It’s important to know the fundamentals of Google’s search ranking system before we get into the strategies. At its most basic, Google searches the web for all the different pages available, then picks the ones it thinks best fit the particular search being asked. When it does this, it tries to evaluate not just the content of the page but also the reasons why that content might be a good fit. Five different “conversational” factors guide this evaluation. The first is relevance: Does the content match the searching user’s intent? Next is quality: Is the content informative, engaging, and well-structured? Then comes authority: How credible is the site? Often, this is determined by how many other trustworthy sites link to it. After that comes user experience: Is the site easy to use, mobile-friendly, and fast? And finally, what about engagement metrics: Are users interacting with this site in a way that suggests it’s a good fit for what they’re searching for? Focusing on these factors can give your site a better shot at showing up higher in Google search results.

How to Outrank Competitors: An SEO Primer

At the core of a prosperous digital marketing strategy, there must be Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. This is primer SEO for you:

1. Research Your Keywords: Unearth the search terms your ideal customers are using and blend them seamlessly into your content.
2. On-Page SEO: Dial in title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and images. More important, ensure that your content has a clear hierarchy and is effortlessly scannable for our friends at Google as well as for your humans.
3. Quality Content: Write something for heaven’s sake. Make it worthwhile, make it useful, make it easy to digest, and, for the love of all that is good, make it engaging.

Link Building Strategies

Links pointing to your content from respectable websites show Google that your content is high quality and trustworthy. Here are some ways to get those links pointing back to your website to help you outrank competitors:

1. Write for Other Blogs: Find reputable blogs in your industry. Write articles for them. Include a link back to your site in the article.
2. Work with Other Businesses: Find businesses in your industry or a related one to partner with. Work with them to cross-promote your businesses.
3. Research: Conduct studies that are important to your industry. Write articles about those studies. Do so in a way that makes them sound interesting and in a way that also makes them shareable.

User Experience and Perception

Your search rankings can be substantially affected—positively or negatively—by how users perceive your site. There are several ways to make a perceivable impact on how users interact with your website, and thus how they perceive it. First, see to it that your website is equally responsive on both desktop and mobile devices, as more and more people are using smartphones to access the internet. Second, check to ensure that your site is loading quickly. A variety of tools exist to help you identify issues and fix them, if any are found. Finally, have a look at your site from the perspective of a first-time user and ask yourself whether or not navigating through your content is a straightforward experience.

Local Search & Google My Business

It is vital for local businesses to optimize their websites for local search so that they can be found by prospective customers in their area. Here are several steps you can take:

1. Google My Business: Your listing can be a local search engine. Ensuring its optimization can push your appearance in local search results.
2. Local Keyword Usage: Google is smart but not necessarily as smart as your content. You need to signal to it that your content is about something locally relevant.
3. Customer Reviews: Good reviews don’t just help your business look good; they also can help place your business in local search results.

Social Media Tips

Although social media signals might not have a direct effect on SEO, these can drive significant traffic to a website and boost brand visibility. Making the most of social media is a worthwhile endeavor, and it’s possible by doing these three things:

1. Be Engaging: Share not just your content but also engage with your audience, and even have conversations with them. For some brands, it might make sense to only be present on one or two platforms. For others, six might be too many and one might be just right.
2. Be Promotional: Use ads to target specific, fairly narrowed-down demographic segments.
3. Be Collaborative: With whom and with what can you be a part of? Use your platforms to engage with the potential audience on the other end of your collaborators.

At CueCamp, our focus is on expanding the online visibility of businesses such as yours. We accomplish this, in part, through custom website design, but primarily, we engage in a much more detailed and exhaustive practice known as SEO. SEO—that is, Search Engine Optimization—can be thought of as a (more or less) scientific process. It involves (again, more or less) some fairly straightforward math and, more often than not, some “hidden” multipliers that many of your competitors either don’t know about or, if they do, aren’t using to their fullest advantage.

Prevent your competitors from getting all the attention. Reach out to Michel Sharritt at michel@cuecamp.com to set up your no-cost consultation. We’ll get you started on the path to much better placement in Google search results and much greater visibility online.

The post How Can You Outrank Competitors in Google Search Results? appeared first on CueCamp.

Inbound Marketing begins with establishing social media profiles on various platforms that will work for your type of business – in order to start engagement with potential customers.

What happens after you make contact with a new potential customer? Typically your social media initiatives will help drive new traffic to your website. All of the traffic that you drum up from your social media platforms will hopefully drive people to learn more about your company, offerings, and services.

Once you have established traffic to your site you can then start making direct contact with your potential customers and then create a sale.

A useful way to use the sales funnel concept is to figure out which social media platform sites will work best for your type of business. As a general guideline for our clients, we start out with a Facebook company fan page. Facebook is a powerful tool to increase visibility in your target market and engage in a relationship with your customers. With over 1.23 billion active users, Facebook is a great place to begin.

There are many different ways to start engaging potential customers by using Facebook. Our team at CueCamp helps businesses to figure out what to post, and when to post, in order to help attract new customers. Every business is different, which is why we tailor every marketing plan to fit clients’ specific needs. A solid Facebook company fan page is an excellent way to begin.

CueCamp is now offering free custom Facebook fan pages. Our marketing team will help generate more potential customers talking about your business with a custom designed and professionally marketed Facebook page. Our social media experts do it all for you by creating a page that best represents your business and its offerings, and then builds your fan base to get the conversation going.

If you don’t have a Facebook fan page or are not happy with what you have now, our team will build a page that gets you a following. Next, we will professionally market your new Facebook page to get you likes, targeting people who will be interested in your business. Finally, we will keep these new fans interested and talking about your business by frequently updating your content and creating new marketing campaigns.

If you are interested in a free custom Facebook fan page, contact us.

How can you retain traffic and turn those visitors into paying customers? Check back next week to learn about the next step in the sales funnel: your website.

Written / posted by: CueCamp

The post Inbound Marketing with Social Media appeared first on CueCamp.

