We understand all of the moving parts, and can maximize your web presence to get you ranked higher, with a real-world approach and no overblown sales pitches.
Below are the most important elements, and how we can put them to work for you.
Linkbuilding
The number of links that point to your site from relevant, authoritative sources, including those from trusted resources such as industry directories and social media platforms all influence how well your site will rank in search engines.
This is even more true if you also have an authoritative presence on the Web.
Linkbuilding (also referred to as ‘backlinks’) as a facet of Internet marketing and search engine optimization that has evolved over the past few years. While it’s still very relevant today and likely will be for the foreseeable future, linkbuilding is an activity that needs to be approached with a certain level of caution.
Several years ago, Google publicly acknowledged that ‘inbound links’ were a “significant ranking signal in Google’s search algorithm”. (source). In a nutshell, inbound links were viewed by Google as ‘votes of confidence’, and the more links a site had pointing to it, the better it tended to rank in search engine results pages (SERPs) for desired keywords.
Predictably, when this became public knowledge, people developed ways to game the system. Thousands of services popped up, known as link farms. Which is just what they were – directories that charged a fee to publish links – therefore increasing the number of links pointing to your site. This became a problem for Google, since the number of inbound links a particular site had accumulated in and of itself was becoming less reliable as a ranking signal.
Eventually, Google began penalizing sites that had been so egregiously gaming the system, as well as those providing the service. MoxieMen can proudly claim that we have NEVER had a client receive a penalty from Google because of unscrupulous linkbuilding efforts – although we have had the unfortunate experience of cleaning up the messes left behind by other service providers.
Linkbuilding is no longer a numbers game.
Linkbuilding is still relevant today as a discipline of Internet marketing. However, the landscape has shifted dramatically. Some examples of modern linkbuilding are:
Infographics
Case Studies
Relevant Industry Publications
Viral Videos
Google My Business
Industry Directory Listings
Linkbuilding has become more of an effort in earning links. This can be done by cultivating an authoritative presence, as well as by establishing relationships with influential industry publications, blogs, etc. Every situation and business is unique, so it’s important to formulate a strategy to improve your link profile before jumping in with both feet.
Directory Submission
Sites whose geographical information matches the information found on the various directories are being rewarded with favorable search placement.
In a nutshell, the information on your site has to match the directories as exactly as possible in as many directories as possible.
While some directories are more important than others, such as those in your industry, there are dozens of directories that are potentially relevant. Inaccurate or missing information in any listing is bad for SEO.
How do directory listings get messed up in the first place?
If your business is new, it is highly advisable that you take the time and effort to ensure that you submit to as many directories as possible, especially those that are related to your business. If you are able to submit fresh listings that do not yet exist, you can control what the listings say and ensure that they include accurate information and are uniform in appearance. This is the ideal situation.
However, if your listings are already active on the various directories across the Web, there’s a significant chance discrepancies exist, such as:
Misspelled words
Variations in the business name
Variations in address listings
Variations in phone numbers
Varying links to URLs
Wrong phone numbers and addresses
This can occur because listings were likely submitted by different individuals at different times, resulting in a lack of continuity. Or perhaps your business moved, or changed phone numbers, or has multiple phone numbers depending on the department.
Perhaps at some time in the past you subscribed to the services of a Web marketing company who set up landing pages that they own, on domains that they own, with phone numbers that they own – and adjusted the directory listings to point to all of this information. This is a problem because now that you’ve cancelled your subscription to their services, all of these directory listings point to misinformation.
In short, you have a mess on your hands.
MoxieMen analyzes your directory listings using a variety of tools as part of our linkbuilding services. Then, we formulate a plan to clean up your directory listings to ensure that the information is accurate and the links are correct.
Directory Clean-Up
Did your business change locations? Change phone numbers? If so, the listings on the various directories could be inaccurate, which could potentially cost you customers, as well as have an adverse effect on SEO.
There are Web marketing companies who, as part of the contract set up landing pages that they own, on domains that they own, with phone numbers that they own – and adjust all the directory listings in their service arena to point to all of this information instead of the information on your actual site.
This is a problem because now that you’ve cancelled your subscription to their services, all of these directory listings now point to a domain that you don’t own – a domain that no longer has a website (or worse yet – hosts a website for a different business now), displays a phone number that is either disconnected or forwards to another business, etc.
Fortunately, there is a solution. The team at MoxieMen Incorporated can help you clean this up. We use a series of tools to identify directories on the Web with problematic listings, them formulate a strategy to get the information corrected. Some directory listings can be manually resubmitted, others require special tools. Once we’ve figured out where the problem areas are, we can then execute a plan to get them adjusted to display the correct information once again.
SEO Content Creation
It is a general consensus among SEO professionals that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future.
Google and other search engines are designed to deliver the most relevant content based on the keywords being queried. Their motivation is to satisfy the end user – the searcher. Because of this, search engines reward “authority sites” because they are most likely to accomplish this goal.
How does a business cultivate an authority site?
With high-quality, original, relevant content.
While this sounds simple enough, it isn’t. As a result, there are many businesses doing a poor job of this. This is where MoxieMen comes in.
How does SEO content creation work?
When you contract MoxieMen for SEO content, we’re not just going to whip up a bunch of fluff pieces of content and publish them on your site. We work hard to create quality content, including articles, webpages, blog posts and whitepapers that will resonate with your target audience and bolster the authority of your Web presence.
MoxieMen will:
Perform keyword research to determine search volume for various words and phrases that are relevant to your business and important to your target market.
Coordinate with you to learn more about what your audience wants to know.
Research existing resources on the Web for information related to content topics.
Create content to be published on-site.
Create content for potential link-building opportunities.
