Initially released February 2011, and updated periodically after this release, similar to Google Penguin. This update would determine if content on site pages was related to queries it was being displayed for, and alter the site’s rankings accordingly. Sites with low-quality content saw significant ranking drops due to this algorithm update. The algorithm has now been assimilated to Google’s core search algorithm, and can assess content quality in real time.
(See also: Google Algorithm, Google Penguin)

Google Penguin – A Google algorithm update focused on analyzing the quality of links pointing to a site, or more accurately, the overall quality of a site’s backlink profile. First announced on April 2012 and updated periodically after this release, similar to Google Panda. This algorithm targeted so-called “black-hat SEO” tactics which manipulated search rankings by creating links to sites in an unnatural manner. Google analyzes all of the pages which link to a specific site and determine whether the links are a benefit to users, or if they simply serve to manipulate search rankings and adjust the site’s standing accordingly. Google estimates that Penguin affects 3.1% of all searches in English, a relatively large number for one algorithm.
(See also: Backlink, Black Hat, Google Algorithm, Google Panda).

Google Pigeon – A Google algorithm update focused on providing locally relevant results to searchers. For example, searching for “SOHO coffee shop” will return results primarily centered around that neighborhood. In addition, Google can determine your location when you enter a search, and show you local businesses nearby your area even without localized keywords. This algorithm greatly influenced the potential for local businesses to appear in search results.
(See also: Google Algorithm)

Google Algorithm – A mathematical programmatic system that determines where websites will appear on Google search result pages for any given number of queries. Sometimes also called the “Core” algorithm, though this is a less specific term. Google’s algorithm is constantly updated (approximately 500-600 times a year, or two times per day), which can have varying levels of impact on the rankings of websites across the world. Google’s actual algorithm is kept deliberately secret to prevent webmasters from manipulating the system for rankings, though Google does publically state their suggested “best practices” for appearing higher in search results.

Google Reviews – Reviews left using the Google My Business platform. Reviews are on a 1-5 star scale, and include a brief message written by the reviewer. Reviews can show up in the knowledge graph in Google searches, and have been shown to positively correlate with SEO rankings.
(See also: Google My Business)

Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) – Search Console is a free tool Google offers to webmasters. Within the tool are several areas that include data on how a site is performing in search. Search Console differs from Analytics – it does not measure traffic, it measures a site’s visibility on search pages, and indexability by Google crawler bots. Metrics Search Console measures are Click-Through Rate, Number of Indexed Pages, Number of Dead Links (AKA 404 pages), and more.
(See also: Google Analytics, Click-through rate, Index, Crawler/Spider)

GCLID – Stands for Google Click IDentifier. This is a small string of numbers and letters that serves as a unique ID badge for visitors to a website. Typically, this is used to keep track of individual users as they click on a PPC ad, so that their interaction with the website (whether they converted, on which page, and using which method) can be tracked and attributed properly using Google Analytics.
(See also: Google Analytics, PPC)

Gravity Forms – A WordPress plugin that adds a customizable contact form to a website. This plugin keeps track of all completed form submissions, and allows for all of the fields on a form to be customized. Gravity Forms is the standard contact form plugin used on sites built by Geek Powered Studios.

H

HARO – Stands for Help A Reporter Out. Three times a day Monday through Friday, HARO emails are sent out, listing different stories that reporters need sources for. Used as a marketing strategy to gain PR and link opportunities.

Hashtag – a phrase beginning with the symbol “#” used in social media as a way for tagging content for users to find. Adding hashtags to a post allows users to find that post when searching for that topic. This can be used for finding users looking for broad topics on social media, as well as niche, detailed topics.

Header – Can refer to either the top portion of a webpage that typically contains the logo and menu, or the section of HTML in a website’s code that contains important information about the site.

Header Code – On a website, certain code is placed in the universal header section so that it can be accessible across all pages of the website. Typically in the header code, you’ll find things like Schema Markup, Analytics Code, Adwords Code, and other tools used for tracking data across a website. These are placed in the header code so that they can be rendered and start tracking information as the site loads.