Our view on social’s role in content marketing is threefold:

1. Social should play a key role in informing content strategy
2. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and so on are all valid platforms that should be used as part of your content strategy
3. Social media (particularly Facebook) has a unique ability to amplify your content placed on other channels

Social Media’s Role In Informing Content Strategy

Social data is an absolute core component of creating a content strategy. From deciding what to create content about, to the weighting of that content within your overall plan, the data you can pull from social should be integral to your thoughts.

There’s a whole host of great tools you can use to get insight in-house, such as:

– Followerwonk: Followerwonk allows you to analyse any Twitter audience by age, location, and bio word clouds to give you a flavour of your audience. Combine this with the most influential followers and see who they are and what you do to give yourself a headstart

– Unmetric: Unmetric allows you to track your competitors social media content and get alerted when there are spikes in engagement levels, allowing you to react or use historical data to plan future activity

– Twtrland: this tool allows you to delve into the Twitter data of any profile to see their most influential tweets, top followers, and basic demographics

We use a mixture of these tools, and some of our own data sets to really understand a target audience in advance of planning content. Outputs from various tools are used as part of the idea creation process, such as this Followerwonk word cloud of the bios of @datifyuk followers for instance:

Or this Socialbakers data based on the top Facebook interests by market, and the age split of people interested in Bollywood in New Zealand:

When you start adding of all of this data into the mix you can start to take intelligent decisions about your content marketing to make it more effective and relevant for your target audience.

Use Social Platforms As Part Of Your Content Strategy

Many brands will see their content strategy as having two sides, on-page (website), and off-page (guest posting/outreach led). Social often gets missed as a crucial part in between. Not only can social help you identify who to outreach to, but should be used as a platform for your content to drive engagement with your brand.

Your Facebook or Twitter updates should form part of your overall content strategy, and tailoring your content across various channels with a focus on social will always be beneficial. In Moz’s recent search rankings factor survey the majority of search marketers surveyed felt that social signals, and in particular the overall influence of Google +1’s on rankings would continue to increase in the future, again showing why social channels should be integrated into your strategy now.

Regardless of which channel works best for you, having a presence across each is important, even if only to own your brand name and keep people aware of you across their chosen channels. Google Plus is a good example of this – the users numbers are high, but interaction levels generally low (outside of the digital marketing community!). However, due to the increased importance Google are likely to place on this as a ranking factor for your content and therefore your site it is crucial that you keep this channel burning with your social content even if only with a few updates a week of content amended from another platform such as Facebook.

Amplify Your Content

Where social really can benefit your content marketing efforts is in putting your content in front of new audiences that are highly relevant and ready to engage. Whether your social audience is big or small, with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn you can now amplify your content through native paid means to reach new audiences at a relatively low cost compared to other channels.  At Datify, we do this for nearly every piece of content we create to ensure that reach is good when our clients have invested.

What’s more, the targeting across all three of these channels is very detailed, with Facebook in particular having multiple targeting levels that can enable you to find your perfect audience in this environment. This can enable you to create an initial buzz around your content, or keep traffic sustained after the initial outreach push.

Being able to target people who engage in other topics in your niche, who are in the right location and the right age grouping is a great opportunity, and can be very cost effective if managed correctly.

Whilst Matt Cutts has denied Facebook and Twitter’s social sharing signals are included as major ranking factors, they are still important as part of your content marketing efforts. Driving increased traffic to the content you create not only generates social shares, but also has the impact of creating ‘earned’ links, brand interactions and the potential for new business.

Facebook is particularly strong for amplifying your content. By using Power Editor you can ensure that your content is only seen in relevant News Feeds of the exact type of person you want to be viewing your content.

Summary

In summary, don’t think of social media as a completely separate discipline to content marketing – in fact, don’t separate the two at all. Social media should be completely integrated into everything you do – from informing your overall strategy, to being included as a platform to think about, and to increasing the distribution of your content.

Embrace social, particularly the paid amplification piece, to ensure that you can drive content marketing success for your clients.

Written by: Ben Harper, socialmedia today
Posted by: CueCamp

The post The Role of Social Media in Your Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on CueCamp.

Moreover, “highly prototypical” sites – those with layouts commonly associated with sites of it’s category – with simple visual design were rated as the most beautiful across the board.

In other words, the study found the simpler the design, the better.

But why?

In this article, we’ll examine why things like cognitive fluency and visual information processing theory can play a critical role in simplifying your web design & how a simpler design could lead to more conversions.

We’ll also look at a few case studies of sites that simplified their design, and how it improved their conversion rate, as well as give a few pointers to simplify your own design.

What is a Prototypical Website?

If I said “furniture” what image pops up in your mind?  If you’re like 95% of people, you think of a chair. If I ask what color represents “boy” you think “blue”, girl = pink, car = sedan, bird = robin, etc.

Prototypicality is the basic mental image your brain creates to categorize everything you interact with. From furniture to websites, your brain has created a template for how things should look and feel.

Online, prototypicality breaks down into smaller categories. You have a different, but specific mental image for social networks, e-commerce sites, and blogs – and if any of those particular websites are missing something from your mental image,  you reject the site on conscious and subconscious levels.

If I said “Online clothing store for trendy 20-somethings” you might envision something like this:

image credit

This follows the “online clothing store” prototype so closely, that it shares many attributes with the wireframe for an online clothing store that sells hip-hop clothing.

image credit

Neither  lacks originality, and it’s unlikely they “stole” from each other. Instead they’re playing into what your basic expectations are of what an e-commerce site should be.

What do you Mean By Cognitive Fluency?

The basic idea behind cognitive fluency is that the brain prefers to think about things that are easy to think about.

That’s why you prefer visiting sites where you instinctively know where everything is at, and you know what actions you’re supposed to take.

“Fluency guides our thinking in situations where we have no idea that it is at work, and it affects us in any situation where we weigh information.” – Uxmatters.com

Cognitive fluency is an stems from another area of behavior known as The Mere Exposure Effect, which basically states that the more times you’re exposed to a stimulus, the more you prefer it.

image source

Again, the rules are the same online.

It’s “familiar” for blogs to have opt-ins on the right sidebar, or e-commerce sites to feature a large hi-resolution image with an attention grabbing headline & the company logo on the top left hand side of the screen.

