SEO FAQ

In 2019 SearchEngineLand.com produced a periodic table of SEO elements that visually summarizes how much “SEO” actually includes.  SEO is never a “set it and forget it” process as there is always an element that needs improved or worked through.

There are a few main areas that truly comprise SEO;

• On-Site SEO
  • Search Queries
    • Page Titles,
      Meta Descriptions, H1& H2 tags
  • Content Length
  • Image file size and alt tags  
• Off-Site SEO
• Referring Domains (Backlinks)
• Site Speed
• Site Security (SSL Certificate)
• Reviews & Social Media

SEO has became more important than ever in 2020. Here are a few important nuances to focus on now; 

Featured Snippets Dominate More Search Clicks
Influencers Should Be Leveraged for SEO & Backlink Opportunities.
Secure & Fast Websites Are a Must
Websites Optimize for Voice Search
Mobile UX Will Be Huge in Determining Your Rankings
Videos as a Source of Information On Site
CTR and Average Time on Site Will Become Important in 2020

Read more about SEO in 2020

Online reviews are one of the first things visitors see when searching a company online. Customers are more likely to trust your business if fellow consumers give an honest and positive opinion of who you are, what you do, and how well you do it. 91% of consumers read reviews before they are ready to make a purchase. The most important directory for your reviews to be posted on is Google. This is because 93% of online interactions begin with a search engine… and 68% of which use Google to do so! And for your Google stars to start showing up you need to have about 2-3 reviews on Google. Other important directories are Facebook, Bing, and Yelp! Gaining consumers’ trust is what all businesses should be striving towards. This is how you gain loyal consumers who help your business spread by word of mouth and online reviews. 2-3 reviews gains the trust of 28% consumers, while earning 4-6 reviews makes that percentage jump to 36%. As you grow, the number of reviews you have should grow as well!

The average small business spends 4-14% of their gross revenue on marketing. This percentage includes both traditional marketing and digital marketing. Both of these techniques are essential for any business’ success. However, since technology is being integrated into almost every aspect of our daily lives, digital marketing spending should be in correlation with the growth of the digital world around. In fact, according to Small Business Trends, 70% of small businesses plan to increase digital marketing expenditure within the next year. Guardian Owl Digital believes that every small business business should spend at least $750 per month on their digital marketing. This cost includes: directory & citation management, keyword & content software alignment and management, website auditing, link building software and management, local aggregator software of search engine data and management, and finally 6-10 hours of monthly work. 

Google Analytics is a free website visitor tracking tool that helps you monitor the quality and consistency of your website traffic. The benefit of having data at your fingertips is to help you decide if your ROI (return on investment) is paying off. But if you can’t decipher what you’re looking at on your Google Analytics (GA) dashboard, then you’ll never be able to decide how to best spend your marketing dollars.

Read More about Google Analytics

There is no silver bullet to SEO and any digital agency who guarantees rankings you should run.  

As business owners navigate the search engine world, the term “keyword research” is important to know for SEO purposes. If you are new to the SEO world, essentially keyword research is the process of discovering key terms and phrases related to your business that users type into search engines.

When initiating your keyword research, business owners need to think about the most important products or services their business wants to highlight. Examples such as “What are your business goals?” and “Who are the customers or audience?” you’re targeting need to be considered.  Putting together a questionnaire such as these questions can help in the discovery process of keyword research. 

With the research list, you need to understand why the search intent is so important. It’s not as much about the actual keywords being searched as it is about the search volume behind the search query.

Read More about Keyword Research in SEO

Not everyone is comfortable jumping in front of a camera and uploading it for anyone to see. 

However, it may be a necessary evil when attempting to become visible online. In this video, Bella briefly touches on a few ways to post more visible videos online.

A family of four is deciding on a restaurant for Sunday night dinner. The kids are having a hard time agreeing before the parents settle on a local Italian restaurant. They search the location on Google Maps and begin driving there. When they arrive, the restaurant looks dark and unpopulated. The family realizes the restaurant is closed! 

Where was that information in the Google search?

When users on Google search or look up a business on Google Maps, they expect relevant information in return. Google My Business is an online platform that holds the most essential information to improve online presence.

Learn more about GMB Listings.

You spent a lot of time thinking (and probably overthinking) which images to add to your website. But the work isn’t done once you load them. You need to add ‘alt text’ (shorthand for alternative text) to them so that search engines, such as Google, will know what the pictures are about. And you want credit, so to speak, in search results for those pictures.

First things first: Google recognizes BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and SVG image files, so ensure that your image file is saved as one of those. Secondly, you’ll need to name the image itself something descriptive. But be warned that more is not always better. It’s a fine line between sparse and overkill. For example, the Guardian Owl logo (below) could simply be named ‘owl’ but that does not accurately portray the business and would do a user no good, unless they were literally searching for owl images. It would be more accurate to add alt text such as ‘SEO experts optimize content and drive traffic’. Resist the temptation to cram every keyword imaginable into your alt text because that strategy might actually backfire when it comes to search rankings.