Header Tags (h1, h2, h3, etc) – Header tags are used in HTML for categorizing text headings on a web page. They are, in essence, the titles and major topics of a web page and help indicate to readers and search engines what the page is about. Header tags use a cascading format where a page should have only one H1 (main title) but beneath can be multiple H2s (subtitles) and every H2 can have H3s beneath (sub-sub titles) and so on.
-H1 is used only once on a webpage, and is used to display the most important title.
-H2 is used to display the major subtopics of a certain webpage
-H3 is used to display the major subtopics underneath an H2 tag.

Heatmap – A heatmap is a graphical representation of how users interact with your site. Heatmapping software is used to track where users click on a page, how they scroll, and what they hover over. Heatmaps are used to collect user behavior data to assist in designing and optimizing a website.

HTML – Stands for Hypertext Markup Language. HTML is a set of codes that are used to tell a web browser how to display a webpage. Each individual code is called an element, or a tag. HTML has a starting and ending element for most markups.

HTTP – Stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the protocol used by the world wide web to define how data is formatted and transmitted, and what actions web browsers and web servers should take to respond to a command. When you enter a website into your web browser and press enter, this sends an HTTP command to a web server, which tells the server to fetch and send the data for that website to your browser.

HTTPS – Stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. Is a secured version of HTTP, which is used to define how data is formatted and transmitted across the web. HTTPS has an advantage over HTTP in that the data sent when fetching a webpage is encrypted, adding a layer of security so that third parties can’t gather data about the webpage when the data is sent from the server to the browser.

Hreflang Tag – A code in the html of a website that tells search engines like Google which spoken language a web page is using. These are especially useful for websites that have versions of pages in multiple languages, as they help Google understand which pages are related and which should be shown to specific audiences.

Hummingbird – See “Google Hummingbird”

Hyperlink – A hyperlink is an HTML code that creates a link from one webpage to another web page, characterized often by a highlighted word or image that takes you to the destined location when you click on that highlighted item.

I

Iframe – An HTML document that is inside of another HTML document on a website. Iframes are used commonly to embed content from one source onto another web page.

Impression – A term used in Pay per click advertising that represents how many times an ad was shown.

Impression Share – Used in Pay per click advertising, this metric refers to the percentage of times viewers have seen an advertiser’s ad, in relation to the total possible amounts that ad could have been seen. If an ad campaign’s impression share is 70%, then the ads showed 7 out of 10 possible times.

Inbound Marketing – Inbound marketing refers to the activities and strategies used for attracting potential users or customers to a website. “Inbound” is a more recent euphemism for what has traditionally been called “SEO”. Inbound marketing is crucial to having a good web presence, as it’s used as a way to attract prospective customers by educating and building trust about your services, product and/or brand. (See also: organic)

Index – When used as a nound, index refers to all of the web pages that Google has crawled and stored to be shown to Google searchers (eg: “The Google index has billions of websites”). When used as a verb, it refers to the act of Google copying a web page into their system (eg: “Google indexed my website today so it will start appearing in their search results”).

IP Address – An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a unique number that identifies a device using the internet to communicate over a network. Each device has a unique IP address, and can be used to locate and differentiate that device from all other devices when using the internet.
You can find your public IP address by going to Google and searching “what is my ip address.”

J

Java – Java is a programming language that is used to create applications that can run on a digital device. Java can be used on it’s own, while Javascript can only be used in web browsers.

Javascript (JS) – Javascript is a scripting language. Javascript is used on web browsers to provide interactive elements to web pages that are difficult or impossible to achieve with just HTML or CSS.

John Leo Weber – The COO at Geek Powered Studios, and the person responsible for writing this fancy digital marketing glossary! *easter egg

K

Keyword – A word or phrase indicative of the major theme in a piece of content. When you search for something in a search engine, you type in a keyword and the search engine gives you results based on that keyword. One major Goal of SEO is to have your website show in searches for as many keywords as possible.

Keyword Phrase – A group of two or more words that are used to find information in a search engine. Sometimes, when searching for something, one single keyword does not provide the information you seek, where a keyword phrase allows you to string multiple words together to find better information.

Keyword Density – Keyword density refers to the percentage of how often a keyword appears on a webpage in relation to the total words on that webpage.

