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The Booster Seat Season 2 Finale Hey there Boosters! I'm Andrew Eagar. Welcome to another edition of The Booster Seat. Today, I want to talk about the conference I attended a week ago called SMX Advanced. Well, let's get started! About SMX Advanced SMX Advanced is one of the best SEO conferences out there. It is located in Seattle and it is for SEO agencies such as myself and in-house SEOs to gather together and learn some of the best SEO tactics in the industry today. It is one of those conferences where they had limited seating, it is somewhat expensive, so really for some of our smaller businesses they don't have the opportunity to go to conferences like that. That's what my hope is today! With this Booster Seat episode, I want to take what I've learned from the conference and provide it to you. A World Without Matt Cutts? One of the things I've learned was with Matt Cutts. Those of you that haven't been in the industry in a while, Matt Cutts was head of the web spam team. He has been on leave for over a year now. At the time, we didn't know if he was going to come back or what his plans were. At the SMX conference we learned that his role had been taken by somebody else. So that has been fulfilled! If he does come back to Google it is not going to be on the web spam team. That kind of leaves up to question, who do we go to. Who do we go to now to answer our questions about Google updates or general information about Best SEO Practices. Google Transparency Our contact with Google now that Matt Cutts has left is kind of a shared role. It is multiple Googlers role. With that shared role comes something pretty exciting which Google has announced and that is with their transparency. This is kind of exciting. This is kind of a new initiative to Google - to be more transparent. Before all this, Google had announced, "No we are not going to be transparent; we are not going to show you everything that has happened." But, at SMX they said they want to be more transparent. Now we have seen that in a couple examples. We have seen that with them announcing the Panda update that they've said is going to launch in a couple weeks. So watch out for that! They did not give us a specific date, but they did announce that it is in the works and should be here. Mobilegeddon or Just Another Mobile Update? Another thought about transparency is when they came out with the mobile update or

Tweet This Content Length & Strategy | The Booster Seat Season 2 Episode 11 Hey there boosters, my name is Andrew Eagar and welcome to another edition of the Booster Seat. Today I would like to answer a common question we get in the SEO industry. And that is, how many words should I write for a page on my website? For many of you that have been in the SEO industry for a few years, like I have, you know that the answer to this question has changed several times. Just in the last seven years we have seen major changes to the amount of content SEO’s recommend for pages. From 2008 to 2010, I remember recommending 100 words of content for our customers. That’s right, they were simpler time back then. At the time and from our experience, 100 words was plenty. In 2013, this changed to a 200 word minimum, but you really need 250-plus. We added the “plus” assuming that would catch most scenarios. Starting in 2014, however, our strategy kind of changed. Although we still recommend a minimum of 200 words, the answer of, “it depends” kind of took over. We determined that different businesses, verticals, locations and products should really determine the amount of content recommend to a business. So, in short, is it 100, 200, 350, 500, 700? The answer is: none of them. Stop worrying about the numbers and start worrying about your users. If you are concerned about users and visitors to your website, then everything else will take care of itself.   So, how do you write content that helps users? Your content must be able to answer the following questions: What features or benefits help convince a prospective user to choose your company over others? Is you affordable price, your customer service, your timely response? Write those things that help you stick out from the crowd. Often times, you can figure out what it is that makes you so great, directly from your customers. Ask them this same question and they should be able to give you an answer. I would also add that this question helps if you are a local business targeting locations outside your physical location. Why would a potential user choose your company over the potentially dozens that they pass while going to your location? What is your company’s typical customer base? Is it that users are a certain age, within a certain geographical area? Are your typical customers all home owners? This question help you determine who the content is directed toward. If

