Naper Design | Naperville Web Design and SEO

Google Robocalls: What To Do If You Get A Phone Call About Your Google My Business (GMB) Listing

2019-08-01T16:49:15Z

100% of these calls are a scam, and here is what you need to do…

Just hang up.

For no reason should you give any personal information, or hire the caller to help verify or claim your business listing.

The Google listing phone call is not coming from Google. Google does not call about listings.

Read on to get all the details about these scam calls, and how to actually verify and update your Google business listing.

But one last time, please understand — if anyone ever says they are calling you from Google they are LYING.

Sorry to harp on that point.

Even when we explain this to clients, by the end of the talk they are asking what to do the next time their “Google rep” calls. And we have to say, yet again, that person is not working for or with Google. Far too often we hear of clients who have paid to some random company a subscription for services that Google offers for free.

Again, the call is Not Google.

There will never be an emergency or an urgent problem with the way that search results show your business info. If you ever feel pressured when it comes to Google, it’s a sign that someone is trying to con you.

With that out of the way, let’s go over all the details you need to know about the Google My Business options.

Click any of the links below to jump to the most important topic for you right now.

And don’t worry — this article is for small business owners. So there will be no confusing tech jargon.

Just simple explanations so you can protect yourself and understand how the local search directory works.

What A Google Listing Phone Call Scam Sounds Like

It could be a robocall asking you to press 1 to verify, or press 7 to be removed from a list (you won’t actually be removed).

Or it could be an actual person who is “alerting” you that you are not showing up on Google, or that there is a problem with your listing.

They might even say your listing is “scheduled for deletion” or “flagged for removal”.

Finally, they could offer to sell you a “lifetime Google listing at a discount”.

If you do not let them bamboozle you, and you ask some pressing questions, they will usually admit they are not Google, but may say they are “working with” Google.

They’re not.

These calls happen so often, that the actual support team from Google had to release a public statement.

They gave a list of some things that they would NEVER do:

they don’t charge for inclusion in Google My Business or in Google Search
they don’t offer to improve your search ranking or manage your business’s online profile
they don’t ask you for your password or for a verification code

Any pressure or scare tactics you hear over the phone are meant to confuse you into taking action before you think it through.

What To Do If You Already Got The Google Phone Call & Are Paying For Help

First, don’t worry too much.

These scammers are just trying to overcharge you for a simple service you could get for free, or that you could do yourself.

So the worst thing that happened is you just over-paid for the “help”. You may even be on a monthly payment plan.

If you try to cancel, the phone rep could try to scare you by saying that your site will drop out of the Google search, or some other bad thing will happen.

It won’t.

The first thing you should do is to remove their access from your page.

Go here: https://www.google.com/business/

You may already be signed in on your computer. If not, you’ll need the email tied to your Google Account, as well as the password of your Google account.

Here are the instructions to remove a manager from your Google listing:
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3403100?hl=en

Once you have removed any control this scammer may have, you can stop paying them.

If they have you on recurring billing and will not stop it, call your credit card company to explain the situation.

What Is A “Google Partner”?

To further protect you, it helps to know some terms.

There is a title called “Google Partner”.

This is a third party agency or marketer that took some basic online training and got a certification from Google.

All it really means is that the agency / marketer has at least an entry-level understanding of how Google services work. It does not guarantee you (the small business owner) any results.

So someone might call you and offer to help you show up higher in the search results for a specific phrase, or to run pay-per-click ads for you.

They might let you know they are a Google Partner.

As long as they don’t claim to be working with or for Google, or promising specific results, you can just weigh their offer versus the cost like any other service.

We list some red flags for scammy SEO providers here.

View All Current Scams Involving Google

Here is an official list of all the scams done in the name of Google:
https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/2952493

This list is updated each time a new scam happens.

The robocalls we are discussing are under the heading “Google telemarketing calls”, but it is a good idea to be familiar with all the other scams out there right now.

How To Stop Google From Calling Your Business

Lots of people ask us if they can make (Fake) Google stop calling.

So is there an easy way to fight back, or at least report these scammers?

It’s not really worth your time.

Hanging up and ignoring them is the best option. Even when they give you the option to press a button to “be removed from the list”, they will still call back.

Don’t press any buttons when prompted!

But if you feel like you need to do more, here are some options:

1. Get on the Do Not Call list in Canada / USA

2. Report a violation to Google

But from our experience, after simply hanging up or telling them no a few times, they seem to move on.

Of course, you can also block the number from calling you. However the scammers tend to use a bunch of different phone numbers all the time, so that doesn’t always work either.

Google My Business: What Is The Cost To Add, Claim, or Verify A Listing?

Free.

It costs nothing to make or modify a Google listing.

It does take a little time and patience, and a bit of know-how. Some business owners would rather just pay a pro to take care of it, to save themselves the energy.

Simply put, the Google My Business listing is an easy way to show up on search results, help people find you on a map, show all your contact details and hours, and feature your customer reviews.

It’s very useful for mobile searches as well.

Very Important — Pass This On To Your Friends

Now you know about the Google Listing Call Scam.

Please be a responsible member of your local business community, and tell other small companies about it.

Share this article on your Facebook or Twitter accounts, or email a link to friends that also run a business.

You could save them some money, and a whole bunch of stress and worry.

Think about it — it’s impossible to follow every change in technology, especially when you are so busy. We just need to help each other and to follow clear and honest business practices. Then everybody wins.

Except the scammers… but, really, maybe even them, too. They’ll be forced to get a real job.

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Increasing the ROI of content marketing?

2019-08-01T18:43:27Z

Great content marketing takes serious time and energy, and the cost can also become quite high. That’s why it’s important to keep the return on investment (ROI) as high as possible, so you actually get something in return for all your efforts. That “something” can be, for example, more traffic to your website or increased online sales. How to improve your ROI, that’s what we’ll dig into in this series of blog posts.

Aim for position 0 in Google
Position 0, also known as the featured snippet, is the text box that pops up in a Google search and gives you a direct answer to your search query. Research has shown that position 0 generates a whopping 114% more traffic to a website than position 1. Clearly, it’s well worth the battle! You’ll see the best results by using the right keywords. To help you in that area, you can use Textmetrics Content Ranking. That tool indicates whether you’re on the right track and offers you tips for improved keywords.

Practical tips
You might think that position 0 is only available to online giants like Wikipedia. It’s actually also up for grabs for your company or organization, but of course within search queries that are relevant to your business! To improve your chances of reaching this position, you can apply the tips listed below.

Use questions to your advantage. It’s smart to use actual questions in your web text, like “How do I rank higher in Google?” and “How can I maximize the ROI of my content marketing?” Then you answer the question very briefly in the intro and expand on your answer in the body of the post.
Are you a small business owner? Focus your efforts on local SEO, like “Where can I find a washing machine in Amsterdam?” or “How do I get to the closest café in Victoria?” Make sure to answer those questions briefly, just like in tip 1.
Use keywords that already score high in other articles on your website. Not sure which ones those are? Try using the handy Content Ranking Index by Textmetrics.
Run the Textmetrics Keyword Analysis to link the search queries related to your top keywords. That way you know exactly which searches rank highest in Google, allowing you to adjust your web copy accordingly.

Position 0 likes things to the point and strong. The long pieces of web copy you use to explain a product or service won’t score you that ranking. That’s why it’s smart to create separate pieces of content containing about 54 to 58 words in total. Don’t forget about longer blog posts and articles altogether, since Google likes those, too. Make sure you include both styles on your website. Or make sure you have a main question followed by a short summary of a longer post.
Columns, tables, rankings, lists… Position 0 loves those! Definitely use them in your content, just like we’ve done here.
Make sure your articles and blogs are connected to related questions. Try explaining any jargon specific to your business on a separate page or come up with some questions that are linked to the topic of discussion in your article.

Stay alert! Textmetrics Content Ranking Index will keep track of how you’re scoring in comparison to your competitors. That way you know exactly when it’s time to take action.
Automation of SEO. Textmetrics offers the plug-in ‘SEO-editor’, which you can apply to your website (compatible with WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, SiteCore, and Word). It automatically ensures that your content is made Google-proof. Easy peasy, right?

Use smart tools
By applying the tips listed above, you’ll improve your chances of conquering position 0 in Google. But that can only work if your SEO basics are in place. Check to make sure that your website is completely optimized before even thinking of position 0. Make things easy on yourself, though, by using our Content Creation Engine and the Textmetrics Content Ranking. These smart tools make it much easier and a lot more fun to write great, discoverable, and Google-friendly content. Need more help than that? In this blog you’ll find more information.