Create and distribute infographics
Cultivate and nurture relationships with industry publications and authority sites for future content distribution
Supply monthly, quarterly and annual reports detailing activities, results, etc.
Blog Content Creation
It increases engagement with your audience, and increase your site’s visibility in search engines which will, in time, lead to an increase in traffic.
The consistent creation and publication of unique, valuable content that demonstrates your ability to understand and solve the problems your potential clients. It can be a sure path to increasing conversions.
What is a blog?
This might seem like a silly question, but ask 10 different people to define a blog and you’re likely to get 10 different answers.
A blog is a collection of content created with the purpose of engaging an audience.
Therefore, ‘blogging’ is the art of creating content for consumption. It’s not content for content’s sake. That won’t get you anywhere. Not only will it bore your audience, but it won’t do your site any favors with respect to search engine placement, either.
The content can be in any number of formats. The most common formats are written, video and podcasts.
A blog puts a voice to your business and institutes a human element to your company that otherwise may not have been there.
Instead of the perception many companies fall into – a nameless, faceless, soulless entity whose sole existence is for taking in revenue – you can engage your potential clients and partners by offering them valuable information in a friendly, easy to consume manner that will build trust and loyalty. A feat that was exponentially more difficult just 10 years ago.
Webmaster Services
Examples of these types of activities can include:
Creating new pages and blog posts for SEO purposes
Updating to the latest version
Keeping plugins updated to their latest versions
Updating content on-site
Etc.
It’s important to keep up on these things for a variety of reasons.
Keeping the your platform and plugins updated to their most current versions is critical because as Web technologies improve and progress, older programs and code needs to be updated for security, compatibility and functionality reasons.
Content needs to be added and improved over time for the benefits of your visitors. Content needs to be updated to ensure that your site contains accurate information, and the consistent addition of content is paramount to establishing authority for search engine optimization.
While it’s possible a business to handle these types of things internally, often that isn’t ideal.
Finding time to craft new content, update existing content and remembering to handle the day-to-day responsibilities of properly maintaining a website can be challenging. For this reason, we offer webmaster services to take these things off your plate.
The webmaster services we have to offer vary by project, and are determined based on the needs of the client. This can include writing blog posts for your site, creating pages, rewriting existing content for freshness and SEO purposes, maintaining your site, etc.
Keyword Research
In fact, it’s extremely difficult to execute an effective Internet marketing campaign without it.
The process begins with deep analysis of industry keyword and phrase searches related to your website. While the initial list of keyword phrases searched on this topic are fairly obvious, the research process will include analysis of keywords that are standard in the industry, which uncovers the other ways that people are searching for information relevant to your business.
The purpose of this research is multi-faceted. The main benefit is the knowledge gained as to how the target audience is searching on Google. Once we understand how your prospective customers use the Web, we will be able to create a strategy to increase awareness and leads by optimizing the site to rank in search engines for the appropriate keywords.
Another outcome is finding hidden opportunities that there are less widely used. They are valuable because they are usually less competitive and are often easier to rank for organically. This is especially more likely to be the case for geographically specific keywords.
Yet another asset is the fact that once research is completed, we gain a clearer understanding of the problems to which people search for solutions. Understanding this allows us to create and optimize content to better serve the needs of this audience.
Not only will this give the your website a better chance to rank in search engine results for the targeted keywords, it also allows us to provide a better user experience to the site’s visitors, which increases the likelihood of a conversion.
The clinical definition of search engine optimization (SEO) is the act of modifying the elements of a site’s presence on the Web in order to achieve favorable search engine placement for keyword phrases relevant to the content of the site. While this is fundamentally true, there’s more to it than that.
To understand SEO, you need to have a grasp of how search engines like Google and Bing work – and more importantly what their motivations are. Search engines are designed to serve a specific purpose: to deliver the most relevant links to content with respect to the keyword(s) being queried – and more importantly the perceived intent of the person searching. For example, if you’re an attorney specializing in a particular area of law, you want to be able to demonstrate an ability to solve the problems to which your prospective visitors are seeking solutions.
When you think of directories, you think of sites like Yellowpages.com and Yelp.com, right? Well think of search engines like Google as a giant directory, but instead of simple business listings they try to index as many individual web pages as possible. Google is, at it’s core a keyword-searchable directory.
Google and other search engines have what are called ‘crawlers’, sometimes also referred to as ‘spiders’ or ‘bots’.
Crawlers are tiny little programs that go webpages and review their content. They look at attributes such as page load speed, on-page keywords, the titles of the pages, image file names, etc. They also look at what pages are linked to other pages and the corresponding relevancy.
These crawlers then send the information back to Google and an algorithm is applied – in essence a formula for determining the most relevant content to display for a given keyword phrase. Google has publicly stated that they have over 200 ‘ranking signals’ that they use to determine relevancy.
Search engines want to deliver the most relevant content to the keyword phrases being queried. Because of this, they reward sites considered an authority in their respective niches.
Search Engine Optimization is the practice of cultivating and maintaining an authoritative presence on the Web.
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A website establishes authority in the eyes of search engines by demonstrating an ability to understand and solve the problems of potential visitors. Accomplishing this takes time, and requires the site to contain valuable content that is relevant to the needs of the potential visitor.
In truth, every industry is different and the path to building an authoritative presence on the Web will require a different strategy depending on a variety of factors.
For this reason, analysis and strategy development always recommend at the beginning of every SEO campaign to determine the best opportunities.
Learn how blogging earned over 58k visitors and millions in potential revenue for an auto repair shop.
A local dentist projects an additional $1 million in sales from a new website, pay-per-click and SEO.
How can we help you get more from your website?
Web Presence Analysis