How to properly manage your local SEO

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To have a good local SEO unfortunately it is not enough to want it. Indeed it can be extremely difficult to position yourself on competitive keywords, especially at the scale of a country or a big city. But with an effective local SEO strategy, you can claim to appear on the first page of Google for a user search corresponding to the area of expertise of your company.

Being known by Google

To be well seen by Google, it is essential to create a business listing via Google My Business. In this form, you can display the name of your company as well as a description, its opening hours, the address and phone number and a link to your website. You can also share photos that will appear during Google searches. This card can also receive customer reviews.

Note: This step is crucial, create this form does not exempt you from making you known elsewhere, especially on local and regional directories (Yellow Pages, Yelp, Tripadvisor, etc …). pay attention to ensure that your information is consistent across platforms and update it regularly.

Encourage your customers to give their reviews

Stand out with consumer reviews

73% of consumers trust a local business if they have read positive reviews about it. What’s more, Google takes into account the rating of companies and favors those that are well-rated and whose reviews are numerous and positive to position them among the first results of research. More reviews will be numerous and praised on different platforms and the more you will shine in the eyes of your customers, but also Google.

What to do in case of a negative review?

Do not panic and feel free to answer, being courteous and professional, of course. Make a short and sincere response, provide useful information to resolve this dissatisfaction and if necessary invite the customer to contact you.

Responding, and even more, to suggest a solution will show that you are truly interested in your customers and will thus bring a more positive note to negative comments.

Promote local links

Work your network of ‘partners’

By providing your financial, material or human support to associations, local sports clubs or events in your geographical area, you can in exchange ask to show a link of your company via their website or on their social networks. Remember also to show on your site other companies ‘partners’ who, in exchange, publish a link to your site.

Let’s not forget that, external links pointing to your site can boost its ranking in Google search results in a remarkable way.

Think about local press

The local press, both in print and online, promote local events and often mentions their support. To talk about you, you can also contact them directly when you have a piece of strong news. If the news seems relevant, they will not hesitate to write content, give the link to your site and sometimes even to share on social networks.

Many tips exist to gain visibility on the Internet, locally or nationally or even internationally. In addition to the tips given above, you will, of course, think about SEO optimization of your site, to create accounts on social networks and to keep a blog. If You do not know how to do it or have no time for it, Don’t hesitate to call on a specialist to set up an SEO policy adapted to your company, it is the best solution to boost your Local SEO.

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OK Google: What are the impacts on voice search and SEO

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While operating systems today have almost all their own assistant staff which allows owners of an electronic device to interact directly with their machine through vocal search, what are the impacts of voice search on the results provided by Google?
What impacts does voice search also have on other spheres of the web, especially on SEO work?

The increasing use of voice search

According to a 2014 survey published on the Google blog, 55% of teenagers and 41% of US adults already used voice search at least once a day.

Because the use of voice search is constantly changing in the United States and now in Europe since this study, especially among teenagers, more and more successful personal assistants have arrived on the market. The Google web giant and its Google Home smart speaker sold around the world is a great example of this.

This growing use of voice search becomes an important criterion to consider for website owners. Indeed, there is a real impact on the results provided by Google.

The results of voice searches very often differ from those generated by a manual search.

What changes the voice search has on the results?

The evolution of artificial intelligence, but also the uses of vocal search lead to changes in the results provided by Google. Voice search changes the results because vocally spoken queries are longer and more accurate. One of the consequences of formulating grammatically well-built sentences is the shift with a short manual search. Manual searches are characterized by the addition of keywords.

In addition, the voice search, thanks to the artificial intelligence, allows the requests to be realized without any misspelling, and with accents. But it can also generate some misunderstandings. Indeed, voice requests are not always totally absorbed by the machine.

What are the impacts of voice search on SEO?

Because speech search encourages users to communicate with their personal assistant almost as if in a real conversation, search engine queries become unique and push the trend towards decreasing keywords.

The end of the reign of the keyword, without its complete abandonment thus leaves a place for a content that is more and more in tune with the natural formulation of a question.

Questions and answers sites, often presented as FAQs (FAQs), where natural language is privileged can logically appear in the first results of the Google search engine after a voice search.