Whitepaper SEO
Would you like to dig a bit deeper into SEO and how to best apply it to your website? You could, of course, dig through thousands of whitepapers about SEO, all available online. But if you lack the time and desire to do that, you can simply use the Content Creation Engine by Textmetrics. Just start writing, and our tool offers you tips to update your SEO along the way.

Our team is always up-to-date, does take the time to read all the thousands of SEO whitepapers, and then integrates all that information into the Content Creation Engine. That way you can create great content quickly, without having to hit the books first. You can even have it check your “older” content. Copy and paste the existing copy into our tool to get advice about SEO. The tool will check the text against the latest rules and guidelines for Google and offer advice on that front. Implement the points of improvement, then paste the optimized text back into your website. It’s practically child’s play!

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The Myth of Fair and Balanced Media, and How it has Dumbed Down the Populace

2015-11-23T20:42:48Z

Years ago, Fox News came up with a brilliant strategy. The idea was to build a media empire by projecting bias on other news agencies while attempting to paint themselves as something different. After all, you have to present a negative before offering a solution to the problem. So they invented a negative image to perpetuate their projected ‘positive’ idea. The “Fair and Balanced” (FAB) marketing method was born.

Unequaled data certainly deserves equal time, right?

To begin with, Fox News attempted to offer equal time on their shows to members of each party and political spectrum. Many will argue that they offered insincere or weak spokespeople for the ideals they disagreed with, but that isn’t what we will be analyzing. The point is that they presented the idea that regardless of facts, truth, or verifiability, they would allow equal time to each side of an argument.

The way that Fox injected this new marketing method was a novel concept. It paved the way for weaker and less intelligent debate. By convincing a large portion of the populace that each side deserves equal time, EVEN WHEN PROVEN WRONG, LYING, DISHONEST, FACTUALLY INCORRECT…etc.

(lowercase all of this, you will prove your point with the following facts).As a result, a large swath of the American public now believes that equal time has to be allotted to items that have already been proven completely wrong time and time again. Effectively, this process has elevated the marketing of dishonesty along with lowering the value of verifiable data.

It should be pointed out that these same people (what people? Fox?) are completely against the Fairness Doctrine (define), while they are demanding it’s practice (just for the least intelligent side of debates). Think about that: the very same people who oppose “equal time for equal debate” are the ones crying, “fair and balanced” when their known lies are dismissed as irrelevant.

While I take no specific interests in the political aspects of the FAB talking heads, the implications on online marketing and deceptive practices have been enormous.

Because paranoid people offer the best advice.

Everyone from the (is Natural News a company? If not, lowercase. If it is, then capitalize “food bank”)Natural News food bank scams to Anti-Monsanto social media advocates are now using the FAB method to disarm debates and sway members of the audience with non-arguments. (That’s a long ass sentence, break it into two?) These non-arguments include straw-man tactics, dishonest comparisons, bogus science (natural news (company?) being the king of this one) and other variations of attacks on facts. Conspiracy theorists have even used this method to project lack of arguments (ie. people writing their theories off as mentally challenged and refusing to engage them) as verification of their theories. The practice has become a pervasive manifestation of the modern marketing model and even those who despise the “Faux Noise” (?) organization utilize the same practice day in and day out.

Currently there is a debate on the suicide of Officer Joe Gliniewicz. Even while the evidence is absolutely overwhelming that it was indeed a suicide, those who refuse to accept it are demanding equal airtime for their purported theories and invented stories that have no factual or realistic basis. The result is a social media debate on almost every Chicago area news page that is pushing traffic higher and higher. The media groups now have only to put out the story and allow this poor debate model to run itself. It’s for instances like these that we believe the FAB mentality has become a poisoned pill to all forms of cultural debate.

Even while speaking with people who had just watched a political debate, we found the same marketing practice manifested in their post-debate conversations. After this most recent debate, one person at the coffee shop immediately opened tabs to a few “fact checking sites”. He was quick to point out the painfully obvious lies, mischaracterizations, exaggerations, and blatantly false statements used in the debate. Rather than listen to the fact driven responses he was calling out, several people from the audience quickly said something to the effect of ,“He should have just as much time to voice his thoughts as anyone else”. Yes, in political debate, where facts can literally decide wars, fortunes and financial collapse, people are wanting to skip on the demand for honesty and instead demand equal time for any statements, regardless of how ridiculous these statements can be. (too long of a sentence)

The FAB model, as was most likely intended, has dumbed down the populace to be marketed ideas, topics, sales devices, fear driven products, and complete lies with impunity. No longer are arguments simply ignored because they lack credibility or factual backing. No longer are ideas discarded because data shows them to be false.

This is only funny because we all know someone who might actually do it.

Social workers we spoke to for this article note that this manner of discounting reality could even be pervasive within individual choice reasoning that is leading to a more imprisoned populace. When people are allowing equal time for false, negative and improper ideals to be spoken, it can logically be assumed that they are also allowing these falsehoods equal time within their own minds. Let that sink in, the prudes (opinionated term, your reasoning should paint them as prudes) at Fox may have led us to a more deviant society. Impulse control and situational reasoning has been damaged in our society. It isn’t absurd to theorize a connection between this constant push for equal time of all ideas, even those ideas, ideals, and concepts that are completely wrong.

We think the patterns of response from the FAB open a wide door of deceptive and vulture marketing while closing the door on common-sense. Many in the consumer protection bureaus are aware of the degeneration of consumer defenses in the modern market, but it would be interesting to know how many are linking this degradation to the Fair and Balanced model. It would seem the model was created only for the public to limit their ability to perform viable pro and con debate within their communities and also within their own minds. The repercussions of which could be quite damaging to society and culture itself.

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Incorporating User Experience into Web Design and overall SEO Strategy Part 2 | What is your website visitor interested in?

2014-11-17T00:48:39Z

“You don’t build it for yourself. You know what the people want and you build it for them.” Walt Disney

Well, so what do they want? Too often business owners and marketers will be so concerned with our desires for immediate gratification, that we forget the most important part of the user experience is to first know what the user wants to begin with. The User’s wishes have to be fulfilled, and this can only be done by understanding what their actual wants are.

Know Your Website Users

Some sample data and use existing models to determine what the user may want for their desired field and interests. This is a legacy method that, while it can’t be abandoned completely, has to adapt to incorporate new, and in some cases, yet to be developed methods. Using bots and spiders to pull information can give us a decent picture of the past, but little more. Simply assuming that what has always worked will continue to without refinement is a recipe for marketing disaster. Instead, we need to make use of the resources available to use and to constantly incorporate the ideals of “what is next” into our user engagement plan. Sampling data, while important, will need to continue evolving to keep up with the users of today and tomorrow.

Some methods include using call and data tracking methods that will replace the antiquated methods of only a few years ago. There are voice and ad tracking software resources now that are able to determine exact ad responses, and the tracking of those ads. One might ask, “when will a data tracking software come out where the user is able to rate the ad itself?”. This may sound like an absurd question to those in legacy mentalities, but when thinking of what the user wants, there is no better place to begin.

Content That Writes Itself

In the end, the most likely reason a user will be at your site is the content they are searching for. Ensuring that you have the right content for your target market is always the starting point of a strong User Experience Web Design and Development strategy.
A futuristic idea is to eventually engage with more than just dynamic content. Some sites and developers are trying to design and develop with predictively created content in mind. No, this isn’t a reference to retrieving content predictively for an individual, but to aggregated and create content customized for that individual, based on their wishes. Many apps and sites are trying this now, but are still locked in predisposed rules, there is some traction to developing a truly customized experience with completely original and created content based solely on the user’s desires. The option of AI responsiveness is also worth mentioning since it would be the logical step forward in producing a truly responsive development. How long something like that will take to get here is only limited to our motivation to bring it.

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How to incorporate User Experience into Web Design and overall SEO Strategy Part 1 | Empathy and SEO Keywords

2016-02-10T18:55:01Z

First we should consider, what is the focus of the user experience? Since the user is going to define your business with their experience more than any other aspect of your marketing plan, you should first assume that the focus is to ensure that your user’s experiences meet “AT LEAST” your basic expectations of your business model. This means that in every aspect of your marketing approach, your user experience should become the focus of your efforts, not just conversions and sales.

Using this definition, let’s consider how best to ensure a quality user experience from start to finish. The user experience has to start with empathy for what the user would wish to encounter in your digital business profile. More and more digital customers want the same effort for an experience placed into digital media as they would expect for arriving at your business in person. For too many years, the marketing method of welcoming users to a site was to simply inundate them with data and articulate information. While both are important, the same can be garnered using a billboard. Instead, we need to consider how to welcome them to our sites, even if we are ranking the top for a keyword. (what is the point of ranking the highest if you also have the highest bounce rate?).

So, we start with empathy:

Why did this customer search this term?