Update: Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) has been rebranded to Google Search Console. Everything is exactly the same as it was before. Just a new name. The name was changed to be more inclusive since webmasters are just one of the many groups of people that use GWT. Join in the conversation on Twitter by using hashtag #TheBoosterSeat for all your questions and comments. Tweet This The Booster Seat Season 2, Episode 10 The Top 5 Reasons to Use Google Webmaster Tools Hey there Boosters, I’m Andrew Eagar and welcome to another edition of the booster seat. Today, I would like to discuss the top 5 reasons to use Google Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster Tools is a great resource for webmasters and SEO’s. Sadly, it is often underutilized or misunderstood. I have created a list of the top 5 reasons you should use Google Webmaster Tools. Reason #1: Site Messages So often it feels like with all the edits and files we create that we are just giving and giving and giving to Google with nothing but silence on the other end. If this were a relationship it would surely fail. Google Webmaster Tools opens that communication. If Google needs to communicate to you as the webmaster they are going to communicate through Google Webmaster Tools, specifically through the messages or manual actions sections. Reason #2: Search Queries This is a very exciting section. Here you can see both Query and traffic information. This data shows you the number of queries your website show up for in the Google Search Engine Results Page. This doesn’t only show you keywords that you got impressions for, it also attempts to show you the keywords you got traffic for. It isn’t perfectly accurate, but the data does give you an idea of trends. This data shows the Query, impressions, clicks, CTR and Average Position. In addition to seeing this data for a given keyword you can take a deeper dive into the keywords to see its performance over time. This section really helps with Keyword Research and can also help to see what keywords might need some help or extra optimization. Reason #3: Links to your website This shows you sites that link to you and your most popular pages that get links. Knowing who links to you is an important tool. SEO’s have discovered that Google doesn’t show all of the links that link to you, but this tool does show a good sample of links. Review the links to your website and if you feel like a site is linking to you that is not re

Join in the conversation on Twitter by sending your comments and questions with hashtag #TheBoosterSeat.Tweet This The Booster Seat Season 2, Episode 9 Hey there, Boosters! I’m Andrew Eagar and welcome to another edition of the Booster Seat. Today I want to discuss the top thing you need to know before you do Onsite Blogging. In just the past couple of years, onsite blogging and general content marketing has taken front stage in the digital marketing space. Onsite blogging is a big piece of content marketing. Unlike traditional marketing tactics, digital marketing tactics can be used by companies both large AND small. Onsite Blogging can be utilized by both small and big brands. To understand the importance and power of onsite blogging one must understand consumer behavior in the digital world. You see, the internet has changed the way we as consumers shop. We no longer want to be talked at, or told what to do. We want to curate, connect and create. Google calls these consumers Gen C. The new generation of internet users does not want to be marketed to. Simply put, we don’t want to be sold to.The most important thing you need to understand about onsite blogging is that it is not the place to sell people on your product. You have product pages for that. Now I am not saying that you can’t talk about your products or services in your blog posts. I’m just saying that your blog isn’t really the place to self-promote or to sell your products. You can use your blog to announce product changes, additions or special promotions. Anything that looks even mildly like an ad, however, or is not relevant to the consumer’s situation, will be completely ignored. So, if you can’t sell consumers your product on your blog, then, what is the purpose of a blog anyway? I mean, shouldn’t every effort you make in marketing be selling to your customers to increase your business? As mentioned before, Gen C doesn’t want to be sold to. The purpose of your blog is to be of value to your customers even when they are not ready or willing to buy from you. Having a blog and posting to it regularly opens the doors for your site to be interesting and relevant to consumers. The mindset that you have to sell to make a sale is what us digital marketers want to dispel. Although an onsite blog can serve m

Join the conversation about quality content and engagement by tweeting your thoughts with #TheBoosterSeat.Tweet This The Booster Seat: Season 2, Episode 8 Hey there Boosters, I am Andrew Eagar and welcome to another edition of the Booster Seat. Today I would like to discuss quality content. Now, there is a lot to be said about quality content, most of which I don’t have time to discuss in this episode. Today, I want to discuss the top 5 ways you as a webmaster can engage potential customers through quality content. Now, let’s not forget last months booster seat episode where we talked about “cracking the C.O.D.E of Panda”. That episode was a general overview of quality content as it pertains to Panda, while as in this video, I am going to take a deeper dive into 5 specific ways you can engage customers while using quality content. So here are the 5 ways. The first two ways are so related I combined them, Title Tag and Meta Description Tags. Now remember, these are slots 1 and 2, but they are so similar that I am putting them together. Each page on your website provides you an opportunity to engage your customers through the Title Tag and Meta Description Tag. When written on your website these two tags can be viewed on the Search Engines. This snippet of your website is often the first thing many searchers will learn about your business. You are wanting users to read this snippet and then click to go to your page. To get the most out of these tags, I would answer these questions. 1- Why would a user want to click on your page? Remember, you are competing with 9-15 other pages on the SERP. So, why would they click on your page? Is it because you have a good deal, that your located close by? Think about what is important for your users. 2- What is the first thing you want your users to know and to see about your business? This could be your personality or your prices. 3- What can you say to compel them in and convince them to click on your website? What action items can you give them? Click here to see our deals or find out more, etc. Now remember, the Title tag and Meta tags were the first two areas. The 3rd area is your websites Main Content Main Content, or the MC of your website is what users read AFTER they have found you. They are hopefully done searchi