The zero positions or featured snippets are also preferred and placed in a very good position after a speech search, because of their response to a specific question.

The SEO optimization work must then aim for a zero position. It must also rely on the shaping of the request by rich and qualitative content. This content must indeed cover a whole semantic universe to be able to answer the precise questions of the users.

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Why create SEO content?

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SEO content is essential for a good SEO of your website. What is SEO content and why should it be produced?
SEO content is a very important factor for your website. Good SEO content will make your site visible in the search engine results, including those of Google. It will allow you to increase the organic traffic of your site and boost your visibility.

Definition of SEO content

SEO content is content optimized for search engines. All the texts and visuals of your website can be optimized SEO.

Search Engine Optimization is known or called (SEO). SEO is defined as the art of optimizing the positioning of a web page, the objective being is to appear in the first page positions of search engine results and especially on Google.

Why create SEO content?

Why create SEO content and why for Google in particular? With these few figures on the market share of Google in the search on the web, you will find the first answer. This will help you understand better why it is important to create SEO optimized content for your website:

In Canada, 90.8% market share for Google (Bing 5.61% and Yahoo 2.48%),
In North America, 88.66% market share for Google (Bing 6.77% and Yahoo 3.62%),

Source: gs.statcounter.com for the month of June 2018

These numbers alone illustrate why you need to meet Google’s content requirements. To get good visibility on Google, SEO content is king.

SEO optimized text content

To make your website visible on the search engines and especially on Google, it must contain optimized SEO content.

Optimized SEO content must be:

  • Original, interesting and quality,
  • Adapted to the web and the requirements of Google,
  • Concise and quickly understandable,
  • Interactive.

To this short list are added the Google’s quality guidelines:

  • Design content by thinking first of your visitors rather than the search engines,
  • Do not mislead your visitors,
  • Avoid using SEO techniques that are contrary to Google’s guidelines to help you rank,
  • Make your site unique, attractive and stand out from your competition.

SEO optimized visual content

Depending on your field of activity, visual content may be as important as text content. Since 2001 (corresponding to the birth of Google Image), the search for images is constantly increasing on Google. By using quality images related to your business activity, you can acquire quality traffic to your website. This is the case for example for communication agencies, e-commerce sites, portfolios of artists such as photographers and graphic artists, image banks, etc.

To optimize your images for SEO, it is essential to:

  • Use ‘ALT’ tags with targeted keywords to describe your image,
  • Take care of their size and weight to optimize loading time,
  • Enter the title of the image.

To learn more about SEO optimization of images:

And do not forget that Google Images has evolved. The advantage of this update allows a more quality image search.

How to value your SEO content?

Creating optimized SEO content will be beneficial for your visibility, provided you meet certain criteria on the web page that will host your content. A web page containing SEO content must include:

Title

It should contain the title of your web page and its content that will be displayed in Google’s results. It must, of course, contain the targeted main keyword.

Title tag

The title tag or H1 tag is the ‘editorial title’ of your content, it is visible on your page and must contain the keyword you are targeting.

A Meta Description

It informs Internet users of the content of the web page in the form of a short description. It is visible in the results of the search engines and must attract the user’s curiosity and encourage them to click on the link of your web page.

How to promote your SEO content?

When SEO content is added to other actions, you put the odds on your side to optimize the SEO and positioning of your web page. The SME, does it speak to you? Need a little reminder?

When you combine SEO, SEA, and SMO, the three complement each other and allow a good SEO of your website on Google.

The three main levers for promoting your content:

  • SEO, natural optimization,
  • SEA paid optimization,
  • SMO, optimization on social networks.

Indeed, a unique and quality SEO content must be relayed on social networks. Promoting quality SEO content is the best way to naturally get backlinks to increase awareness and visibility of your web page.

Who to call for SEO content?

To produce SEO content, you have several options:

  • Write content from A to Z alone by following the instructions of Google,
  • Write a first draft that will then be optimized for a web search agency,
  • Use an SEO agency or web editor.

In short,

Writing SEO content with high added value is essential to improve your positioning on Google. If despite all your efforts and following these tips the positioning of your website is not up to your expectations, do not hesitate to use the services of a web agency to conduct an audit of your website. This audit will allow you to identify and correct the weaknesses of your site to improve its performance.

