Google initially launched voice search in 2012, but it’s really taken off in the past couple of years, especially with the release of personal assistants like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa and Echo, and Google Home. In fact, ComScore suggests that by 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice searches. (This sounds a little high to me.)

For local businesses, voice search has grown exponentially. Google has reported a 900% increase in “near me / today” searches in the past two years – and they also found that searchers are three times more likely to use voice than text searches to find local businesses and ask for local directions.

Why the increase? For one, it’s easier and faster to ask for help out loud rather than typing a search term or request, especially when you’re on the go with mobile devices. You can ask your smartphone a question or get help no matter where you are.

So how does the rise in voice search affect marketing?

In short, if you’re offering products or services for sale directly to consumers (B2C), you need to consider how potential customers will use voice search to find you. While ALL businesses need to think about voice search, it’s critical for local retailers in particular because Google tracks users’ locations and offers results near them when they’re looking for lunch, a haircut, coffee, etc.

Tips on optimising for voice search 

With all that in mind, here are four tips for optimising your website content for voice search:

1. Answer questions in your keyword phrases – Unlike text searches, when people type in a few words like ‘buy garden gloves,’ voice searchers tend to use complete, long-tail phrases and questions such as, “Where can I buy gardening gloves near me?” or “How much do gardening gloves cost?” Therefore, when deciding which keywords or phrases you want to include, think about what questions your potential customers have and how you can answer questions and solve problems within this context.
2. Location, location, location – If you’re a local business, think about what major landmarks you’re near and which neighbourhood or district you’re in. These may be useful in helping people find you. Got a salon right near the University of Adelaide campus? Own a café near Victoria Square or in Parkside? Consider adding these terms to your meta descriptions or on your home page, contact page or FAQ page in order to help Google and local searchers find you.
3. Check your Analytics and Ads results – Another good tip is to check your Google Analytics and Google Ads results. See which keywords or phrases searchers are using to find you. Unfortunately, Google Analytics won’t show you all the keywords used by searchers, but you can still get an idea of what’s bringing people to your site. Look at the search terms for help in crafting your content.
4. Claim your Google My Business (GMB) listing – If you haven’t already set up a Google My Business listing, now is the time. In voice searches for local businesses, Google shows GMB listings first in response to enquiries. In fact, searchers may never get to your website at all, but if they see your phone number, hours, and address on a Google map (as well as some positive Google reviews), they’re much more likely to call or stop by.
   

Need help optimising your website or improving your content? Contact Breathe Marketing today.

On-site (or on-page) SEO is what’s displayed on your website – it’s the written copy your visitors read and search engines see, and it’s what helps give your site a boost in search engine rankings. Off-site (off-page) SEO, on the other hand, involves content outside (and/or linking back to) your site.

Here are four key things to keep in mind for both SEO-friendly and viewer-friendly content:

1. Write for people, not for Google

When writing your content, make sure you write for real, live people. First of all, people who visit your site will be much more likely to read it (and actually spend some time learning about what you offer) if it’s clear and makes sense. Creating good, informational and engaging content takes a lot of time and effort, but it will always help you in the long run.

And when you have new, fresh content available on a regular basis, Google will re-index your site and your customers will keep coming back (and hopefully make additional purchases). Your customers want to see what’s new, understand what’s different about your products and services, get ideas on how to use a product and learn about related topics, so Google will reward you when you show them.

2. Research your keywords and use them wisely

It’s important to do your keyword research (and if you need help with that, contact us) and then put together a plan for where and how they can be used to the best advantage, including within pages and in your meta data. Don’t just create a bunch of sentences that include keywords. Remember, Google and other search engines are getting much better at ranking sites that are designed just to rank for certain terms – a technique known as “keyword stuffing”.

(Remember the bad “black hat” techniques we talked about in our last post? “The Goog” is watching and will penalise you for these sooner or later.)

As a basic guideline for ranking with search engines, be aware that it’s hard to rank for keywords that don’t appear in your page content itself. Each page should be organised around the goal of ranking for a specific keyword or keyword phrase, with a few related phrases and keywords mixed into that copy. You don’t want to overdo it.