Choosing keywords needs to be user oriented. For too many years, marketing director and SEO gurus have chosen keywords solely based on sales and conversions with little regard to additional reasons a customer may come to their site, as a result, the market has been marginalized when it comes to keyword targeting.

Users are not completely satisfied with Search Engine Results now due to the mixed bag of outcomes in the results. Much of this is the fault of our SEO Strategies that have pushed businesses to the tops of search results by providing the best answer in text, even when they may not be the “best answer” in reality. This has caused the modern consumer to become less and less impressed by search engine placement. Don’t get me wrong, local services and immediate need sales are still in vital need of top placement in the search engines, but the non-immediate purchases are becoming more and more thought based.

Local searches for plumbers will certainly still benefit from the top listing in organic and map, but what about for their non-emergency sales? The searching customers not requiring an impulse purchase are becoming more reliant on user investigation and “purchase assurance” than just the need to address the issue in the easiest way possible.

As a society, we are becoming more diligent about the items we individually care most for, and as a result, our marketing methods have to shift to accommodate for digital narcissism. We are obsessed with the desire to garner the attention of our fellows and become recognized as individual “truth givers” and “knowledgeable people” to our fellows.

People inherently work for the acceptance of others, and with the advent of the digital age, people have begun basing self-worth and assessment on how others view their ability to be knowledgeable resources of data and information. As a result, you should start by considering what the individual will be looking for to satisfy that internal need and proceed with a marketing strategy that incorporates this knowledge.

Google coined the term the “0” Moment marketing Truth, I would go to say that this is the precursor to it. Empathizing and breaking down the average user to his core understanding has to come first. Doing so allows us to choose keywords based off of what the user actually wants in the way of an experience, not just what we wish to sell them.

There are many deeper aspects to this line of thought. Next, we will discuss why finding the customer/visitors interests before they do is a vital use of this empathy and the next step in your User Experience Based marketing strategy.

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How To Create A Working Search Traffic Strategy (STS) To Amplify Your SEO Strategy

2014-10-25T03:53:13Z

So many of our newest clients are coming in after working with another Chicago SEO Company who has them ranking for keywords that have nothing to do with their conversion goals. Just having a Search Optimized Traffic Plan (SOT) isn’t enough, the entire picture of targeted inbound traffic has to be a planned event. Inbound marketing means strategically planning seo traffic. Ranking for terms that have no conversion potential is a waste of resources, and only serves to be bragging rights for the bottom feeders of Chicago SEO Companies. Often these Chicago SEO Companies will just take credit for the top ranking, luck of the draw, items from Webmaster Tools, even if they have no impact on the business whatsoever. This is not only dishonest, but it has no relevance or impact on their primary purpose, to convert their site for their targeted traffic.

SEO Specialists who accidentally take credit for crap keywords.

Instead of trying to rank for random and “got lucky” terms, or trying to convert those who arrived at your site while looking for something your don’t actually provide, your site team should be planning specific Inbound Marketing terms to use in your Search Traffic Strategy (STS). Your STS strategy should culminate with one specific goal: converting visitors to your site’s primary purpose. If you have an ecommerce site, then the your strategy should focus on targeted traffic likely to desire your products. The same holds true for services, content, blogs or any other type of site you are trying to deliver qualified search traffic to.

There are many blogs offering “Top 5 Search Strategy”, or “6 Search Traffic Items You Can’t Ignore”, and any other spammy title of the like, but these are more for promoting that SEO Company’s blog than to assist you in your goals. Instead, we are going to simply list a couple of common sense solutions to amplify your Search Traffic Strategy and boost your converted inbound marketing. You’ll find tons of blogs pushing strategies like the image below, but effectively, throwing all the crap at the wall and hoping it sticks isn’t a strategy for anything but mayhem.

Be Realistic While Being Ambitious

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it was built. Your Search Traffic Strategy (STS) should be focused and well planned for realistic growth potential. Starting with a realistic view of keyword development, your strategy should begin focused on conversions and little else. Use keyword tools offered by Google to find the ones that will have the most direct appeal to the most potential visitors in your market. If you are a local business, you should search all terms in a local area instead of looking at broad terms (since those in the Adwords Keyword Tool are based on national stats). For local businesses as well, there is Google Trends. Digging down to local areas to test keyword effectiveness is always suggested. You may also want to verify keyword usage with customer and reader surveys. Poll your readers and those you want to become readers on what terms they find the most engaging. Use this data to build future Search Traffic Strategy plans that will be more effective at pulling in convertible visitors.

Get Your Visitors To The Funnel, Not To The Fluff

Some marketers are now selling the theory of diverting traffic from your site to your social media and then back… This is absurd and a waste or potential conversions. All of those coaxing you to divert traffic elsewhere when a direct trip to your conversion funnel has fewer steps are asking you to risk conversions to prove their theory (that in many cases is only popular because a bunch of marketers bought into it and replicated it to their other clients). In the end, the shortest distance between your visitors and your conversion funnel, then best. Your keywords should be paired with your target conversions to bring the most qualified visitors to your funnel in the most efficient way possible.

Sell What You Sell

Instead of dancing around product keywords that have nothing to do with your own, stick to the ones people will use to find you. As long as the product can stand on its own, there is never a need to use fear tactics or subverted sales techniques to push your product Search Traffic. Many times we see the failure of this in scam sites pushing things like Prepper Food Supplies. We’ve all heard the fear mongering commercials about some guy who knows “a secret about a FEMA plan to cause global chaos”… probably leading to a zombie apocalypse and definitely death by snu snu… Not only are these scams ridiculous in their appeals to those who are willing to eat up pandemonium as fact, they are a giant waste of resources since direct sales methods would likely provide better conversions.

In all of those indirect, fear driven ads, they waste mass resources while one direct ad would be able to garner the target purchaser without all of the deception. The only thing gained from those skyscraper, dupe sites are the sheep who are dumb enough to add themselves to these site’s mailing lists. Worse, those unskilled enough to allow themselves to end up on these lists will likely lack the financial means of being strong sales candidates.

In the end, a simple, and direct sales message would weed out all of the non-purchasing traffic for those who would be willing to convert. In fact, the only reason those clickbank and Newsmax scam feeds are even doable still is that the media still pushes them as well to push up their own affiliate banks.

Only Use Analytic Data To Track Originally Targeted Keywords That Convert

As stated above, some Chicago and Naperville SEO Companies are all too willing to take credit for “oops” keywords. If you have an SEO Expert bring you additional keywords that you never agreed to before (especially in a spreadsheet looking like it came from Google Webmaster Tools), your red flags should be going up. Many times, struggling SEO Techs will bring thee up to divert from the failure to have clients ranking for the keywords that were to be targeted to begin with. If the keywords can’t be cross-referenced to traffic

Instead, make a decisive list of keywords to track, and pay little, if any attention to the others without traffic data to legitimize them as useful terms. You will want to ensure that your keywords are ones that convert traffic and sales, and as a result, this will be a criteria needing regular investigation. Again, this is where the scared SEO Tech will bring up ranking for random terms, but be mindful that these terms will need serious scrutiny. When adding additional terms to your watch list, ensure that they produce. Search new keywords in “Google Trends” to see if they have any ranking. This is especially true when you dig down to your local market. If you rank #1 for a term that gets 1 local search per month, then it might not be one worth nurturing.

If your SEO Expert tells you that this is a needed term, you may want to look for a more qualified representative. Ultimately, there will be new tools to pick up at every turn along the path, so most importantly, remain teachable. SEO and Search Traffic Strategy are fluid and will require updating methods to adapt to updated measures.

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Search Optimized Traffic (SOT)| How SEO Placement Alone Isn’t A Solid Site Strategy

2014-10-24T05:11:33Z

Often we will inherit clients who have had previous experience with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and sometimes even find themselves ranking well, but have little to no traffic to show for it. Even worse, the methods used by previous Chicago SEO Companies have left many of our clients with horrible content that reduces readership and increases bounce rates. Cheesy SEO tricks that cause for a higher SERP ranking aren’t necessarily going to equate to better traffic and conversions; this is why our Naperville, Glen Ellyn and Chicago SEO Teams focus on a full Search Optimized Traffic performance plan. We could only hope that more Internet Marketing Agencies would recognize the common problems seen as the SEO standard that cause horrible conversion rates.

