You know what’s missing from most website’s SEO plans? It’s simple. Most of the time, it’s the design and user experience that take a backseat to search engine optimization (SEO) strategic plans. Businesses and bloggers care more about getting people to their websites, but, without design and user experience, your website will never be successful.

Would you bring your target market or customer to a dilapidated house that’s infested with all types of vermin? Well then, why are you leading them to a website that is failing miserably at engagement and conversion people?

You think if you build it, they will come? Well, friends, not if it looks like junk and frustrates people!

Building User Experience Design into SEO

It’s not too late though! I’m here to give you 9 Tips to Design & User Experience that will rock your SEO strategy!

1) Call to Actions
Every website should have a clear and strategically placed call to action on every page.

2) Professional Design
A compelling and user friendly design makes your business stand above the competitors.

3)Security Badges
When your website’s authenticity is under question, include “badges”, such as VeriSign, American Marketing Association, Angie’s List, and the Better Business Bureau, to gain the trust of your website’s visitors.

4) Never Confuse People
Ever heard the phrase: “Less is more”? Well, don’t confuse your visitors with a billion options. Choose 3 that stand out and those should be your calls to action.

5) Give Visitors Cool Features
Visitors love it when you make his or her life easier. Let them add things to a wish list, send email alerts and subscribe to newsletters. Making life easier for people will help increase conversion rates.

6) Highlight the Best Sellers
Use images and video of your best selling products and services to captivate your visitors.

7) Cross Browser & Mobile Friendly
Your website should be accessible and responsive across multiple platforms and multiple devices. Never frustrate potential customers with technology issues.

8) Simple Check-Out Processes
Conversion rates increase when you keep the check-out and payment process simple.

9) Reduce the Loading Time
Never make your website visitors wait for your page to load. Minimize the size of your files and use caching mechanisms to help your website load quickly.

Question: What design or user experience tip would you add to captivate a website’s visitor?

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Author information

Shannon Steffen

Founder & Human SEO at Excira Media

Shannon Steffen is a business inbound marketing consultant who helps Fortune 500s and small businesses around the world to Stand Out and Get Results by creating solid online strategies. She speaks widely on the science and art of online long-term success through strategic and creative thinking known as Human SEO^™.

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The search engines have always been about answering people’s questions quickly. But, as you know, what people say in a conversation and what they type on their devices are totally two different types of communication. We don’t speak in keywords and the search engines are finally paying attention with Google “building the search engine of the future”.

Society has gone from word of mouth to word of web, and now to word of mouth on the web.

Google Loves Human SEO^tm

Google has been hard at work to make their search engine understand and answer your questions like people do. Soon you will be able to just ask a question of Google, hands-free, and get the answer spoken to you. However, it doesn’t stop there.

You will soon be able to continue the conversation with further questions.

For example, you can ask Google, out-loud, if it will be sunny in Long Beach, New York this weekend. Google will then answer you, out-loud, what the weather will be like; allowing you to ask a follow-up question about how far it is from New York City.

Google also claims that, with better answers, there will be improvements to their Knowledge Graph. This update will allow the search engine to even answer your follow-up question before you even ask it.

How Will the Future Google Search Affect SEO?

With all the changes coming to Google, any website owner, businessperson or blogger may wonder what the future changes will have on search engine optimization (SEO).

Of course, there are no guarantees when it comes to SEO success. Nevertheless, by following solid foundational SEO Best Practices, ensuring that you continue with white-hat ethical SEO strategies, and that your content remains fresh and relevant, your website will have the best chances for continued success. Follow the path of White Hat Human SEO^tm and you will be well on your way to better online success – regardless of the search engine changes.

Question: What do you see for the future of Google Search?

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Author information

Shannon Steffen

Founder & Human SEO at Excira Media

Shannon Steffen is a business inbound marketing consultant who helps Fortune 500s and small businesses around the world to Stand Out and Get Results by creating solid online strategies. She speaks widely on the science and art of online long-term success through strategic and creative thinking known as Human SEO^™.

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If you want Google to display your business or organizational logo on the search engine results page, then you’ll want to know how to use Schema.org’s Organization Markup in your SEO strategic plan. A bit of simple code on your website and you’re logo will be displayed on relational content on the SERPs.

Google SEO and Schema Organization Markeup

Google launched support for the Schema.org markup language for logos as a way to connect your website and brand with an iconic image.

By using Schema.org’s Organization Markup, you can tell the search engine the location of your preferred business or organization’s logo.

An Example of Schema’s SEO Organization Markup

<div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Organization”>
<a itemprop=”url” href=”http://www.example.com/”>Home</a>
<img itemprop=”logo” src=”http://www.example.com/logo.png” />
</div>

Making Business Logo Indexing Easy for Google

To Google, this example code indicates that this specific image is designated as the logo for this homepage. Google then has knowledge to use this logo in its search results when your website is displayed.