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Google Speed ​​Update will take effect in July 2018

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Google Speed ​​Update: As of July 2018, the speed of a website will affect its ranking on mobile

In a few days, Google’s mobile search engine will take a look at its desktop version by integrating loading speed into its algorithm. What impact should we expect? How to improve the speed of a website? Answers.

Google Speed ​​Update: applicable from July

If the loading time of a website is part of the various ranking criteria on desktop since 2010 already, Google’s mobile search engine is also preparing to integrate this criterion to its algorithm. As of July 2018, websites displaying a slow loading time will be penalized.

“« People want to be able to find answers to their questions as fast as possible. (…) Although speed has been used in ranking for some time, that signal was focused on desktop searches. Today we’re announcing that starting in July 2018, page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches. » – Google.

We live in a world where immediacy is the proper action to take, as Google understood very well. We therefore wish to be able to find answers to our questions as quickly as possible. The concept of speed is even more important on the web, where it is not rare that we lose patience when we have to wait more than a few seconds to reach any page. If Google has integrated this concept of the desktop for quite some time now, the Mountain View firm will soon extend this reality to mobile too.

How to prepare for Speed ​​Update?

The Google Speed ​​Update, as it was named, will come into force in July 2018. So you have a few days left to work on the speed of your website, before it is likely to be penalized. How? Different tools are available for you:

Also check out the article we post before, which is directly related to the topic we are dealing with here: ‘Loading speed of your website’.

Feel free to contact us for more information and tips on Google SEO.

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GDPR impact on SEO

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What will be the impact of the GDPR on SEO?

The GDPR is on everyone’s lips right now. Indeed the new legislation comes into force on May 25, 2018. But what is the GDPR, why does it come into force and will it have an impact on the SEO?

What is GDPR?

The GDPR is the General Regulation on the Protection of Data (or GDPR for General data protection regulation), a text of the law (Law No. 2016/679) adopted in 2016 by the European Union. This text will enter into force on 25 May 2018 and will serve as a European reference for the protection of citizen’s personal data. The text of the law brings new and much more binding obligations on the treatment and the circulation of these data on which the companies rely on to offer their services and products.

Why GDPR?

The entry into force of the GDPR reinforces the main principles issued by the Data Protection Act, in force since 1978, to increase the rights of citizens and give them more control over their data according to the CNIL. But the text of the law also aims to replace a directive of 1995 and thus become the new reference text on personal data in the European Union. The explosion of digital technology and the new uses that this entails made it indispensable to adjust a directive that was more than twenty years old.

The GDPR is part of a desire to harmonize the European legal panorama with regard to the protection of personal data, thus, one and the same law applies to all Member States.

When does the GDPR come into effect?

The entry into force of the GDPR took place in two stages. The text was first adopted by parliament on April 14, 2016, and promulgated on April 27 in the official journal. However, it has been decided to postpone its application for two years, it will take place in a little over a month, on May 25th, 2018. These two years have allowed both national legislation and businesses collecting and processing personal data to prepare for the entry into force of the law. After May 25, sanctions will be imposed on any processing of personal data in violation of the GDPR. Companies that commit breaches of the rules enacted by the GDPR incur up to 20 million euros or 4% of the annual turnover of fine.

What’s changing on websites?

It will be necessary to provide the users with a clear and precise information which data will be collected and for what purpose in order to obtain or not its consent. In addition to giving the user the right to act on his data, the company must keep a record of consent in order to defend itself in case of complaint and the control of the CNIL that would result.

What impact will the GDPR have on natural referencing?

In fact, not much since the ranking criteria of a website does not depend on how the data are collected or a number of subscribers to a newsletter.

And no search engine has yet indicated that the compliance of a site with the GDPR would become a ranking criterion. That said, this is not a reason for not complying on the one hand, and maybe in the future, this criterion will be taken into account on the other hand. You never know with the search engines.

The impact of the GDPR on SEO will be more subtle especially on the side of the UX and analytic data collections.

Another reason to put SEO and UX in relation?