In the old days of Search Engine Marketing, and sometimes still true today, ad agencies would charge ridiculous amounts of money for ad driven traffic even when it had nothing to do with a site’s content. Conversions were low and bounce rates were high. Today, the same is still occurring but now expanded to SEO campaigns. In Chicago it is far too common to find websites littered with footers pages for each individual township and suburb. At first, companies like Reach Local and Orange Soda did this as a way to push relevant content and lift their own clients in the SERPs. The problem was, these pages were comprised of the same city data, spun over and over, and leaving multiple sites with the same giant spam bomb in the footer and sitemap of each of their clients. Many freelance and smaller SEO Companies in Chicago followed this blueprint and littered the search results with more of the same. As a result, the practice became one of the basic principles to Chicago SEO tactics.

Poor overall traffic from high SEO placement is another problem. Imagine a keyword ranking at the #1 position but only delivering 50 visitors a month, and then a keyword that was ranking in the #6 position that was delivering 900 visitors a month – which one would you rather? Traffic numbers are much more valuable than rankings alone and converted traffic is the primary focus.

This cheap and semi-effective SEO and SERP placement method had a major downfall: when the sites received the positive listings resulting from all of the city data, they also received few visitors willing to trudge through the mounds of crap content to find what they were actually interested in. The basic remedy for this problem is the keystone for the framework of Search Optimized Traffic.

Searchable Content Written For The Readers, Not Google

Repeating the same phrases and keywords spamming with local pages is a great way to ensure that garnered traffic bounces from your site. Your goal as a business content creator is to inspire readers to become both customers and secondary promoters, you are not to be writing what “Google will enjoy”. Inherently, if your content is satisfactory to your readers, describes and informs your product or service and inspires visitors to engage, then Google will already be satisfied and reward your efforts. Well written data will attract both Google and engage site visitors.

Optimizing Content For Visitor Interactions

It’s one thing to get people to read your content, it’s another to have them find it important enough to respond with comments or even more important, to share with their Personal Social Networks (PSN). Everyone online has their own, individual PSN. Inspiring visitors to engage your content via their own PSN is the basis for using the facebook comment plugin or commenting widgets like Disqus. With every user that your reader is able to re-engage your content to, your site gets more than just another reader, it gets relevant linking with every interaction.

Traffic Strategy With Quality Page Descriptions

This is likely the top failure we have seen in the Chicago SEO market. We will have clients come to us with incredibly high listings for quality terms…. and they will have horrid and useless descriptions for their search results (yes, this still happens even with the updates Google has made to results). This is often the direct action of a previous Chicago SEO Company they had managing their site. Descriptions written to please Google are almost certain to discourage real readers. Descriptions and page titles, while important to specific points of an SEO Strategy, can’t be the one trick to Search Engine Ranking. Title and Description are the main driving force to bring readers to your overall content; if they don’t match, or worse, are redundant and ridiculously written keyword spam bombs, then the readers will have no incentive to actually follow them. Consider signs for rest areas and food along an Interstate; if they don’t adequately describe their product, you are less likely to stop unless desperate for a bathroom. If your content is ranking highly, yet the descriptions don’t adequately match the search terms, you will only gain the traffic of those are desperate to get off the search.

Again, Search Optimized Traffic (SOT) is the main strategy that should be the focus of any business with serious SEO campaigns. Listing high for the purpose of listing high is a strategy that can be a waste of resources. Ensure that your SEO Content and SEO Countermeasures are written to elevate user interaction and the overall conversions.

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SEO Content Countermeasures Part. 2 | How Public Safety and Public Trust Are Under Attack

2014-10-14T21:20:13Z

Last week we discussed SEO Countermeasures and Content Countermeasures that are hurting the structure and information flow of the internet; today, we will take the conversation a step further. The lack of honesty in the reputation and information sharing services is one problem, but what happens when we ask the same questions in regard to political and legal questions.

Political and Anti-Science SEO Content Countermeasures

Anyone who has a family member on the Newsmax Spam List knows all too well the problems with misinformation and dishonest content promotions. For years, false information, fed to the masses has been the hallmark of political propaganda. Both right and left are equally guilty of this dishonest practice, and it seems both will turn blue in the face complaining about how dishonest the other is. Pushed articles are common place for the purpose of having multiple sites replicate the same false story, over and over, and then link to each other to offer a seemingly relevant citation. Again, this requires an audience that is predisposed to believe that a specific viewpoint is possible or likely.

Sites like Politifact, Snopes, Hoax-Slayer, FactChecker, and many others have become the bane of the political fringes who WANT their preconceived ideals to be realized in the most obvious of dishonest rallies.

The proliferation of the political scams is two fold; the first goal being to direct public opinion by preaching to a choir, the second being to drive traffic to sites filled with products aligned with the content itself. Many of the Natural News (and its affiliates site’s) articles are solely produced to push traffic to their product affiliate sites for purchasing books or ‘natural remedies”. The traffic for survivalists will take them to sites promoting solar water heaters and wood-burning stoves (sold at ridiculously expensive prices at that). The scam site method is fairly simple, it only requires having a bunch of sheep ready to repost network stories for ad and clickbaited traffic. Often, most of the reproduction sites will be owned by the same group as the originating site.

The SEO methods used by reposting false information include medical info as well. In spite of medical science, the proliferation of false claims on medical needs is growing by the day. People, convinced in spite of science, that medical needs like vaccinations and treatments are some form of evil scam to make people sick (irony being that they avoiding the vaccines increases sickness) are increasingly promoting false narratives at the behest of their blogger overlords. Often, this information will be completely void of even the most basic scientific study. Again, Natural News is a notorious for the use of down-line blogging to perpetuate its SEO Content Countermeasures to recognized science. You may ask, “why would they do this to sell a few books?”, and in doing so you will be asking a legitimate question. The answer is simple, they make millions off of affiliate book sales, vitamin sales, and training/event sales associated with the topics they push. In the end, the irony is that they claim the motivation for medical science to promote medical cures is money, while in the end, it is their own primary purpose. Obviously, Natural News and its many clone sites is an easy target, but it certainly isn’t the only one. Often the hoax stories used on its network are dusted off months or years later to replicate the same affiliate gains. Even after pointed out to be the obvious lies they are, the dedicated who desire it to be true will promote the false stories without question.

Ultimately, public safety is put into jeopardy by these groups because of the purposeful direction of the public to act in a manner that is contrary to their health or basic common sense. Yes, the people who fall for and repromote this misinformation are guilty of being naive, gullible and ignorant, but those leading them by the snout are doing so in a way that is blatantly irresponsible and places large populations in danger… all to make a buck and push agendas.

Using SEO and Content Countermeasures to Hide Criminal and Legal Data

Someone will always be trying to invent a better mousetrap, but what happens when the mousetrap itself is under attack? People entrust their futures, businesses and family welfare to background and identity checks; what happens when the information gained from them is bogus? The answer is simple, the system fails those who deserve to know enough to protect themselves, their businesses and their families.

People of ill repute and those with a past worth hiding use SEO Countermeasures and Content Manipulation to promote a fictitious form of themselves so that their past, present and future victims are blind to the actual threats the individual can hold. We ran into a typical scammer recently who had an intricate manner of hiding reports of his previous scams. He produced so many member and blog accounts in his own name that even articles about his scams from Ripoff Report and NY Times were pushed to page 10.

Many are getting in on this option; from legal offenders to financial swindlers, the option allows them at least one more hustle and a crowd of people unable to find the sourced information about the scammer’s history. The scammer mentioned above even went so far as to seek legal orders to force google to hide search results mentioning his name (since he apparently trademarked himself). As a result, attempts to find accurate information on this person who has scammed and stolen from so many are often in vain.

The “push down” effect of Content Countermeasures and SEO Tactics used for these dishonest means are likely to persist. Google has given no indication that is has a real solution to counter the SEO Countermeasures being deployed. Google attempted to kill the duplicate content and spun material game, but only so much can be done when some of these scammers are running hundreds of accounts and sites to keep a clean image. They’re wolves and their fake wool consists of the SEO Content and descriptors of themselves used to promote the false narrative.

We can hope that they will finally be curtailed, but they appear to be a constant from generation to generation. These are the same sad sacks that would be selling snake oil and ‘miracle cures” in the 1800’s. The unfortunate reality is that Content Countermeasures are only the latest tool of those who wish to defraud their fellows. That they have learned how to manipulate SEO techniques for these scams is only the latest step in a long walk. We can only assume that their growth online will continue, marking less honesty and more skepticism.

The post SEO Content Countermeasures Part. 2 | How Public Safety and Public Trust Are Under Attack appeared first on Naper Design | Naperville Web Design and SEO.

How SEO and Reputation Content Countermeasures Are Ruining The Internet Part 1

2014-10-11T03:18:53Z

Marketing has always consisted of presenting a narrative of your product, service, or even ideas and crafting them in a manner more pleasing to the audience. With the increase in data sharing and interactions online, this has only grown. The problem with this growth is that it comes with an increasing rate of growth for Content Countermeasures that are intended to stifle, erase, or completely distort the truth about specific content online. Content Countermeasures are nothing more than the attempt to deceive the public with exaggerated, inflated and, in some cases, invented information.