Introducing Schema markup code as shown in the example, is a strong signal to Google to show this image over others and is a welcome addition to SEO strategic best practices.

Question: What has been your experience with having your business or blog images displaying correct on Google’s search engine results page?

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Author information

Shannon Steffen

Founder & Human SEO at Excira Media

Shannon Steffen is a business inbound marketing consultant who helps Fortune 500s and small businesses around the world to Stand Out and Get Results by creating solid online strategies. She speaks widely on the science and art of online long-term success through strategic and creative thinking known as Human SEO^™.

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The post How to Get Google to Display Your Business Logo appeared first on Professional Human SEO and Inbound Marketing Consulting | Excira Media.

Imagine that you just opened your email box to find an email that catches your attention. The subject reads “Advanced Link Building Solution” and you can’t help but feel intrigued to read the email. You know you need more links to your website in order to increase your website’s SEO and this just may be the solution to all your problems. I’m sorry to burst your bubble, friends. It’s a Black Hat SEO Scam and even my own inbox wasn’t immune to it.

If you receive an email similar to what’s posted below, please do not fall prey to this scam:

“We have created an advanced link building solution which is Penguin proof. Our solution addresses the fundamental problem caused by Penguin update. We focus on unique IP growth coming from various networks, anchor tag diversity, natural contextual links, and link type diversity which is not created using your typical black hat SEO software.”

Black Hat SEO Scam Red Flags

Many people I know receive more than a handful of these a day. Usually, if the solution is too good to be true, it usually is. They know link building is one of the foundational pieces to a solid SEO strategy but it is a long process. By guaranteeing that it will be easy and quick, they are using your emotions to override logic. To help, here’s a few too good to be true SEO red flags:

1. Penguin Proof Link Building – There is nothing that is Google proof or algorithm proof just as it is impossible to guarantee the #1 ranking in Google. Algorithms change and there’s even a huge Google Penguin SEO change coming in the next few weeks to help eliminate black hat link building techniques. (I’ll be writing about that next week.) Because things change so much in SEO, there is no such thing as a guarantee success – there is only guaranteed quality work.
2. Your Typical Black Hat SEO Software – Look at the way this term is used. Logically speaking, they are admitting they are a Black Hat SEO Software Company because they are not “typical”. A solid red flag there!
3. Originating Email – I didn’t disclose the email address of the company but it is from a Hotmail.com email account. If a company is not willing to send an email from their own domain, they are hiding something. Never go with any SEO consultant, strategist, agency or expert when his or her email comes from a free service. Ethical companies will always use their own domain email addresses.
4. The Name of Sender – Again, I didn’t disclose his name but it doesn’t matter because it was sent from “Jason K”. How many guys with the name Jason, and last initial “K”, do you think there are in the world? Again, if they aren’t willing to be upfront with their information, they are hiding something.

Your Reaction to SEO Scam Emails

If you receive one of these emails, the best action is to do nothing at all. When you reply, you are giving them your direct email address, which can open a whole separate, can of SEO worms.

• Don’t click any links
• Mark the email as spam
• Move it to your trash
• Continue on with your day

Don’t get annoyed or let it steal your joy. Sadly, this will most likely not be the last time you get one of these emails but at least you won’t fall for their trap.

Question: Did you receive this same email? How many of these of these scams do you receive in a month? What action do you take?

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Author information

Shannon Steffen

Founder & Human SEO at Excira Media

Shannon Steffen is a business inbound marketing consultant who helps Fortune 500s and small businesses around the world to Stand Out and Get Results by creating solid online strategies. She speaks widely on the science and art of online long-term success through strategic and creative thinking known as Human SEO^™.

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The post “Penguin Proof” Black Hat SEO Scam Alert appeared first on Professional Human SEO and Inbound Marketing Consulting | Excira Media.

Contrary to popular belief, Google is not the only game in town when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) for your online success. Yes, Google is definitely a heavyweight that should not be ignored, but you’ll be doing yourself (and your business) a disservice if you concentrate all your efforts on Google.

Not every social media network is meant for every business. Nor is every search engine meant for your business success.

With the increase in social media influence on search engine rankings (SERs), it’s time to put the humans before the robots. The days of gaming the search engines are over and Google has gotten wise to the black hat SEO spammers out there.

Where the True SEO Success Online Lives

First, it must be noted that there are some solid SEO foundations you must put in place for higher search engines rankings. You must follow Google’s best practices with clean website coding, proper use of tags, and optimizing your images. Without a solid foundation, you don’t have a leg to stand on.

But when it comes to standing out and being found online, you need to connect with those animated objects called human beings. It is real people that will help you shine online through sharing your content, links, and keywords across the Internet and around the world. They are the ones that become your champions and help funnel your online success.

