This article is written for small business owners who either have a physical location or service-based business. The goal is to create a mindset and understanding of how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) works, what they can do to support their SEO efforts, and what they should hire an SEO expert for.

I’ve found that SEO has been misunderstood.

The fact that SEO is such a difficult industry to understand, and the fact that it’s always evolving with Google’s latest changes, makes it a volatile and risky area for business owners to know who to trust and what to do.

This article is one angle on explaining SEO and should be considered as one option and outlook on what SEO is and means to people. Because SEO changes so often, we’ve compartmentalized SEO into 4 categories in order to understand the fundamentals and how to get the most out of it.

Keep in mind, in this article, we are only talking about organic (non-paid) search engine optimization, although I do suggest for companies to do Google Ads and/or have a balance of both Google Ads and organic SEO to create the best lead generation system they possibly can.

When done correctly, SEO can be an essential part of a companies marketing.

When you excel in the following 4 categories, you will be able to solidify the foundation for your SEO.

There are so many different ways to learn about SEO. This method is what we’ve come up with for business owners to better understand and navigate this unique and evolving industry.

We have categorized SEO into 4 main areas. Each category encompasses various tasks and strategies. As SEO changes and evolves, the new updates can fit into these categories, and you or an SEO expert can measure how successful you are within each category. This in turn can help you understand what you need to focus on or what you can help with to improve your SEO moving forward and with consistency in your marketing.

By using this system, your company can stay consistent with your marketing efforts and hold yourself accountable to keep up with these 4 categories.

#1. Website Content & Keywords

Strategize content on all the pages in your (mostly) static website, keywords used, and amount of keywords vs. content.

Relevant, Unique, Engaging Website Content

If you want to rank your website in Google, the number one thing you can do is have a lot of content on your website. What I mean by that is every page on your website should have 500+ words. Google is a search engine that requires text-based content on your website for it to scan through and figure out what your website is about. The content on your website should be unique (not copied from somewhere else on the Internet). While you're at it, you should make sure the content speaks to your audience and is engaging. Talk about benefits of doing business with you, why should someone care and/or want to do business with you over your competitors, what your process looks like, and what makes you unique as a company.

Keywords That Describe You and Keywords That Describe Your Service

Once your content is written, do another once over and make sure your primary or secondary keywords are incorporated throughout your website. Are there keywords that describe you? For instance, if you are a massage therapist, do you have "RMT" or "registered massage therapist" keywords written on your website? Do you have keywords that describe the service you provide such as "massage therapy" or "deep tissue massage," etc.?

Location Targeted Keywords

The next part we'd suggest you consider is location (city, province/state, or country). Next to your keywords or within your website copy somewhere, you should also focus on where you physically are or where you'd like to do business. For instance, "massage therapy vancouver" or "RMT vancouver."

#2. Code & Guidelines

Take into account Google’s requirements for websites to be indexed in their search engine: how to spec your website and code are, how efficient your website is loaded for users, and benchmarking guidelines and/or comparisons to other websites across the Internet.

Website Code & Website Hosting

There are many different ways to build a website, and there are many different ways to display or host a website. This is an area that you definitely want to hire an expert for to make sure your website is set up correctly and to give you the best chance for success. You may have an important piece of code that's throwing off your whole marketing campaign. For instance, your website hosting might be so slow that your website visitors aren't even loading the website before they've decided to leave, or your website contact form might not be working due to poor email delivery settings from your web hosting company.

This is also an area where a lot of business owners use software or consider reports from people who are trying to sell them on marketing services. How do you know which report or software is actually telling you what's important, and how much of an impact does each of these warnings or errors have? SEO software and reporting are actually quite complex and would take years to learn to be able to decipher what matters the most. The suggestion here is definitely to hire a professional to help you when it comes to website code and hosting.

Google's Suggested Webmaster Guidelines

Over the years, Google has done an excellent job of educating webmasters on the rules and regulations they put forward on how to best optimize your website to rank well in its search engine. In short, Google wants to give the best search results as possible to their end users. Webmasters want to deliver the best results for their customers. This in turn should mean that Webmasters should do their best to abide by the guidelines that Google recommends. If Webmasters don't abide by the rules, they may see their clients' websites removed from Google completely as a penalty. The point here is not to try and cheat the system. It's not worth being removed from Google's search results.  

Knowing these guidelines takes time and years of experience. As such, this is another area you'll need to hire an SEO expert for. Here's a link to Google's Webmaster Guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en

This area also evolves and is essentially a never-ending area. Every time you add something new to your website, it opens up a list of tasks that you could do to optimize your website further. Knowing which tasks are most important and which tasks are much less of a priority is the real key here.

