4 Benefits of Blogging for Business

The other day, the professional copywriting team from our SEO firm was talking to a group of business owners and we were asked, "Why should our businesses be blogging? What's in it for us?"

There are four core reasons that every business, especially small businesses, should be blogging.

1. It drives traffic to your website. 

If you want to have more traffic to your website, then you are among the thousands of business owners who wish to have more traffic to their site. Let's consider the various ways that people will find your website: 

• They could type your URL right into their web address bar. However, for that to happen, they have to already know your URL, which means your business already has them. You are on their radar and they know about your business. 
• You can pay for the web traffic by purchasing some email lists, emailing the people (victims?), and hoping for some clickthrough with the emails. However, that is both tacky and sort of illegal (Google hates it, a lot). 
• You can buy Adwords and pay for high placement in search results. This is an effective method, to a point, but people only click on these links 20-30% of the time. 
• That means that organic links get clicks 70-80% of the time. 

So how can you drive traffic to your site since those three methods got shut down? Blogging, social media marketing, and search engine marketing. 

Blogging draws the eye of search engines to your site, which helps with traffic in two ways. 

The first way is that search engines like content, fresh content. If your business actively blogs, this adds another fresh page of content to your site for search engines to crawl, index, and like (hopefully). This enhances your chances of good organic rankings. The alternative is to update the content on your website; this is a great method but how many times can you actually update your "About Us" page? The second way is that people will read your blog posts and click to your site. In each blog post, you will include links to your site via keywords and images. By extension, you can drive traffic to your site (and blog posts) with blog posts being shared on social media. It can be tough to have social media posts worth looking at, let alone sharing, blog posts help both issues. 

2. It helps you convert all that traffic into qualified leads. 

Now your site has all that traffic flooding its pages; you have a fantastic opportunity to convert that traffic into qualified leads. How do you do this? Insert a good, lead-generating call-to-action (CTA) to each blog post. 

Your CTAs can be things like free ebooks, whitepapers/fact sheets, pamphlets, consultation meeting, trial memberships, etc. It has to be something someone will be willing to give their email up for, not something lackluster. 

If you are already writing blog posts but don't have a quality CTA, start adding that to the blog posts right now. 

3. It helps establish your expertise and authority in the field. The people who write about topics in an industry are the people who know the most about it and can share info. How many blogs about an industry are written by "rookies", at least that you see? Not many, if any. 

The best corporate blogs are blogs that can answer consumer questions. If you can create content that helps your target market, they will see you as an authority. This is helpful, nay, necessary for good sales leads. Your sales team will thank your SEO copywriting team. A card would be nice. 

Measuring your success in establishing your business as an authority can be difficult, if not impossible. You can gauge it by how many readers your blog posts get, comments, and shares on social media. 

4. It drives great long-term results. 

A good blog post can drive traffic and help establish good, organic search results for months after the blog posts was published. Our Chicago SEO company has at least half of our monthly web traffic come from blog posts that are several months old. Crazy! 

If your blog posts can rank on their own, then they can each drive traffic for days, weeks, even months after being published. 

Is a company blog something that your business needs to invest in? Then call or email Integraphix. Our SEO team will give you a free website analysis! 

5 SEO Trends to Look Forward to in 2015

If you are hearing that "SEO is dead" then you are wrong, my amigo. While search engine optimization is constantly changing, it is far from dead. SEO is a beautiful mix of SEO techniques, content marketing, and social media marketing. 

In the coming year, we can expect to see several things happen, when it comes to SEO. 