If your visitors are conditioned to certain characteristics being the standard for a particular category of site, deviating from that could subconsciously put you in the “less beautiful” category.

Here are a handful of e-commerce sites. See if you notice any similarities.

Warning: Whatever you do, for the love of GOD, don’t take what I’m saying as “do what everyone else is doing.”  If you’re not careful, you could really hurt yourself that way.

It’s important to know what design choices are prototypical for a site in your category, but it’s more important to find evidence that supports those design choices resulting in some sort of lift.

A lot of designers make bad choices. Without doing the research, you could make them too.  For example, many e-commerce sites use automatic image sliders to display products, but study after study shows that automatic sliders tank conversions.

What Happens When You Meet Basic Expectations? – A Case Study

In the three images above, everything you’d expect from an ecommerce site is exactly where it’s supposed to be. Even if you’ve never been to the site, there’s inherent “credibility” to the design.

With a high level of fluency, a site will feel familiar enough that visitors don’t need spend mental effort scrutinizing and can instead focus on why they’re on your site in the first place.

When the experience is dis-fluent however, you feel it immediately. Take online tie retailer, Skinnyties.com, who didn’t really look like an e-commerce site until their redesign in October 2012.

Before:

After:

A few key changes that lead to huge results:

• Follows prototypical e-commerce layout themes
• Much more “open” with whitespace.
• Images feature a single product with high-resolution pictures & contrasting colors.

Check out the full case study on this particular redesign, as it shows what is truly possible when updating a site to “fit in” with current prototypical standards.

These are the results of the redesign are staggering for only 2.5 weeks after the launch:

The redesign itself, while pretty, isn’t doing anything groundbreaking. It plays exactly into the expectations of what a modern online clothing retailer should be. It’s “open”, responsive, and has a consistent design language across all of the product pages.

But when contrasted with the old site, it’s very clear that the lack of these common elements were preventing buyers from making purchases on the site.

What Visual Information Processing Has To Do With Site Complexity

In this joint study by Harvard, University of Michigan, and University of Colorado, researchers found strong mathematical correlations for “aesthetically pleasing” between different demographics – For example, participants with PhD’s did not like high colorful websites – but there were no guidelines that emerged for universal appeal.

The only thing that was universal was that the more visually complex a website was, the lower it’s visual appeal.

(Sidebar: if you wish to take the test, you can do it here)

Why Simple is Scientifically Easier To Process

The reason less “visually complex” websites are considered more beautiful is partly because low complexity websites don’t require the eyes and brain to physically work as hard to decode, store and process the information.

Watch this quick video about how the eye sends information to the brain for that to make more sense.

Basically, your retina converts visual information from the real world into electrical impulses. Those impulses are then routed through the appropriate photoreceptor cells to transmit the color and light information to the brain.

The more color and light variations on the page (visual complexity) the more work the eye has to do to send information to the brain.

“…the eye receives visual information and codes information into electric neural activity which is fed back to the brain where it is “stored” and “coded”. This information can be used by other parts of the brain relating to mental activities such as memory, perception and attention.” – Simplypsychology.org

Every Element Communicates Subtle Information

image source

This is why it’s important when designing a website to remember every element –typeography, logo, and color selection – communicates subtle information about the brand.

When these elements don’t do their job, the webmaster often compensates by adding unnecessary copy and/or images, thus adding to the visual complexity of the website, and detracting from the overall aesthetic.

Optimizing a page for visual information processing – specifically simplifying information’s journey from eye to brain – is about communicating as much as you can in as few elements as possible.

While that’s an article all on it’s own, consider MailChimp’s logo redesign as food for thought.

When they decided make the brand grow up, they didn’t add the usual “we’ve been doing email since 2001, 3 million people trust us, here’s why we’re awesome, blah blah blah”

Instead, they tightened up the writing, simplified the website – the top headline simply reads “Send Better Email” – and added an even simpler explainer animation of the core product.

Even though this was part of a bigger growth strategy, the results are still impressive, over a million new users have been added since June, when the new logo was first debuted.

 ”Working Memory” & The Holy Grail of Conversion

What all this simplicity is leading to is what happens once visual information finds it’s way to the brain.

According to the famous research of psychologist George A Miller of Princeton, the average adult brain is able to store between 5-9 “chunks” of information within in the short term, working memory.

Working memory is the part of your brain that temporarily stores and processes information in the course of a few seconds. It’s what allows you to focus attention, resist distractions, and most importantly, guides your decision making.

image source

Everything we’ve been talking about up to this point is to reduce the amount of “noise” that makes it’s way into the working memory.

On a “low complexity, highly prototypical website”, the 5-9 “chunks”  the working memory tries to process are things like guarantees, product descriptions, prices or offers. When the working memory can stay focused on fixing the problem, it will try and solve the problem as quickly as possible.

Deviation Causes Disengagement

When you deviate from a person’s  expectations – the price was higher than expected, the color scheme and symmetry were off, the site didn’t load fast enough, the photos weren’t high enough resolution – the working memory processes those disfluent “chunks” instead of what matters.

That’s because the working memory calls the long term memory to use what it already knows to perform the task. When the long term memory can’t aid in processing the information, flow is broken & the working memory disengages and moves on.

That’s why it’s vital you understand your visitor’s level of exposure – not just for sites in your category, but to websites in general -If you want to “hack” their working memory with design.

The blogs they read, the sites they shop on, their browser, age, gender & physical location, all hint at how  will impact their level of familiarity on first impression.

Conclusion

If the visitor can’t rely on their previous experience, they’re not thinking about how innovative your site is. They’re just left wondering why things aren’t where it’s “supposed to be.” Not the best frame of mind if you want them to buy stuff.

Bonus: 7 Things To Do When Planning A Simpler Site.