Keyword Stuffing – When a web page uses a keyword too often or superfluously, with the intent of manipulating search engines. This type of behavior is frowned upon and can lead to either algorithmic devaluation in search, or a manual penalty from Google.

L

Landing Page – The destination webpage a user lands on after clicking on a link (either in an ad or anywhere else). Some landing pages are designed with the purpose of lead generation, and others are with the purpose of directing the flow of traffic throughout a site.

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) – A search engine indexing method that creates a relationship between words and phrases to form a better understanding of a text’s subject matter. Latent semantic indexing helps search engines serve up results to queries with higher precision.

Lead – A potential customer in the sales funnel who has communicated with a business with intent to purchase through a call, email, or online form fill.

Link – Also known as a hyperlink, a link is a string of hypertext transfer protocol structured text used to connect web pages on the internet. There are two main forms of links: internal links that point to pages on the same site, and external links that point to web pages on a different website.

Link profile – The cumulative grouping of all links pointing to a particular website. A link profile can be used to determine a website’s power, trust, subject matter, and content. Link profiles are important at determining where a website ranks in google search results. If a website has a high number of links from websites that are not trusted, adult in nature, spammy or against guidelines, the link profile will have a negative effect on rankings. If a website has a high number of links from websites that are strong providers of content or reputable sources of information it will have a positive effect on rankings.

Linkedin – A social networking website oriented around connecting professionals to jobs, businesses and other professionals in their industry. Linkedin is also a strong platform for marketing, job posting, and sharing professional content.

Linkedin Advertising – LinkedIn’s advertising platform. Through different ad formats, advertisers can bid on ad space and target unique audiences based on job title, years of experience, industry, and many other demographics.

Link Network – A blackat link building strategy that uses a network of websites all interconnected with links in order to boost backlink profiles and rank certain sites higher in google search results. Some link networks can also be known as private blog networks (PBNs). Link networks and PBNs are against Google guidelines and are devalued or penalized when detected.

Lookalike Audience – A targeting option offered by Facebook’s ad service. This audience is created from a source audience (i.e. fans of your Facebook page, email list), and from this list Facebook will identify common characteristics between audience members. Facebook will then target users that exhibit similar interests or qualities.

Long Tail Keyword: A keyword phrase that is longer in length and hyper-specifically matches a user search query. A long tail keyword get less searches per month but has a higher search intent, and typically less competition by companies looking to serve up content to that search query. For example, a regular keyword might be “austin web designer” but a long tail keyword would be “affordable austin web designer that makes WordPress sites”.

M

Map Pack: The section of Google search results pages featuring three businesses listed in a local map section. The map pack shows up for queries with local intent, a general business type, or a “near me” search.

Medium (source/medium): Medium is the general category of traffic to a website tracked in google analytics. Some examples of common medium are:

organic
CPC
email
referral

Meta Tags: HTML snippets added to a webpage’s code that that add contextual information for web crawlers and search engines. Search engines use meta data to help decide what information from a webpage to display in their results. Example meta tags include the date the page was published, the page title, author, and image descriptions.

Meta Description: One of the meta tags that gives a description of the page in 160 characters. The meta description is an important aspect of a webpage because it is what appears in Google searches and other search engine results.

Meta Keywords: A specific meta tag that displays the specific keywords addresses in a page. After meta keyword markup was abused on some websites, listed keywords no longer apply to how a page is categorized by google and other search engines.

N

NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) – An acronym for local citations. Consistency in name, address, and phone number citations is an important piece of a local SEO Campaign. To build local SEO authority, a business’s name, address ,and phone number should be listed across local citation websites like Yelp, Google Business, Angie’s List, Yellowpages, Better Business Bureau, Foursquare, and more.

Nofollow – An HTML link attribute that communicates to web crawlers and search engines that the link to the destination web page should NOT transfer SEO equity (ie it shouldn’t give SEO benefit to the recipient). According to Google’s guidelines, any link that is unnatural (like you paid for a press release, or you gave a journalist a perk for writing about your product) should have a nofollow tag.