1. Better semantic search. When Google released its Hummingbird update in September of 2013, it was a rebuild of the algorithm to favor semantic search. Semantic search attempts to understand why someone searches for something via analyzing possible meanings and intent. Hummingbird looks at each word of the query to hopefully grasp the whole meaning. 
1. This means more conversational style queries will be made. Instead of searching solely for, "Chicago SEO firm", we might search for, "Who is the best SEO firm in Chicago?" This also means more long tail keywords. So, instead of keywords that are only one or two words, keywords will be more in the range of 3-6 words. 
2. LSI keywords- LSI keywords are "latent semantic indexing" keywords, which means that they utilize synonyms and plurals of your main keywords.
2. SEO for mobile search.  According to Google, half of searches made by someone on a smartphone are made with the intent of making an in-store purchase. However, not every mobile search has local intent:
1. 17 percent of mobile searches are in the store but complete the sale online. 
2. 44 percent research online & complete the sale online. 
3. Over 75 percent happen at home or work. 
4. 17 percent are done while in motion. 
5. 81 percent of smartphone owners research products on their smartphones. 
6. 50 percent of smartphone owners purchase via their phones. 
7. 66 percent of all the time in 2014 that was spend with online retail was done so via smartphones instead of computers. 
1. Mobile search is growing; by the end of 2015, mobile search is expected to be more powerful than computer. Everyone has a personal computer right in their pocket, these days. 
1. 43 percent of US adults use their phones & tablets as primary search tools. 
2. 46 percent of adults don't use their laptops or desktops for pre-purchase research. 
3. 33 percent of online shoppers used their phones & tablets for the whole purchase process. 
4. 58 percent of US adults researched prices of prices of a product while in-store for that item. 
3. Social signals will lose power. While retweets, shares, and +1s have power in rankings, their power is not what we likely believe them to be. The confusion here is that there is a difference between correlation and causation. While a high ranking social media profile may have lots of these social signals, it may be something on the page (something deeper) that is causing the page to rank well. Some studies have shown that when a company gains 100 Google+ followers, they tend to increase in rankings by 14 percent. 
1. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are high authority sites, this means that your company's profile on these sites can outrank your website. As a Chicago SEO firm, we have seen this actually happen, many times. 
4. Earned links will be even more important. Earned links are in contrast to paid links. Earned links are going out and placing your links places, writing blogs, and social media. Paid links are a sure-fire way to get your site penalized. 
1. This means that content marketing is still king. 
5. Getting brand mentions and citations. A citation is mentioning your business name, address, and number on a website that is not your own website. There are three types of citations to recognize:
1. Local- Local businesses such as dentists, attorneys, restaurants  being listed in places like internet Yellow Pages, Yelp, Google Business, Google+ , etc. 
2. Industry- Being listed with industry-specific citations. 
3. Niche- Get brand mentions and citations on industry websites that appeal to their target markets. 

To be successful in local SEO and SEO as a whole, an SEO company needs to be able to see ahead. If your business wants to be found on the internet, then hire an SEO company that knows what to look for. Talk with Integraphix. 

Benefits of Google+ for SEO & How It Impacts Search Results

Considering getting more use out of your search engine optimization? Great! Wondering how you can do that? Well, one way is through using Google+. Google+ offers people opportunities for their business that cannot be found elsewhere.

For one thing, it makes sense that it will do some work for your SEO; think about it, Google owns Google+ and they essentially run the internet. Google+ is described as a unification of all that Google has to offer but with a social layer on top; due to this, the social media platform is a major factor in your SEO, in addition to your social media marketing. So how exactly does the platform work its way into SEO?

Social signals. When you share things on Google+, it can be shared and +1'd (it's like a Facebook "like"). Google sees the credibility from others and takes that into account. These social signals account for 7 out of 8 ranking factors in search results. Search results like to display what is popular and resourceful, having good content on Google+ is a great way to achieve this.

Pagerank. One way search engines review material to index and rank is by sending out crawlers that scan the internet and review information. When you post things on Google+, it is scanned and indexed  very quickly and the better the content is, the more it helps your profile's PageRank; any Google+ profile is treated like a real website by Google. Just a tip for novices, the higher your PageRank (PR), the better.

Web Influence. The more you are in Google+ circles (they're like networks), the more you influence the search results of the people who have you in their circles.

Google+ Local. A major tool of Google+ focuses on businesses and their locations, this comes in handy when someone searches, "BBQ near Houston" and guess what, YOU'RE A BBQ PLACE NEAR HOUSTON! These pages are similar to Facebook business pages but have more features and connections for businesses and users. You get much more visibility, more engagement with consumers, better access to consumers, better PR, and better integration with Google Maps.

Don't believe us? Then just try it for yourself! Need help? Then contact Integraphix, we are a SEO firm and social media marketing firm that's been around for one 20 years! Speak with one of our specialists today and get noticed on Google.

