3 Fundamental Pillars of SEO Techniques

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Moz recently stated that Google changes their algorithm 500-600 times a year. If their algorithm changes this frequently, shouldn’t your SEO strategy be changing too?

SEO is fundamental to boosting your organic search rankings and building your presence online. When done right, SEO can improve your company’s bottom line (leads, sales, etc.).

So what is SEO and what makes up a good SEO strategy? These are the three fundamental pillars of SEO and our techniques for building on them:
Structure
Content
Authority

SEO Pillar #1: Structure

There’s a technical side of SEO that people don’t really talk about, but it’s crucial for your long-term SEO efforts. Whenever we approach a new website or client we do a website audit to find the technical issues that either prevent Google from indexing it or that go against Google’s best practices. Here, we look at things like:

• Broken links
• Broken images
• Site speed
• HTML tags
• Internal linking
• External linking
• Sitemap errors
• Robot.txt errors
• Schema implementation

Fixing these errors make it easier for Google to crawl your site, rank you in the correct location and industry niche, and increase your visibility online.

SEO Pillar #2: Content

Google likes to know that your business is an active, relevant member of the web. To be seen as active, you should be releasing new content regularly and that content should be up to date. Google favors new content over old content and they want to know that you’re relevant to the industry you’re trying to rank in. Your content needs to be informative and focused on concepts that relate to the users intent.

If you want to do this effectively, you need to start by doing keyword research. There are a lot of resources to use for keyword research, but a few that Epic’s digital team uses are Google’s AdWords Planner, Answer the Public, and Ahrefs’ keyword explorer tool. Focus your time on keywords and create content that will benefit your users. There are 5 main types of searches that businesses should be aware of as they try to target content toward specific customers:

search engine optimization utah

Search intent is a big part of content creation and through trial and error, you’ll find your sweet spot.

Content is also where you have the chance to really localize your business. Localizing your content and site (technical SEO techniques), helps Google know where you’re located, what services you offer in that location, and ultimately decides your place in the local pack for certain keywords.

digital marketing utah

Through unique, quality content, keyword research, and listening to customer demand, you can own your industry online.

We’re hoping your question “What is SEO?” is getting answered slowly..

SEO Pillar #3: Authority

The higher you rank for relevant keywords, the more potential clients and current customers will see you as an authority. Google ranked you well because of the authority they think you have and the industry knowledge portrayed on your website (along with all of the technical factors we talked about). To gain higher authority, you can do things like gain backlinks from high authority sites, social references from respected accounts, have a content marketing strategy, make sure your NAP (name, address, phone number) listings are consistent through quality citations, and last but not least, do competitor analysis.

Doing a deep dive of your competitors’ site and rankings can help you find content gaps on your own site. We use a program called Screaming Frog to analyze their content. Pair that with Ahrefs’ content gap analysis and site explorer tool. This allows you to view your overlap areas with competitors, where you rank and they don’t, and what they rank for that you don’t. This is a great tool to help you create content that you know that your potential customers are interested in. The site explorer tool allows you to see their organic search, backlinks, referring domains, and paid search. Finding the gaps in their online marketing strategy can play to your benefit.

After you’ve put a strategy into place using the SEO techniques we’ve talked about above, measure your success. Did it work? Here are some KPI’s to look at on a monthly basis (if not more often):

• Traffic by channel
• Top entry pages
• Rankings
• Conversions from organic traffic
• Time on site
• Average page views
• Bounce rate

No one expects you to change your SEO techniques 500-600 per year, but adapting to the changes in search engine algorithms is essential to boosting your organic rankings, increasing your reputation online and to understand what is SEO. If you have any more questions, reach out to our SEO experts here at Epic Marketing.

Content Marketing Strategy Must-Haves for Your Website

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Content marketing is its own kind of marketing beast. If it’s fed properly, it can be as majestic as a lion, king of the jungle and ready to engage. If it’s not given the proper digital diet and care, the content on your site lags like a sloth, unuseful and unseen at the bottom of Google’s SERPs (search engine result pages).

The good news is there are simple techniques that content marketers can use to help your website gain traction with search engines. These techniques provide the nutrition your site needs to continue to grow and thrive in the online jungle.