1. Research your audience and the sites they visit the most. Look for case studies on design changes from said sites & how those resulted in improvement is key areas.
2. Create a mashup of all those “working” components for your own site.
3. Obey the rules of cognitive fluency when you lay out your design. Put things where your visitors have grown accustomed to finding them.
4. Rely on your own colors, logo, and typeface to communicate clearly and subtly. Don’t add copy and/or images unless it communicates something your visitor actually cares about.
5. Keep it as simple as possible – one large image vs a bunch of little ones, one column, instead of three – utilize as much white space as possible.
6. Double check to make sure your site fits the public expectation in pricing, aesthetics, speed, etc.
7. Remember that “prototypical” doesn’t mean that every aspect of your site should fit that mold.

Don’t think of your site as some unique snowflake piece of art. Instead make it a composite of all the best stuff.

Your visitors will love you for it.

Written by: Tommy Walker, ConversionXL
Posted by: CueCamp

The post Why “Simple” Websites Are Scientifically Better appeared first on CueCamp.

Website Usability Tip #6: Recognition, Not Recall

Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the site to the other. Nor should the user have to remember or learn a new way to do something. (ex. Checkout Process)

• Use common icons that make sense to the user
• Do not over-complicate your interface
• Only use pop up instructions on buttons if you must

Website Usability Tip #7: Flexibility & Efficiency

Flexibility: allow multiple ways of accomplishing the same thing.

Users can find information through:

• A search box
• Using menu navigation
• Breadcrumbs
• Links in the footer

Efficiency: build in simple and efficient methods of doing common tasks, without making it difficult for someone new to the system.

Amazon’s checkout process and shopping cart system are an example, with users being able to set up a ‘one-click’ checkout system where a default credit card and address are stored to make checkout super speedy and easy.

Website Usability Tip #8: Aesthetic and Minimalist Design

Aesthetics is important when designing for the web. Knowing how to balance aesthetics with what users want can be a challenge.

Here are some key points to remember:

• Make sure colors play off of the colors of a well designed logo
• Do not overwhelm users with too much content
• Content should be relevant to the site
• Use clickable videos
• Never use avatars

A big mistake that web designers often make is adding more pages to a website to make it look more ‘legit’. Always remember that users on the Internet usually quickly skim over information, and avoid wordy text. Overwhelming them with redundant information will make them leave the website.

Website Usability Tip #9: Assist Users

Help users recognize and recover from errors.

• Error messages should be expressed in plain language
• If there is a process for ordering something (or otherwise), guide users through the process
• Never make users guess what to do next
• Constructively suggest a solution if a mistake is made

Website Usability Tip #10: Documentation

Even though it is better if a website can be used without any assistance, it may be necessary to provide documentation for complex tasks.

Any such information should be easy to search, and focused on the user’s task.

• List concrete steps to be carried out
• Make sure instructions are not too long
• Ideally, it should be contextual (placed where it is needed, so users don’t have to search for it)

Let us know if you have any questions on our website usability tips. If you would like a free expert analysis of your website’s usability, request a free usability report from CueCamp.

Written and Posted by: CueCamp

The post Website Usability Tips, Part 2 appeared first on CueCamp.

Website Usability Tip #1: Visibility

Always show users where they are at on the website. 

• Use breadcrumbs
• Highlight where the user is at in the menu navigation
• Use sitemaps

Website Usability Tip #2: Communicate Clearly

The website should speak the user’s language. Nothing should be left up for interpretation. 

• Links and buttons should be concise and clear
• Labeling should make sense to the user
• Labeling should also be short and to the point
• ‘Error 404’ pages mean nothing to most users
• Buttons should be labeled in a way to bring a call to action (buy now)

Website Usability Tip #3: User Error

Users often click on items by mistake and need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted area without having to go through an extended process. 

• Use clear breadcrumbs
• Use sitemaps
• Have a search button
• Make sure your logo is clickable to take the user back to the home page
• In some instances pop boxes may be useful warning your users of their error

Website Usability Tip #4: Consistency

Consistency is key to keep your users happy and coming back for more. Users should not have to reorient themselves each time they click on a page.

• Keep the same format for all pages of your website
• Placement of menu navigation should remain consistent from page to page
• Heading font sizes and placement should be consistent
• Labeling should not change
• Functionality of buttons, forms, etc. should not change

Website Usability Tip #5: Error Prevention

Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place.

• Eliminate error-prone conditions
• Check for errors
• Present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action
• Design a simple environment

Interested in the last five tips? Read Part 2 of our website usability tips. If you would like a free expert analysis of your website’s usability, request a free usability report from CueCamp.

Written and Posted by: CueCamp

The post Website Usability Tips, Part 1 appeared first on CueCamp.

For newer SEOs, the process can be overwhelming.

To simplify this process, I created this SEO blueprint. It’s meant as a framework for newer SEOs to build their own work on top of. This basic blueprint has helped, in one form or another, 100s of pages and dozens of sites to gain higher rankings.

Think of it as an intermediate SEO instruction manual, for beginners.

Level: Beginner to Intermediate

Timeframe: 2 to 10 Weeks

What you need to know: The blueprint assumes you have basic SEO knowledge: you’re not scared of title tags, can implement a rel=canonical, and you’ve built a link or two. (If this is your first time to the rodeo, we suggest reading the Beginners Guide to SEO and browsing our Learn SEO section.)

Keyword Research

1. Working Smarter, Not Harder

Keyword research can be simple or hard, but it should always be fun. For the sake of the Blueprint, let’s do keyword research the easy way.

The biggest mistakes people make with keyword research are:

1. Choosing keywords that are too broad
2. Keywords with too much competition
3. Keywords without enough traffic
4. Keywords that don’t convert
5. Trying to rank for one keyword at a time

The biggest mistake people make is trying to rank for a single keyword at a time. This is the hard way. It’s much easier, and much more profitable, to rank for 100s or even 1,000s of long tail keywords with the same piece of content.

Instead of ranking for a single keyword, let’s aim our project around a keyword theme.

2. Dream Your Keyword Theme

Using keyword themes solves a whole lot of problems. Instead of ranking for one Holy Grail keyword, a better goal is to rank for SEO with lots of keywords focused around a single idea. Done right, the results are amazing.

I assume you know enough about your business to understand what type of visitor you’re seeking and whether you’re looking for traffic, conversions, or both. Regardless, one simple rule holds true: the more specific you define your theme, the easier it is to rank.

