Acceptance of Circumstances, alt-tags, Being Found on Google, blog, Blog, Blogging, Google Ads, Google Nonprofit Ad Grant, keywords, organic SEO, paid search, pull marketing, Search Engine Optimization, search terms, SEM, SEO, SEO tags, User experience, website

How Not To Let Your SEO Strategy & Progress Slide When You’re Short On Time

The topic of this blog post wasn’t the one I planned to write about next. But, it’s particularly busy at Results Communications & Research, and that’s a good thing and blessing, right? It does mean, though, that the longer, more-detailed post topic I had on my radar will have to wait.

Right before posting this, I was faced with this challenge. I’ve been so busy helping clients with their paid SEO and organic SEO this spring and summer, I haven’t had the physical bandwidth to employ SEO tactics related to my own site that I encourage all my clients to implement — particularly the tactic I wrote about in my “Why It’s Time To Get Back To Internet and SEO Basics” blog post about being “fresh” by adding new content to, or updating existing content on your website.

So, I asked myself, “since I don’t have time to effectively write and post a really informative blog post, what small revisions can I make to my website to let Google know that my business, Results Communications & Research, is still alive & well? That we haven’t abandoned ship or shop? That we’re still open for business? That were not neglectful?

neon signage
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Small Website “Freshening-Ups” Support SEO

I landed on making a couple of simple tweaks. I recently had new, professional headshots taken. So, I added those to the About and Contact pages of my site, and wrote an image alt-tag for both of the photos. Alt-tags support being found on Google since Google will crawl and index such tags. They also make it clear to Google that your site is accessible to visually impaired individuals since alt-tags can be read by screen readers. It’s unknown if Google favors accessible sites over inaccessible ones, but Google does love sites that provide for a good user experience.

In addition to the above photo and tag additions, I added a new client name to the Google Nonprofit Ad Grant Services page of my site. And, I submitted all three revised pages of my site for indexing, using my Google Search Console account, so I and my site don’t have to wait for Google to find my revisions.

None of the above was a big lift, but it should support my site ranking well for relevant terms vs. it sliding as far as where in search results listings Google serves it up for desirable, high-volume search terms, known as keywords.

What small revisions can you make today to your site to support your SEO strategy?

Reach Out To Our Team Of SEO Experts

Need advice about small, less time-consuming tweaks you can regularly make to your site to support maintaining how it ranks in Google? Reach out today for a complimentary conversation.

Being Found on Google, blog, Blog, Blogging, competitive advantage, digital marketing agency, keywords, meta tags, online presence, organic SEO, pull marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO tags, strategic planning, User experience, website

Why You’re Missing Out If You Don’t Consider Joomla For Your Website CMS/Platform

While our Boston digital marketing agency doesn’t normally build websites for clients, we regularly advise our clients about what content management systems (CMS)/website platforms they should consider when launching a new website. We’ve also project managed the RFP/RFI process for several clients to arrive at the best-fit web developer and platform for a new site build. In addition, we often provide recommendations to clients for expert developers in various CMS with whom we’ve had the good fortunate to collaborate. One such collaborator and true partner is Robin Clapp at Web Design by Robin.

By working closely and collaboratively with Robin on the execution of SEO tactics on numerous mutual clients’ Joomla websites, we’ve gotten to know the many benefits to an organization of building and managing their website on Joomla. We’ve found it easy ourselves to use the tool to add new posts to resource/blog/news/articles sections of sites; plus, enter post title tags that support websites being found on Google for relevant high-volume keywords.

And, thru the results of SEO audits we conduct, we’ve become confident that, like WordPress and other sites built on non-drag-n-drop platforms, Joomla sites tend to rank well in Google when the proper SEO tactics are put in place. But, we’re letting Robin take it from here by sharing her thoughts below about why it’s a mistake not to consider Joomla as a website platform option when launching a new site.

From Guest Blogger, Robin Clapp, Web Design By Robin

While networking lately, I’ve been asked repeatedly, “What platform do you design websites on?” The reaction to my answer is confusion. They had never heard of Joomla. That’s okay! I don’t necessarily expect business owners to know all about website technology. So I put together these highlights to help them understand what Joomla is and why it is an excellent choice for a business website.

What Is Joomla and Why Should I Choose It For My Business Website?

What is Joomla and why should I choose it for my business website?

Joomla is the ideal Content Management System (CMS) platform for businesses and companies with websites with numerous pages and continuous content updates and additions.

At Web Design by Robin we have been designing custom websites in Joomla for 15+ years. Using extensive website development knowledge and years of experience developing websites in Joomla, each design is a custom experience tailored to your specific needs. Joomla provides a secure login and the ability to add, change, and remove content.