3. Don’t duplicate

Make sure that as much as possible, you have unique content on every page of your site. Google claims there is NO duplicate content penalty, but they do recognise ‘thin’ or ‘boiler-plate’ content that’s out there just for the sake of ranking.

If you’re just building your site and haven’t written the content yet, consider creating a spreadsheet to map out what’s going to go where, look for places where you need additional content, and then create pages to fit your needs within that structure.

4. Make sure title tags and content match

As mentioned in our previous SEO post, a title tag is text that’s incorporated into your html to help describe your site content to search engines. Even though a visitor to your site doesn’t see this text on the page, it’s still considered an element of on-page SEO. In fact, it’s the most important on-site SEO element besides your actual content, and it appears in three key places:

⋅ In a browser
⋅ In search engine results
⋅ On external websites (such as social media sites)

It’s critical to create descriptive title tags for your site’s pages that match the content and include keywords to help with your rankings. Remember, if someone finds your site in a search, it may be their first exposure to your site and/or product, so write compelling text that will draw those searchers in.

Finally, in addition to the fact that both Google and your visitors like it, an added bonus of creating good on-page content is that it helps position you as an expert in your field. The more you and your team members write and share knowledge about your products or industry, the more you build trust and loyalty with your audience.

Need help with keyword research or improving your SEO?  Contact Breathe Marketing today.

That’s where SEO comes in. As mentioned in a previous post on SEO, search engine optimisation is all about creating websites so that search engines (namely Google) can easily identify, categorise and select them when a user does an online search. This means that users have an easier time finding your site.

In the past, some companies tried to use underhanded practices (known as ‘black hat’ techniques) to improve their search rankings, such as duplicating content, putting in bad links or adding keywords into their page content just for the sake of getting extra keywords in there (a practice known as ‘keyword stuffing’). But Google is onto these tactics and constantly updates their algorithms to improve results for users and reward sites that follow legitimate, or ‘white hat’ SEO practices.

If you’re building a new site, it’s a good idea to include SEO best practices from the start, but you can also improve an existing site by making adjustments that keep Google (and your users) happy.

SEO is a huge topic (plus there’s onsite and offsite SEO techniques to consider too).  There’s way too much to cover in this blog – but here are 4 best practices for designing or updating a site so that it’s SEO-friendly:

1. Make sure your content can be indexed

Creating good, engaging content for your site will always benefit your company and your viewers. But you can do more to help Google understand exactly what your content is. Why is this necessary? When Google sends out its “spiders” or bots to crawl the web, they collect data to bring back to Google’s massive database. But the spiders can’t ‘see’ images like photos, Flash animation or videos – they can really only collect HTML text – so it’s hard for them to index this information.

Of course, photos and videos are very valuable, because they help you tell the story of your brand, sell your products, make your site more attractive and improve user experience. Therefore, the best thing to do is to help the spiders out by creating ALT text for photos and images (by assigning actual text that explains what’s in them), adding supplemental text for Flash images and providing a transcript for videos and audio recordings whenever possible. Your web designer can help you put all these in place.

If you can get keywords into your ALT tags and transcripts, that’s even better. On that note . . .

2. Watch those keywords, and use them wisely

It’s a good idea to work with your web designer to do some keyword research prior to building your website, because it can help you focus your content, build your meta data such as title tags and descriptions (more on that in a moment) and determine where you can target potential searchers.  To start, you’ll definitely want to include the name of your business as a keyword, as well as particular products or services you offer. If you have a local business, using your name with your location is important for searchers.

For instance, if you’re an accounting firm in Adelaide, you’d probably want to consider keyword phrases such as “Adelaide accounting firm”, “Adelaide accountants”, or “top accounting firm in Adelaide”. As noted above, it’s not a good idea to throw in more keywords just for the sake of getting those terms onto your pages. Doing so makes for bad content, and Google will punish you for this kind of ‘keyword stuffing’.  A good rule of thumb is to choose a couple of keywords to focus on for each page.

3. Title tags

Title tags are one of the most important elements of SEO. A title tag is the main text that describes what’s on a web page or in a document, and these tags appear in three key places: browsers, search engine results pages and external websites. Even though you probably won’t see them when viewing a web page, they’re in the source code and show up in searches.The text in blue below is an example of how and where a title tag appears in search results:

Ideally, each page of your site should have its own title tag – preferably including a keyword or two – so Google knows what each one is about (and so do your searchers).  However, don’t make your titles too long or they’ll get cut off – if you keep your titles under 55 characters, at least 95% should display correctly.