In some cases, this serves a very legitimate purpose, like incentivizing positive reviews and ratings from clients to overcome someone who griped about not getting his water and hot bread fast enough when entering a restaurant. There are certainly legitimate cases like this for businesses to present a positive image of themselves to the public. There is a duality of this topic as there are those who purposefully mislead the public with positive or negative spam of business content, causing a countermeasure to any possible chance of receiving accurate information. While this might seem like a trifle act, it damages the ability to have a reasonable expectation of receiving correct and verifiable data in search results.

“Reputation Management Scams”

When it comes to the dirtier uses of Content Countermeasures, the “reputation managers” of the world are almost always going to be one of the top offenders. The ads heard on talk radio and pushed for local companies are usually nothing short of bragging on how they can spam the public with disinformation about your company or yourself. Sure, it’s sold as “restoring your good name”, but if you are going to go through extreme steps(and reputation management often requires extreme steps) to garner enough faked or duplicated content to push down the negative reviews and ratings, then the entire concept of public relation is in shambles. Again, this isn’t being critical of those who have a solid and honest goal of ensuring honest content about their business (because we will talk below of the content assassins below). Let’s be clear, if you have to market your company or yourself with false or spammed information, then you or your product simply aren’t worth what you are trying to present them as.

Scam Spam

The same holds true for people who want to push down legitimate information to hide their concerning content from the public. Content writers are notorious for this one. We get a different one filling our spam folders every week with messages bragging about how they can spam the highest ranking blogs on the internet … for a price of course. This is a two-pronged version of Content Countermeasure SEO. First, they are spamming mass content about themselves on the front end of the conversation, then, they have to do something to remove data from all of the people who are complaining about the unsolicited content. There will be the guys who have dozens, sometimes hundreds of wordpress.com, blogger, webly, Tumbler…etc, sites with several variations of their own name and all with content claiming to be the most relevant. We’ve found the same thing done lately with people who have warrants and want to confuse police (from identifiable IP addresses though, so not sure how well that works). Additionally, they will play the game of buying any and all variations of ones name in domain format, and again, spamming the internet with redundant and often obscure data to attempt to divide relevancy on the person’s identity. We ran into one of these guys recently who had over 200 variations of his own name out there, all to push down the 40-50 ripoff reports filed about his poor business practices. The spam data traces act as a SEO Countermeasure to prevent people from finding about his actual business practices, and instead focus on a false narrative that is completely opposite to reality.

No, I am not coming down on narratives themselves. As I said in the intro to this post, narratives are shaped by the marketer, but as soon as they are completely falsified narratives, then nothing is left but a dishonest scam being perpetrated on the reader. The petty marketers who believe that there is a magical line of lies they can hover on and still have their integrity intact are some of the most genuine and shining examples of cognitive dissonance available.

SEO Assassins

These are the lowest bottom-feeders of he internet. They include “Yelpers”, “Competing Reviewers”, and all the others willing to destroy. Content Assassins, or SEO Assassins are often written off as competitors or disgruntled employees, but we’ve found more instances lately of little to no association being the culprit. The internet gives strength to those who wish to do damage to others with impunity.

A restaurant client of ours apparently slighted a patron by serving his therapist. The individual saw this as a slight against him, and went on to commit a fake review and spam campaign to destroy the restaurant’s reputation. Using a photoshopped comment image, the spammer made it appear that the restaurant (run by a gay man) had made anti-gay statements to him on Facebook. This one fake image, posted in several LGBT social media groups, caused over 500 negative reviews in one night. By the time the restaurant came to us, we had over 900 review accounts to send individual requests and explanations to.

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Negative SEO: Have You Been a Victim Of Nefarious SEO Tectics

2014-10-03T23:59:43Z

Recently, our Chicago SEO clients came to us with a new, and expected problem. Thanks to Google’s desire to stop SEO spamming and farming, we now have a new problem. Negative SEO is happening and it’s something that can be used against your business at any time, no matter what industry you are in. This post will help you quickly identify if you’ve been a victim of negative SEO and provides tips on how to overcome it. O

Good SEO vs. Negative SEO

There’s good(positive) SEO and then there’s assassin (negative) SEO. Just like a good comic book character, the super power of SEO can be used for dark purposes; in the same way, negative SEO can be used nefariously and refers to the worst kind of SEO possible:

Negative SEO – The intentional act of over-optimizing or spamming a site in order to lower its rankings in search results.

Good SEO is a highly ethical practice and is based solely on hard work for a strong output. When it’s employed honestly, it helps quality sites with great content to establish well-deserved rankings through following developer best practices and Google’s quality guidelines. It’s also ethical when used to help well-intentioned sites overcome technical barriers such as unintentional duplicate content, crawlability, page speed and other issues.

How Does Negative SEO Occur?

Negative SEO is done primarily through link spamming and farming, usually through Fivrr and SEOClerks gigs. For example, someone may pay an off-shore firm to build 10,000+ links to your site using a key phrase your site is targeting. Please note: if your current agency is doing this with the belief this is going to improve rankings, cancel immediately or you may experience traffic declines similar to this:

How to Tell if You’ve Been Targeted With Negative SEO

Spotting negative SEO is fairly obvious if you’ve never intentionally built links or targeted specific keywords through spam bombing. If you have built links manually through the years using various target keywords, then it may not be as simple. Regardless of how the links have appeared in your profile, here are a handful of things you can do:

Conduct a backlink analysis, focusing on anchor text using sites like MajesticSEO
Look for unnatural or suspicious IPs
Identify any unrelated anchor text (Credit Checks, Pills, Payday, etc.)
Check Google Webmaster Tools for Manual Penalties

Always keep an eye on what anchor text is being used to link to your site? A detailed backlink analysis should be conducted to help identify which terms link to you the most. There are a number of great tools including Ahrefs, Link Detox, Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer to help you do this but pay special attention to keyword-rich anchor text. Any links that aren’t simply linking with your brand or domain name raise flags and be put on the suspect list.

If your site and target markets are located entirely in the U.S. then you shouldn’t have foreign IPs or non-US TLDs pointing to your site. Tools such as Ahrefs are handy in quickly spotting TLD distributions:

Do you have any nonsense, unrelated anchor terms? This is the biggest problem in the topic and the easiest way to tank a website’s SEO. Negative SEO Assassinss often take advantage of all the algorithms associated with certain industries such as PayDay Loans. If a site happens to link to yours using anchor text which includes these terms, your rankings will suffer. We have a local dentist as a client with remarkable payday-related anchor text in hisprofile:

Do you have any Manual Actions/Penalties in Google Webmaster Tools? Here’s what you’ll see if you do:

How to Recover

Future posts will delve further into the complete recovery process but where is the rough and basic path to recover from Google Penalties and the principles are the same:

Keep in touch with webmasters and remove known bad links (yes this makes us upset too – especially if you’re not the one that built bad links – but Google still wants you to do you best to remove them)
Use the Disavow Links tool (with extreme caution)
Submit a reconsideration request (for manual penalties only, for some penalties, it will be difficult to even know your site has penalty)
Contact Google through the Webmaster Tools Troubleshooter (for algorithmic penalties)

To summarize, know what links are pointing to your site and know what anchor text is being used the most. Be suspect of any anchor text that is highly optimized (focuses on your primary keywords) or especially be on the lookout for completely non-related industry terms (such as payday loans, etc.). Attempt to remove all known bad links and add all [bad domains] to your disavow file in Google Webmaster Tools. Be up front about the issue and be respectful in your communication to Google through the reconsideration request form or troubleshooter and don’t give up, even after several contact attempts.

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Marketing and SEO Mistakes Chicago Businesses Should Avoid

2014-10-03T05:13:05Z

When it comes to local marketing there are no set rules but there are some known “no no’s”. Each community in the Chicago Area, be it Naperville, Glen Ellyn, Barrington, or even as far as Rockford,while related is different; and each individual business has to adjust to its target customer base within that community. Still, there are some basics to marketing successfully to a specific local audience that can’t be ignored. If you feel like the return on your local promotional initiatives is hit or miss, you may be neglecting some basics that can bolster your business and reputation in your community.

While there are many mistakes to be made, here are five common mistakes are businesses make when it comes to reaching targeted local customers:

Lack of Any Web Presence.