Here are five common components that you may want to incorporate into your content marketing strategy in order to help your site dominate search in your niche.

Too busy/lazy to read the whole thing? Here’s an infographic.

1. Call to Action

According to Optimizely.com, a call to action (or CTA) is a prompt of sorts that ask the viewer to act on a specific request. Some typical examples of CTAs include:

• Sign up now
• Buy now
• Learn more by clicking here
• Contact us today

The CTA is a common feature of the sales funnel and is one of the most important features. It increases sales and newsletter memberships. A simple call to action also allows you to extend the reach of your marketing efforts without having to do much.

The best CTAs are easy to read and stand out on the page according to HubSpot. Take, for example, DropBox’s bright blue sign-up button that stands out against its all-white background.

dropbox logo

Other effective calls to action include Panthera’s “Join the pride today,” which appeals to cat lovers; Quick Sprout’s “Are you doing your SEO wrong?”; and OkayCupid’s bright green “continue” button on the dark blue background.

2. Local Relevancy

When it comes to digital marketing, few techniques can help a local business owner out as much as having local SEO content on their website. As Yoast points out, most people who use local search terms aren’t looking to buy online. Instead, they need information that will direct them to a local brick-and-mortar store, where they can take the next step.

To attract these customers, you’re going to need to do a couple of things. First, you need to make sure that you’re using unique localized content for each page. Basically, this means that even if you have an office in two different cities for the same business, the content for each page won’t be carbon copies of each other.

You’ll also want to add your business’s contact information (name, address, phone number, email, etc.). Moz additionally recommends that you put a Google map on your site. All of this type of information helps search engines categorize your site correctly.

Additionally, you should be using keywords/ keyword phrases with a local flair. For example, if you’re a dentist in Fort Worth, Texas, make sure that your business’s website uses words like “Fort Worth dentists” or “dentists in Fort Worth” throughout.

3. Internal Links

The internal linking strategy that you use on your site is important. It shows search engines like Google the relevance of pages, the relationship between pages and the value of the pages.

There should be a lot of links to the most important topic-related pages, the ones that pass the most link value. From there, link to subpages about similar content. You want Google to see what pages have similar topics and information.

The anchor text used in linking is also important. Anchor text is the clickable text that your reader sees. It should contain keywords or relevant content to what it’s linked to. The content around your anchor text says more about relevancy to Google than the anchor itself, so be sure that you aren’t over-optimizing.

4. SEO Components

SEO elements like metadata, subheadings, alt text, and other components also help your website rank better by making it easier for search engines to categorize your content.

Metadata includes title tags and meta descriptions. Title tags indicate to search engines what your page is about. It’s currently recommended that title tags stay below 70 characters and include localization. Meta descriptions are written so the reader can understand what information your content is going to give them. These typically include a CTA and it’s recommended they stay below 140 characters.

Another important thing to have are headings. An H1 is the title of your page. It’s an HTML code that search engines crawl to understand what your page is about. It’s similar to a title tag, and oftentimes are the same. You should only have one H1 on each page so search engines don’t get confused about the topic of your page. Subheadings should be labeled as h2, h3 and so on.

For example, let’s say you’ve written a blog post about Alice in Wonderland. In this example, this is the H1 for your page. Some of the subheadings that might appear on your blog post would be “Alice Meets Hatter,” “Alice Cries a Pool of Tears,” “Alice Meets the Red Queen.” These subheadings give the reader a preview of what they’re going to read next. In this case, the content will be about the Mad Hatter, the pool of tears, and the Red Queen.

Finally, visual elements like photos and illustrations should have alt text that tells search engines what the photo is about. Going back to the Alice example, if you have a photo of Alice in her pool of tears, the alt text and file name should include that.

alice in her pool of tears

content marketing utah

5. Up-to-Date Content

Keeping the content on your website up-to-date is important because it signals to search engines that your website is current and you’re actively contributing to the web. Along with helping you build your reputation with search engines as an expert in your niche, it also helps keep your site at the top of the SERPs as long as the content is relevant and useful.

