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.  

How to Create Blog Post Titles That Are Attractive

When it comes to blogs, having a post title that gets people to read your post can be a little difficult when you are not an experienced writer. On average, 8/10 people who see your blog will only read your title and then move on; only 20 percent of the people who read your post title will stick around to read your whole blog.

As an SEO firm, we write lots of blogs and yes, we do employ these techniques.

So how do you get people to find your title intriguing enough to care to read the whole blog? Consider these tips:

• Use lists. "5 Ways to…" Use a number to get the person to understand how long the post is (they are usually easier to read) and give a good solution. Also, try to keep the number towards the beginning of the post. 
• Unique info. When you have information that no one else has, that is great. For example: "Lessons you have never heard before…" or something to that effect. 
• Give solutions to problems. "How to fix this problem with easy solutions". 

If you are going to put keywords in your post, which is a good idea, make sure to insert them naturally. Don't put keywords in your titles and shove them in there awkwardly. One great way to accomplish this is to have a keyword in mind when you create that sentence or perhaps the post as a whole. 

A main thing to remember with titles is to keep it short and sweet (K.I.S.S.). You don't want to have a blog title that is as long as the post itself. Everything in moderation. 

Writing a good blog can be difficult. However, every business needs a blog for many reasons (authority, fresh content on the site, etc). If your business does not have the skill or the time to write a blog, then contact Integraphix and talk with one of our professional copywriters. 

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. 

How Does Your Timing Impact Your SEO?

So you've written a great blog for SEO and now you published it… the next step is to gain that massive rush of web visitors because of the post, right? Yes. However, what do you do when they don't arrive?

Well, my friend, it might have to do with the timing of your post. Yes, this does include at what time of day you hit "Publish" but it is also more than that.

1. Publish when your target audience will see it. Your target audience will have times of day when they will be more active online and thus, will see your post. In general, the weekday morning will be a better time for people to catch blog posts but that is not standard for all demographics. It depends on the sort of lives they lead, the work they do, the time zone they're in/you're in, etc. Content marketing is about having good content and displaying it when people will see it most.

2. Should you pay for promoted posts? When you post your blogs, it is always a good idea to share the link to them and promote them on your social media accounts. Some believe that you should also dabble with paid posts so more people see them. This can be a good move if your demographic allows it to be but it can also be a waste of money. If your post is happening on a time that is more dead for readers, then deciding on the timing of a paid post might come in handy (in addition to organic finds).

3. Utilizing your network of peers. You just wrote a blog about something and you mentioned some influencers in your industry. A great idea is to mention to
them that they can be found in your latest blog post; however, it can be ruined when you don't remember to do this until the last minute. Remember to give them a heads up! "Hey, I'm writing a blog in a couple days and you'll be in it." You know, something along those lines.

4. Backlinks. The timing of your backlinks will make a big splash or flop too.  This is not when you put in a backlinks according to a clock but how frequently you put them in your post. For one thing, a reader will not like it as much but neither will search engine optimization crawlers. If you put too many links in the post, then you run the risk of stuffing, which is no good.

The idea of running a good blog can be too much for some. Just take a deep breath and relax. If you have a blog and need assistance making it better, then contact Integraphix. We have excellent professional copywriters who can assist you.

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! 

10 Frequently Asked Questions About Search Engines

Search engine optimization is a great way to get your business noticed on the internet, especially for the smaller guys in the business world. The problem is that many people have not heard of SEO or do not know how SEO works and how it can help them.

In order to help people get an understanding of SEO and how it works, let's go through the basics. If you have heard of SEO or have no idea what it is, this blog is for you!