Join in the conversation on Twitter by using hashtag #TheBoosterSeat for your comments and questionsTweet This Hey there Boosters and welcome to the Boostability News Network. I am Andrew Eagar and here are your top stories from the month of March. Our top story has to do with Google’s recent mobile algorithm announcement. Here is what you need to know. Google announced that having a “mobile friendly” website will be a factor in mobile ranking results starting April 21. This announcement, as you know, set the SEO world in commotion. The mobile algorithm change is set to run on April 21, but will likely roll out worldwide over the course of that entire week. Let’s break this announcement down into it’s most basic form. Let’s first talk about this “April 21” date. It isn’t very often that Google announces an update BEFORE that update happens. I think Google is trying to give as many webmasters as possible the opportunity to change their websites to be mobile-friendly before the update. I don’t think they are doing this out of the kindness of their hearts however. No, they aren’t. If you think about it, Google’s goal is to display the best results in their Search Engine. What better way to reach that goal than to scare webmasters into making these changes. Now, let’s talk about what “Mobile-Friendly” means. A “Mobile-Friendly” status is assigned to those websites that reach the standards that Google has set forth to be mobile-friendly. For the most part, Google is looking for a mobile site design that can be easily navigated through mobile searches. This algorithm Google is launching works on a page to page basis. This means that you can have some pages that are mobile-friendly and other pages that are not. If you want to know if you site is mobile friendly, simply go to Google and type “mobile-friendly test” and click on the first organic result. On this note, I think it is important to recognize that there aren’t any “degrees” of mobile friendliness. You are either mobile friendly or you are not. Now, why should you, as a website owner, care about mobile searches? Mobile is becoming a big deal in the industry with more and more searches on Google being mobile. Each year more users use their mobile devices to search on Google. M

Join in the conversation on Twitter by using hashtag #TheBoosterSeat for your comments and questionsTweet This The Booster Seat Season 2 Episode 6 Hey there boosters, my name is Andrew Eagar and welcome to another episode of the Booster Seat. Today I’m going to answer some common SEO Questions. Our first question is “How does Google find the information they display in their Results page?" This is a great question. Google uses a series of robots or spiders to crawl the web to gather information about given websites. These spiders are very busy as they crawl every website that is created. When they crawl a website they gather all important information about the website such as content, design, meta tags and other bits of code. When the information is gathered they send the data back to the Search Engine for it to index. As a side note, Google uses the data collected for your website to compare against other websites to determine who ranks or not. Now, don’t worry about whether your website is being crawled by Google or not. This is a scenario that if you build it, they will come. In this case, if you have a website, chances are Google already knows that you exist and is already crawling your website. If you want to see if Google has crawled and subsequently indexed your website simply use the “site colon” search in the search bar, as seen here. If your website shows up in the search results then Google has crawled and indexed your site. If your website does not show up in the search results, don’t panic. Just install or check your Google Webmaster Tools to see if there is anything wrong with your website that is stopping Google from crawling or indexing it. This leads us to our next question. That is, “How often is Google Crawling my Website?” What a great question. First off, Google wants the most up to date information possible. This is after all why we all use Google so much right? To get the most up to date information Google may be crawling your website multiple times a day. It really depends on how often you update your website. For one of my own websites as an example, Google only crawls it once every 3-5 days. This is likely due to the fact that I only update my website but maybe once a year. For a news website like cnn.com Google likely crawls that websi