Benefits Of Using the Joomla Platform For Your New Website Include:

  • Joomla is a free, open-source content management system for publishing web content. Joomla is free and open-source because a community, not a company, owns it. The nonprofit organization, Open Source Matters, Inc. and the Joomla community develop the Joomla platform code where skilled Joomla specialists can design top-of-the-line websites.
  • Website content is template-agnostic. In the Joomla platform, content is created natively as individual elements. The template, in our case, a custom-designed template, is independent of the content, allowing for a design change while keeping the content as is.
  • Joomla has powerful role management and permissions built-in. This is useful if you have a variety of staff roles and responsibilities or tasks that they need to perform in relation to the website.
  • Content can be customized using custom fields. Custom fields include content and options such as video, audio, links, and images. Content can be categorized, tagged, searched, and sorted. All this is native to Joomla, making it an excellent solution for resource-heavy websites.
  • SEO metadata is easy to access and maintain in Joomla. Add your titles, descriptions, and alt tags in the same place you add your content. Joomla makes it easy.
  • Joomla is the leading platform when it comes to accessibility. If you choose accessibility for your website design, maintaining accessible content is easy going forward using Joomla’s built-in accessibility checker.

Joomla websites are beautiful, functional, and robust. At Web Design by Robin we design all our websites in Joomla. Check out our extensive portfolio to see just how diverse websites designed in Joomla can be.

What to learn more about Robin and Joomla?

Feel free to reach out to Robin directly, or ask us to make an introduction — we’d love to do so!

Being Found on Google, keywords, organic SEO, SEO, SEO tags, website

Search Engines Still Have A Long Ways To Go Before They Are True “Interpreters”

Regardless of the nature of the search engine — Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. — search engines do not yet have the Artificial Intelligence (AI) that they would need to have to be bestowed the title of “interpreter.” We’ve found at our Boston SEO company that many people who aren’t digital marketers, or particularly who aren’t SEO experts, don’t truly understand that search engines still don’t take a lot of leaps of faith. They don’t make a lot of assumptions either.

Per this “Search Engine Land” article, the above scenario will certainly change over time as search engines continue to add more AI knowledge and capabilities to their tools. But, for now, we think what have recently been considered to be SEO best practices, are still best SEO practices, including the one discussed directly below.

Why You Need To Tell Search Engines What Problems Your Organization Solves And In What Geography

Let’s say your organization offers “nutrition counseling.” Most people understand that there is a very diverse set of reasons why people who engage a nutrition counselor may do so. Some may be looking for help losing weight, others may have food allergies and are looking for food substitution ideas, still others may be looking for a diet that helps them manage their digestive issues or one that provides more energy.

In the above case, if an organization offering nutrition counseling does not specifically call out in their website content and/or behind-the-scenes meta page and post title tags that their services provide solutions to the aforementioned problems/challenges, search engines, like Google, will be unlikely to serve up their website in organic search results to people searching on terms like “how to lose weight, “help for losing weight,” “weight loss programs,” “weight loss counselor,” “help for food allergies,” “diet to manage my digestive issues,” etc. You get the picture.

As discussed above, our belief is that, while AI models/tools like ChatGPT may interpret, assume, and take some leaps of faith, standard search engines don’t and won’t to any significant degree. At least not in the near future. As this website content by the developer of the ChatGPT model openly reveals (scroll to “Limitations” section of page), there are still numerous limitations with AI models, and we think both consumers and businesses will continue to pose questions to search engines via voice or typed queries (vs. a tool like ChatGPT) for quite some time. Therefore, we think search engines will continue to be around for a long, long time, and website content and tags will still need to spell out to them exactly what services, products, and solutions an organization offers and in what geography it does so.

Reach Out To Our Team Of SEO Experts For Help

As stated above, we believe current SEO best practices will remain so for the foreseeable future. By visiting the Ponderings section of our website. and scrolling down to the “Categories” section, you can search on blog posts about SEO to learn just what some of those best practices are, but our team is always here to help you understand and implement them.

Learn more about our SEO services, and/or schedule a complimentary SEO discussion with our Boston SEO Company.

Acceptance of Circumstances, Being Found on Google, competitive advantage, content marketing, digital marketing agency, fundraising/development, keywords, landing page, landing pages, lead generation, marketing best practices, marketing consultant, Marketing Planning, meta tags, organic SEO, pull marketing, sales, Search Engine Optimization, search terms, SEO, SEO tags, strategic planning, target audiences, Target Marketing, Understanding Your Environment, User experience, website

Is Your Website Holidays-SEO-Ready?