4. Meta descriptions

Like title tags, meta descriptions help search engines and searchers understand what’s on your web pages. Meta descriptions are in your source code and appear underneath your title tag and URL in search results, as shown in the grey text below:

A meta description gives you a chance to introduce your brand and what you offer to searchers before they come to your site – they act as ‘organic ad text’, helping connect searchers to your content when keywords appear in the text and match a search.

With meta descriptions, you have a little more text space than with title tags, but you still need to keep them fairly short and sweet. Ideally, your meta descriptions should be between 150-160 characters so they don’t get cut off.

As I said earlier, there is a lot more to SEO than I can talk about in one blog.  If you need help improving your onsite or offsite SEO, contact Breathe Marketing today.

Enter Hummingbird, the latest update from the search engine giant.

What is Hummingbird and what does it do?

Officially released at the time of Google’s 15^th birthday (at the end of September), Hummingbird has really been ‘live’ since late August. Senior-level executives at Google claim that it’s actually the largest update in the past three years, affecting about 90% of all online searches, and is therefore much bigger than Panda or Penguin.

In general, the idea behind Hummingbird was to make online searches more ‘human friendly’ by better understanding complex phrases and language. For instance, if you type a full question into the search box instead of just a few keywords, Google will show you sites that are most likely to answer that question. Therefore, Hummingbird focuses on all the words in a query and how they connect, rather than only a few terms within that query.

The Knowledge Graph

Hummingbird also makes more use of Google’s Knowledge Graph. Google has been using this knowledge base since 2012, which returns answers to “semantic search” questions. For example, if you type “How many seats in Sydney Opera House” into the search box, you’ll see something like this pop up at the top of your results:

Google uses the Knowledge Base to answer your question before listing any other sites relevant to the performance venue.

In addition, on the right side of your screen, you’ll see more information about the building appear, including the address, the names of the architects, opening date, a Google map, etc., like this:

By providing this information, Google is working to anticipate what other needs and questions you may have, and there’s more of this to come. Google executives have stated that anticipating the needs of searchers is a big part of their future work.

Also, with the explosive growth and use of mobile devices, Google has been working on ways to improve voice search (since, of course, they want to make sure it’s easy for you to get results using your phone). Therefore, Hummingbird better understands phrases that are spoken, rather than just typed.

What do these changes mean for your website?

As we said when Penguin came out: Don’t panic. Having good content on your site is still the most important thing you can do, and the use of keywords in your site still matters. However, anticipating and answering your visitors’ needs will become increasingly important, so keep that in mind as you create new content.

Have more questions about all of this? Need some help? Let us know and stay tuned for future posts on SEO!

The heart of SEO

Just to recap from our previous article, search engine optimisation is the art of creating websites in a way that makes it easy for search engines to identify, categorise and select them when a user does an online search.

There are many elements within SEO, but all of them can basically be broken down into two major groups:

• On-page (on-site) SEO, or the content within your website; and
• Off-page (off-site) SEO, focusing on content outside (and/or linking back to) your site

So why is this important? And what should you do?

First of all, here’s why this is important: When someone does a search in Google (or other search engine), only about 10 sites show up on the first page. Most people only click on the top few sites, and they’re unlikely to go past the first page of results. Therefore, if your site ranks at the top of the first Search Engine Results Page (SERP), you’ll get a lot of traffic to your site – and that’s good for your business.

However, if your site shows up on the second or third page, you might only get 1% of the search traffic that the top-ranked sites get. Therefore, it’s important to create great content and build good links to and from your site so Google thinks your website is more relevant and provides a better user experience for a particular search term that the remaining hundreds (or thousands) of results.

That leads us back to:

On-page (or on-site) optimisation

On-page SEO, therefore, is what’s displayed on your website, and it includes the written copy that visitors read and search engines see. To help with this on your site, make sure you write high-quality content that people can understand, incorporating the keywords for that particular page if possible in your heading and/or sub-headings as well as the body copy.