• How do search engines function? Search engines build an index of every single web page available on the internet by using "crawlers". When you type in a query into a search engine, the crawlers follow links via "href" or "src" to find the page or image relevant to your search. They base their relevancy on several factors. 
• I've heard of SEO and terms like Black-hat SEO & White-hat SEO? Yes, there are two kinds of search engine optimization available, one is good & the other is bad. White-hat SEO is the SEO that is the good one, you might have guessed. This type of SEO abides by the "SEO laws" set in place by search engines, mostly Google. The results are more long-term and are not hated by the internet community. Black-hat SEO is SEO that is the more sneaky, "illegal", and sleazy method of the two. Using black-hat SEO will get you penalized, maybe banned from the internet. 
• What are examples of Black-hat SEO?  
• Keyword stuffing: packing lots of keywords into pages. This is a no-no. You want keywords in content but not too much. 
• Cloaking: this is giving separate content that you give to web users. 
• Hidden text: hiding text that is keyword-rich in the background or off-screen. A common way for this is to make the text the same color as the background. 
• Doorway pages: pages created especially for crawlers. 
• Which factors will affect the rankings for my webpages? There are hundreds of
  
  factors that are used to determine how relevant your pages are to things; of those factors, these are the most important:
• Backlinks: these are links on other sites that track back to yours. The more of these your site has, the better. 
• On-page factors: the page's title, formatting, good content, images, optimized images, optimized title tags, headers, etc. 
• The age of your domain: the older, the better. 
• Frequency of updates: the more you update the page, the better. This can be done with posts, refreshing existing content, etc. 
• I've heard of Google Panda & Penguin. What are they? These are updates to Google's algorithm that determine search rankings. Panda improves the rankings of high-quality sites and Penguin punishes the bad websites, like ones that use Black-hat SEO. 
• Why doesn't my site show up on Google when I search my keywords? One of the most FAQs on SEO. Check to see if your site has been indexed on Google by doing: site:webdesign.tutsplus.com. Site not indexed? You might need to work on the site's authority, publish good content, and do good backlinks. 
• Can pages protected by passwords be indexed? No, the search engine crawlers will be blocked. 
• Does traffic affect my ranking? No. The traffic that makes its way to your site is not a factor that impacts ranking. Sites that get lots of traffic get that from good SEO or because they're just that well known. 
• My search results differ from my friend. Why? This is because of search personalization, which is based on search history. Your history is tracked via cookies and your Google+ profile. You can disable this if you'd like. 
• When should I see results? This is hard to say because it depends on things like how well your site is optimized, the amount and quality of your SEO, etc. It can take weeks or even months to see results. Think of it like a train; it takes a long time to get chugging but once it does, it lasts. Therefore, do not get upset or frazzled when it doesn't work right away, be patient. 

Want to do SEO for your business? Then hire a Chicago SEO company to do it for you. As a Chicago marketing company, Integraphix has worked with SEO since it started. 

How To Run a Social Media Program That's Effective

Social media has become one of the leading efforts for marketing for just about every company. Think about it, when you hear about a company, one of the first things we do these days is check them out on social media. However, when you have a social media program that is not working, is it actually harming your company? Is your company wasting time and possibly money?

So how does you company run a social media program that is worthwhile?

• Think strategy- Do not go at social media like you do a gym membership right after New Year's. You know what I mean, we get super excited and say we'll do it right. What really happens is we go in blind, get overwhelmed by the lack of immediate success, then we get out of there, never to return. You have a much better chance of being successful if you plan out your routine. Do not just choose the platforms you want to use because you like them and are comfortable with them; think of which ones your consumers use the most. Think about what you're going to post and when. 
• Think about the content- This is often something that is overlooked and it does not make sense why that's the case. When a company is not able to have a solid content game going, they miss their chances and their potential consumers. Make content that is relevant to your audience, relevant to the times, and makes you sound like an expert. 
• Remember, it takes time- Just like the unmotivated gym-goer after a week of their new resolution, getting fit takes time and so does successful social media. The heavy lifting is when you are designing and installing the processes towards your social media. 

Of course, if you would rather have a Chicago SEO firm handle your social media marketing, then contact Integraphix.