How to Harness True SEO Success Online

I’m not going to lie to you. Success online takes time and energy. It also takes times and will not happen overnight.

In order to harness true success, you need to build trust and engagement through:

• Connection – Truly connect with other human beings by allowing your business or online brand to be seen as being human. Don’t force-feed your network but engage with it.
• Collaboration – You should always be asking: “How can I help?” Come together with other people online for a common goal. When you put yourself, or your business, out there to help, people want to help you.
• Consistency – Just like any relationship, humans online need to know what to expect of you. Be consistent in your communications and actions. Let them trust you.

Yes, Google is the largest SEO game in town but it’s the humans that are now making up the rules. Pay attention to Human SEO and the search engines will take care of themselves.

Author information

Shannon Steffen

Founder & Human SEO at Excira Media

Shannon Steffen is a business inbound marketing consultant who helps Fortune 500s and small businesses around the world to Stand Out and Get Results by creating solid online strategies. She speaks widely on the science and art of online long-term success through strategic and creative thinking known as Human SEO^™.

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The post Why You Should Not Count On Google SEO appeared first on Professional Human SEO and Inbound Marketing Consulting | Excira Media.

You’ve heard of Google, haven’t you? It’s that huge search engine that directs traffic to your business website or online brand. To keep ranks of its search engine results page in check, Google creates frequent algorithm changes that have the best brands online scratching their digital heads. Did you know though that there are basic search engine optimization (SEO) tricks that are still highly effective – that help increase your page results regardless of the search engine changes? Well, I’m here to give you 3 of those SEO tactics that you can count on to better optimize your business website or blog for the search engines.

SEO for Building Your Business Brand Online

1) Always Know Your Keywords – Using every keyword you’d like to on your website is impossible and your customers may not even speak the same language as your team. Choosing your keyword carefully will give you the most return on your time. Using a tool such as Google’s AdWords Keyword Tools will help highlight competitive keywords to use in your blog posts, main website page, meta tags, and key landing pages. When using keywords though, remember to write first for your target market and then go back to edit for keywords. The humans are the ones buying your products and services – not the search engines.

2) Create Compelling Content – There are many different types of digital content; from blog posts to eBooks and white papers to videos. Make sure to give your visitors an easy way to share that content. Social sharing buttons are crucial to your business’ online success. If a visitor cannot share your content through social media networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, then you’ve lost the opportunity to turn a visitor into a champion. You’re business or brand doesn’t have to be on every social media network but it does need to allow others an easy way to share your content.

3) Link Within Your Brand’s Website – Once you get people to your website, you need to have ways to keep them there and wanting more. Your content should not only be compelling but you need to be linking within your own website to other appropriate sections or content. Put links to other related content and calls to action.

If you want a brand advocate, then your business needs to create content and make it easy to share. When you turn people into champions, they help build the brand for you. Give them a method to share and watch the search engines happily index all your brand has to offer.

Question: Does your brand have a digital footprint? If so, what do you see as the foundation to its success?

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Author information

Shannon Steffen

Founder & Human SEO at Excira Media

Shannon Steffen is a business inbound marketing consultant who helps Fortune 500s and small businesses around the world to Stand Out and Get Results by creating solid online strategies. She speaks widely on the science and art of online long-term success through strategic and creative thinking known as Human SEO^™.

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The post 3 SEO On-Page Tricks to Build Your Business Brand appeared first on Professional Human SEO and Inbound Marketing Consulting | Excira Media.

If your website has been banned by Google, Yahoo, or Bing, then you’re probably feeling the frustrated, annoyed and probably a little bit angry. There doesn’t seem to be any statistics given by the top search engines on the number of websites banned each year, but do a simple search on “banned website” and you will find over 196 million results. Ultimately, you’re not alone, and if you’re not practicing black hat SEO tactics knowingly there are things you can do to fix it.

Step 1: Make Sure Your Website is Banned

Make sure it is a search engine ban – Not all drops in organic traffic or search engine rankings result because of a ban. Google search engine algorithms are updated frequently, which will cause significant changes for your websites page rank.

1. Check Google: Type “site:yourwebsite.com” (changing out for your own website address) in Google search to see if any of your business website’s pages or blog posts are being indexed.
2. Check your robots.txt file to verify that your website can be crawled and indexed by the search engines.
3. Check Google Webmaster Tools console to verify that no errors are appearing.

Step 2: Why You May Have Been Banned By Google

• Your Website Has Been Hacked – There is a possibility that you’re website fell to hackers. Have your website developer check for malicious code and scan all files of your business website or blog with an Antivirus software.
• Violating Google Webmaster Guidelines – The search engines have strict practices for good on-page SEO tactics. If the website is spamming, scrapping, has hidden text, is cloaking, has doorway pages, or is sneaky, then you can be easily banned.