O

Organic – A source of traffic to a website that comes through clicking on a non-paid search engine result. Organic traffic is a main measurement of an SEO campaign and grows as a site ranks better for keywords, or ranks for more keywords in search engines.

P

Panda – A search engine algorithm developed by Google to rate the quality and relevance of content on a webpage. Google panda was released in February 2011 and devalued sites in search results that had thin, non original, or poorly written content.

PBN (Private Blog Network) – also known as a link network, a private blog network is a collection of private websites all linking to each other. These networks are intended to manipulate search engines by adding large amounts of new links to a website’s link profile.

Penguin – A search engine algorithm developed by Google to determine the quality of links pointing to a particular site. It was launched to deter spammers from blackhat seo practices such as private blog and link networks. Google Penguin was released in April 2012 and updated regularly until 2016 when it was then rolled into the Core Algorithm.

Pigeon – A Google search engine algorithm intended to serve up locally targeted information for certain searches. Google Pigeon was released in July 24, 2014 and helps users find local businesses from broad keyword searches.

PPC / Pay-Per-Click – An online advertising model in which advertisers are charged for their ad once it is clicked. The PPC model is commonly associated with search engine and social media advertising like Google Adwords and Facebook Ads.

Position – The placement in Google search results that a site is in for a specific query.

- Featured Snippet: When content within a web page is pulled into google search results to instantly give the information a user is looking for.
- First Page: when a site ranks on the first page of google search results.
- Map Pack: the first through third result on a google serp result page that serves up local businesses for a query.

Penalty – An infraction issued by Google, to a webmaster, for breaking Google’s guidelines. The penalty is issued by Google through Search Console, and can result in a sites’ removal from search engine results. The issues that caused the penalty will need to be fixed before the penalty is lifted, and once the penalty is lifted it may still take some time to return to previous rank in Google search results. Penalty may also refer to an “algorithmic penalty” which is actually a misnomer; a website may be doing poorly in search results because of an issue that Google’s algorithm has found in the site. This however is not really a “penalty” but a ranking problem. For there to be a true penalty, there would have to be a manual action from Google, as denoted by the message sent to the webmaster in Search Console.

PDF – A digital document format that provides a digital image of text or graphics. PDF’s are the preferred document type when uploading documents to the internet because of its ease of use and its ability to be imported or converted easily. PDFs can be read and indexed by Google just as a normal web page can.

Q

Quality Score – Google Adwords’ rating of the relevance and quality of keywords used in PPC campaigns. These scores are largely determined by relevance of ad copy, expected click-through rate, as well as the landing page quality and relevance. Quality score is a component in determining ad auctions, so having a high score can lead to higher ad rankings at lower costs.

Query – The term given for what a user types and searches using search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Examples of queries include “austin electrician,” “how do i know if i have a raccoon in my attic,” “distance to nearest coffee shop,” and many more.

R

Rankings – A general term for where a website appears in search engine results. A site’s “ranking” my increase or decrease over time for different search terms, or queries. Ranking is specific to each keyword, so a website may have keywords that rank on the first page, and others that don’t.

Reciprocal Link – Two websites linking to each other, typically for the express purpose of increasing both’s search engine ranking. These types of links are sometimes deemed manipulative by search engines, which can incur a penalty or devaluation against both sites.

Redirect – A way by which a web browser takes a user from one page to another without the user clicking or making any input. There are various types of redirects (the most common of which is the 301 redirect), which serve different purposes. Typically, this helps improve user experience across a website.

Referral – A medium denoted in Google Analytics that represents a website visit that came from another website (as opposed to coming from a Google search, for example). When users click on a link to another, external webpage, they are said to have been “referred” there.

Rel Canonical – In HTML, “rel” is an attribute associated with links. “Canonical” can be applied to the “rel” attribute, which will link to the original or authoritative page from which content is being used or referenced. The “canonical” page is the original content, and any page referencing it is a duplicate or otherwise similar page. Used to prevent duplicate content issues and maintain search engine rankings.