#3. Ongoing Content Marketing

Update your website with fresh, relevant content (usually blog posts or landing pages).

This is an area that I feel all business owners need to start considering much more within their marketing campaigns. It's an area that they can have input on in which they can fine tune their brand messaging and attract more ideal customers by producing relevant and engaging content. Once you have completed #1 and #2 to a level where you are happy with, moving on to #3 and #4 in this program will really ramp up your results and solidify your marketing.

Think of this part of your SEO as running your outbound messaging to generate your inbound inquiries. Much of the success for marketing is based on the message you want to convey and how deeply defined it is. Marketing experts will tell you this is where you need to define your voice. What I mean by this is: why are you in business in the first place? What's your story? Bringing this into your marketing blog posts and landing pages will give you better long-term success. 

Ultimately, you can hire people for this area, although if you don't supply them with your tone and background messaging, they may not be able to communicate or write the way you want them to.

This is often why the business owner is the one who's best to write the articles and has trouble passing on this task to someone else. The mindset in this step is very important. Find a way to fit writing content into your schedule, or hire a professional who can match your tone and messaging that can get you results. Another key tip is to not just write the articles, blog posts, or landing pages, and then just leave them there. You need to promote the content once written, and get it in front of people. You've already spent the time or money on writing the content. Now, get people to read it!

#4. Exposure Popularity, Reputation & Relevancy

Consider the popularity of your website (in Google's mind) across the rest of the Internet (including Social Media) and how many links point back to your website (Link Building).

People don't talk about this area as much as they should. The involvement and impact of the rest of the Internet on YOUR website is actually quite important.

Exposure Popularity

When we talk about exposure, we are referring to your Internet marketing reach. How many people are you in front of with your message? Social media is often referred to as the way to achieve a high amount of exposure in an efficient amount of time. It's outbound marketing of your messaging. Google considers social media popularity of websites when ranking them within their search engine. Being popular on social media by sharing your website link and gaining more likes, shares, etc. will help your exposure popularity. 

Reputation & Relevancy

Are you listed on other websites in locations that someone would click on to visit your website? How relevant and related is that website to yours? If you have other high authority websites linking back to your website, this will help with your relevancy. If those websites are talking about you and linking to you, what are they saying about you? How is this reputation affecting your website or marketing in general?

This part of SEO is heavily reliant on how well you are doing with Ongoing Content Marketing (#3). 

Conclusion

This article is an overview and is meant to educate small business owners on which areas they can help with and in which areas they should hire an SEO expert.

Another important thing to consider regarding SEO is that Google Ads is an option in which you pay for top-page ranking within Google's search results. Having a balanced attack on marketing of Google Ads monthly ad spend and SEO will give you the best results. ROI Web Marketing offers marketing packages that include Google Ads & SEO services that are focused on lead generation to grow your business.

Contact us today to get started!

When you think of landing pages, people often think of classic squeeze pages.

These are pages that don't have links to other parts of your website and force the user to fill out a form for more information or to get to the next step.

The way we build a landing page is a little different from the way you may have heard of in the past.

I'll explain why we do this differently.

Customers can now easily find Car Boy Auto Repair through its website with contact information featured prominently at the top.

This mobile-friendly website loads quickly for a positive user experience on all platforms.

Visit the Website

On January 23rd, 2019, our very own Kevin Hicks will be presenting at BNI Urban Professionals (networking event).

You will learn:

• What are Google Ads
• How you can generate ongoing leads to your website
• How to measure your success on Google Ads
• What an average Google Advertising package looks like

This is a networking event held at Chambar Restaurant in downtown Vancouver, BC. 

Registration is required. Contact us for more details if you'd like to attend.

Date: January 23rd, 2019

Location:
Chambar Restaurant
568 Beatty Street
Crosstown, Vancouver BC
Canada V6B 2L3

Time: 6:45 am - 9 am
Cost: $40/person
Includes: Choice of 3 breakfast options, coffee or tea.

Bring business cards and a postitive attitude. You'll meet 30+ business owners from all different types of industries.

Marketing methods for websites are constantly evolving.

Not only are digital marketing tactics, search engines, and technologies changing, but there is also a variety of online marketing activities that are changing.