Typically, search engines favor new and relevant content over old and outdated content. And given the fact that millions of new pages of content are created daily, content updates are one of the simplest things you can do in your content marketing efforts to keep your site on top.

By incorporating calls to action, local relevancy, internal links, SEO components and up-to-date content you can make sure you have a majestic lion. It’s good to be king.

Content Marketing Strategy Infographic

 

A Guide to Google Posts: Connect with More Clients

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When someone searches your business on Google, you want to be front and center. To do this, you need to incorporate PPC ads and have your Google My Business profile filled out completely. To add to this, Google introduced a feature in 2017 that lets you include a post with your local listing to tell customers and potential customers about:

• Events

• Products

• Promotions/specials

• Announcements

For local businesses, this means your listing stands out and gets more views and clicks to your site. This also helps current customers stay connected with what’s happening at your business. Your Google post should be brief, useful and call your customers to act on something.

Here’s an example we created for Epic. You’ll see that it shows on desktop and mobile.

Here’s what it looks like on desktop:

marketing google post

Here’s what it looks like on mobile:

ad agency utahIf you click on the post, you can see more info:

epic marketing agency utah

How to Create a Google Post

Log into your Google My Business listing and select “Posts”

digital marketing utah

After clicking on that, you’ll see a field that says”Write your post.”

From there you can add photos, descriptions, make it an event and add a button.

marketing company utah

Keys to Writing a Great Google Post

Post type: What are you sharing? Are you holding an event? Are you promoting an offer or special deal? Does your business have exciting news to share? Whether it’s to encourage customers to buy something or to announce a new change, consider what you want the post to do and what action people should take after reading it.

Photo: Your photo should draw attention to your post so that it stands out. The resolution should be 720px by 540px and should be simple yet direct.

Title: If you’re posting an event, you have the option of describing your event in 58 characters.

Detail: Although Google suggests keeping your description between 100-300 words, you have a character limit of 1,500. Be clear about what the event or offer includes.

Call to action: What do you want your customers to do? Include instructions like “Buy now”, “Reserve a spot”, “Call”, etc.

**Quick note: You don’t need to include your business name as it already will appear in the post. It’s recommended that you use all of the fields Google provides you with to maximize your impression.

To learn more about Google posts, get more tips and see more examples, visit the Google My Business Help Center or if you have additional questions for our SEO experts and your business, contact Epic Marketing today!

Making Local SEO Work for Your Business

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Every company needs to actively engage in local search engine optimization to be successful.

Google can make or break your business, and with most people not venturing past the second page in Google’s search, you’re missing out on potential customers by not having a content strategy and doing proper keyword research.

One of the biggest hurdles that companies face when crafting their search engine optimization strategy is competing with the biggest players in the market. If you’re a pizza restaurant, for example, you’ll go up against industry titans like Pizza Hut and Papa Johns if you’re trying to be found for a term like “pizza”. These companies have huge budgets and spend millions of dollars on marketing to stay at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Most businesses don’t have the bandwidth or budget to compete head to head. What you can do though is focus on local SEO services offered to you.

Local search engine optimization operates on the same principles as the marketing you’re already doing. The difference is that it targets potential customers within a specific geographic area. With this, you’re speaking directly to the people who are in proximity to your business and therefore more likely to buy your product. Plus, you have a much better shot of showing up higher in the SERPs, it’s a win-win!

What Is Local Search Engine Optimization?

Local SEO services involve strategically choosing your keywords and adding in a specific geographic location. So, if you’re the pizza restaurant from our earlier example, you would use a keyword like “Pizza in Portland, Oregon” or simply “Pizza in Portland”. You’ll reach people in that area who are looking for a good slice and able to give your restaurant a try! Using a keyword research tool like Google’s keyword planner allows you to research how often a term is searched and make any adjustments to your organic and paid strategy.

What Are The Benefits Of Localizing Your SEO Strategy?

Localization does two things for you: it makes you a larger fish in a smaller pond which allows you to rise up through the search engine rankings more quickly and it puts you in touch with people who are both interested in your product and physically able to obtain it. If you’re interested in expanding your business to a larger market, localization helps tremendously. Building local credibility prior to establishing a national or international presence is essential. If you want to cement yourself as an authority in your town or city, local SEO is the key. Utilizing techniques like NAP consistency (name, address, phone number), local citations and meta data, you can dominate.