This is basic stuff, but it bears repeating. If your topic is the football, you’ll find it hard to rank for  “Super Bowl,” but slightly easier to rank for “Super Bowl 2014” – and easier yet to rank for “Best Super Bowl Recipes of 2014.”

Don’t focus on specific words yet – all you need to know is your broad topic. The next step is to find the rightkeyword qualifiers.

3. Get Specific with Qualifiers

Qualifiers are words that add specificity to keywords and define intent. They take many different forms.

• Time/Date: 2001, December, Morning
• Price/Quality: Cheap, Best, Most Popular
• Intent: Buy, Shop, Find
• Location: Houston, Outdoors, Online

The idea is to find as many qualifiers as possible that fit your audience. Here’s where keyword tools enter the picture. You can use any keyword tool you like, but favorites include Wordstream, Keyword Spy, SpyFu, andBing Keyword Tool and Übersuggest.

For speed and real-world insight, Übersuggest is an all-time SEO favorite. Run a simple query and export over 100 suggested keyword based on Google’s own Autocomplete feature – based on actual Google searches.

Did I mention it’s free?

4. Finding Diamonds in the Google Rough

At this point you have a few dozen, or a few hundred keywords to pull into Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Using “Exact” search types and “Local Monthly” search volume, we’re looking for 10-15 closely related keyword phrases with decent search volume, but not too much competition.

5. Get Strategic with the Competition

Now that we have a basic keyword set, you need to find out if you can actually rank for SEO for your phrases. You have two basic methods of ranking the competition:

1. Automated tools like the Keyword Difficulty Tool
2. Eyeballing the SERPs

If you have an SEOmoz PRO membership (or even a free trial) the Keyword Difficulty Tool calculates – on a 100 point scale – a difficulty score for each individual keyword phrase you enter.

Keyword phrases in the 60-70+ range are typically competitive, while keywords in the 30-40 range might be considered low to moderately difficult.

To get a better idea of your own strengths, take the most competitive keyword you currently rank #1 or #2 for, and run it through the tool.

Even without automated tools, the best way to size up the competition is to eyeball the SERPs. Run a search query (non-personalized) for your keywords and ask yourself the following questions:

• Are the first few results optimized for the keyword?
• Is the keyword in the title tag? In the URL? On the page?
• What’s the Page and/or Domain Authority of the URL?
• Are the first few results authorities on the keyword subject?
• What’s the inbound anchor text?
• Can you deliver a higher quality resource for this keyword?

You don’t actually have to rank #1 for any of your chosen words to earn traffic, but you should be comfortable cracking the top five.

With keyword themes, the magic often happens from keywords you never even thought about.

How can you improve your chances of ranking for more long tail keywords? Let’s talk about content, architecture, on-page optimization and link building.

Content

6. Creating Value

Want to know the truth? I hate the word content. It implies words on a page, a commodity to be produced, separated from the value it creates.

Content without value is spam.

In the Google Algorithm Update example above, we could have simply written 100 articles about Google’s Algorithm and hoped to rank. Instead, the conversation started by asking how we could create a valuable resource for webmasters.

For your keyword theme, ask first how you can create value.

Value is harder to produce than mere words, but value is rewarded 100x more. Value is future proof & algorithm proof. Value builds links by itself. Value creates loyal fans.

Value takes different forms. It’s a mix of:

1. Utility
2. Emotional response
3. Point of view (positive or negative)
4. Perceived value, including fame of the author

Your content doesn’t have to include all 4 of these characteristics, but it should excel in one or more to be successful.

A study of the New York Times found key characteristics of content to be influential in making the Most Emailed list.

Source: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1528077

7. Driving Your Content Vehicle

Here’s a preview: the Blueprint requires you create at least one type of link bait, so now is a good time to think about the structure of your content.

What’s the best way to deliver value given your theme? Perhaps it’s an

• Infographic
• Video series
• A new tool
• An interview series
• Slide deck
• How-to guide
• Q&A
• Webinar or simple blog post

Perhaps, it’s all of these combined.

The more ways you find to deliver your content and the more channels you take advantage of, the better off you’ll be.

Not all of your content has to go viral, but you want to create at least one “tent-pole” piece that’s better than anything else out there and you’re proud to hang your hat on.

If you need inspiration, check out Distilled’s guide to Viral Linkbait or QuickSprout’s Templates for Content Creation.

8. Title – Most Important Work Goes Here

Spend two hours, minimum, writing your title.

Sound ridiculous? If you’re an experienced title writer like Rand Fishkin, you can break this rule. For the rest of us, it’s difficult to underplay the value delivered by a finely crafted title.

Write 50 titles or more before choosing one.

Study the successful titles on Inbound.org, Mashable, Wired, or your favorite publication.

Whatever you do, read this fantastic post by Dan Shure and the headline resources at CopyBlogger.

9. Length vs. Depth – Why it Matters

How long should your content be? A better question is: How deep should it be? Word count by itself is a terrible metric to strive for, but depth of content helps you to rank in several ways.

1. Adds uniqueness threshold to avoid duplicate content
2. Deeper topic exploration makes your content “about” more
3. Quality, longer content is correlated with more links and higher rankings

I. Uniqueness

At a minimum, your content needs to meet a minimum uniqueness threshold in order for it to rank. Google reps have gone on record to say a couple sentences is sometimes sufficient, but in reality a couple hundred words is much safer.

II. Long Tail Opportunities

Here’s where the real magic happens. The deeper your content and the more in-depth you can explore a particular topic, the more your content becomes “about.”

The more your content is “about”, the more search queries it can answer well.

The more search queries you can answer well, the more traffic you can earn.

Google’s crawlers continuously read your content to determine how relevant it is to search queries. They evaluate paragraphs, subject headings, photographs and more to try to understand your page. Longer, in-depth content usually send more relevancy signals than a couple short sentences.

III. Depth, Length, and Links

Numerous correlation studies have shown a positive relationship between rankings and number of words in a document.

This could be attributed longer, quality content earning more links. John Doherty examined the relationship between the length of blog posts on SEOmoz and the number of links each post earned, and found a strong relationship.