9 SEO Questions You Are Embarrassed to Ask

There are questions we are sometimes too embarrassed to ask about a subject in fear that if we do ask them, we will be ridiculed. Here we have 9 questions that some of us are just too embarrassed to ask about search engine optimization. 

1. Should my domain have keywords? While this seems like a good idea, the answer is no. Your domain should be easy to remember and true to your business name. Your shoe store, "Joe's Shoes for Less" might have the domain name, "www.joesshoesforless.com" rather than "www.cheapandlightlywornshoes.com". See what I mean?
2. What is the right amount of keywords per page? This is a great one to ask, actually! You don't want to be convicted of keyword stuffing. White hat SEO techniques are what get you ranked and one of those is optimizing your text without over-optimizing it. When you read other posts about this topic, you might find that they giv
   
   e a percentage for keywords to text; overall, use them when you need to and don't over do it. It's like salt, a moderate amount goes a long way. Our marketing specialists will often use one every 100 words or so; so, in a 500 word post, they use five or six keywords. 
3. What about links within text? Only include these when necessary was well. If you are referencing something and there is a link to it, then connect it. Of course, always in moderation. 
4. What is a robots.txt? This is a nifty page that gives search engine crawlers about the pages that a company's site indexes. Simply go to thisisyourdomain.com/robots.txt. 
5. What is the difference between indexed text and crawled text? When you publish content on your site, search engines will crawl the content and if they can, they will index it; think of indexing like filing. The content that is not indexed is not indexed because of prohibitions or it is not optimized. 
6. Why do I need alt text? Alt text allows search engines to know what is in an image. Also, if your image doesn't load, web visitors can read the alt text and know what should be there. A properly optimized site will feature alt text. 
7. How long does SEO take to be effective? This depends on many factors such as the competitiveness of your industry, the keywords you choose, how much you spend on SEO, etc. It often takes a few months for your site to be completely noticed by search engines, then another few months to get rankings, at least ones better than the 100th page of Google. 
8. Inbound links vs internal links? Inbound links are links from other websites pointing back to your own; internal links are links on your site pointing to other pages within your site. 
9. What are meta descriptions? Meta descriptions are the bits of text that appear below your page and link in a search engine results page. It explains what is in the page. 

Feel better now that you know the answers to these questions? I know I sure do! Whew! If you want your site to rank well on Google, then you need to know this information. Contact Integraphix for help with other SEO questions or SEO services. 

The Best Way to Help Your SEO

When it comes to having good SEO, you need to have this one thing down or else your search engine optimization will suffer greatly.

What is that one thing? CONTENT. Content, my friends. As an SEO firm, we operate offices across the country and one thing we can tell you is that people all over love to see good content. Of course, good content doesn't just soothe the soul of humans, it also soothes the souls of the search engines.

You have to write great content! This is the heart of your SEO efforts. What is great content? It is content that helps people, is captivating, relatable, interesting, and even sales-oriented. Great content shows your customers why they need your services and how you can better their lives. It gets people to realize they have a connection with your brand. Sure, you can write about your cat and how he is adorable but that will not work for your flooring site.

You have to write unique content. This means no copying what other people write. One, that's plagiarism. Two, if you avoid that, it just looks tacky. Do your own research and find out what people want to read and write about that. Write stuff that is not on other sites or other pages of your site. As an SEO company, we can't stress this enough. People hate it. Search engines hate it.

Post new content frequently. Your site should have new content added to it on a regular basis. A site that adds new content is seen as more credible than static sites. Your rankings will see great improvements if you do this. Search engine rankings are sometimes hard to achieve, you want to do all you can to get them!

Need help creating great content? Then contact Integraphix who has a whole team of talented marketing specialists who write specifically for SEO purposes.

Why Optimize Images for the Web

In order for your website to rank well on the internet, it has to be optimized. One aspect of websites that have to be optimized are the images. When images are not optimized, that hurts the chances of being ranked well on search results.

Search engines like it when every part of your website is optimized; however, even just in regards to the images, when they are optimized, they are much more likely to be pulled up in the images tab on search results.

What does it mean to optimize images? There are 5 parts to an image that have to be optimized.