How Do You Localize Your Digital Marketing Strategy?

The first step is integrating properly localized keywords into your content. Write your website content and any supplementary blog posts with this purpose in mind. This will help you tremendously in organic rankings. Consider running Google AdWords alongside your organic campaign. Many successful companies run SEO and a Google PPC campaigns in tandem for maximum success. Together they add exposure on the SERPs and can help combat negative PR with keyword research. If you run a local PPC campaign, you’ll pay a lot less than you would for a generic, non-localized term and reach the more of the customers you want.

You can also leverage your social media platforms to enhance your local search engine optimization. Facebook ads are highly targeted and localized. The landscape of social is constantly changing, especially with the emergence of different advertising opportunities. Facebook has customizable audience options to target those who would be most interested. The data you collect from social campaigns might uncover other details about what audiences you really should be targeting and help you refine your overall SEO strategy.

Be sure that your website is completely responsive (mobile friendly). Google’s most recent algorithm is mobile-focused and takes into account if your site enhances the customer experience. There is a strong trend towards searching on mobile devices that isn’t changing anytime soon. People won’t tolerate pinching and zooming in on their smartphones anymore. Make your website as attractive and as user-friendly as possible.

Why Localized SEO Is Smart SEO

Local SEO is all about strategy. Focusing on local customers is an excellent way to boost your business. You’ll compete with fewer big players, attract customers who are physically able to consume your products or services and establish yourself as a local authority. This type of marketing is so important that even some big players, like Coke and Pepsi, are focusing on local markets to appeal to consumers in their hometowns. The advantage you have? You are actually a local business in your town, not an outside player. You can speak to people in person and you’ll stand out as a small business who serves the community. Don’t underestimate the support that a small business can get from their loyal patrons.

By employing smart keyword focus and maximizing social media platforms to emphasize your appeal locally, you’re making a smart business move that will pay huge dividends in the future! When evaluating your content and marketing strategy, stop thinking global and start thinking local. Contact Epic Marketing in Draper, Utah to see how we can boost your marketing through Epic’s digital local SEO services.

Top 10 Best SEO Companies in Utah [In 2019]

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[UPDATED MAY 2019]

Finding the right digital agency is tough. If you’re looking to outsource your SEO or PPC you’ve probably already discovered just how complex the selection process really is. Chances are you’ve found yourself asking-

• Who can I trust with my brand?‌
• Does paying more always mean getting a better service?
• Who is going to be as invested in my success as I am?

Here at Epic, we pride ourselves not only on our award-winning fulfillment but on viewing our clients as partners and not paychecks. Our clients stick with us for much longer than the industry average because we’re invested in seeing them succeed. Our reputation as one of the best SEO companies in Utah depends fully on the success of our clients. We grow with them. We’re not content running a campaign for a few months only to have the client cancel because they don’t feel like they’re getting what they paid for. Our years of experience specializing in SEO can help you not only survive in the ever-growing online world but dominate your competitors in the process.

It’s a common experience to get promised the world by an agency and then be delivered something that hardly resembles what you expected. In fact, a 2015 4A commissioned survey found that only 4% of Americans think the marketing industry behaves with integrity. 

Frankly, we’re tired of this number being justified. Unfortunately, because of the “over-promisers” out there,  you should be wary and cautious about choosing an agency. That’s why we’ve curated this list of the best SEO companies in the Salt Lake, Utah area that have won awards and are well-reviewed.