Join in the conversation on Twitter by tweeting your Booster Seat questions or comments with hashtag #TheBoosterSeat.Tweet This Hey there Boosters and welcome to the Boostability News Network, or BNN!  I'm Andrew Eagar and here are your top stories for the month of February. It is official, Twitter and Google have reached an agreement to allow Google access to Twitter's stream of tweets, or what we in the industry like to call the fire hose.  Now, here's what you need to know.  The announcement was made early in February, but nothing is going to be launched for several months.  So, don't get too excited.  Settle down!  Also, this isn't the first time that Google and Twitter have made such an agreement.  A similar agreement was put into place a few years back, but was later cancelled.  Also, Google already crawls and indexes tweets without this agreement.  So, that begs the question - why does Google want live access to the data stream. Why Would Google Want Access to Twitter? Google is all about fresh data.  Their weakness is that crawling and indexing is too slow.  Having access to live tweets makes their search engine more up to date in with the times. What's in it for Twitter? Twitter is always looking for ways to increase its logged out user base. This gives Twitter more opportunities to reach out to its logged out users who search on Google. I for one am pretty excited to see what Google does with this data. In other news, I attended LocalUp which is an SEO conference specific to local businesses.  The conference was great with many local experts discussing tips and tricks to help local businesses.  The conference was refreshing. For as many conferences as I attend, they don't really dive deep into local SEO whereas the LocalUp conference did. Here are some key takeaways from the LocalUp conference: Try To Be Local When writing content for your location or local services, try to be local. This is different than just writing content that makes you local. To be local, your business needs to take part in the community by writing community-related content or tweeting about community related things. Respond To Reviews Whether that be positive or negative, you should be responding to reviews.  Now, as a side note, when soliciting for reviews do not offer to pay them. Although ki

Join in the conversation on Twitter by using hashtag #TheBoosterSeat for your comments and questionsTweet This Crack the C.O.D.E of Panda Hey there Boosters! I am Andrew Eagar and welcome to another edition of The Booster Seat. This week marks the 4 year anniversary of the very first Panda update put out by Google. We at Boostability take Panda very seriously and we monitor pandas on a regular basis. Check out our feed. Oh, they’re so cute. Well despite their cute nature, Panda is actually a very penalty-related update put out by Google. Today, I would like discuss how you as a website owner can crack the CODE of Panda. First of all, if you need a refresher on panda click here for an infographic that reviews the Panda update throughout the years. Panda was an update that rocked the internet 4 years ago. Panda focused on quality content and would penalize websites with low quality content. Even with Panda being four years old, many webmasters still don’t understand how to overcome common Panda-related problems. Here are my tips to crack the C.O.D.E on Panda: C – Consumable No, this doesn’t mean your content has to be food-related. It means you have to write for your users. For the many years before Panda and sadly the years after, some SEO’s wrote content for Search Engines rather than the end users. Writing content for users should be your focus. Consider what your users want to know, read, and share. Your users should want to “consume” your content. O – Original I cannot tell you how many people I have talked to who copied content from other websites and put it on their own. You know who you are. Duplicate content will affect your keyword rankings. Your website should add value online. Google sees value as original. Never duplicate content. Ever. For more information on duplicate content, click on the below video where I explain in more detail how duplicate content can affect your website. D – Detailed Nothing is more frustrating than going to a website, reading through all the content and not finding what you are looking for. As a website owner, you CANNOT afford to make that mistake. Be as detailed as possible. Organize your content in such a way that it isn’t boring to read ALL the details you are laying out. People read more than you think. Don’

JOIN IN THE CONVERSATION ABOUT EPISODE 2 BY TWEETING YOUR QUESTION AND TAGGING #THEBOOSTERSEAT.Tweet This Hey there Boosters! Welcome to another episode of The Booster Seat. Today I would like to answer one of the most common SEO questions we receive: “How long does SEO take?” Let’s get started. First off, the question of how long SEO takes is a great question. It is important for business owners to understand what to expect when it comes to time frames and ultimately budget. To answer this question I am going to skip past the boring “it depends” answer and cut right to the chase. SEO currently takes anywhere from 6-9 months for you to see significant rise in your rankings. Now, I know, you wanted a more specific answer right? Well, here is how to get your keywords ranked in 4-6 months: Keyword selection Not all keywords are created equally. To get keyword ranking in 4-6 months you will want to select moderately competitive keywords. These are keywords that you are relevant for and bring an appropriate amount of traffic. Side note: for a local business to be found relevant for a keyword, that keyword needs a Geo of the same city you are located in Website optimization If you want success in a reasonable time frame you need to be willing and able to make appropriate content and SEO-related edits to your website. This includes content, title tags, H1 tags, meta descriptions, internal links and more. Link Building Seven years ago, link building was all you had to do to get your keywords to rank. And, many times you would rank in less than 3 months. Well, because of the Penguin update, that dynamic has changed a bit (for the better I might add). Link building is still the #1 needed way to get a keyword ranking. However, much has changed about good link building so make sure you don’t mess this up. In addition, you need to be doing just as much or more link building than your competitors. Time and Trust Google ranks websites that they trust. In many cases, trust comes with time. 4-6 months of consistent efforts is adequate time for Google to trust your website for the keywords you are pushing to promote. These factors are the most useful in getting a higher website ranking in 4-6 months. If you try to change, add to, or takeaway from these efforts you are likely going

