Structuring Your Page for SEO

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Whether you’re building a page for an article, a blog, a product review, or a practice area, the way you structure your page is vital for Search Engine Optimization. From the design to the programming to the writing, you should always keep the big picture in mind before publishing.

 

Design

Your webpage should also be user-friendly first. This means the visuals are pleasing and the color scheme is easy to read. If the website looks good enough for the consumer to stay and read its contents, you’re on the right track. For improved reading and improved SEO, make sure you use headings in your text. These allow readers to easily scroll through your text to find the section they’re looking for, and it lets Google know the contents of the website. Don’t be afraid of having multiple “Heading 1’s,” as Google has ensured webmasters that despite certain less than honest tactics, the search engine can look past them.

 

Programming

The success of your site should rest on a foundation of solid programming, with special consideration taken to page speed and crawler accessibility. I’ll be honest, I know nothing about programming or coding, but if you’re building a website you or someone on your team should. 

 

Writing

As mentioned before, make sure your content is properly labeled with headings. As for the actual writing, try not to be Hemmingway or James Joyce. You want your writing to be comprehensive, but not rambling. If possible, work links into your writing as naturally. This will help Google connect your page to other pages on your website, as well as other websites. 

Your website is your company’s connection to the largest human network in history, and if you don’t set it up for people to visit you are wasting time and money. If you need help setting up a website for your law firm contact us here at Mockingbird Marketing. Optimizing web pages is what we do!

If Google Ads Runs Itself Now, What do We do?

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Google Ads have been getting more sophisticated and closer to full automation over the recent years, all the while causing panic for those who make their living in SEO and PPC. This is a well-known never-ending crisis, as evidenced by blogs and articles from the early 2010s. Recent developments by Google have done very little to quell these fears, as updates introduce features like automated ad suggestions and automated extensions, which write, design, and post ads with little to no help from the human in charge. This leaves the question: what is our role?

 

Just Because its Automated Doesn’t Mean it Has to Be

 While Google Ads have the capacity to be fully automated, they probably shouldn’t be, for the good of your campaigns and your wallet. Many of the default options for Google Ads serve Google more than you. You know your target market, and it’s more narrow than Google’s Display Network. Until further notice, you and Google have conflicting goals: Google wants your ad to be seen by as many people as possible, and you want your ad to be seen by people who are likely to click-through. SEO experts will always have a place as long as there are options to customize ad reach and visibility. 

 

Content Works Best When Written By Humans For Humans

We’ve all read scripts written by ai, and we all know that people still have the upper hand when it comes to writing for human readers, for now at least. Humans, and SEO experts, in particular, are particularly skilled in writing content that optimized for the guidelines of Google rankings as well as holding the interest of a human reader. We have that touch of emotion and a unique voice that has yet to be properly replicated.

 

Humans Can Connect Broader Concepts

Direct traffic has little data connected to it, making it difficult to use in analytics. Luckily, SEO experts are able to make sense of where traffic can come from, even if they don’t have an accessible browser history. They can see that the person went to the website from a mobile device shortly after their ad was played on TV. People have a better ability to think outside the box, which is why advertisements look different than they did in the 1970s. Times and trends change when people try new things, a concept that doesn’t work as well for computer programs.

 

In Conclusion, Your Industry Is (Probably) Safe

While automation has a tendency to remove people from certain steps of the digital marketing equation, it has yet to make them obsolete, and since this worry has been pretty consistent for almost a decade now without the disappearance of the industry, you will probably be fine. Just remember to hold onto the skills the robots can’t replicate.

Setting Up Your Google Ads

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In today’s digital marketing climate, Google Ads are just about unavoidable. Google owns over 89% of North America’s search engine market, which rises to 92% worldwide. This makes advertising on the platform the best way to get to the eyes of consumers. Unfortunately, a lot of advertisers are completely clueless about how to optimize their Google Ad campaigns. Here’s how to not be one of those advertisers. For a more in-depth guide, check out Brittany Zerr of Kick Point’s article here.

 

Keywords

For an aspect of advertising that has been around since the beginning of search engines, keywords are commonly misused. Think about keywords like a description of a sandwich on a menu: descriptive, but not over the top. Describe the sandwich’s key features, but you probably don’t have to describe every ingredient. If your keywords are too broad you risk people seeing your ad who are searching for something completely underrated. A search for the keyword “sandwich” will bring the consumer a mountain of results that your ad could get lost under. If one of your keywords for your sandwich is “self-rising flour,” it might show up when someone is looking for a cake recipe. This results in you paying for an ad that the consumer didn’t want to see.

