But, remote work comes with some negatives, such as the complete lack of human interaction. Or the growing desire to never step away from the four walls that have become your confidants.

Still, for me, that all changed today. Here I was researching a blog on paint protection film when our social media manager for growmemarketing.ca/toronto-seo/ reached out. She wanted to know how we could better integrate our operations for our SEO in Toronto.

This is not the punchline.

Instead, it comes later. After we spoke about some potential ideas. After I finished the blog. And, even after I got ready to write the next blog on my list.

Can you guess what it was?

How SEO & Social Media Work Together

Toronto SEO and social media function together in ways that are both obvious and hidden. For a great SEO strategy, it is best to crosspost your blogs to your social media feeds. This helps give a great boost to visibility and some free backlinks as well.

But, that relationship is only skin deep. What are other great ways for social media and SEO in Toronto to work together?

Increasing Traffic

The juice that all Internet companies run on, site traffic is a key metric of performance for marketing and advertising businesses. However, it is also an essential measure for companies who have an in-house marketing team, as it shows what those efforts are worth and is often a primary objective.

Social media can help SEO increase traffic to blogs or landing pages by posting on the popular websites. Plus, the more social media attracts users and builds a community, the bigger the amplification becomes.

Increasing Brand Awareness

Increasing brand awareness is key to improving both SEO and social media results. Although it is not an easy task, as anyone trying to break into the flavoured drink market can attest to. Therefore, it is essential for these two services to work together. Where social media brings up the company to a captive audience, SEO must be waiting to fill in the blanks about data, information and products in a concise and straightforward manner.

Relationship Building

We often miss half the picture when it comes to social media, namely the SOCIAL component. It’s a strange thing to observe, how we have taken platforms for meeting and sharing with our friends and family and turned them into vast advertising empires. Still, that is the way of the world, and it does afford better opportunities for connecting with talented individuals.

One of the ways that SEO and social media both benefit through cooperation is the ability to build relationships. For social media, this could mean sponsorships with influencers, content sharing and more. On the other side, SEO benefits from building a better linking portfolio, access to more opportunities for sharing or trading content, and a greater initial boost to new content or added webpages. All told, the relationship between SEO and social media may only be burgeoning at this point. But we will soon see closer ties between the two as it becomes ever more important to present a united front for successful online businesses

The post Social Media Marketing & SEO: Working Together appeared first on Stabene.

That’s not the only obstacle you face as a local business either, considering how frequently Google changes their list of ranking factors. If you’re a small business hoping to show up in local searches by using affordable SEO services, it’s possible for Google to totally turn things upside down for you. They certainly did that when they rolled the Possum algorithm update out because it lets businesses who are outside of city limits the right to compete for any local spots in areas they service.

Now, this is when you need to start emphasizing how you can get your business more traction, and the following 10 local SEO tactics can do just that for you:

1) Claim the Listings for Your Business:

Over the course of time, business listings get created for your company. In time, those listings are going to accumulate. It’s crucial that you claim every listing for your business name. Remove all the duplicates, and make sure the surviving listings have information that is correct. You might discover that finding every listing seems intimidating, although there are some very effective tools that can make this process much simpler.

Moz Local is one great tool for you to use in finding any and all listings related to your business. Just enter your company name, but remember it has to be spelled out just like it is on your own website. That includes abbreviations, capitalizations, and the like. Pick your business out of the results, and then Moz will deliver you the total listings related to your business, whether they be complete, partial, duplicate, or inconsistent.

2) Put Location Pages on Your Website:

Search engines visit your site routinely, crawling them so they can identify the best matches to offer their users in the SERPs. If you have a specific landing page for every one of your physical locations, then search engines have an easier time finding your listings and providing the appropriate results to those looking for you (or just what you have to offer them). You need to include suite numbers. You also have to decide whether or not you want to abbreviate or spell out things like avenue, road, street, and the like. How information gets presented on pages like those are going to determine how you update information everywhere else. Be mindful of that when picking your information’s written formatting.