Yes, again a reason to put SEO and UX in relation. As we know the use and ease of access to information of a site participates in its good ranking in the search engines. And the consent request that will have to be offered to users from May 25th will probably be presented on most sites in the manner of a request for acceptance of cookies. It will then be necessary to bring the consent request in the most user-friendly, and the least heavy in bytes so as not to impact the site loading speed.

An ill-thought-out, invasive pop-up window that puts the user experience at risk could scare your visitors away. And the flight of visitors inevitably leads to a loss of positions in the rankings of search engines. And it’s the same idea for a device that would require a lot of resources, which slow down the loading of your pages and which would, therefore, risk seeing your visitors leave as quickly as they arrived.

Analysis tools and data collection

In a newsletter addressed to its users, Google announces that the necessary measures are taken for the deployment of the GDPR. The newsletter informs us that precise data retention parameters will be put in place and will make it possible ‘to determine the storage duration of the data relating to the users […] As of May 25, 2018, these data will be kept according to the defined parameters. Google Analytics will automatically delete those that exceed the chosen retention period. Google encourages you to review these data retention settings and change them if necessary.

The newsletter also informs us that ‘Google Analytics and Analytics 360 will continue to offer different rules and features related to the collection, use, and retention of your data, to help you secure them. For example, you’ll have features for customizable cookie settings, privacy settings, data sharing settings, deletion of data when you disable an account, and IP anonymization. They may be useful when you assess the impact of the GDPR on the specific situation of your business and the integration of Analytics. ‘

In conclusion, it will be necessary to be vigilant on the way to collect the data of the visitors of your website.

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4 Criteria to evaluate your SEO

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4 CRITERIA TO EVALUATE YOUR SEO

SEO is relatively unclear for may marketing professionals and an abstract marketing and customer acquisition lever. Indeed, it contains a part of ‘chance’ related to the goodwill of Google and other search engines to put forward your website or not. Fortunately, there are criteria that can show if you are going in the right direction in your SEO strategy. Discover 4 criteria to evaluate your SEO with Great Northern Marketing Calgary Local SEO. Read more

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How to optimize images for SEO

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How to take advantage of the traffic potential associated with searching images? Here are some tips to optimize images for SEO on your website. One of the SEO strategies that have been neglected is to optimize images for SEO. This era is over since the advent of Google’s universal search in 2007, resulting in the appearance of images and photos in the engines search results.

Since the birth of Google Image in 2001, image search is constantly growing on Google and other search engines. Google Image is the most complete image search on the Web. In 2015, 80% of Google search results display universal search with an image in 35% of cases.

Why should you optimize your images?
Getting a good position in the results with a sales image linked to your business is the assurance of acquiring qualified and potentially important traffic. For certain categories of websites, a good positioning of the images is essential today, it is the case for:

  • E-commerce sites,
  • Portfolios of artists, graphic designers,
  • The image banks,
  • Travel agencies and tourist sites,
  • Printers,
  • The web agencies,
  • The photographers, …

Here now the 8 tips to optimize images for SEO

These are 8 simple tips to implement (on WordPress in particular) to optimize the optimization of images on your website and acquire qualified traffic.

1 – The names of the images

Google cannot read an image, it’s up to you to indicate what is on your image or your photo. For example, if you want to reference photos of the Niagara falls, avoid image names like IMG19762.jpg and prefer Niagara-falls.jpg, admit that it will be easier for Google to position your photo with relevance by placing a few keywords in the file name. (avoid accents and prefer dashes for better interpretation of the file name by Google)

2 – The alternative text or tag ‘ALT’

The alternative text or attribute ‘ALT’ is a text read by the search engines, so it is essential to optimize the referencing of images. In addition to the name of the image, the tag ‘ALT’ also improves the SEO of your site since it allows to accommodate additional keywords that will be interpreted by the engines, be careful with keyword stuffing your image. Keywords placed in the ALT tag will replace the image if the browser can not display the image.

3 – The format and weight of images

Preferably use JPG, GIF and PNG formats even if some engines are able to read other formats. Also, specify the height and width of your image to tell search engines how big your image is. Ideally, the native size of your image should be the same as the display size. Doing so, this will reduce the weight of your images resulting in reduced loading time of your pages.