Epic Marketing

marketing agency utah
Google: 4.9
Clutch: No Reviews
Glassdoor: 5
Location Based in Draper
Founded 2005
Average Client Budget $$$
Company Size 25-30 Employees
Facebook Likes 900
Twitter Followers 1,500
Notable Achievements:
• Named one of the top digital marketing agencies in Salt Lake City by UpCity.com
• Named a Top Digital Marketing Agency by Hubspot.com
• Named a Top50 Ad Agency by Top50adagencies.com

Boostability

seo company
Google: 4.5
Clutch: 4.8
Glassdoor: 3.6
Location Based in Lehi
Founded 2009
Average Client Budget $
Revenue 38.5 Million
Company Size 421 Employees
Facebook Likes 15,346
Twitter Followers 30,000
Notable Achievements:
• Ranked 1287 by Inc 5000 in 2016
• #3 of top 10 SEO Companies of 2017 by 10bestSEO.com
• Leading Social Media Marketing Service by Clutch

Search Bloom

best seo company utah
Google: 4.8
Clutch: 4.9
Glassdoor: 5
Location Based in Salt Lake City
Founded 2014
Average Client Budget $$
Revenue 1-5 Million
Company Size 16 Employees
Facebook Likes 4,652
Twitter Followers 6,913
Notable Achievements:
• Special Recognition by 10bestseo.com

97th Floor

seo masters utah
Google: 4.8
Clutch: No Reviews
Glassdoor: 4.7
Location Based in Lehi
Founded 2005
Average Client Budget $$$$
Revenue 1-5 Million
Company Size 57 Employees
Facebook Likes 1,234
Twitter Followers 6,913
Notable Achievements:
• Recommended Vendor of Moz.com
• Named in 50 Best Workplaces by Inc and Fortune
• Marketing Agency of the Year – Silver Stevie

Fusion 360

salt lake city seo company
Google: 4.6
Clutch: No Reviews
Glassdoor: 2
Location Based in Salt Lake City
Founded 2003
Average Client Budget $$$
Revenue 1-10 Million
Company Size 19 Employees
Facebook Likes 4,273
Twitter Followers 14.5K
Notable Achievements:
• Named one of the top 25 advertising agencies by Utah Business
• Named one of the top 25 PR agencies by Utah Business

180Fusion

seo company utah
Google:4.2
Clutch:4.2
Glassdoor:4.1
Location Based in Draper
Founded 2010
Average Client Budget $
Revenue 10-25 Million
Company Size 59 Employees
Facebook Likes 5,008
Twitter Followers 2,501
Notable Achievements:
• 176 on Inc 500 Fastest growing companies
• #11 on Los Angeles Business Journal’s fastest growing private companies 
• Repeat contributor to Search Engine Journal

Red Olive

seo company near me
Google: 4.7
Clutch: No Reviews
Glassdoor: 5
Location Based in Sandy
Founded 2010
Average Client Budget $$$
Revenue 10-25 Million
Company Size 59 Employees
Facebook Likes 3,482
Twitter Followers 520
Notable Achievements:
• Gold Davey Award For Work on Highland Custom Homes
• Silver Davey Award for Web Self-Promotion

Wallaroo Media

utah seo company
Google: 4.6
Clutch: 5
Glassdoor: 4
Location Based in Provo
Founded 2012
Average Client Budget $$
Revenue 1-5 Million
Company Size 25 Employees
Facebook Likes 1,682
Twitter Followers 4,725
Notable Achievements:
• Named one of Utah Venture Entrepreneur Forum’s “Epic 100” Award winners

Big Leap

seo pros utah
Google: 4.9
Clutch: 4.7
Glassdoor: 4.7
Location Based in Lehi
Founded 2008
Average Client Budget $$
Revenue 2 Million
Company Size 51 Employees
Facebook Likes 1,020
Twitter Followers 1,683
Notable Achievements:
• Named 1050 Fastest growing private company by “Epic 100” Award winners
• Experienced 374% 3 year growth (2016) according to Inc.

Foxtail Marketing

utah seo services
Google: 4.7
Clutch: 4.7
Glassdoor: 4.2
Location Based in American Fork
Founded 2013
Average Client Budget $$
Revenue 1-5 Million
Company Size 35 Employees
Facebook Likes 3,758
Twitter Followers 936
Notable Achievements:
• Named a top startup to watch in 2016 by Utah Valley Business Q
• Named Emerging 8 Company By Utah Business
• Named as Best SEO firm for Feb 2016 by TopSEOs.com

Thomas Arts

seo company utah
Google: 5
Clutch: No Reviews
Glassdoor: 3.9
Location Based in Farmington
Founded 2002
Average Client Budget $$$
Revenue 25-50 Million
Company Size 162 Employees
Facebook Likes 1,128
Twitter Followers 1,448
Notable Achievements:
• Winner of The Greater Salt Lake Public Relations Society as the “Golden Spike Awards” best tactic
• Named Emerging 8 Company By Utah Business
• Named as Best SEO firm for Feb 2016 by TopSEOs.com

 

So there you have it! We wish you all the best as you search for an SEO company that’s a good fit for you.