3) Enhance Your NAP Consistency:

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean you get to take consistent naps. You probably don’t have time anyway. In this case, NAP is short for your business name, its address, and the phone number. These need to be consistent across the board in order to help search engine users. You need to get really nit-picky here, because it’s not just about writing down your name and address. You have to include things like Inc., Co., LLC, suite numbers, and those aforementioned roads, streets, and avenues. Always be consistent here, as everything should match with any location information that your website is displaying. The Moz Local search tool and its improvement process will do a lot of this consistency for you. Need a great place to start? That would be your listing for Google My Business, but that deserves its own tip.

4) Update Anything Related to Google My Business:

Google My Business is also commonly called GMB. Users online trust it every day for correct information about business listings. Your local SEO is going to rely on accurate information, so be sure that everything is right. Another good practice is including a link back to your website, your hours of operation, and a short yet informative description. Create an appealing listing. Use your logo as the profile or avatar image, and update any available photos of your interior, exterior, and products. These need to be high-caliber images, given how blurry and pixelated images come across as amateur and unprofessional. If you have multiple locations, then GMB does provide a helpful article about bulk uploads for easy organization and updates.

5) Get Reviews:

Reviews are more important than nearly everything else. Not only do they let your listing stand out in the crowd, but they are also a local pack ranking factor. If you can get your happy customers to start leaving you good Google reviews as a way of showing their appreciation for their positive experiences with your business, it goes a lot farther than nearly any other tactic on this list. Reviews are going to help you rank better, but they also mean that your business result takes up more room on the SERPs.

This is an effective strategy to use for pages that fall outside of the local pack, as you can add things like sub-pages and schema markups to eat up even more of that real estate. Another great thing about reviews is the social proof they provide, because when searchers see a full five stars, they know instantly that their neighbors and peers are highly recommending your business. When you get good reviews, you’re actually killing three conversion components with one stone: namely, conversion rate optimization (or CRO), clickthrough rate (or CTR), and ranking.

6) Cultivate Local Content:

Creating content that is focused on your niche will make a serious impact on how your rank for local searches. Check out our blog post entitled ‘SEO Checklist’ in order to learn what it takes to publish successful content.

7) Utilize Google AdWords Keyword Planner:

This isn’t just a great tool, it’s also free to use! Use it to generate your list of local SEO keywords. You can look up the keywords and search phrases that have high search volumes but low competition. You can also use it to find terms similar to what local prospects are looking for.

8) Get Backlinks from Sponsorships and Partners:

The cruel reality of the business world might have taught you that the best fruit is on the parts of the branch outside your comfort zone. Take sweet relief in this being an exception, because the low-hanging fruit is what you want here. Write down a list of all the organizations and businesses which you sponsor or are just partners with. This can even include fundraising events or charitable drives that your company has been involved in. Reach out to all your points of contact to remind them of your past involvement, and then just ask them to put links pointing back to your own website.

9) Do Local Link Building:

On top of getting links from your sponsors and partners, the importance of link building for your business is never overstated. Optimize all your links the best you can by striving to create relationships with any local websites associated with your niche. Getting links from any websites that have high domain authority for your local area can really pack some punch with the search engines.

Qualitative link building acts as a central nervous system for your website. Without creating backlinks to your site, you might find that your website’s growth has limited itself. This is where Blogger Outreach Services can help you. Blogger Outreach services can help build qualitative links and give the boost your website needs.

10) Use Social Media:

Social media platforms tend to be free to use, so it’s not exactly news that you can use them to stay on your audience’s radar. Google searches and crawls social platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The post The Definitive Guide to Improve Your Local Search Rankings appeared first on Stabene.

Types of SEO Content

To make your article or blog standout, you first have to decide which kind of SEO content you wish to use. There are four main types of SEO content you can use to target your blog to the right audience.

Branded SEO Content

Many bloggers nowadays focus on highlighting popular brands in their content. For example, at typeaparent, you will come across many articles that have a brand linked somewhere in the content. Wondering how that’ll help? Many people consider linking out to other sites a disadvantage to your blog, but search engines reward this action. Search engines love when articles provide links to useful web pages. This also signals to other sites that you are an active part of the web; others may also start providing links to your blogs on their content too. However, don’t do it too much or you can be penalized for spamming.