 

Just as important as regular keywords, negative keywords help to narrow your audience. If someone is looking for a vegan sandwich or classes at a sandwich school, you can make it so that “vegan” and “school” are negative keywords, meaning your ad won’t show up if the consumers searches for those terms. Finding the right negative keywords can take time, so don’t be afraid to look into your Google Analytics and see what keywords are bringing your ads to consumers. If any don’t align with your business, make them negative keywords.

 

Match Types

Google has many options that aren’t best for advertisers, but are best for Google, which is why they might be set as the default. “Broad match” is one of these options. Broad match allows Google to display your ad anywhere it feels like it might be relevant based on your keywords. Since Google profits off your ad being displayed, it’ll likely show up in places you don’t think are relevant. Get ready to see your sandwich on searches for what to do when your car gets crunched between the car in front and behind it. 

 

To start your campaign, try using “Exact match.” This will make sure your ad will only show up on searches that include your exact keyword. If you know your market, you will reach your clients more efficiently with the keyword “pesto aioli sandwich Cupertino” than the keyword “sandwich south bay.”

 

Calls to Action/Extensions

Efficiency is everything in the internet age, as are statistics. Having a call to action on your ad helps with both of these. If your sandwich ad gives options to “Order Online” or “Get Directions,” the consumer will be able to end their search with the click of a button, and you get click-through data. To get those calls to action on your ad, you’ll need to add extensions. 

 

Extensions help to broaden your searches and provide more info to your clients. Its best to just add as many extensions as you think are relevant to your campaign(s) and let Google do the rest. That being said, it’s up to you to make sure all your extensions are working properly with the right parameters. 

 

Location

If you are a local business make sure Google knows. Make sure your business’s address, hours, contact details, and description are all easily accessible and show up when a client searches for your business. This will help with local searches beyond any advertising campaign you might have, but it will also help your advertising campaign. If someone Google knows is close to your business searches “pesto sandwich Cupertino,” your ad will show up at the top of the list. If you can only serve customers in your nearby area, make sure those are the only people seeing your ad. You don’t want someone in Tangiers seeing your ad when they want a pesto sandwich.

 

If you’re unsure about where people are when they’re seeing your ad, you can see those on your GoogleAd page data sets. If a large group of people seeing your ad are in Tangiers, you might want to tighten up your location settings.

 

Campaigns

Finally, think about your campaign strategy. When it comes to Google Ads it’s best to have multiple campaigns with fewer ads in each campaign than the other way around. This gives you more control over each individual ad and more information on each campaign, letting you know what is and isn’t working. 

 

To make further sure that you are in control of your ads, make sure that you’ve selected to be a “Search Campaign” as opposed to Google’s default “Google Display Network.” The Google display network will restrict your ad to a text ad while handing the wheel to Google on where to show your ad. As a rule, you want to be in control of your campaign. 

Google Ads can be confusing and difficult to set up, and if you get it wrong you could be dumping money into a campaign that’s giving you nothing in return. If you are a lawyer who needs help setting up your Google Ads or designing PPC campaigns, contact us for a consultation.

Title Tags: What They Are, How They Work, and How to Write Them

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Those working with WordPress/Yoast SEO will know title tags from setting up their homepage, but not much beyond that. Due to this, it can be easy to neglect title tags when building a website. This is a mistake, and I’ll tell you why.

 

What they are

Title tags are incredibly important to SEO and page rankings by helping to communicate the purpose of the page in its code. HTML title tags are similar to page headlines but are often more to the point and describe the basic function of the page. A seen below, the page title for the New York Times is “The New York Times,” but the title tag (visible in the scroll-over text in the upper left-hand corner) is “The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia.” 

 

How they work

Title tags work by telling search engines the content of the page. This is how title tags can improve rankings: a well tagged page will make it easier for the search engine to connect users with the website. If the tags are relevant to the page, it will show up in relevant searches, even if none of the keywords from the page title are searched.

 

How to write them

As previously stated, title tags need to be relevant to the content of the page, with specific enough keywords for search engines to be able to categorize them. This focus on keywords might make it tempting to cram your title tag full of any relevant word or phrase, but be warned: Google automatically trims long title tags. This can be seen above, where “The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia” is cut into “The New York Times – Breaking News, World News …” If Google considers your tag too long or insufficiently informative, they will rewrite them. If your title tags are concise and informative, Google will probably leave them as you wrote them. In summary: you can make your title tags long if you want to, but Google might take over.

6 Ways for Clients to Find You (SEO 101)

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If you are a veteran to SEO and digital marketing, you probably already know the ins and outs of search engines, internal linking, and any way a client might be able to get to your page. If you’re not a veteran, all these terms might be a bit overwhelming. This is a list of the six basic types of traffic your website might get, and this is for you.