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A Recipe for Success: A Perfect Blend of Digital and Traditional Marketing

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A comprehensive marketing campaign has the ability to increase brand awareness and attract qualified customers. Integrating both digital and traditional marketing has been proven to reap more benefits than a one-dimensional approach. Although some marketers believe the two contrasting practices are in conflict, they can complement each other in order to obtain the best results possible.

Benefits of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing has numerous benefits.  With the ability to go viral, a well-executed digital marketing strategy is essential for any campaign.

  • Cost-Effective

Digital marketing gives your business the power to advertise effectively while reaching a wider audience and producing new revenue. Additionally, not only is digital marketing economical, but it’s a fast way to promote your brand.

  • Measurable

Digital marketing campaigns are trackable, measurable, and cable of being altered in order to improve results. For example, email marketing allows you to track who has opened the email, who clicked on links, etc. The data makes it easy to measure your progress and quickly adapt your entire marketing strategy to obtain better results.

  • Highly Targeted

With digital marketing, you can target your campaign to only the people who are interested in what you’re selling and develop opportunities to engage with your target audience.

Benefits of Traditional Marketing

Your customers don’t just stop online and your advertising shouldn’t either. Traditional marketing can be extremely beneficial in boosting your bottom line. Consider the enormous impact of billboards, print ads, mailers, business cars, and television and radio commercials. These proven techniques have high success rates and are an effective way to reach a broad consumer base.

Integrating Digital and Traditional Marketing Techniques

Utilizing a combination of digital and traditional allows your product/service to be spread across different channels, therefore reaching a larger audience.  Depending on your target audience, you can tailor fit your marketing efforts accordingly. As a full-service agency, Epic Marketing has the resources to create the right package of services for each client. From print, radio and television ads, media placement and creative design to branding and digital marketing, we adapt broad-spectrum marketing solutions to each case for strategic, cost-effective and concrete results.

 

 

The Intersection of PPC and SEO

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If you are at all unfamiliar with how a pay-per-click campaign works, let me enlighten you. Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers place an ad on search engines and pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Essentially, it’s a way of buying visits to your site. PPC offers advertisers a unique means of putting their message in front of an audience who is actively and specifically seeking out their product or service. More effective ads generate greater click-through-rates (CTR) and lower your costs.

Great. But what does that have to do with SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) essentially is the process whereby your website’s “visibility” on search engine results is maximized. With the ever-increasing number of companies, the competition for the digital space is fierce as each is competing for the same rankings. With this in mind, it beckons the question, how can my PPC campaign enhance how I rank on search engines?

Optimizing Your PPC and SEO Campaigns

The keywords here are “integration” and “synergy.” PPC and SEO interact on a click-through basis. These two marketing channels can complement one another and better help to leverage your paid search efforts. According to Google,

“Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.”

This is the most basic thing your PPC and website should cover: actually discussing the items (down to the specific words) that are mentioned in your PPC ad. Readers clicked on your ad because it addressed specifically something they were interested in—don’t lose them as a potential customer by making them dig to find what they were looking for in the first place.

PPC can further help guide your organic efforts by utilizing keywords that bring in high traffic, thus increasing the likelihood of showcasing copy that compels readers to click and to buy. Research has shown that by adding a PPC component to your campaign, not only will you generate more leads per customer from your PPC spend, but you will also increase your organic and local traffic from having multiple listing on the first page.

The Takeaway?

Utilize a PPC campaign in conjunction with your organic results. The presence of both an ad and an organic result on the SERP increases the CTR tremendously, and sound data from the paid and organic reports strongly indicate that SEO and PPC support one another.