More technical aspects of on-page SEO include using keywords in your page titles, photograph labels and other ‘hidden’ elements such as metatags, but we’ll discuss that in a future post.

There is a need to add content regularly in order to continually appeal to Google.  An easy way to do this is by adding a blog to your website.  Add relevant content to the blog and promote interactivity with your visitors.  You can leverage this content on social media sites too, which really helps with SEO.

Here’s another tip: Make sure you have unique content on every page of your site. It’s definitely possible that there will be some overlap of information, but search engines recognise duplicate content that’s out there just for the sake of trying to get a better rank.

Then there is . . .

Off-page (off-site) optimisation

A good way of looking at off-page SEO is to think of it as work done away from your site but directly affects its rankings through building the credibility, relevance and profile of your URL. Off-page optimisation comprises many things, but a major element is the links your site has to and from other sites. Google and other search engines look at how many links you have, but they also review the quality of those links. As we noted in our post on Google and the Penguin, Google has recently updated their algorithm to penalise sites that put in links unrelated to their site content.   A really basic link to start with though, is to submit your website to the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) owned by Google.

Other factors that Google looks at are things like videos, infographics, press releases, guest blog articles, presentations and connections to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. These things all help with your ranking, too.

Have questions about this? Let us know – and stay tuned for more posts on SEO!

If your company produces a product that gets shipped worldwide and you don’t have a ‘brick and mortar’ store, this may not be such an issue for you. However, if you have a small business that provides products and services to local customers, you’ll want to make sure they can find you easily.

If you sell flowers in North Adelaide, for instance, you want to be on the first page of Google results when someone types in ‘flowers North Adelaide’ on their phone, tablet or computer. Unless you deliver in Melbourne or Perth, you don’t need to worry about customers in those areas – you only need to focus your energies on potential customers who want flowers (or want flowers delivered) in the Adelaide area.

So what can you do? Here are four tips to make sure your business gets found by local customers:

1. Make sure your website is optimised for mobile devices. According to recent statistics, over 50% of Australians now own a smartphone. Not only have that, but 19% of Australians searched for local suppliers and services on their smartphones on a daily basis. If customers can’t access or read your website on a phone or tablet, they’ll move on to another site and you’ll lose business.

2. Add your business on Google Places, Yahoo Small Business and local directories. Be sure to add your business to Google Places and Yahoo Small Business, which both have basic packages for free. In addition, sign up for local directory options such as Yelp and Yellow Pages.

3. Use local keywords. What areas do you serve? Do you have stores in more than one location? Do you offer on-site services for customers located anywhere between Gawler and Sellicks Beach? If your products and services are location-based, help customers find you by noting specific place names on your site.

4. Put your contact information in text (not an image) on every page of your site. This will help viewers find you and also help Google connect your business to local searches. Although be careful about including your email address which leaves you open to spam – there are workarounds you can do here. Preferably, you want to set up a ‘click-to-call’ feature directly from your site so that people can immediately dial your number from their phone once they find you.

Have questions? Need some help with improving your local marketing? Contact us today.

Why? Because when Google’s algorithm changes, it can have a major effect on how high a site ranks in a search. This means that a website that was ranking really well before the change can suddenly take a nose-dive and end up far lower in search results.

So what does all this have to do with a penguin?

As explained in our SEO 101 post, Google’s software uses tools called spiders to help ‘crawl’ website content, looking for information to bring back about sites they visit.  When spiders visit web pages, they’re looking for many things including the words used on pages, how relevant they feel a site is for a particular topic, how many links a site has and how relevant those links are. All this information is used to get sites listed in rankings.

Unfortunately, sometimes businesses use bad tactics – or ‘black-hat’ techniques – to try viagra online to get on the first page of search results. In 2012, Google released an algorithm update known as Penguin, the goal of which was to penalise sites that used black-hat techniques such as keyword stuffing, duplicate content, and linking to irrelevant sites (also known as “link spam”).

Google estimated that this change only affected about 3.1% of English language search queries, but some webmasters saw a major drop in their sites’ rankings. Now, in their continuing battle to penalise ‘black-hatters’, Google has announced that another algorithm change is coming in the next few weeks: Penguin 2.0.