Non-Brand Commercial

Non-brand commercial content may sound pointless, but the results will make you realize the importance. By highlighting brands, you will be restricted to getting traffic of the particular keyword. However, non-branded commercials focus on keywords that are broader in nature. These keywords will bring you immense traffic and reach. For example, instead of targeting NIKE sneakers, you could write jogging sneakers. This will widen your target audience calling out readers interested in all brands of sneakers.

Non-Brand Editorial

Non-brand editorial content is a piece that gets published by a third-party. Editorial content helps you build the credibility of your brand without showing any sign of promotion. In this competitive market, it isn’t that easy to convince customers to consider your products. By getting your informational blogs posted by third parties, you will be able to reach out to a new audience and create a better relationship. A great example can be seen in L’OREAL’s article posted by a third party that is focused on providing information to its readers.

Informative Content

Apart from all the other types, a great way to get ranked on search engines and generate traffic by posting an informative or creative blog. The blog post can have high-quality content, infographics, slideshows, interesting cases, etc. If you know how to use the magic of words, this type of content should be a piece of cake for you.

Types of Keywords

After we know which kind of content to move forward with, the second important factor that needs to be thought about is the type of keywords that’ll best suit your piece.

•      Commercial Keywords

If you are focusing on directly targeting your audience to generate leads, you can go with commercial keywords. For example, “black basketball shoes.” With the help of this commercial keyword, the traffic you will generate will be strictly keyword based. You won’t find people reading your article who have no interest in these types of shows. This helps your marketing strategy to be more condensed and keyword orientated.

•      Editorial Keywords

On the other hand, you could also use editorial keywords to generate a higher number of readers and target a broader market. For example, “Which type of shoes are best?” This keyword will attract all web surfers who are interested in reading about shoes.

Search engines have always shown their love for editorial keywords that lead to non-branded editorial content. If we talk about Google, this search engine is always thirsty for high-quality content that provides useful information to readers.

Keyword Research

To boost your ranking, you also have to go through effective keyword research, by handpicking all the terms and words that’ll make your article or blog attractive to web crawlers. To initiate the comprehensive keyword research, you can follow our useful steps:

1.    Identify the Target Markets

One of the first questions you should ask yourself before writing an article is, who your target audience is. The target audience can be determined by focusing on segments like age, gender, profession, location, etc.

2.    Identify Keywords for Each Market

After finalizing your target market, you have to start keyword research. The best keywords are those that are ranked better. Apart from this factor, you also have to keep an eye on the level of competition on the keywords. Some words are high in competition, so it becomes difficult for new blogs to compete with market leaders.

3.    Use Keyword Research Tools

Tools come in handy with keyword research as they provide with the numbers you are searching for. With keyword research tools you can get the search volumes, competitiveness and similar keywords you can use. ­­- A faster way to start your SEO campaign.

Free Vs. Paid Tools

When you start looking for the best keyword tools, you’ll come across many paid and free ones. It doesn’t matter which one you choose, as long as they offer you the necessary features. While selecting the best keyword research tool, look for the following features:

• The number of keyword results
• Keyword difficulty scores
• Search trends For Primary Keywords

Keyword Oriented Content

All your keyword research and planning will only come in to effect if you use these words accurately in your content. Many writers believe that keyword stuffing will bring them higher rankings, no it won’t! Many SEO specialists consider 2-5% keyword density perfect for articles. You could abide by the following tips to avoid keyword stuffing.

1.    1-2 Main Keywords per Page

According to your keyword research, you should have a list of keywords which you can grade according to their level of importance. Focus on adding only one or two primary keywords on every page.

2.    Use LSI Keywords

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords are a list of words that are related to your topic. These words, however, aren’t similar or synonyms of your main keywords. This tactic will surely help you boost your ranking and avoid the dangers of keyword stuffing.

3.    Longtail Keywords

A great strategy to avoid getting caught up with keyword stuffing is by using longer phrases instead of single keywords. These keyword phrases will target your particular audience and also protect you from going past the policies set by Google or any other search engines.

Conclusion

To sum it up, if you want your blogs to rank better, you have to focus on planting the right seeds in your content. With the help of useful keywords, your blogs will surely attract web crawlers to analyze your content and rank your page.

The post Creating Content That Search Engines Love: Article Ideation Tips for Bloggers appeared first on Stabene.