10. Content Qualities You Can Bank On

If you don’t focus on word count, how do you add quality “depth” to your content?

SEOs have written volumes about how Google might define quality including metrics such as reading level, grammar, spelling, and even Author Rank. Most is speculation, but it’s clear Google does use guidelines to separate good content from bad.

My favorite source for clues comes from the set of questions Google published shortly after the first Panda update. Here are a few of my favorites.

11. LDA, nTopic, and Words on the Page

Google is a machine. It can’t yet understand your page like a human can, but it’s getting close.

Search engines use sophisticated algorithms to model your sentences, paragraphs, blocks, and content sections. Not only do they want to understand your keywords, but also your topic, intent, and expertise as well.

How do you know if your content fits Google’s model of expectations?

For example, if your topic is “Super Bowl Recipes,” Google might expect to see content about grilling, appetizers, and guacamole. Content that addresses these topics will likely rank higher than pages that talk about what color socks you’re wearing today.

Words matter.

SEOs have discovered that using certain words around a topic associated with concepts like LDA and nTopicare correlated with higher rankings.

Virante offers an interesting stand alone keyword suggestion tool called nTopic. The tools analyzes your keywords and suggests related keywords to improve your relevancy scores.

12. Better than LDA – Poor Man’s Topic Modeling

Since we don’t have access to Google’s computers for topic modeling, there’s a far simpler way to structure your content that I find far superior to worrying about individual words:

Use the keyword themes you created at the beginning of this blueprint.

You’ve already done the research using Google’s keyword tool to find closely related keyword groups. Incorporating these topics into your content may help increase your relevancy to your given topic.

Example: Using the Google Algorithm project cited above, we found during keyword research that certain keywords related to our theme show up repeatedly, time and time again. If we conducted this research today, we would find phrases like “Penguin SEO” and “Panda Updates” frequently in our results.

Google suggests these terms via the keyword tool because they consider them closely related. So any content that explored “Google Algorithm Change” might likely include a discussion of these ideas.

Note: This isn’t real LDA, simply a way of adding relevant topics to your content that Google might associate with your subject matter.

13. Design Is 50% of the Battle

If you have any money in your budget, spend it on design. A small investment with a designer typically pays outsized dividends down the road. Good design can:

• Lower bounce rate
• Increase page views
• Increase time on site
• Earn more links
• Establish trust

… All of which can help earn higher rankings.

“Design doesn’t just matter, it’s 50% of the battle.”
-Rand Fishkin

Dribbble.com is one of our favorite source of design inspiration.

Architecture

Here’s the special secret of the SEO Blueprint: you’re not making a single page to rank; you’re making several.

14. Content Hubs

Very few successful websites consist of a single page. Google determines context and relevancy not only by what’s on your page, but also by the pages around it and linking to it.

The truth is, it’s far easier to rank when you create Content Hubs exploring several topics in depth focused around a central theme.

Using our “Super Bowl Recipes” example, we might create a complete section of pages, each exploring a different recipe in depth.

15. Linking the Hub Together

Because your pages now explore different aspects of the same broad topic, it makes sense to link them together.

• Your page about guacamole relates to your page about nachos.
• Your page about link building relates to your page about infographics.
• Your page about Winston Churchill relates to major figures of World War II.

It also helps them to rank by distributing PageRank, anchor text, and other relevancy signals.

16. Find Your Center

Content Hubs work best with a “hub” or center. Think of the center as the master document that acts as an overview or gateway to all of your individual content pages.

The hub is the authority page. Often, the hub is a link bait page or a category level page. It’s typically the page with the most inbound links and often as a landing page for other sections of your site.

For great example of Hub Pages, check out:

• CopyBloggers Magnetic Headlines
• SEOmoz’s Learn SEO
• Amazon’s author pages (this one about Stephen King)

On-Page Optimization

17. Master the Basics

You could write an entire book about on-page optimization. If you’re new to SEO, one of the best ways to learn is by using SEOmoz’s On-page Report Card (free, registration required) The tool grades 36 separate on-page SEO elements, gives you a report and suggestions on how to fix each element. Working your way through these issues is an excellent way to learn (and often used by agencies and companies as a way to teach SEO principals)

Beyond the basics, let’s address a few slightly more advanced tactics to take advantage of your unique keyword themes and hub pages, in addition to areas where beginners often make mistakes.

18. Linking Internally for the Reasonable Surfer

Not all links are created equal (One of the greatest SEO blog posts ever written!) So, when you interlink your internal pages within your content hub together, keep in mind a few important points.

1. Links from inside unique content pass more value than navigation links.
2. Links higher up the page pass more value than links further down.
3. Links in HTML text pass more weight than image links.

When interlinking your content, it’s best to keep links prominent and “editorial” – naturally link to your most important content pages higher up in the HTML text.

19. Diversify Your Anchor Text – Naturally

If Google’s Penguin update taught us anything, it’s that over-thinking anchor text is bound to get us in trouble.

When you link naturally and editorially to other places on the web, you naturally diversify your anchor text. The same should hold true when you link internally.

Don’t choose your anchor text to fit your keywords; choose your anchor text to fit the content around it.

Practically speaking, this means linking internally with a mix of partial match keyword and related phrases. Don’t be scared to link occasionally without good keywords in the anchor – the link can still pass relevancy signals. When it comes to linking, it’s safer to under-do it than over-do it.

Source: Google’s SEO Starter Guide

20. Title Tags – Two Quick Tips

We assume you know how to write a compelling title tag. Even today, keyword usage in the title tag is one of the most highly correlated on-page ranking factors that we know.

That said, Google is getting strict about over-optimizing title tags, and appears to be further cracking down on titles “written for SEO.” Keep this in mind when crafting your title tags

I. Avoid Boilerplates

It used to be common to tack on your business phrase or main keywords to the end of every title tag, like so:

• Plumbing Supplies – Chicago Plumbing and Fixtures
• Pipes & Fittings – Chicago Plumbing and Fixtures
• Toilet Seat Covers – Chicago Plumbing and Fixtures

While we don’t have much solid data, many SEOs are now asserting that “boilerplate” titles tacked on to the end of every tag are no longer a good idea. Brand names and unique descriptive information is okay, but making every title as unique as possible is the rule of the day.