When it comes to digital marketing, it is important to be capital-efficient to ensure the greatest return on investment (ROI) for your business. For online marketing to be effective, it cannot remain static. It is a dynamic process that requires ongoing efforts, maintenance, and analysis. ROI Web Marketing is here to help.

Who is ROI Web Marketing?

Based in Vancouver, BC, we at ROI Web Marketing strive to help small businesses achieve the greatest ROI on their Internet marketing. We work with entrepreneurs and small businesses to build their websites, grow their online presence, generate leads, and convert their online traffic into customers. Marketing costs can grow exponentially, and that is why for small businesses, it is extremely important to spend marketing dollars on the right mix of marketing tactics that will create the most value for your specific business needs. At ROI Web Marketing, our process and methods reflect this mindset.

Understanding Your Business

It all starts with immersing ourselves in your business and understanding what your specific goals are. One of the primary focuses of online marketing for small businesses is generating new leads and converting them into customers. This might sound like a simple concept, but depending on your business and how you do business, the strategies and tactics involved will vary greatly. The more we know about your business, the better we can market for you. The more details we obtain, the better. By taking the time to go through a thorough discovery interview with our clients, we are able to achieve better results for them. During this process, we can provide you with ideas on what your website content should be and what we require from you in order to build or refine your website seamlessly.

Experience and Expertise

We’ve been providing online marketing services in Vancouver for over 10 years for clients in the Vancouver area and out-of-province. Depending on what features and functions you require on your website, our expertise with a diverse range of web tools and systems will create the most optimal web experience for your business and customers. Being proficient with various web systems and tools means that we also emphasize the technical side of digital marketing, which sometimes gets neglected. Website performance affects online marketing. One of the main things we ensure for our clients is the speed of their website, which is a huge factor for search engine optimization (SEO). With our expertise in web hosting and various methods to increase the loading speed of your site, you’re in good hands.

Design & Functionality Meets Marketing

The needs of the business and your customers should drive the design. At ROI Web Marketing, we offer a blend of digital marketing, web design, and web development. We build and refine websites with marketing and SEO in mind. Many of our clients use their sites as a primary tool for generating business; if it can’t do that, then it loses its value. We ensure that we create sites that do just that. What this means is that depending on your needs, your website could be as complex (fully customized) or simple (template-based) as it needs to be. Since we specialize in helping small businesses generate leads and converting them into customers, we ensure that your site is ideal for online advertising, SEO, and conversion optimization. We believe that our approach to Internet marketing helps small businesses scale much more efficiently.

Taking the Next Step

ROI Web Marketing is passionate about making online marketing accessible and stress-free for clients. We are here to help our clients achieve the greatest ROI on their marketing efforts. It isn’t just about throwing dollars at marketing; it is about spending “smart money.” If you require building a new website, refining an existing website, online advertising, SEO, or digital marketing strategy, we can help. We are proud to work with a diverse range of businesses throughout the Vancouver, BC area as well as businesses outside the province, and we look forward to helping more businesses maximize their ROI on Internet marketing.

Connect with us to find out how we can help you grow your business.

High-quality content marketing is crucial for any business that’s looking to get ahead of its biggest competitors. Google has always stated that updating your website with relevant, quality content is the most important thing you can do to increase your search engine optimization (SEO).

Hiring SEO companies may be enough for some companies to grow their business, but if you want to drive even more sales and increase your rankings further, you'll want to either A) write content for yourself or B) hire a content marketing company to write content for you and promote it. Writing the article is the first step. The next step is promoting the content and getting people to see it.

To help businesses like your own get ahead, we’ve created brand new content marketing packages that organize your marketing and can be the missing piece to strengthen your marketing and build a strong foundation for your SEO.

This content marketing strategy is designed for busy professionals, requiring minimal input on their behalf for the content marketing to take place. Our new content marketing packages operate on a quarterly basis, so you can anticipate the next three months of articles that will be scheduled and promoted for you each month. In other words, it’s a full-throttle action plan that can kick your web marketing into high gear.

These packages are a natural enhancement for our current customers for which we already manage their website marketing and Google Ads. The content marketing packages include updating your website with the article, and we can optionally include this new content in your email newsletter and create a preview for you to approve before sending it out.

Do you need an expert content marketing agency to maximize your business’s ROI? We’ve got you covered. To show you how it works, we’ve listed what our new content marketing packages include.

1. A Client-First Discovery Meeting

Our specialized packages integrate powerful content marketing services to digitize your goals – and it all starts with our discovery meeting. This discovery meeting pays special attention to your unique needs. Our content marketing agency configures your goals with our content writers to hit all your targets. At ROI Web Marketing, we take time to ensure our content marketing services align with your priorities.