Remarketing – Also known as retargeting, a type of paid ad that allows advertisers to show ads to customers who have already visited their site. Once a user visits a site, a small piece of data called a “cookie” will be stored in the user’s browser. When the user then visits other sites, this cookie can allow remarketing ads to be shown. Remarketing allows advertisers to “follow” users around in attempts to get the user back to the original site.

Responsive Web Design – A philosophy of creating a website that allows all of the content to show correctly regardless of screen size or device. Your website will “respond” to the size of the screen each user has, shrinking and reorganizing on smaller screens, and expanding to fill appropriately on large ones.

ROAS – stands for Return On Ad Spend. A PPC marketing metric that demonstrates the profit made as compared to the amount of money spent on the ads. Similar to ROI.

Robots.txt – A text file stored on a website’s server that includes basic rules for indexing robots which “crawl” the site. This file allows you to specifically allow (or disallow) certain files and folders from being viewed by crawler bots, which can keep your indexed pages limited to only the pages you wish.

ROI – Stands for Return On Investment. In order for a business to receive a positive ROI, they must earn more money using marketing channels than they are spending on the marketing itself.

RSS – Stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a way for users to keep track of updates to multiple websites (news sites, blogs, and more) in one place, as opposed to having to manually check in on every single site individually. An RSS Feed is a place where all updates are tracked together, in an easily viewable format.

S

Schema Markup – Code that is added to the HTML of a website to give search engines more relevant information about a business, person, place, product, or thing. Also known as rich snippets or structured data.

Search Network – A group of websites in which ads can appear. Google’s Search Network, for example, is a group of Google & non-Google websites that partner with Google to show text ads.

Search Engine – a program that searches an index of information and returns results to the user based on corresponding keywords. The most well known search engines are Google, Youtube, Bing, and Yahoo.

Search Operator – a text modifier that can be used in Google searches to return more specific results. Search operators essentially act as shortcuts to an advanced search.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – a nebulous term that can apply to either 1. Any digital marketing that involves the use of a search engine, or 2. Only paid digital marketing that involves a search engine, ie: PPC (pay-per-click). There is not an industry standard as to which definition is correct, however the latter is most commonly used.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – the process of improving a website’s performance and positioning in organic search engine results through a variety of methodologies including content production or improvement, technical and code improvement, and link acquisition.

SERP – stands for Search Engine Results Page, the page featuring a list of search results that is returned to the searcher after they submit a keyword search.

Sessions – A metric in Google Analytics that measures one user interacting with a website during a given period of time, which Google defaults to 30 minutes. A session is not dependent on how many pages are viewed, so if a person goes to a website and looks around at different pages for 20 minutes, it would count as 1 session.

Siri – Apple’s voice search technology that allows for hands free search on iPhones and other Apple products.

Sitelink – An ad extension in Google Adwords that appears below the main ad copy which links to a specific page on the website (i.e. Contact Us, About Us, etc.). Ads can have from 2-6 sitelinks.

Sitemap – An XML file or page on a website that lists all of the pages and posts for search engines to see. This document helps search engines quickly understand all of the content that they should be aware of on a particular website.

Slug – Slang for the portion of a URL that comes after the .com. For example, the homepage might be http://www.domain.com, but for the Contact Us page, a slug would be added to the end of the URL to direct the browser to a page within the website i.e. http://www.domain.com/contact-us.

Source – A term in Google Analytics that helps webmasters classify where traffic is coming from (ie. the “source” of the web traffic). Source can be a search engine (for example, Google) or a domain (website-example.com)

Spam – A broad term that includes many different nefarious activities in digital marketing that are done either to help a website rank better or to harm a competitor website. Spam is often in seen the form of hundreds or thousands of low-quality backlinks that were built by a black hat SEO to manipulate rankings.

Spider – An automated program that visits websites, sometimes also referred to as a “crawler” or a “bot”. A spam spider visits websites for nefarious reasons, often showing in Google Analytics as junk traffic. However, Google uses a bot to crawl websites so that they can be ranked and added to Google search.

Style Sheet – Shortened term for Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). CSS a document of code that tells the website’s HTML how it should be appear on screen. CSS is a time saving document for web designers as they can style batched-sections of HTML code, rather than styling individual lines of code one-at-a-time.