II. Avoid Unnecessary Repetition

Google also appears (at least to many SEOs) to be cracking down on what’s considered the lower threshold of “keyword stuffing.”

In years past it was a common rule of thumb never to repeat your keyword more than twice in the title. Today, to be on the safe side, you might be best to consider not repeating your keywords more than once.

21. Over-Optimization: Titles, URLs, and Links

Writing for humans not only gets you more clicks (which can lead to higher rankings), but hardly ever gets you in trouble with search engines.

As SEOs we’re often tempted to get a “perfect score” which means exactly matching our title tags, URLs, inbound anchor text, and more. unfortunately, this isn’t natural in the real world, and Google recognizes this.

Diversify. Don’t over-optimize.

22. Structured Data

Short and simple: Make structured data part of every webpage. While structured data hasn’t yet proven to be a large ranking factor, it’s future-facing value can be seen today in rich snippet SERPs and social media sharing. In some verticals, it’s an absolute necessity.

There’s no rule of thumb about what structured data to include, but the essentials are:

• Facebook Open Graph tags
• Twitter Cards
• Authorship
• Publisher
• Business information
• Reviews
• Events

To be honest, if you’re not creating pages with structured data, you’re probably behind the times.

For an excellent guide about Micro Data and Schema.org, check out this fantastic resource from SEOGadget.

Building Links

23. The 90/10 Rule of Link Building

This blueprint contains 25 steps to rank your content, but only the last three address link building. Why so few? Because 90% of your effort should go into creating great content, and 10% into link building.

If you have a hard time building links, it may be because you have these numbers reversed.

Creating great content first solves a ton of problems down the line:

1. Good content makes link building easier
2. Attracts higher quality links in less time
3. Builds links on its own even when sleeping or on vacation

If you’re new to marketing or relatively unknown, you may need to spend more than 10% of your time building relationships, but don’t let that distract you from crafting the type of content that folks find so valuable they link to you without you even asking.

24. All Link Building is Relationships – Good & Bad

This blueprint doesn’t go into link building specifics, as there are 100’s of ways to build quality links to every good project. That said, a few of my must have link building resources:

1. Jon Cooper’s Complete List of Link Building Strategies
2. StumbleUpon Paid Discovery
3. Citation Labs
4. Promoted Tweets
5. Ontolo
6. eReleases – Press releases not for links, but for exposer
7. BuzzStream
8. Paddy Moogan’s excellent Link Building Book

These resources give you the basic tools and tactics for a successful link building campaign, but keep in mind that all good link building is relationship building.

Successful link builders understand this and foster each relationship and connection. Even a simple outreach letter can be elevated to an advanced form of relationship building with a little effort, as this Whiteboard Friday by Rand so graciously illustrates.

25. Tier Your Link Building… Forever

The truth is, for professionals, link building never ends. Each content and link building campaign layers on top of previous content and the web as a whole like layers of fine Greek baklava.

For example, this post could be considered linkbait for SEOmoz, but it also links generously to several other content pieces within the Moz family and externally as well; spreading both the link love and the relationship building as far as possible at the same time.

SEOmoz links generously to other sites: the link building experience is not just about search engines, but the people experience, as well. We link to great resources and build links for the best user experience possible. When done right, the search engines reward exactly this type of experience with higher rankings.

For an excellent explanation as to why you should link out to external sites when warranted, read AJ Kohns excellent work, Time to Long Click.

One of my favorite posts on SEOmoz was 10 Ugly SEO Tools that Actually Rock. Not only was the first link on the page directed to our own SEO tools, but we linked and praised our competitors as well.

Linkbait at its finest.

Written by: Cyrus Shepard, SEOMoz
Posted by: CueCamp

The post How to Rank for SEO: 25 Step Master Blueprint appeared first on CueCamp.

Avoid web design companies that promise you they can get your site to appear first in online searches. Google uses complex formulas that take online reputation and many other factors into consideration to determine rank. However, there are several things that can be done to improve the rank of your website on search engines.

Keyword Strategies

• Embedding keywords: these are hidden from the end-user, and reside in the  “code” of your website. They tell search engines about your website and business. When picking keywords, try to imagine what others will type as a search query when they are looking you up.
• Content-specific keywords / wording: Search engines also “read” intelligently the information you present on your website. Therefore, the keywords that you believe are important (those that people looking for your business might type into Google) should appear frequently in your website copy (the wording you choose for your new website).

CueCamp makes use of many specialized techniques that can raise your rank within Internet searches (like Google or Yahoo). We will submit your new website to search engines so they can read the content of your business website. Also, we suggest asking others to link to your site from theirs (this will raise your reputation with Google). Search engines track “inbound” links to your website: they see this as a sign of reputation.

Remember, raising your rank within online searches is important for business. Imagine a stack of printed brochures from different companies: people are most likely to check out what is on the top of the pile! Research has proven the fact that a higher search engine ranking will get you more site visits and more business as a result.

Building a Corporate Identity and Raising Trust

Corporate branding paints an image of your business to potential customers. Many aspects are involved: down to the shapes and colors of the objects in your logo. Many subconscious feelings and messages can be associated with the design of your business logo, the design of your website, and the content that you present. The length of your content, the type of your content (text, images, videos), and the nature of the interactions that your site creates will serve to both introduce potential clients to your products and give them an idea about how you do business. CueCamp specializes in helping you think outside the box to create marketing that shows the full extent of your business’s capabilities and creative services.

Why Usability Matters

Usability refers to the degree to which simplicity, functionality and aesthetics rule the communication on your website. Matthew Sharritt, Founder of CueCamp, has earned his Ph.D. in Communication and Information Sciences, with a focus on usability, efficient information transfer, and communication. This expertise will be put to use while creating a personalized website for your business. He will make sure that both the information presented and the overall design is very functional, simple to use, and creative. Therefore, a lasting good impression is made on those visiting your new website.