2023 Holiday Season Marketing Update

Update: While the content below was originally written in and related to 2022, the message of this post is still very relevant to 2023 and the 2023 holiday shopping season. As we expressed in a previous blog post, if you’re an organization that offers experiences that can either be enjoyed as part of a holiday activity/event one participates in with family or friends and/or an organization who offers experiences that could be given as a gift — experiential gifts/experience presents continue to be quite hot — make sure you capitalize on that by including “things to do” and “experience gift” type terms in your website content. Need a list of experience-related terms to include? Reach out and we’ll share one with you!

2022 SEO Planning to Capitalize On Holiday Shopping

Where did 2022 go? It’s hard to believe it’s late October, and that means that consumers are already starting their holiday shopping. Regardless of whether your target audiences are shopping for Christmas, Hanukkah, or some other holiday celebrated towards the end of the calendar year, it would be a huge marketing mistake to not capitalize on the year-end uptick in online shopping by making sure your website ranks as well as possible for terms related to it.

While the focus of this post is related to retail, e-commerce, and B2C organizations offering physical products, as you read thru it, you’ll see there are applications for organizations trying to sell services, tickets to events, or even looking for someone to make a donation to their non-profit organization as a gift to someone else.

SEO Tactics For The Holidays

Below are both easy, and more time-consuming/complex SEO tasks your organization should complete by early November to support having a successful holiday sales season.

  • Conduct keyword research to determine the search phrases your target audiences are using most related to holiday shopping or holiday gift giving. If you don’t have access to a keyword planning/research tool, reach out and we will share holiday-shopping-related keyword research with you that we already conducted for FREE (a more extensive list than what we share further on in our post.) That’s our holiday gift to you!
  • Incorporate high-volume keywords (search terms) that are relevant to your target audience in:
    • the public-facing content found on a holiday-related landing page (if you plan to have specials/sales/discounts or want to promote certain items that make great holiday gifts) and/or incorporate such terms on existing product-specific pages.
    • website product and landing page headers (H1 and H2), as appropriate.
    • page title tags, particularly if you have a distinct landing page or several such pages for holiday shopping and specials.
  • Use structured data to support your products appearing at the top of Google search results when someone searches on a very specific product need like “yellow pocketbook.” As a result of the aforementioned fall 2022 algorithm change, use of Google “Shopping ads,” a Google Merchant Center Account and/or Google Surfaces is no longer mandatory to have your products shown to individuals who are shopping. This article details Google’s reason for making the change and where your product information may appear when you properly use “structured data.”

The above task/tactic may be a more complicated and difficult one for your organization and may require your website developer’s help. You can learn more about structured data (also known as “schema markup”) via these resources:

Google Search Podcast

Crowdcontent.com

How To Incorporate High-volume Holiday-Shopping Keywords In Your Website Content

Recent holiday-shopping keyword research we conducted indicated the following as being among some of the highest-volume search terms used related to holiday shopping or gift shopping, in general (the number shown represents the average # of monthly searches in Google for that term):

  • gifts for men – 301,000
  • gifts for mom – 201,000
  • gifts for dad – 135,000
  • gifts for women – 135,000
  • Christmas gifts for mom – 90500
  • Gifting ideas for men – 90500
  • mens gifts ideas – 90500
  • gift ideas for women – 90500
  • mom Christmas gifts – 90500
  • women’s gifts ideas – 90500
  • women’s gifts for men – 74000
  • Christmas gifts for men – 74000
  • Gifts for mens Christmas – 74000
  • Christmas gifts for dad – 49500
  • Gifts for girlfriends – 49500
  • Christmas gifts for boyfriend – 40500
  • Christmas gifts for womens – 40500
  • Gifts for womens Christmas – 40500
  • Gifts for wife Christmas – 33100
  • Best Men gifts – 33100
  • Gift ideas for mom – 33100
  • Husbands gifts – 33100
  • Unique gifts – 33100
  • Best Christmas gifts 2021 (note you can use this phrase but change to 2022) – 33100
  • Gift for Christmas for wife – 33100
  • Unique gifts for men — 27100
  • Christmas gift idea for her — 27100
  • Christmas gifts for a girlfriend — 27100
  • Christmas gift ideas for her — 27100
  • Best gifts for men 2021 (change to 2022) — 27100
  • Best gifts for women 2021 (change to 2022) — 27100
  • Christmas Gifts 2021 (change to 2022) — 27100
  • Christmas gf gifts (change to 2022) (reminder people use acronyms like bff, bf in searches) — 27100
  • Gift ideas for boyfriend – 22200
  • Gift ideas for dad – 22200
  • Best gifts for mom – 22200
  • Top gifts for guys – 22200
  • Best gifts for moms – 22200
  • Secret santa gift ideas – 22200
  • Fun gift – 22200
  • Ideas gift boyfriend – 22200
  • Christmas gift teenagers – 22200
  • Gifts for husbands Christmas — 18000
  • Best gifts for dad — 18000
  • Best gifts for dads — 18000
  • Gift ideas for girlfriend — 18000
  • Unique gifts for women — 18000
  • Christmas gift ideas for mom — 14800
  • Ideas for mens stocking stuffers — 14800
  • Good gifts for mom—14800
  • Gift ideas for wife — 14800
  • Christmas gift ideas for moms — 14800
  • Unique Christmas gifts — 14800
  • Secret santa gifts — 14800
  • Mom’s Christmas gift ideas — 14800
  • Christmas gifts to her — 14800
  • Christmas gift ideas for him — 12100
  • Cool guys gifts — 12100
  • Cool gifts for guys — 12100
  • Presents for mom — 12100
  • Gifts for mother — 12100
  • Women best gift — 12100
  • Best gifts for women — 12100
  • Gadgets for men — 12100
  • Cool Christmas gift — 12100
  • Christmas fun gift — 12100
  • Christmas gift ideas 2021 (change to 2022) — 12100
  • Best gift 2021 (change to 2022) — 12100
  • Gift ideas him Christmas — 12100

