How to Do Well in Local SEO in 2015

Can you believe we are almost done with 2014? Crazy! I just started writing 2014 on checks without having to remember the year… No, I kid, but it is funny how fast time flies.

That being said, it is time to consider the things we have to do in 2015 to dominate local SEO and get noticed in local web searches. One of the big things to do is take a long, hard look at your website and make a checklist of these "bad SEO practices" and then fix what is not right.

• No content on the home page. If your home page is barren, then you need to add content to it. Consumers and search engines want to know what your site is about, so not having content on your home page is hurting that conclusion, even if you only have a slider/banner photos. As a Chicago SEO firm, we can tell you that having a banner or slider is nice on your home page but there needs to be more than that. 
• Having a few sentences on your pages. Each page of a website needs at least 400 words, if not more. Those consumers and websites need to know that your site is useful and full of relevant info. 
• Spam keywords. If you have a paragraph listed on your website that is simply keywords, that is not going to be helping you one bit. Sprinkle those keywords throughout your content! It is just great SEO. 
• Bad title tags. Your title tags need to be set up a certain way --> relevant keyword | page or another relevant keyword | company (don't italicize the title tags, though). They should be between 50-60 characters, so don't put a sentence as your title tag or a long, keyword-packed description up there. 

Those things will really be good for optimizing your site, if you want to make it great for local searches, then add in your city/state to those things. Put your city (and maybe state if it's a small city) in your title tags, H1 headers, content, alt tags, and URLs. 

Optimizing your site can take some time and effort. We understand not every business, big or small, can take the time to do this or they just don't know how. If you fit into one of those two labels, then contact Integraphix, a Chicago SEO company.  

Valuable Internal Optimization Tips

As a Chicago Marketing Company we stress the value of Search Engine Optimization. If you want web traffic from search engines there are certain areas of your website that must be optimized.

Title Tags – Title tags are shown up as the title in search results and on browser windows. Our Chicago Marketing team has found that title tags are the most important place to insert your keywords on your website. A strong title tag should contain between 65-70 characters or less. It is important to choose keywords for your title tags that correspond with the content on the page.

H1 Tags – Search engines have been attracted to h1 tags for years. Our Chicago Marketing Company has found that some websites don’t even utilize H1 tags! Many search engine optimization experts have found that H1 tags are one of the most important factors of internal optimization. You are only hurting your website by not including H1 tags.

URL – The key to any web page is it’s URL. Within your website you will have different pages designated to separate web URL’s. Our web designers in Chicago always name particular page’s slug according to what the page and content is about. Example: http://www.integraphix.com/services/chicago_internet_marketing entails information regarding our Chicago Internet Marketing services.

Image Tags – Our creative agency has found that images are often ignored when it comes to search engine optimization. It is very important that all of your images on your website are saved according to your keywords to help increase web traffic. Make sure that all of your images on your website are given logical and readable names. An image saved as “logo.jpg”says nothing to search engines. Saving an image as “Chicago-web-design-company-logo.jpg” will help your website for search engine optimization purposes. Uploading images to your website saved as keywords will definitely help increase your rankings and ultimately increase your web traffic.

Content – When creating web content for your website, it is very important to include a variety of keywords. As a Chicago Marketing Company, we recommend you use at least 4-5 keywords on each of your pages. If your site is legitimate and you are targeting the right audience, your keywords should fall into the copy naturally. It is important to understand that the more content you put on your site, the better off you are in terms of search engine optimization.

Without a solid foundation of internal optimization on your website, you cannot grasp the full potential of search engine optimization. For a FREE Marketing Analysis of your website, contact Integraphix: 847-537-0067. Our Chicago Marketing Company consists of our creative team specialists that have the knowledge and experience on  how to increase interest with search engines.

SEO Myths: Busted!

10 years ago, Search Engine Optimization was spam. People who knew very little about the practice could manipulate the search engines with very little effort and huge results. Nowadays, it's much more difficult and takes more than simple trickery to get results. The following myths, however prevalent in the current SEO scene, need some busting, by yours truly, Integraphix.

Myth One: Search Engines don't "see" Images
While this is correct that the actual image itself can't be seen by search engines, applying appropriate tags to the image can benefit your image search capabilities and on-page optimization efforts. While not a huge benefit, Alt Text and Image Filenames does make a difference and should be included in your SEO strategy.