 

1. Organic traffic

Often considered the best type of traffic, organic traffic describes when a client searches something related to your business and ultimately find their way to your page. You don’t have to pay to get them there, they find you on their own. It’s the romantic meet-cute of web-traffic.

The best way to increase your organic traffic is to improve your website SEO. Work with Google’s algorithms to increase your page rankings, and make sure to have content the client both wants and trusts. 

 

2. Paid Traffic

Paid traffic is made up of clients who got to your page by clicking through an advertisement. There’s some overlap between paid and social traffic, but for the sake of this article let’s say that paid traffic is any advertisement on any web-platform. 

Advertising will only increase your customer base if the page they land on is well built. If a client clicks on an advertisement and finds a slow page with bad content, they’re likely to bounce (leave the page in less than 10 seconds without interacting with any aspect of the page). Advertising costs money, so make sure you make it worth it for the people who click-through.

3. Social Traffic

Social media is a huge opportunity for growing your brand presence, and if you don’t have a solid presence on whatever platforms are popular in your country you’re neglecting a huge portion of your market. Not only will a presence on social media open you up to a much larger client base, but it will also help to build your brand identity. At the very least, it will be an easy access point for customers to find information about you. Even if you never post anything make sure to put all your information on your social media platforms. Business location, hours, contact info, all this will make your business feel more trustworthy and accessible.

 

4. Local Traffic

Local traffic is only really relevant if your business has a physical location that customers can visit. If this is your business, its vital that you set up your business information on the main Location Citation Sources. This will help build your local customer base and increase the trustworthiness. 

Local traffic is the more palpable version of social traffic: set it up well and people will find you without knowing who you are; just set it up and people who know who you are will be able to find you.

 

5. Referred Traffic

Referral traffic comes from clients following links from other webpages. Maybe they found their way to the website of your furniture business through a link you put on a Smithsonian article about antique chairs. Maybe they found their way to a legal blog through a random link to a 2017 post about the State of New York banning child marriage. Referral traffic is a significant percentage of web traffic, and link-building is a task that shouldn’t be neglected. The number of links referring to your website helps to build your page rankings in search engines like Google.

 

6. Direct Traffic

Direct traffic comes from people typing your URL into their browser or clicking on a bookmarked link. Direct traffic can be hard to analyze, as there’s no real information on why or from where the client decided to visit your website. This isn’t ideal for tracking client behaviors or knowing what changes to make to optimize your online presence, but it is traffic.  

 

There is overlap within these subsections of web traffic: Facebook Ads blending from paid into social, links in Twitter posts sitting on the intersection of referral and social, a local news article linking your local law firm bridging the gap between local and referral. The best way to increase your traffic from all origins is to make sure your website follows SEO best practices and is prepared for optimal user experience.

Branded and Unbranded Keywords: When to Use Which

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Consumers have a better and better idea of what they’re looking for when they search for something online, whether they care about specific brands or not. This allows them to use keywords that your brand can benefit from. The problem comes when trying to decide whether or not to have your keywords or phrases as branded or unbranded. As it turns out, distinguishing between the two is simple.

Branded keywords work best when referring to features of the business that may not be present in other locations. If the manager of a hotel in a chain wanted people to remember that their branch has a breakfast with espresso drinks they might want to capitalize on searches for “[hotel brand] in [location] with espresso” and “[hotel brand] near [location] with good coffee.” 

A business that already has a strong local foundation is optimized for branded keywords. They help repeat customers to find businesses they enjoyed or had unique features they wanted to revisit or comment on. 

Unbranded keywords help to build a business and only work well when sufficient details of the business have been provided. Google’s local searches won’t help you if Google doesn’t know where you are. Make sure you have your address, phone number, hours, and website easily accessible. These are important for both branded and unbranded searches.

When choosing unbranded keywords, focus on the foundational aspects of your business. Are you a family/locally owned, vegan cafe? Those are your keywords. The consumers performing unbranded searches are the easiest to convert into first-time customers. If they cared about brands, they would have done a branded search. Unbranded keywords are your opportunity to catch the attention of new customers, while branded keywords help you to convert them into a reliable consumer base.

When deciding on branded and unbranded keywords, it’s not a question of “either/or,” both are required to keep a business running and customers spending.

Yoast Opting Users In to Snippet Update

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Google’s recent core update included a feature, or at least the announcement of an upcoming feature, changing the search engine’s “Opt-Out” policy regarding snippets and website previews to an “Opt-In” policy. The update will give webmasters a variety of options regarding snippet word-count, preview video length, and whether or not to show a snippet at all.

Why

This update, set to launch late-October, is in response to a recently implemented French copyright law requiring search engines to offer “Opt-In” rather than “Opt-Out” options for webmasters. This is the first implementation of Europe’s new copyright laws, which Google is complying with by providing more snippet options.