1. Alt tag
2. File name
3. File size
4. Caption

What do these do? Why should they matter? Well… 

1. The alt tag is what the search engines read to find out what the image is. Since they don't have eyes to see what an image looks like, they go by words. No alt tag? Search engines will have no idea what the image is, they like to know. This is a great text alternative when browsers are not able to render an image correctly. It will add lots of SEO value to your site. Using plain English is a good idea here.  
2. File name is what the image is labeled when saved. Why does this matter? Well, it is more information for the search engines to pull when a search is made. An image named "liow20u09508.jpg" will mean nothing when someone searches for a "Ford Mustang 2014", however, an image named, "2014-red-ford-mustang.jpg" will do you good. 
3. The file size does indeed matter. Why? Well, if your file is too large, then the image will take lots of time to load (load times impact SEO rankings). Make the image a small file size.  
4. The caption is more information for the search engine and is also good for human viewers. People will read this to find out what is going on in an image and this means less bounce rate (that impacts rankings). 

Don't know how to optimize your images? Then contact Integraphix, a Chicago SEO firm that services the whole country! Our marketing specialists have in-depth SEO knowledge and can help get your site properly optimized. 

Do Keywords Still Matter in SEO?

Keywords still matter in the world of Search engine optimization. Keywords are just as important to successful SEO now as they always have been. When it comes to content marketing, if you do not use keywords, then your content is not optimized; if your content is not optimized, then it is not easily findable.

There are people who think that the usage of keywords is outdated, keywords are still used by search engines to categorize content that they index. The search engines, especially Google, search for keywords in many aspects of content (we will discuss this in a bit). As search behaviors change, search engines rely on keywords more and more to find relevant information. For example, a major new search technique is "conversational search"; this type of search is like, "Where is the nearest dry cleaner?" This is in contrast of traditional search queries like, "Dry cleaner in C
hicago" etc.

Keywords will not improve your page rank. There are other factors that websites have to adhere to in order to get good rankings; a keyword helps your page be categorized after being indexed, like we previously mentioned.

So where do keywords need to be in content? 

• URL
• Title of content
• Document name
• H1, H2, H3 headings
• image names
• Image ALT tags
• Image captions
• Meta description tags (despite claims to the contrary)

Whether you are using written content for SEO or just to have another tool for marketing, make sure you use keywords. Great SEO means being found on the internet, so make sure you have quality SEO done. To get the best SEO techniques, then hire an SEO firm. Contact Integraphix for SEO services! 

5 Ways SEO Can Help a Small Business

A good product or service that is appealing and can sell itself is something that every company wants. However, not even when your company has a product or service that is fantastic, it doesn't always get noticed by itself, without doing much promotion. For those products, there are several marketing tactics that a business can use to promote; one of those tactics is search engine optimization. A marketing strategy like SEO is great for any company, no matter what the size is; small companies of less than ten employees experience the same benefit as a company of 500+ employees, recognition and traffic to the site.

More than 3/4s of online shoppers use search engines to guide their decisions on where to purchase an item online; this means that if your site is not utilizing SEO, then it is missing a large segment of shoppers in the marketplace. When you are a large business, getting recognized is how your business continues to gain sales; when you are an entrepreneur or small business, it is how you survive. Here, we have 5 ways that SEO can help an entrepreneur and small business.

1. Reputation management. When your business is getting started, any amount of negative reviews, press, or other information can make a huge dent. If you are on the attack, being proactive, then you are able to put good news out there and create the first impression on your terms. 
2. Figure out what they are searching for. In SEO, you use keywords to allow search engines to pick up on your online content; when the search engines connect the keywords with you, you are posted as a result to those terms when people use them in searches. If someone searches for "Chicago tshirt company" and that's a keyword you use, then you have a greater chance of being seen by the searcher. It helps you understand what your consumers are looking for and how much they look for those things. 
3. Traffic to your site increases. When you do search engine optimization then you allow more people to see your site, thus, more people will go to it. A large company can get away with less SEO than a small one since they have a larger consumer base to know of and talk about their site/business. Getting this traffic to your site is free and can generate some real sales. 
4. Social media. Using social media is a great aspect of SEO because it can allow your business real time customer service, news, and promotion. You can create great links to other businesses and people in the community. The more your name appears on the internet, the better your SEO will be. 
5. Credibility. When you are shown on the internet and as an expert, then your credibility (ethos) will be given a higher rating by consumers. When a company earns the trust of a consumer, the brand loyalty is what can create long-term sales. 