Though no one outside Google knows just what to expect, there’s pretty clear evidence that sites with a high number of bad links, or link spam, will be targeted, and those sites will drop in overall search rankings.

What can you do?

First of all, don’t panic. If you’re currently using proper white-hat SEO techniques such as creating valuable, original site content for your customers and linking to legitimate sites that are relevant to your business products and services, you shouldn’t have any problem when Penguin 2.0 is released.

However, SEO is clearly becoming increasingly complex.  If you haven’t already, consider outsourcing your SEO activities to a reputable SEO provider.  Asking them how Penguin has changed their SEO practices is a good place to start in sussing out their expertise.  If they don’t know what you’re talking about then they may not be the right people to help you with your SEO.

For more on Penguin and link building, check out this article from Searchenginewatch.com.  What’s also really interesting is all the commentary at the end of the article – there’s clearly a lot of confusion out there right now about SEO and what these Penguin updates mean.

Have more questions about all of this? Need some help? Let us know – and stay tuned for future posts on SEO when Penguin 2.0 gets released!

What is a search engine?

An internet search engine is a database of websites, videos, images and other content. Search engines determine what to include in their database based on many things (such as content quality, level of authority, etc). Once a website is included in a search engine, it’s considered to be “indexed.”

Note: If a website is not indexed, it won’t show up when people search for it, even if they type in a specific domain name such as www.yourbusiness.com.

There are many Internet search engines, including Yahoo!, Bing, MSN, Ask.com and AOL, but Google is arguably the most powerful and well-known.

Google and other search engines include a search tool which people use to find information, products or services on the web. (You probably use Google all the time yourself.) When you type in words for a search – like “picture frames,” for instance – Google immediately searches from millions of existing websites to find the best matches for those words, and then displays all the known websites that match in the order it thinks best and most relevant.

How does that work?

Search engines use software tools called spiders to help ‘crawl’ content, looking for information to bring back the the database about sites they visit. The information gets stored, which helps you get your search results more quickly.

When spiders visit web pages, they’re looking for a number of things, but two of the main things Google spiders look for are:

1) What words are used on a page, and
2) Where those words are found on a page.

If a spider comes across a website that is not in the search engine’s database already – and if it determines that the site is good – it will include the information in the database.

So how does knowing all this help you?

When you sell products or services on the web, you want people to find your website easily – not only that, but you want your website to be on the first page of results when people use search terms that match what you sell.

By knowing what spiders are looking for and building your website content to match, you make it easier for search engines and customers to find your site and purchase your products and services.

Have questions about this? Let us know – and stay tuned for future posts on optimising your site for search engines!

1) PPC – This acronym stands for pay-per-click, and refers to ad campaigns with major companies. Most often, this acronym is used to talk about Google AdWords campaigns. In these campaigns, you (as the advertiser) bid for your ad to show up when someone enters a search term relevant to your business, and then you pay when someone clicks on one of your ads. Sometimes these campaigns bring in tons of website traffic, but depending on how often people click on an ad, you can burn through your budget really fast. So monitor your ads and spend carefully.

2) SEO – This stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Basically, SEO means using various techniques (including link-building, researching and using keywords and high-quality content) to get your website to rank as high as possible when someone enters a search term that’s relevant to your product or service, without paying to run ads in a PPC campaign. Unfortunately, some people use underhanded, “black hat” SEO techniques to try to improve their site’s rank, but be warned: Google is getting better all the time at catching these, so stick with creating great content that include your keywords.

3) URL – Uniform Resource Locator. This refers to the unique address of a file on the Internet. The files can be plain web pages, text documents, graphics, or programs. For instance, the URL for Breathe Marketing’s home page is https://staging.breathemarketing.com.au/.

4) HTML and XHTML – HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, and it refers to code or language that’s used to create web pages. XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language) is the successor to HTML, and it has stricter rules about what’s used (and allowed) in coding.

5) CMS – In the Internet marketing world, this stands for Content Management System, and it refers to web applications that allow users to edit pages on a website without knowing HTML. In other words, the app creates the code for you when you make your changes. WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are examples of some popular CMS software programs.

Have questions about any of these? Let us know!