Even owners of a longtime, Glen Ellyn mom and pop establishments could have benefited from a simple website or inclusion in an online directory. We encountered a client who had absolutely no presence in any directory, yet had been in business in Glen Ellyn for over 30 years. We thought something like this would be impossible, but he was an internet ghost. It is not often that a local business owner says he or she has “too many” customers(although we may switch keywords at times to keep from peeking). In addition to regular, sustainable and residual customer, a web presence brings in new clientele that happen upon sites when looking for a product or service. Many websites cost very little to create and maintain, and results-driven online directories are affordable too. If you’re unsure of where to begin in building an online following, hire someone to help you or contact us today. The money you invest will pay off over time and many companies offer a flat fee to maintain the site for you. Ultimately, if you don’t tap the resource, it is an avenue of growth that your business will not experience.

Remember that it is not enough to rely on word-of-mouth or traditional marketing techniques to bring in new local customers. Hanging your digital shingle in cyberspace is also vital and easier than ever to accomplish. Give potential customers the answers to their questions in an immediate way in order to win their business and not lose them to more visible competitors.

Beautiful Sites Unable to be Found in Search Engine Results.

This point is similar to having a lack of web presence but applies beyond the digital realm. Having a website is a great start, but the having one that is invisible to the search engines is nothing more than a place for people to go when they read your business card. One of our Naperville SEO clients learned this the hard way. He had a brilliant website, that was designed well, and written well; it was just all images and invisible to the search engines (warning, any images of text on your site are absolutely worthless). Ultimately, he brought us to his Naperville office to discuss a way to boost his Search Engine Optimization and elevate his listing in the SERPs. It took an entire rebuild of his site due to the poor decisions of his previous web designer, but we had him on the top of his 5 main keywords within a month.

Location Location Location

If people do not know where you are located, they cannot give you their business. We often work start Chicago clients who don’t even have access to their Google+ and Local citation sites. This data is absolutely imperative to building business in the local market. This means promoting your web location in addition to your physical address. Unfortunately, people are so programmed to find the answers to all questions immediately that they will not take the time to track you down if a competitor offers ease of information. Additionally, with the improvements in local search functions on smart phones, over 50% of local market share is now going to the top 5-10 listings in a map search. Do whatever it takes to let people know where you exist, from web presence optimization to the signage outside your location to inclusion in web listings for your industry.

Take the Temperature

One of our Barrington Web Design clients was absolute in that he didn’t care about what his clients thought of his services. That was, at least, until he started reading his reviews online. He soon found that reputation and feedback management are absolutely critical in the way of local business targeting.

There has never been a financial advantage to being an industry “best kept secret.” Ask customers how they found you and how you can improve your physical visibility. Those that are most loyal to your business will want to help and will be honest with you. Do not lose customers to frustration or impatience at having to track you down, instead make it easy to find you and even easier to buy your products or enlist your services.

It’s Hard to Acquire Community Business without Community Outreach.

There is a reason that people say “the more you give, the more you get.” Find simple ways to give back to the community of your loyal clients and build your reputation for future local clients. Simple ways to get involved include sponsoring a local event, donating a product or service to a fundraising auction or volunteering at a local non-profit organization. Align your name with a cause that you believe benefits your client base and one that represents your business ideals.

Not only does outreach earn you the respect of the community, but it also creates a culture of social consciousness in your business, encouraging employees to reach out when they are off the clock too. You can feel satisfied knowing that you went beyond the call of duty to help the community and build a strong image of beneficence in the process.

Focus on local marketing does not have to be overwhelming. Find simple ways to reach out to your local audience through an online presence, easy-to-find location and outreach programs. By participating in just a few initiatives, you’re taking down some of the barriers that may be holding your business back. This then allows you to increase your business and root yourself in your community.

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WordPress 4.0 Released With Useful Features To Add A Richer Platform

2014-10-03T04:34:00Z

What do CNN, The Blaze, Fox News, Flickr, TechCrunch, eBay and Best Buy all have in common?

They all use WordPress. Initially developed as a blogging platform, WordPress has evolved in the last 11 years to a full-fledged popular content management system (CMS), capable of hosting static and dynamic content, e-commerce and event calendars, audio and video podcasts, and more, thanks largely to an expansive plugin system and a supportive community.

Of the top 10 million Alexa-ranked websites, 23% use WordPress; of those sites that use a CMS, WordPress accounts for 61% of the market. WordPress dwarfs the competition, with Joomla and Drupal holding only 8% and 5% of the CMS market, respectively.

Media and Plugin Options

WordPress 4.0 focuses on making it easier for site admins to write content, install plugins and manage media. If you spend any time at all in your site’s back end (as opposed to using a client like WordPress for iOS or Android or MarsEdit 3 for Mac), these changes will be apparent and appreciated.

There are now more options for adding rich content to your posts. Have an image, video or tweet to share with your readers? Since WordPress 2.9, authors have been able to paste the link directly into the WYSYWIG editor (or by clicking “Add Media > Insert from URL”) and WordPress would automatically embed the referenced media at a width appropriate to their theme — for example, so that a YouTube video would play within a site. There’s been no need to obtain separate embed code or use the HTML editor.

With WordPress 4.0, that automatically embedded media can now come from any of 26 supported sites. Joining essential platforms such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Instagram are others such as CollegeHumor, Issuu, Mixcloud and TED Talks.

Also new in 4.0 is the ability to see the embedded media in the WYSYWIG editor, offering a more accurate preview of the published post. But this feature works only when pasting in URLs from the aforementioned 26 hosts. If you prefer to manually obtain, configure and insert a site’s embed code in order to, say, start a video at a certain time or add captions, WordPress will not show a preview of media embedded in this fashion.

This is a repost for our Chicago, Naperville and Glen Ellyn web design network team.

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Marketing Your Local Business Online

2014-10-01T03:52:31Z

If you run a local business, you may be missing out on a wealth of effective and economical online marketing opportunities. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is known for connecting people around the globe with their target products and successfully promoting businesses. It’s even more well known for marketing local businesses in their communities. There is an entire world of marketing opportunities available for location-based businesses, including search, social, and content marketing options. In this guide, we look into two marketing strategies that successful local businesses use to boost their local SEO. Follow these SEO steps to getting noticed in your local community searches.

Optimizing your website for local search is one of the top priorities.

There are a number of ways you can optimize your website for local search that will help attract local clients and customers. The first thing you need to do is identify your keywords. These are the words (usually a short phrase) that describe your business. If, for example, you run a wedding photography business, your keywords might be “wedding photographer.” To localize your business, add the city you target to that phrase, e.g. “Naperville wedding photographer” or “Glen Ellyn Wedding Photography.” Read the Small Business SEO Guide, do some keyword research to make sure the city + keyword phrase has strong search volume, then optimize your website for the best locally focused keywords using the on-site optimization tips in the guide.

Next, include a local street address and phone number (with a local area code, not 800 number) on each page of your website. Most businesses do this in the footer. This information must be on the website in text, not image format, so that search engines can crawl the information. If your business has multiple locations, the alternative is to put the primary location on each page and create individual contact pages for each location.

Tip: Make sure your website has a contact page for each location that includes the address, phone number, and a map helping customers find it. Adding photos of each location on the contact page is also a good idea.

Find the right local directories to join

Local directories and review sites are often referred to as “citations,” and they can help your business website rank well in local search results on Google. Here are the keys to ensuring each local directory and review site you join counts towards helping your business rank well in local search:

Make sure your business name, address, phone number, and website are consistent, on both your website and in local listings. Things that will cause ranking problems include having your business name listed as ABC Services in one place and A.B.C. Services in another, or having your address listed as 1500 West First St. in one place and 1500 W. First Street in another, or having your website address listed as abcservices.com in one place and www.abcservices.com/index.html in another.
Encourage (but do not incentivize, bribe, or purchase) customers to write reviews about your business on the top local directories and review sites. The more positive reviews you have, the better your business is going to rank.
Complete each of your local listing profiles as thoroughly as possible. If you are given the option of adding additional information, social network links, photos, and videos, be sure to do so.

With hundreds of local directories, review sites, and profile pages, choosing which ones to sign up for can be difficult. Start here:

Create listings on Google+ Local, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, and Yelp.
Search for your business name using Google and then claim and complete profiles for any of the listings that appear on the first couple of search engine results pages (SERPs).
Use the GetListedresource pages to find the best citations for your business based on industry and city.

To get in a wide array of listings without spending a lot of time, you can use services like Universal Business Listing. You complete a profile in their system, and they take that information and populate it across all of the local directories and review sites. You can also use tools like Whitespark to find citations for your competitors. They also offer a free review handout generator that helps you create a guide for your customers to use on how to do reviews for your business.

Don’t forget about local media and organizations such as newspapers, news stations, and chambers of commerce. Many have their own business directory that you can get listed in simply by asking or becoming a member.