2. Expert In-Depth Research

Once we’ve completed your discovery meeting, our content marketing agency will research top industry topics that will help set you apart from your competitors. We go the extra mile to analyze your industry and understand the latest trends and any cutting-edge material. This means your content will be original, giving you a leg up in what can be a crowded online pool.

3. A Menu of Original Concepts for Your Approval

Once our experts meticulously research your subject matter, we’ll present you with an impressive menu of article concepts. We love giving clients autonomy on their decisions, so we present you with six compelling concepts. Out of these, you get to choose the three you love the most. 

4. Writing Relevant, Quality Articles

Our content marketing strategy includes high-end articles that attract your target audience and keep them engaged. As part of our content marketing services, these packages design content based upon keyword research and questions your ideal customers may ask. Our articles are focused on the benefits of using your services or products. Once these are completed, they are sent your way for your approval.

5. Facebook Post & Boosting

The article serves as primary content for your social media marketing. We don't manage your account for you, but we can create a single post on Facebook and optionally boost it with your ad budget for more people to see the new post. There's a method for this posting, and it will actually have an impact on your SEO when you're more social and creating more engagement.

Learn more about our Content Marketing Packages here.

Feel free to contact us about any questions you may have regarding our new content marketing packages via 604-239-0101 or emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

You spend a lot of time networking over the years and have built up your LinkedIn contacts. Now what to do? How can I update them all with what’s going on with my company?

Think of your network of contacts on LinkedIn as part of your Internet marketing reach. The more people you are connected with the more people will see your posts.

When you write an article through LinkedIn Pulse, everyone you are connected to (who has notifications turned on) will be notified that you posted an article. This gives you a greater chance of having people see it.

You’ll want to also then share the article as a post on LinkedIn and maybe even share it through your other social media channels to give the post more exposure. Not only is this post giving you exposure, it’s giving you credibility too.

One strategy would be to write your full article on your website or blog and post only half of your article on LinkedIn. Then have a call to action for the viewer to visit your website to read the rest.

How to Post on LinkedIn Pulse?

Select write an article from the homepage of LinkedIn in the top.

• Choose an article title (Headline) and upload a photo.
  
  • For best results, cover images should be 744 x 400 pixels.
• Write your article.
• Upload images as necessary.
• Feel free to post your whole article or enough of an article to gain interest and have them continue on to your website to read the rest.
• End your post with a call to action and link back to your website for more information.

Conclusion

Write on brand as part of your content marketing strategy. Be relevant and meaningful. If you need ideas on what to write about you can visit my post on Content Marketing Strategy which will help you organize your thoughts and assist you in scheduling your articles.

If you’d like to learn more about strategies on Internet marketing visit our website and learn our 6-Month ROI Internet Marketing Plan.

Google has a very complex algorithm (or rules) that operates its search results. Their guidelines have been clear from the beginning of launching their search engine.

Don't try and inappropriately gain rankings with spammy techniques and...

Content is king! 

What's next is how popular your content is.

• What do other people think of you after reading your content?
• Are they sharing it or liking it?
• Do they engage with it?

Each month, ROI Web Marketing does an internal strategy meeting for each of our clients on what should be done for them to enhance their SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Google AdWords (Pay-Per-Click Advertising), website maintenance, and overall Internet marketing exposure.

Our clients also ask us what they should be doing next or what they should do to assist us with their marketing.

This has spawned this article on what I feel the future of SEO looks like and what you should be doing now to keep up with how Internet search is evolving.

You can either be ahead of the game or be left in the dust.

Ok, that sounds a little harsh. But I promise this article is a beauty! :)

Google Is All About the User

Google is an excellent company that puts the user experience first and has stuck to this since the begining. When people find relevant information and are happy with what they've found, Google is happy that they are giving people what they want. With all the data and tracking that is available to Google, they are doing a great job of continuing to deliver quality search results for their users.

SEO is definitely an area where you need to take everything into consideration in order to be successful. There are no quick fixes or accelerated ways to the top of Google. It's a process, and you need systems in place and consistency in order to get results from it.

Current SEO Landscape

The current landscape of what's needed for SEO can be summarized into 4 categories:

1. Keywords & Content
2. Code & Guidelines
3. Off-Page Factors
4. Social & Engagement

1. Keywords & Content

A keyword is a search term input into Google to find relevant websites. Every keyword will give you different results. Every location you are in will give you different results. From a basic standpoint, if you want to be found for specific keywords, you should have those keywords in your website, in your code (appropriately), linked internally on your website, linked from other websites, and so on. But now I'm getting too technical. Quite simply, keywords are important. :)

Content is King!