Social Media Marketing: The Wave of the Future

Social media marketing ties your business website together with our futures-oriented approach in bringing more business to your business. Utilizing social networks can make a huge impact on your corporate branding. Also, they can easily connect you with potential customers and can assist in giving your website reputation (and raising its rank in search engines). CueCamp’s marketing expertise in social media can help you fully take advantage of the business opportunities that it provides. We offer social media marketing plans and training services as a complete package. Employing a full array of digital technologies can give you the competitive advantage and boost to business you need.

For a free quote on our website or social media campaign packages, call (630) 962-7043 or get a free quote today.

Written by: Matthew Sharritt, Ph.D., President, CueCamp

The post Setting Your Business Website Apart From the Competition appeared first on CueCamp.

1. You will find whomever you want to do business with somewhere online
2. You will find whatever knowledge you need about any market or any person online
3. You can reach your market by simply engaging in the right conversations with the right people. This is more effective than advertising.
4. If your business can’t be found, isn’t engaging with the market or worse yet ignoring the market you are not likely to be creating transactional opportunities while your competition does.
5. Communications is a system to leverage your organizations ability to communicate with your market. Social media is the new communications system.
6. Social media saves time and money if you use it right for the right things
7. If you learn “how” to use social media correctly then you’ll understand “what” your market is looking for and “where” they are looking. You’d want them to look for you.
8. “When” your customers and prospects are engaging about you, your industry or your products and services you need to be there listening. Otherwise how will you gain the necessary market intelligence, be enabled to respond or even be aware of problems or needs. If you are not present when and where the conversations are occurring you are basically out of touch with your market.
9. Communications is about reach. Communicating is about relational dynamics between people. Social media provides the means to effectively communicate with your market. However communicating in human rather than institutional terms.
10. If you are not communicating (listening first, initiating second) then how in the world do you expect to create relationship with people and businesses that may want the value you offer?

When people need or want something in the old days they’d look up information in the yellow pages. Today people turn to search engines to find what they want or need. Each day on average Google gets used 235 million times.

When people are looking to purchase something they want and need more and more they are going on line to find out what other people think or say about a product, service or brand. The relevancy that influences people’s buying behavior is other people’s conversation, including yours. That is if they can find your conversation and if it provides value people are looking for.

To sum up: For many, the Web isn’t a place to look for information, it’s the only place.

Written By: Michel Ann Sharritt
Posted By: CueCamp

The post The Real Reasons Why To Use Social Media appeared first on CueCamp.

Navigation Designs

Danielson (2003) found that the users’ perceived disorientation in navigating a Web site is related to the amount of changes in the navigation schema that the user experiences while seeking information. Danielson manipulated the level of persistent and consistent categories in the navigation and defined this manipulation as navigational volatility. He measured navigational volatility by counting the number of links that changed location from the source page to the destination page.

Danielson found that the navigational volatility was related positively to participants’ ratings of disorientation and negatively to ratings of ease of use. In other words, participants reported feeling more disoriented when the links changed from one page to the next and rated the site low in ease of use. He concluded that it is best to keep navigation links the same from page to page to help reduce the risk of users feeling disoriented and to assist them in finding information.

Information Architecture Structure

Miller and Remington (2004) looked at how information architecture and category label ambiguity impacted user performance. They manipulated the depth and width of the information architecture by having users interact with either a three-tiered or a two-tiered structure. They also manipulated the categorization by using clear labels or ambiguous labels.

They found that users performed better on sites with a deep rather than wide architecture when the site had clear labels. Participants also found items with the ambiguous labels faster in two tiered (wider architecture). This is because participants have more chances to get lose in the three tiered (narrower) architecture. The research reinforces that having a great organization scheme does not help users if the link labels are unclear.

Organizational Scheme and Labeling

Resnick and Sanchez (2004) looked how organizational schemes and labeling affected a user’s ability to find information. They created six fictitious health food store Web sites. They organized the sites by a product-centered or user-centered schema. Product-centered sites organized items by product categories whereas the user-centered design organized items according to the user’s goal. Labeling schema contained three schemas, high, medium, or low quality labels. Quality was defined based on ratings as to how well each heading represented the items in that group.

Labeling

Results showed that quality of labels had a significant effect on the amount of time required to complete the task and on the userâ€s overall performance. Users in the high quality label group committed fewer errors, and found more products than users in the medium and low quality label groups.

The results show that sites with poorly designed labels caused user to waste their attention trying to figure out what different labels meant. Labels classified as high quality were gathered from typical users. Low quality labels were gathered through benchmarking existing labels. Labels that did not meet the user’s schema result in longer search times. It is important to know what information users are expecting to find and to provide them with clear links so they don’t waste time searching for information.

Content Organization Scheme

Product based organization received higher satisfaction ratings and users committed fewer errors when compared to the task based organization. Users performed better and were more satisfied with the product-based content organization, especially in the lower quality labeling condition.

Information Organization and Older Users

Kurniawan and Zaphiris (2003) looked at information organization for older users. They were interested in looking at health information sites and ways to create better information architectures. They wanted to group and label information to make it easier for seniors to understand.

First they asked the seniors to do a card sort of all the items in one of the main categories from the site. A cluster analysis of the data resulted in the four main categories each containing 4 subgroups.

In the second experiment participants took lists of the group items and provided labels for each group. In the final experiment, the researchers showed participants the suggest label and group items and asked them to rank the label names based on their fit to the group.

Results showed that the new user-provided labels were much less formal than the original site and were easier to understand. The participants also grouped the items much differently than the original structure. The original structure had 4 branches, each main branch had two sub-categories and each sub-category contained two items. The user based structure was a lot less structured with varying numbers of items and sub-categories in each main branch.

Users also grouped items together based on their function or service provided, instead of factors such as geographic location.

Conclusion

These studies suggest several important considerations for designing the information architecture of a Web site. First, good link labels help user performance while bad or ambiguous labels hurt their performance. Second, additional levels of organization can be helpful for users (as long as they are appropriately labeled). No matter which content organization schema you chose, it is better to keep navigation links persistent and consistent throughout the site. Matching user’s mental models to your design will result in a more useful site.

Written By: Usability.Gov
Posted By: CueCamp

The post Content Organization on Websites appeared first on CueCamp.