Step 3: Getting Your Website Out of SEO Jail

• Eliminate the Issues – If you found specific SEO issues that caused your business website or blog to be banned, the first step is always to fix the problems immediately. Remove spam content and stop using black hat SEO tactics.
• File a Reconsideration Request – After all the on-page SEO problems have been resolved, you may file a reconsideration request to the search engines. You must be up-front about the problems and describe what went wrong. If you used black hat tactics, admit it.
• Learn Patience – Removing your website’s ban is a manual process so you must be patient. Google’s team reviews every case to ensure that everything is fixed. This process can take 2 weeks to 3 months.

Question: What’s concerns you most about the potential for your website to be banned by the search engines – something you may unknowingly do wrong or your website being hacked?

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Author information

Shannon Steffen

Founder & Human SEO at Excira Media

Shannon Steffen is a business inbound marketing consultant who helps Fortune 500s and small businesses around the world to Stand Out and Get Results by creating solid online strategies. She speaks widely on the science and art of online long-term success through strategic and creative thinking known as Human SEO^™.

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The post You’ve Been Banned By Google. Now What? appeared first on Professional Human SEO and Inbound Marketing Consulting | Excira Media.

If you think that Pinterest is not meant for business and it’s just a fad for crafty moms and adventurous explorers, then you need to read this post. Why? The data doesn’t lie and this visual data (from over a year ago I might add) shows Pinterest as one of the top leading referral traffic generators to hit the Internet. Yes, my friends, this social media network impacts search engine optimization (SEO) and getting found online more than most businesses are willing to admit.

This infographic not only shows how Pinterest was beating Facebook and Twitter in 2012 but that the referral traffic was greater than Google+. Since then, Pinterest has taken on a cult-like following with main business target markets around the globe. And, some shared Pinterest boards have hundreds of thousands of members. Imagine posting a visually stimulating graphic for your business brand that is shared by 500+ thousand people who are not subscribed to your feed or your mailing list! How awesome!

If your demographics are aligned with this market, then it may just be time to get a Pinterest Business Page to take your SEO and social media marketing strategies to the next level.

Behold the power of Pinterest:

Question: Do you have a business Pinterest page? If so, share it in the comments. We would love to see it!

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Author information

Shannon Steffen

Founder & Human SEO at Excira Media

Shannon Steffen is a business inbound marketing consultant who helps Fortune 500s and small businesses around the world to Stand Out and Get Results by creating solid online strategies. She speaks widely on the science and art of online long-term success through strategic and creative thinking known as Human SEO^™.

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The post The Ultimate Guide to the Power of Pinterest [Infographic] appeared first on Professional Human SEO and Inbound Marketing Consulting | Excira Media.

If you feel overwhelmed while trying to improve your online marketing presence for your eCommerce shop or business website, then learning some link building techniques will definitely help. Link building is a simple SEO strategy that creates incoming links to your website through external websites and the search engines. It’s simple because, with a few solid SEO best practices in place, the on-page links stand out to visitors (and search engine spiders) as juicy content they are compelled to engage.

3 Ways to Optimize Your Link Building for SEO

1) Targeted Anchor Text – Within hyperlinks, include the keywords that appear on the titles of each product or service you offer. Each link should be unique and quickly identifiable. Do not stuff keywords in this area as it may look like keyword spam. Make sure to use text hyperlinks, with keywords, between your products, services, and pages.

2) Check Out The Competition – Analyze the link building campaigns of your competitors to get ideas as to where you should acquire links for your online eCommerce shop or business website. You do not want to copy them – just research where there are high quality sources of incoming links.

3) Think Outside the Main Homepage – Links to your main web page are good but links that point directly to product or service landing pages are better. By building links to eCommerce landing pages, you are bringing your target market to a page that provides a solution to his or her problem. Not only does this increase your conversion but it also gives the search engine spiders other product or service specific keywords to index.

Link building is one of the three (3) most influential SEO strategies that exist. This is because a website that contains optimized links is specific, fresh, and socially friendly. To achieve top search engine rankings, on such as sites as Google, Yahoo and Bing, it is crucial that your business website utilize clean and solid link building SEO strategies or get buried by the competition.

Question: If you could name one frustration about link building, what would it be and why?

[Photo courtesy of iStockPhoto.com]

Author information

Shannon Steffen

Founder & Human SEO at Excira Media

Shannon Steffen is a business inbound marketing consultant who helps Fortune 500s and small businesses around the world to Stand Out and Get Results by creating solid online strategies. She speaks widely on the science and art of online long-term success through strategic and creative thinking known as Human SEO^™.

TwitterFacebookGoogle+LinkedIn

The post SEO Link Building: How to Get Your Website from Good to Great appeared first on Professional Human SEO and Inbound Marketing Consulting | Excira Media.