Will it Affect Me

Users of Yoast SEO don’t have to worry about their Google snippets vanishing and costing them valuable web traffic; Yoast announced a company-wide policy that they will still offer the “Opt-Out” option for their users but will have all their websites automatically opted-in to snippets unless they were opted-out before the update. 

What Should I Do

While Google’s update isn’t set to launch for another few weeks, Yoast SEO has announced its update for October 1st. George Nguyen, in a blog post for Search Engine Land, recommends that Yoast users who aren’t interested in the new snippet features shouldn’t update to version 12.2, and for those who do want to take part in the new features to keep track of their max-snippet limits for each of their pages.

 

 This new update won’t have an impact on your Google rankings but could affect your rich results if you get opted out of snippets. This could affect traffic to your page the previously came from rich results, which is why Yoast SEO automatically opted its users in. If you are a Yoast SEO user who does not want to take part in Google’s snippets or rich results, make sure your preferences say so before or after Yoast’s version 12.2 update. If you do want to take part in snippets, still check and make sure all your preferences are up to date and to your liking after the update October 1st.

SEO Copywriting: The Marriage of Content and Data

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The balance of SEO copy with quality content is difficult to find and often misunderstood.  How much copy should be in your content? How much content in your copy? How much should keywords play into what you post? The broad answers to these questions blend together into “it depends on the project and your team(s).” Luckily, we don’t have to leave it there. Here’s how good SEO copywriting can improve organic traffic and conversions.

Navigating Vs. Steering

Imagine a car with a driver and a passenger. The passenger has a map or, more likely, directions on their phone. For them to get where they need to go, the driver needs to trust the passenger’s navigation, and the passenger needs to trust the driver’s steering. SEO should function as navigation and content should be the driver.

If your company has separate SEO and content departments it is important to get them on the same page. They are working for the same goal, and they’ll go further together. It is key to remember that both departments have specific jobs that they excel at, and forcing those in SEO to try and design content or those in content to analyze SEO will only result in failure and confusion. The car will crash if the passenger tries to steer or if the driver tries to read. 

The Role of SEO

As previously stated, SEO should function as a GPS. Let the data show where to go, and don’t stop at your company’s data. Research your competitors, see what’s working for them and either beat them at their own game or focus on areas where they’re weaker. If your competitor is producing a lot of high-traffic content in the form of video blogs but is lacking in written articles: it’s time to get your content department to start writing.  

The Role of Content

Content writing is focused more on producing well-written, enjoyable, and/or useful pieces, as opposed to copywriting, which is aimed at increasing traffic and conversions. The two exist on a spectrum, in that copy needs to be well written in order to have conversions, and content needs traffic in order to be read. A good content department/writer can strike a balance between the two and should be familiar with the basics of SEO. This doesn’t mean they won’t benefit from guidance from the SEO professionals. 

Where They Blend

Keywords and formatting. Before content writers cringe, this doesn’t mean content should be dictated by how many keywords can be stuffed into an article. This leads to clunky writing and ultimately lowers organic traffic. Keywords should be used as a prompt. SEO research can provide content writers with topics consumers are interested in, as well as what formats perform best for that topic. From there the writer can get to work. Ideally, other keywords will naturally fit into the content. 

Good SEO copywriting exists in the gray area between data analysis and content. It cannot exist without collaboration between SEO researchers and content writers, and it cannot succeed without hard work on both sides. 

Why Video Reach Campaigns Matter

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Just in time to kick off AdWeek in New York City, YouTube has launched Video Reach campaigns; an ad management system designed to improve the advertiser experience on the video-sharing platform. 

The new Video Reach campaigns will allow advertisers to upload three sets of ads under one campaign, as opposed to in the past when advertisers were forced to create separate campaigns for each type of ad. The ads, or asset types, are six-second bumper ads, skippable in-stream ads, and non-skippable in-stream ads.  Once the advertiser uploads their assets and begins the campaign, Google will analyze which ads perform better and will optimize the campaign for maximum viewership.

This built-in analysis and access to consolidated asset-types will allow advertisers to run more comprehensive campaigns for a reduced price. 

Early users are already seeing strong results, according to Google’s announcement. Says Google “[Ford] lowered their campaign cost over 20 percent compared to their previous YouTube benchmarks.” 

The Video Reach campaigns promise to save time and money for advertisers as much of the learning from trial and error of advertising is replaced by Google’s machine learning. The built-in analysis paired with automatic efficiency optimization will ease the role of finding the best combination of assets away from advertisers. 

The full benefits and drawbacks of YouTube’s new feature is yet to be fully known but has the potential to improve video advertising experiences for companies everywhere.