For more information about better managing your SEO and PPC campaigns, contact Epic Marketing today for a free consultation!

Internet Marketing Jargon: Decoded

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You may hear us use some of the following terms about the rapidly growing world of Internet marketing. If “conversion rate” wasn’t your first spoken word, here’s a quick guide to understanding some Internet marketing jargon:

SEO: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (organic) search results. Local search results – an entirely different ballgame – are also important if your business has a physical address. Countless factors affect a site’s search engine rankings, such as site design, load time, over- or under-use of keywords, number external links – the list goes on and on.

Algorithm: PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn)). Got it? Ok, neither do I. Google’s algorithm is highly complex – and that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. An algorithm is a mathematical equation that enables search engines to quickly rifle through over 60 trillion web pages and deliver us the best search results possible. As if this isn’t complicated enough, Google makes changes to its algorithm 500-600 times a year. You go, SEO’s.

Analytics: A web marketer’s bread-and-butter, analytics is used to measure, collect, and analyze website data for developing actionable insights that help us make informed marketing decisions. Basically, we get a “behind the scenes” look at who’s visiting your site, when, for how long, etc.

Conversion Rate: A metric to describe the percentage of those who take a desired action. Said desired action depends on one’s individual goals, which could be taking advantage of a free consultation, subscribing to a newsletter or blog, completing a survey or making a purchase. Basically, conversion is the process of turning website visitors into customers.

Content: Content is a piece of information that exists to be digested, engaged with, and shared. Content typically comes in the form of a blog, social media post, advertisement, photo, or website copy. “Content is king” is a (wildly overused) phrase you may hear, describing how good, relevant content is crucial for search engine rankings, conversion, and more.

Keyword: Keywords are single words, or strings of words – called “keyword phrases” – that are strategically selected and incorporated into web content to optimize a page for both search engines and humans. Keywords represent what a page is about and should be integrated through a page’s content in a way that is natural and subtle to avoid “keyword stuffing” – an SEO tactic that Google considers to be a big “no-no.”

Responsive Web Design: This is the practice of developing a website that adapts according to how someone is viewing it. A responsive site will provide an optimal viewing experience across a wide range of devices – laptop, tablet, smartphone, etc. This is crucial, because mobile site visits are quickly surpassing desktop and laptop numbers.

These are only a few of the many buzzwords in the ‘dictionary’ of Internet Marketing.

We want to hear from you! Tweet some jargon you may not understand to @epicmarketing and we’ll give you the 4-1-1.

One Website or Multiple?

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Is it better to have one large website or several targeted websites related to individual products or services you offer? Through our experience with clients across the nation in various industries, we have found that many businesses have multiple websites, but often are not maintained or optimized like they should be. As a general rule, it’s almost always more effective to have one authoritative website rather than multiple, small sites. Why? One website is far more productive for your budget and reaching optimal rankings while also creating brand consistency,

Additional websites are typically created as landing pages with keyword-relevant domain names. For example, a business may have a main domain for their brand name (companyname.com) but have other landing page sites for services they offer with a local keyword in the domain (city+serviceoffered.com). Keyword domain names used to be much more of a ranking factor than they are today. Even if your site has a keyword rich domain, your site won’t rank for those keywords unless it’s probably optimized and trusted by search engines. These landing page sites usually have thin content and a limited number of pages–two things search engines don’t like.

Having multiple sites is generally counterproductive for your SEO budget because instead of all of the effort going to helping your main site rank well, it’s divided amongst a variety of small sites that don’t have a lot of potential for ranking well in the first place.

Additionally, having multiple sites doesn’t help to improve your brand consistency, which is an important part of your overall marketing strategy. Multiple sites promote a disjointed brand image and can also detract from your brand credibility, especially if small sites lack design integrity and aren’t maintained.

In short, you will most likely get better results with one great website rather than multiple marginal sites, even if they do have keyword-relevant domains. In the long run, it will save you a lot of time, money, and effort while trying to help your business get the most visibility in search engines. If you have multiple websites but aren’t sure what steps to take next, contact us today to find out what our SEO team can do for you.