If you want an SEO company that can help your business get noticed, then contact Integraphix. We are a Chicago marketing company. 

How are SEO and PPC Different?

There are two kinds of ways to get your site to be seen on Google, one is search engine optimization, or SEO, and the other is pay-per-click, or PPC. These two formats of promoting your site on the internet search engines are both similar to each other however they are different and in big ways.

How are SEO and PPC different?

• Where they are placed on search engines
• The potential for traffic
• Cost to rank 
• The involvement your site has

1. The first difference, where they are displayed, is the biggest difference that anyone can notice and not just those of us who work with SEO and PPC. See how at the top of the image, the first link has the "Ad" marker? These are links that were paid to be there and thus, are PPC. The links on the right side of the page have this too. In the past, Google had the PPC links where in yellow boxes but they have very much reduced the yellow and replaced it with the "Ad" icon. The links that do not have the "Ad" marker next to them are organic links; they are placed there as the result of good search engine optimization. 
2. Another big difference, the potential for traffic, is a bigger deal for those who work with these two formats as well as those who utilize them. Yes, you get to the first page of Google faster with PPC, however, most people do not actually click on the PPC links. Why? Well, ask yourself the question (if you don't). Likely, your answer has something to do with the fact that the paid ones are not as credible; they are only there because they were paid to be there & didn't earn their place. It's like the guy at work who is management because his dad owns the company, not because he worked hard, you know? Internet users are 5x more likely to click on an organic link. 
3. The third difference, the cost, depends on several factors. Google and Yahoo! manage their PPC costs differently. Yahoo! does it purely on ranking; if you give lots of money, then you'll have a higher ranking. With Google, it depends on your market, competition, etc. They both set up budgets for you and each time someone clicks on your link, that cost per click is deducted from your budget, likely a daily budget. 
4. The fourth and final difference, involvement of your site, is a big deal too. When it comes to PPC, you do not have to really work on getting your site ready; the more clicks you want, the more money you spend on it. When it comes to search engine optimization, you have to optimize your site to get it working. This means having lots of content, title tags, image tags/descriptions, H1/H2/H3 tags, keywords mixed into the content, images, etc. If your site is not optimized when you decide to do SEO, then you'll have your prep work to do. 

If you are interested in doing SEO, then contact Integraphix - an SEO company. If you want to first see how SEO could help you, we can do a free website analysis. 

Why Content Matters with SEO

Content in search engine optimization is not just something you do, it is the thing you do. Everything about SEO revolves around the content. There are several things to consider when talking about content for SEO but we will focus on the big three: keywords, quality, and freshness.

The Hummingbird update that happened was a big change for the search algorithm that Google put into place. There is more focus on keywords now than ever before once the Hummingbird update came; keywords are to be in the titles of things, meta tags, in the paragraphs, your keyword density, etc. However, in regards to keywords, more emphasis is now on what the article is about and how you are using the keywords within all the content.

In the past, Google studied the search trends around the world and realized they had to improve identifications among synonyms and concept grouping. What does this mean? It means you should have both synonyms that are related to your main keywords as well as keywords directly related to the topic. This has changed search engine marketing strategy for every internet marketing firm in Chicago, New York, San Franciso, etc.

What about the article quality? You now have to write articles that are longer and are much more meaningful. Back in the day, you could get away with articles that were only 250 words but now, that minimum has doubled. A lot of websites have seen themselves get hit by Google because they had too little content. Ideally, webpages of 300, 400, 500+ words do well, even some sites with 1500 word articles do well. The most important thing is how well your articles are written; Google likes to see how well your stuff is written since that impacts its search quality.

Fresh content is a big, big deal. If you are unable to create content from your own mind, then you will need some extra help; having content that you did not make up is not only plagiarism but it will also get you hit by the big ol' Google. Online marketing has a focus on creating fresh, fun content for audiences and for good reason. Write on things that other people are not covering, or if they are, take a new spin on it. Always putting up new content to your site will help you quite a bit!

If you are looking for a Chicago marketing company that can help with your SEO needs, then contact Integraphix.