Content is really what gets indexed in Google and sorted based on suggested keywords you've given Google. Google is so smart that no matter what you give them, they index your content in their own way anyways. Nevertheless, as an SEO Expert, our job is to influence them in appropriate ways according to their guidelines. You don't want to piss Google off, do anything that would get you removed from their listings, or do anything that would hurt your rankings.

More is Better

People ask me how long their pages or posts should be. More is better. 400-600 words for a page or blog post is great, although most of my posts are much longer as you can tell. It depends on how much of a topic you'd like to educate people on and how much resources or time you have to write it.

Writing with purpose to make an impact on your customers will allow you to write much better than writing for the sake of posting for SEO.

Write the content as you would like to say it. Don't worry about keywords until after you've written what you want to say. Then, feel free to go back in and see if there are some more keywords to add into your post (or for technical people, to input into the meta tags and alt tags for the post).

If you aren't able to write content for your website or don't have the resources to do so, having your marketing company create landing pages may help fill this void in some way, although ideally, the content is sharable socially in order to get the maximum effects for SEO.

2. Code & Guidelines

In order to comply with Google's guidelines, you basically need to have a well-coded website, look good on all devices (be mobile-friendly or responsive), and not do anything spammy or black hat that would get you removed from Google search.

I'm not going to go into each of these tasks, but essentially, these are changes to your website structure, code, navigation, security, and speed.

Here are a few common tasks that you may have heard of, and this is not the full list:

• Meta Tags
• Alt Tags
• Security & SSL certificate
• Structure of your theme and code
• Website hosting & website speed

3. Off-Page Factors

Google scans the Internet to see what other websites think about yours. They do this by measuring how many links point to yours from relevant websites such as news websites, directories, or even affliiate companies, or referral websites. There is a standard list of the most common directories your company should be listed on - this is no quick fix and often one of the most challenging areas for SEO. This often takes the most time and effort to gain backlinks to your website. 

Here are a few examples of common off-page factors:

• Link building for common business directories
• Registering and verifiying your company in Google My Business & Bing Places
• Having links back from your associations or community groups
• Google Remarketing & Facebook Retargeting advertisements
• Online reputation management

4. Social & Engagement

Internet marketing reach has always been important. How many people do you have access to? How many emails are in your database? How many followers? While reach is important, what's becoming more and more important is engagement. Google is giving far more exposure to how social you are - this is directly related to your current SEO and will be more and more related into the future. If you want to be successful with SEO and Internet marketing, you definitely want to consider increasing your Internet marketing reach, being more social, and creating more engagement.

You need quality content to be socially accepted and have your content shared, so you can see the cycle happening here. To keep up with where SEO is going, you need to:

1) write quality content,

2) promote the content through your growing network and create engagement,

3) abide by the guidelines set forth by search engines and coding structures, and

4) build quality, relevant links throughout the Internet.

Lastly, in order to be able to run any successful marketing campaign, you need to set up some form of measuring your success.

5) Google Analytics setup with proper tracking for goals to gauge how well your marketing is performing is extremely important.

Systems & Procedures for Your SEO

Ok, now that you realize the importance of good quality content and how that's going to shape your future, this is what I'd suggest you do moving forward to get the most out of your SEO.

#1: Content Marketing Strategy

Consistently releasing new content for your website either via a blog or news-type articles is your top priority. Once you've done that, you can move on to other forms of marketing. Having content on your website and then promoting this content via social and email newsletters will give your company the most efficient Internet marketing you can get.

You can learn more about a Content Marketing Strategy here: https://www.roiwebmarketing.com/6-month-roi/content-marketing-strategy

#2: Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Google AdWords is the top reason companies hire us. We set up and maintain Google Adwords Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising to get you as many leads as possible for the best rate. 

If you aren't able to produce content to support your SEO efforts, it is imperative to continue optimizing and enhancing your PPC campaigns. If you were to look at the traffic to your website, the most relevant and converting traffic should be your paid advertising.

Are you looking for more customers? Contact ROI Web Marketing to get started with an Internet marketing package today. 

Okanagan wine tours are exciting. Booking them needs to be easy. With this custom web design for Top Cat Tours, we've helped them showcase their awesome tours and organized their booking system to make it easier for customers to checkout and book their tours easily.

Visit the Website