Join in the conversation about Episode 2 by tweeting your question and tagging #TheBoosterSeat.Tweet This Hey there, Boosters! Welcome to BNN, your source for SEO news. In these monthly segments, we will be discussing the top SEO news stories. I’m Andrew Eagar, and here are your top stories from January. Google makes yet another push for mobile usability for Internet users. More on this is our mobile correspondent Mobi. Andrew – Sorry, what’s going…[on] Mobi – Hey Andrew its me, Mobi! Andrew – Mobi,! I thought we would see you in person, you know, in the studio? Mobi – Heck no dude! I use my cell phone for that. You know, I live my life by one simple rule… Andrew – Oh yeah, what’s that? Mobi – Don’t do anything yourself that your cell phone can do better! Andrew – All right… I don’t think that’s a great idea…well, never mind. Mobi, what can you tell us about this latest action Google has taken on non-mobile friendly websites? Mobi – Dude, what a great question man, you know, that is why I like you so much, you ask great questions. Andrew – Uh, thanks? Mobi – Dude, you are welcome. All right. In an effort to help Webmaster make their websites more mobile friendly, Google is now sending webmasters a warning message via GWT. Andrew – GWT? Mobi – Google Webmaster Tools Andrew, try to keep up. The message comes in the form of a warning that explains how Google doesn’t find individual or all pages on your website as mobile friendly. This is just another example that Google is not going to let up on the mobile friendliness front. The message also gives webmaster instructions on how to fix these issues. Andrew – So how important is mobile to Google? Mobi – Pretty important. I mean, more and more users are using cell phones to search for things. Let me put it this way: you remember back in November when Google started giving search results a “mobile friendly’”status? Andrew – Yeah, I remember…. Mobi – Exactly. Mobile is becoming a bigger deal to Google. They even built a tool to help users see if their website is mobile friendly or not. Andrew – How does this affect Keyword Ranking? Mobi – For desktop searches and normal SEO efforts, this should not have an effect on Keyword Ranking. If you don’t have a mo

Join In #TheBoosterSeat Conversation Want to know more about HTTPS? Join in the conversation about Episode 1 by tweeting your question and tagging #TheBoosterSeat.Tweet This Hey there, Boosters! I'm Andrew Eagar and welcome to the new season of The Booster Seat! I am so excited to get this new season rolling. We have tons of great and fun information to be sharing in the coming weeks. This week we are going to discuss HTTPS. Just over 6 months ago Google announced that they were going to be making HTTPS a ranking signal. Today we’re taking a look at how HTTPS helps rankings now, six months later. Let’s get started. Before we move on, I want to make sure you understand what HTTPS is. If you don’t, please click on the video below to watch as I explain the basics of HTTPS. Okay, let’s talk about data. Boostability has tons of data that helps us understand Google algorithm changes. Boostability has over 17,000 accounts that track tens of thousands of keywords. We use this data to help us understand Google algorithm changes. Back in August we noticed little to no changes after the announcement that HTTPS would be a ranking factor. Six months later we’ve gathered enough data to see some pretty interesting things. Take a look at this graph: This shows the percent of results on the first page that are HTTPS since the beginning of September. In general, we are seeing a slow but steady increase in results. Remember however, these are percentages. This data helps show that there is still a low amount of sites ranking that have HTTPS, thus denoting the HTTPS is still a very small ranking factor. Having looked at this data however got us thinking. Does Google treat all websites the same when it comes to requirements of security? In other words, would Google expect more security from websites we generally see as more important, like money or finance websites? Take a look at this next graph: This graph shows some of our more popular verticals. Notice anything that sticks out? The jump we saw was in the insurance vertical. Based on this data, we can

  Andrew Eagar is busy getting ready for a brand new season of The Booster Seat!  He has a bunch of great new videos on the way that will discuss various online marketing topics including SEO, social media, Google updates, and more!