You can also reach out to local business owners to see if they are willing to become referral partners. For example, caterers, wedding planners and florists would be ideal referral partners for a wedding photographer. Look for local businesses with partner’s pages or local resource pages.

The post Marketing Your Local Business Online appeared first on Naper Design | Naperville Web Design and SEO.

Why Relevant External Links Matter: Back to SEO Basics

2014-09-04T02:18:23Z

As a knowledgeable and methodical webmaster and we may be, we know that know that optimizing our website is a constant effort and that the Web is always evolving. Our Naperville Web Design and SEO Team is constantly being retaught and our methods reformulated to appeal to the demands of the search engines. You may have spent several hours adding and updating meta and titles tags, keyword-rich content, H1 header tags on top of pages, multiple header tags within content, title text, quality web content, alt tags for photos, and even building inbound links. One thing you’ve certainly learned through all of this is that in order to rise and remain at the top of SERPs — everything is never enough.

Outbound Linking

Certainly one commonly overlooked, and sometimes feared, tactic is hosting external links to relevant websites within your own site’s content. Some SEO’s view this as the ultimate sin. You likely know that having authoritative sites that include a link back to your website can help generate traffic, leads, as well as increasing your rankings on SERPs. But you might find your self puzzled considering, “if we’re going back to basics, how exactly would linking out to other websites help?” And with the onslaught of websites that have fallen off the grid post-Google updates (Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird) for suspicion of trying to “game the system” – why on Earth would you want to risk having your website get penalized? Some SEO’s here in Chicago have openly claimed that outbound links are a near and dear friend of the internet devil.

The answer is very simple: user experience surpasses all other aspects of the algorithms. Search engines want you to provide relevant resources on your website that enhance your visitor’s experiences while surfing the web. Your dynamic content and lists of helpful resources will all add a great deal of value to your website in the eyes of your visitors…and the Googlebots.

Spammy vs. Natural Links

So, how can you distinguish between “natural” and “spam” external links and why should you care? Well, what’s useful and relevant to your website’s categories and topics. For example, if your website is geared towards sports, it would make sense to link out to other authoritative and relevant sport sites and pages that can enhance your visitor’s experience; whereas including a link to a dentist’s office would seem out of place (unless somehow the connection is legitimate). Of course, you also want to protect your visitors from sites that involve online gambling, payday loans, pharmaceuticals, or adult-oriented content. Avoid any links from sites associated with known spam content. Additionally, if you ensure that the keywords associated with the site linking into yours are similar to your own, there will be a greater chance of additional weight being placed on them.

External links can also come in several shapes and sizes. Surely one of the more well-known tactics is to develop useful content that contains natural links out to other related sources and websites. Accepting authoritative guest posts is also a way to keep your site updated with unique content. The addition of an authoritative author is that you receive fan traffic from those who are avid readers of the guest author.

They’re Still Votes From The Internet

Obviously, you want quality links coming in, and in doing so, you want votes of approval from the internet as a whole. While yes, Google has clamped down on the weight and power of any specific link, the simple reality is that they aren’t currently able to get a good feel for a website’s overall impact without using link data. Keep them clean, and Google will reward your SEO effort.

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Google Authorship Is Dead & What That Means For Your SEO Strategy

2014-09-01T17:23:39Z

The Authorship markup was first unveiled by Google in June 2011 and SEO Techs everywhere rejoiced. Its roots can be traced back to the company’s Agent Rank patent of 2007. Bill Slawski, an expert on Google’s patents, says that the Agent Rank patent is a type of system wherein multiple pieces of content are connected with a digital signature that represents one or more “agents” (authors).

Three years after Google Authorship was launched, the company decided to discontinue the project and SEO’s everywhere cried a little. The announcement came from John Mueller of Google Webmaster Tools which he posted in Google+. According to Mueller, Google will stop displaying authorship in Google Search. Likewise, it will no longer track data from content with the rel=author markup in SERP rankings.

Google noticed that displaying the authorship information wasn’t as useful as the company had thought it would be. At some point, it can even distract from the results. For these reasons, Google decided to axe the Authorship project.

Don’t discount Author Rank as a result of this change and the reduced spinets.

According to Search Engine Land:

Author Rank Is Real — And Continues!

Schmidt was just speculating in his book, not describing anything that was actually happening at Google. From Google itself, there was talk several times last year of making use of Author Rank as a way to identify subject experts and somehow boost them in the search results:

Google Authority Boost: Google’s Algorithm To Determine Which Site Is A Subject Authority, May 2013

Google’s Matt Cutts: Someday, Perhaps Ranking Benefits From Using Rel=”Author”, June 2013

Google Still Working On Promoting Subject-Specific Authorities In Search Results, December 2013

That was still all talk. The first real action came in March of this year. After Amit Singhal, the head of Google Search, said that Author Rank still wasn’t being used, the head of Google’s web spam team gave a caveat of where Author Rank was used: for the “In-depth articles” section, when it sometimes appears, of Google’s search results.

Google divulged that dropping Google Authorship shouldn’t have an impact on how the In-depth articles section works so strong writers’ SEO platforms should be intact. Google also explained that the dropping of Google Authorship won’t impact its other efforts to reward authors who perpetually make quality and engaging content.

Well, if you read the above portion, you’re likely scratching your heads. How is there to be author rank without authorship, when Google has also said that it’s ignoring authorship markup?

The answer is that Google has other ways to the author of a quality story, if it wants. In particular, Google is likely to look for visible “bylines” and citations that often appear on news stories and blog posts. These existed before Google Authorship, and they aren’t going away. One thing to keep in mind, you will want to ensure that all of your titled work is consolidated under the account name you will want tracked.

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Low-Cost, HIgh-Impact Ways Businesses Can Boost Local Sales

2014-08-31T03:08:52Z

If you’re a small business owner, you’ve likely felt some pains because of the tighter lending regulations from banks. Your advertising budgets are already small or non-existent, making advertising even harder now. Fortunately, digital advertising has some low-cost options, allowing small businesses to be able to expand their limited budgets.

Many small businesses have Facebook and Twitter pages, and maybe a few listings in local directories, but that is the extent of their advertising. This is not for lack of interest, however. In a recent study released by market research firm BIA/Kelsey, 40 percent of small and midsized businesses plans to increase digital spending in the next year.

So how can businesses get the best return on investment from digital, internet and social media advertising methods?

It is understandable that companies do not want to put up the cash for traditional outbound marketing techniques, but there are actually a lot of inexpensive (and free) ways to market a business online that are underutilized. If you want to maximize your online presence, look beyond the typical social networks and directories and make use of these options as well:

Register your company with Google’s Places for Business. It’s estimated that 97 percent of consumers decide what local businesses to frequent based on an online search? This free service from Google, Places for Business, literally puts you “on the map” so people can find the products or services you offer on a local level. If you do not have an office that is open to the public, you can choose a service area option during signup and hide your physical address. If you have multiple locations, you will want to sign up separately for each spot. Additionally, you will want to be added to several citation sites, to reinforce the Google Places listing. Ensure that the location, phone, and name of your business are the same on each of these sites. Bet results come from consistency.

Join your local Chamber of Commerce. For a small annual fee, you can take advantage of the many networking opportunities your local Chamber of Commerce provides. This is an excellent way to learn about the ways area laws will affect your business operations and also to rub elbows with potential clients. Usually new members get the chance to promote their business on the Chamber’s website or in its newsletter which could lead to a boost in business.

Seek out barter swaps with other local companies. This can take many different forms depending on the resources that you have available to trade. Consider comparable online banner ads or just simply leaving business cards at each other’s physical locations. You may also want to look into exchanging guest blog posts with other area businesses. By linking to each other, you will build up search engine credibility for people searching businesses in your area. There are really no limits here and business swap ideas are free. Try to find companies that make sense with which to trade – for example, a home inspector may find value in a swap relationship with a local Realtor or property management office.

Make a business video. People love to watch videos online, so why not ride that wave? Make a brief video explaining your services or products and post it several places, including your official website and YouTube. Show your expertise in your field with a video that explains what you do and why you are the best at it. People like to put a face with a business name, especially when it comes to local companies, so give them a reason to pick you over the other options.

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Make Sure your Chicago Area Small Business is found on Google| Small Business SEO

2014-08-30T04:10:50Z

You may have recently decided to dedicate a lot of effort and resources to get your website discovered. However, if the website has poor quality and lacks vital information, then it can have an adverse effect on your small business. In order to ensure your small business is found in Google(or Bing and Yahoo for that matter), you will need to be search engine friendly. It’s also important that you provide content that’s persuasive and valuable for your potential client. Here are a few SEO tips to help enhance your visibility on Google:

Use Catchy Titles & Descriptions:

Make sure each page has a ‘catchy’ title. It should include at least one relevant keyword. Your Meta tag descriptions should also include a keyword. It should also summarize what your web page is about. You’ll want to include a call-to-action. The key is to persuade people to click onto your website for further information.