T

Tag – In WordPress, a tag is an identifying marker used to classify different posts based on keywords and topic. Similar to WordPress categories, but tags are more granular and specific, whereas categories are broad and thematic.

Title Tag – An HTML element that is used to describe the specific topic of a web page. Title tags are displayed in the tabbed top bar of a web browser. In SEO, it is best practice to have descriptive title tags featuring your main keywords, rather than something basic like “home”.

Tracking Code – A script, often placed in the header, footer, or thank you page of a website that passes information along to software tools for data gathering purposes. Tools like Google Analytics, Google Adwords utilize tracking codes so that they can track information about users who view a site.

Twitter – A social media platform where users interact, or “tweet” by posting a message or replying to a message in 140 characters or less. Each keystroke on a keyboard is considered a character. Twitter is used to share information and links, and utilizes hashtags to categorize information. Tweets are typically public and can be seen by anyone. If you are followed by another user, that user will see your tweets in their feed. Similarly, you will the see the tweets of anyone you follow in your feed.

Twitter Advertising – Allows marketers to promote a tweet on users feeds without that user having to follow your brand for it to appear on their feed. These advertisements can be used to grow brand awareness, gain more followers, extend social media reach, and/or reach out to prospective customers about a product or service.

U

Unique Visitors -A metric used in web analytics to show how many different, unique people view a website over a period of time. Unique visitors are tracked by their IP addresses. If a visitor visits the same website multiple times, they will only be counted once in the unique visitors metric.

URL – stands for Uniform Resource Locator and is the address of a web page. The URL refers to what specific web page a web browser is viewing.

UI – Stands for User Interface. User interface is the area with which a user interacts with something through a digital device. Good UI should be fluid and easy for most people to understand.

UX – stands for User Experience. UX refers to how a user interacts with a website or app (where they click, which pages they visit). UX can be shaped by testing differences in page layouts, CTAs, colors, content, etc to improve conversion rates. Having a good UX is crucial to having a good business, as it drives repeating users and engagement.

V

Visits – An old term in Google Analytics which was recently changes to “sessions”.

Visitors – A metric in Google Analytics that quantifies a user of a website over a particular period of time. Visitors are often broken down between “new visitors” who are browsing for the first time in the allotted time period, or “returning visitors” who have already browsed at least once in the given time frame.

W

Web 2.0 – The second major phase of development of the World Wide Web, marked by a shift from static web pages to dynamic content, as well as social media and user generated content.

Website – A document of group of documents that are accessible on the World Wide Web.

Webinar – An online seminar used to train, inform, or sell to an audience of viewers who signed up to view the presentation.

White Hat – Term for ethical digital marketers who don’t participate in work that could be viewed as unethical or as spam.

Wireframe – a cursory layout drawing of a webpage that acts as the first step in the design process.

X

XML – Stands for eXtensible Markup Language. Similar to HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) in that it is primarily used to categorize various data for computers and humans to use more effectively. In basic terms, XML allows for customizable tags for marking up information that is otherwise difficult for computers to understand.

XML Sitemap – A document in XML format that categorizes all relevant pages, posts, files, etc. of a website. This document is not intended for human use, though it can be viewed by humans. Instead, an XML sitemap is designed to help search engine crawler bots easily find all of the pages for a given website – very similar to a roadmap or atlas that one would use when driving a car long distances.

Y

Yelp – A social review platform and search engine that allows users to leave reviews for businesses. Yelp also offers an advertising program which gives advertisers the ability show their marketing assets to qualified Yelp users based on keyword searches.

YouTube – A video sharing website, bought by Google in 2006. YouTube is part of Google’s ad network. Youtube is currently the 2nd most used search engine in the world.

YouTube advertising – YouTube offers advertising in 6 different formats. Display ads, overlay ads, skippable video, non-skippable video ads, bumper ads, and sponsored cards. These ads can all be created and run through the Google Adwords platform.

Yahoo! Search – the third largest search engine in the US, owned by Yahoo. As of 2009, the engine has been powered by Bing.

Yahoo! Advertising – Yahoo and Bing ads are both run through the Bing Ads platform. These search engines share advertising networks.

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