4 – The content and the context around the images

The context and content (including the caption and title of the image) on the page where the image to be referenced provides search engines with important information about your image.

For example, avoid embedding a business card picture in a kitchen recipe page, and send a confusing message to the search engines about the subject of the business-card.jpg image.

Search Console Help Center Guidelines: Make sure you place your images near a relevant text as much as possible. We also advise you to assign titles and descriptive captions to your images.

The environment of the page is therefore essential to optimize images for SEO purposes.

5 – The title of the image

The title of the image (title attribute) is a text that is displayed on mouseover. The information of this attribute has no effect on the SEO, it is against a plus in term of accessibility and user experience.

6 – A specific sitemap for images

Once all your images are optimized, you can submit a sitemap for images via the Google Search Console interface.

7 – The legend of the image

The legend of the image corresponds to the text displayed under the image. It does not bring any direct added value in terms of reference. It can be useful for the UX and brings content around the image, the legend helps to heal the context.

8 – The long description

Like the caption, the long description of your image is not read directly by Google. However, it is very useful for attachment pages. This is also a great SEO lever for portfolio sites or sites dedicated to photography.

In conclusion, and by following these simple tips, you can optimize images for SEO and improve your positioning. If the results are not there, an audit of your website will certainly highlight points of blocking.

To know more: the future in the search of the images will pass also by the quality of these, the progress of the engines will allow in the long run to identify a blurred photo!

Since 2017 Google Images has evolved, websites are no longer displayed in the background. Sessions from Google Images are no longer counted on Google Analytics.

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5 tips on how to choose a domain name

Domain name selection for a business is crucial nowadays when everything is now played on the web. And for good reason, the way your audience designates you and the way your customers identify you today are as important in the ‘real world’ as on the internet. It is therefore advisable not to choose the latter lightly. Are you looking for your future domain name? Do not panic: Calgary SEO & Webdesign Agency is here to guide you …

Top companies like IKEA, Google, Volkswagen, Tesla, FedEx, KFC, Lego or HP around the world that no one today cannot ignore. But have you ever wondered what would have become of them if they had not chosen to call each other as they did? If they had not opted for color codes or logos that we all know today? If the very essence of what made their signature had been different? It might have been otherwise, success depending sometimes on a tiny detail …

And since it is impossible today to count without the Internet to promote a unique brand, it is a new detail not to be chosen lightly: it is your domain name. From the latter can actually flow the success story or the failure of your business.

The following five tips should help you to not go wrong in the process of choosing your domain name!

1. Your top priority for choosing a domain name

Choosing the domain name of your website is the first step in starting your online business. You must think of it from the very beginning! Do you want to know Why? Because it would be too stupid to have spent hours, days, weeks or even months on a project to realize at the last moment that the name of your company and its extension (s) are already taken on the internet. That alone will hurt all your projects!

So we can not advise you to find and register the domain name of your choice before going further.

2. Be open-minded, show creative talent

You still have to choose the right one! to do that I strongly suggest to take a sheet of paper and a pencil and put all the ideas that come to your mind. Leave the sheet of your proposals and come back to it later. Do not limit yourself: let your mind go free!

3. Think long-term and think big

Take the time to find a domain name that will not limit you in the future.

If you later want to multiply your locations, be careful not to opt for a domain name including the name of the city in which you are currently located. If you do not exclude the idea of later marketing other services, other products, be careful not to focus on one of them in the title of your domain name.

In short, do not put yourself in a barrier: aim far and great!

4. Choose wisely your domain name extension (s)

In the same vein, do not hesitate, if you want to establish your business in different countries, to select the corresponding extensions for each. Also consider a .net, .org and .info for you domain brand extensions. This will also prevent you from being stolen by competitors or domain resellers people, who will not hesitate to sell them to you at a golden price once you show the need …

5. Ask or Get help

Do not hesitate to ask the opinion of your entourage or, better, of people have already gone through this process. Some tools will also allow you to provide one or the other suggestion. Maybe try Shopify business name generator.

Anyway, do not hesitate to take the necessary time for selecting your domain name. The choice of your domain name, to remind you again, will have consequences for the future of your business. We wish you all the best and Good luck in your journey to find the perfect domain for your business venture!

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