Use Relevant Keywords & Keyword Phrases:

Always use the right keywords. You’ll want to use the keywords that your target audience is actually using to find your product or service. A web design company in Naperville or Chicago that offers SEO services can conduct an extensive keyword search and find the most popular keywords in your niche. Stuffing keywords in that don’t have any relevant position to the page topic, or flood the page with useless info is a great way to be punished by the Google gods.

Be Social

Make sure you can be found on the social media sites that your audience is hanging out. It’s not necessary to sign up for every site. Simply sign up where the majority of your audience is hanging out at. For example, if you find out your target audience is hanging out at Foursquare, Facebook and Google+, you’ll want to make yourself available on those networks.

Don’t forget to add the link of your website to your social media accounts, not only for the search engines, but so people can find you. Social Media traffic is one of the most dedicated driving forces of the internet today; ignoring it would be ignoring your businesses future.

It’s important to understand that Google is constantly evolving. The key is to provide your visitors with a website that is not only well designed but a website that is relevant to the product or service you’re offering. Remember, Google is meant to function in a way that simulates the average person searching. If you make your site more data-friendly to average users, it will also be friendly to Google.

Naper Design is a full-service web design and SEO company in Naperville offering mobile app development, website design & web development, mobile development and SEO services.

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5 SEO Tips for Launching a New Website and New Brand

2014-08-30T04:12:45Z

You may feel that you have the perfect search strategy, but there are still more tactics to consider. Here are some basic SEO tips for launching a new website and new brand:

As you transition from your old website to a new SEO targeted Website, you can maintain the link equity in which you have invested in already. This is vital for getting your new website to rank quickly. The most effective way to achieve this would be to leave your URLs untouched. However, this is not always possible y if you make an attempt to improve your URL structure or moving to a new domain. Often, updating to a strong Database Built Web Design will result in some changes to link mapping.
Images are ideal to make your new website engaging and attractive. Unfortunately, search engines have not reached a point yet where they can decode content that is image-based. The use of alt tags can enable search engines to comprehend the meaning of images; this can also be valuable for those who are visually impaired. Alt tags should be vivid and entail the same keywords for which your page aims to rank.
External links can enable link authority to your website, while internal links can distribute that particular authority across your website pages. In page cross-linking, there are opportunities for appropriate referrals to additional pages with relevant data; they are typically unheeded during a redesign. Page copy can be an ideal place to link to deeper website pages with anchor text to point to long-tail keywords.
Local results have taken a greater standing in the SERPs. Naturally, it depends on your brand; so, local can be your strategy instead of a small portion of your overall plan. Keep in mind, locally focused works only if your business model is only focused locally. There are several locally relevant recommendations to consider in combination with your fresh new website launch, but most importantly, your maps should always be the focus of local SEO. Our Naperville Web Design and SEO Team targets citation listings (map directories) and locally relevant review sites to ensure for a cohesive and universal set of data descriptions.
A new Google search feature in authorship is expected to increase in relevance over time. Author-Ranking is the future of authorship where pages are ranked based on the authority of the writer, as opposed to the authority of the page/website. An investment in authorship can help you not only in the short term, but the long term as well. We suggest that your content creators work on and off of your sites to develop a stronger authorship ranking.

To find out more information about how SEO can help improve your web visibility, contact our Chicago and Naperville SEO Team.

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Tips to Streamline Online Marketing Budgets

2014-08-29T02:42:48Z

Marketing your business online to prospective customers doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Often times, many people waste a lot of money with online marketing that doesn’t produce the results they expect – mainly because they do not have a solid marketing strategy in place. In reality, you can experience good results with online marketing on a budget. Here are six effective tips:

Tip #1:Your marketing strategy will never be lucrative if you don’t have an audience that is clearly defined. Before you spend a dime on marketing, first identify your prospective market. There is no need to pay top dollar to employ a prestigious market research firm. If you have knowledge of your product, then you should be able to identify the market yourself.

Tip #2:You can determine what you’re looking to gain from marketing online, whether it is increased awareness or increased revenue. It is likely you’ll have various goals, but keep track of these multiple goals to measure your achievements. When you reach your initial goals, then you can set new goals for your company to reach success. Our Naperville Web Design team can help you monitor and keep track of your marketing efforts with our various analytic tools. This will help you with growing your business.

Tip #3:Once you are aware of who your target market is and have created goals, you can plan your budget appropriately. The best thing about marketing online is that you can be a success even on a tight budget. You can determine what outlets are the most valuable for your product and have the will to spend some dollars to achieve results.

Tip #4:Set yourself apart from your competitors. There is a myriad of companies making an attempt to sell products online. Thus, you need to make your brand id notable. Naturally, this begins with a first-rate website. Our web design company in Naperville, will not only build an aesthetically pleasing website, we will create a website that’s mobile friendly and easy to navigate.

Tip #5:Every business owner’s dream is to have his/her website displayed on the first results page of the search engine. This can be achieved with the proper use of relevant keywords, back-linking (white hat) and SEO friendly (and human friendly) Meta Tag titles and descriptions.

Tip #6:Social media marketing can also help enhance your brand identity. It’s important that you provide your audience with valuable information that will persuade them to take action. This may include visiting your website or even sharing your content with their friends on various social media outlets. Also, your website, social media sites and marketing materials should complement each other.

If you need help building a website or you need to enhance an existing website, our experienced Naperville Web Designers are here to help. Contact us today or call: 630-803-8998.

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New Clients

2012-08-29T19:04:15Z

In Dallas:

Complete Overhead Door is committed to providing the most professional and quality installation, sales and repair of garage doors and electric openers in Dallas. We will not be undersold.

Blue Nail Enterprises is the best roofing company in Garland, commercial roof repair, roof construction, and roofing contractor. Our expert roofing team serves Arlington and Dallas TX.

Florida:

Charter fishing with Captain Brian Helms for tarpon, bonefish, redfish, permit, and snook. Some of the best fishing in the world is in Islamorada. Captain Helms leads the best fly fishing charters in the Florida Keys.

Port Charlotte Florida Used Cars & Trucks prides themselves on having the cleanest, highest quality and best maintained pre-owned vehicles in Port Charlotte and Fort Myers, Florida.

Buy Tires for less at Don Gasgarth’s Tire shop located in Port Charlotte and Fort Myers, Florida. Convenient location for all customers in or around Port Charlotte Florida.

Don Gasgarth’s Quick Lane Auto Service located in Port Charlotte, services all towns surrounding near Fort Myers, FL. Auto parts, Auto Repair and collision for your cars, suvs or trucks

The UPS Store in Victor NY, services all of Rochester NY for your printing, copy, scanning needs. The store provides printing and business services for all products.

Test drive a new or used car in Port Charlotte at Charlotte County Ford. Their greater Fort Myers, North Port and Englewood Ford dealership always has a wide selection of new Ford cars. Their location makes them the best Ford Dealer to Fort Myers.

Rochester New York:

Five Star Improvements, Inc, in Rochester, NY, takes pride in making homes look and feel like new again. Five Star Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor Improvements is one of Rochester’s top home remodeling companies.

An experienced business founder, CEO and General Counsel for both public and private companies, he started his ?rm to address demand within the small and midsized business community. Call today for for an outside counsel in Rochester who respond to business problems in an “in-house manner.”

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How to Resize Your Images on a PC

2011-12-15T20:51:54Z

This is how to resize the high-resolution images your camera takes. First copy the images you would like to resize. You might need the originals later for pieces of the image to harvest for design reasons. This way you will only destroy your copies if you do something wrong and not your originals.

Now you will want to open your copied pictures with Paint.

The reason I picked Paint is because it is a program that comes with Windows so everyone has this free program if they are running Windows of any flavor.

Once your image is opened in Paint you can easily edit your image.

Click on Resize in the Upper Right hand corner of the screen and you will be taken to the Resize menu.

I chose the pixels over the percentage for scaling the image. Keep in mind your page content is usually under 700 pixels wide. So the horizontal number should be under 700. Otherwise you are just creating an image that will slow your site down for no reason. Save the image and you will have a much smaller faster to upload picture for your website.

You will still have your Originals in the folder to use if you need a partial of a picture as well if you copied the images before hand.

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Distinctive Dentistry

2011-12-13T18:55:06Z

Distinctive Dentistry

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Winter Park Hotel

2011-11-30T22:46:37Z

Winter Park Hotel

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Pass Faa Exams

2011-11-30T22:57:57Z

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Shinobi Martial Arts

2011-11-30T22:14:17Z

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