As mentioned above, we are glad to provide a much more extensive list of holiday shopping terms and their associated average monthly searches in Google. You can e-mail us at gail.moraski@allintheresults.com to have the list sent to you. As we share all the time with our new SEO clients and attendees of our SEO classes, and as we did in this previous blog post, keyword research can also help you identify new products, services or solutions you should offer.

As alluded to above, be sure to use the term 2022 once or several times related to holiday shopping, and also be sure to include terms for non-Christmas holidays that are celebrated in December. Plus, think about what acronyms or abbreviations someone might use related to a loved, such as “bff” for “best friends forever.”

Before you begin incorporating high-volume keywords in your content, think about whom would most likely be the recipient of a gift of your product, services, event or class tickets, or a donation, and use terms that the searcher of your product or service might use. Let’s say you offer hand-made jewelry for women, you’d want your site to rank well for terms above like “Christmas gifts to her”  and “Christmas gifts for mom” and should incorporate such or similar terms in your website content. 

We’re Here To Help You Rank Well For Holiday Shopping Search Terms

Got questions or need our help. Reach out today as holiday shopping has already begun!

alt-tags, Being Found on Google, blog, Blog, Blogging, competitive advantage, digital marketing agency, keywords, lead generation, marketing best practices, Marketing Planning, Objectives Setting, ongoing digital audits, online presence, organic SEO, pull marketing, push marketing, sales, Search Engine Optimization, search terms, SEO, SEO tags, target audiences, technical SEO, website

Why Combining Keyword Research With An SEO Audit Is A Recipe For SEO Success

Anyone who knows me well, knows I love watching cooking shows on Food Network, particularly ones where competitors have to combine ingredients that are given to them to make a dish that is appealing to both the tongues and the eyes of the particular show’s judges. Yeah, I’ll admit it, I’m watched pretty much every episode of “Beat Bobby Flay,” and countless episodes of “Chopped.”

So, what does food have to do with me, my company, and search engine optimization (SEO)? While my digital marketing agency isn’t just an SEO company, we’ve definitely gotten to be known, particularly in the last five years, for helping organizations (both for-profit and non-profit) in the Greater Boston area and beyond be found better and rank better on Google. Due to more than 10 years of being responsible for how websites rank in Google and other search engines, I’ve learned thru hands-on experience what combination of ingredients, i.e., what SEO tactics/activities, make for a winning SEO recipe!

Keyword Research: Your First and Most Important SEO Ingredient

I’ve given to, or shared with, Massachusetts chambers of commerce and SCORE chapters, as well as existing and prospective clients, a number of SEO presentations about the importance of keyword research. I’ve also written blog posts about it, and have a Word doc I’d be glad to share with you if you reach out to me to ask for it (hey, we don’t want to give out all the secret ingredients in our special SEO sauce too easily!) As we’ve shared in all the aforementioned documents and activities, keyword research ALWAYS needs to be a first step or ingredient in implementing an effective SEO strategy and recipe.

Even if you believe you already know what search terms (known as keywords) your various target audiences are entering into Google’s search engine to identify an organization or individual that offers the products, services, or solutions to problems you do, you should still make the time to confirm your intuitions about target audience’s search behaviors are accurate for these two key reasons:

  • you may be ranking well or trying to rank well for terms that target audiences are truly searching on, but are you missing out on terms that audiences are searching even more frequently on (high-volume search terms), and therefore, missing out on being found for desirable, relevant search terms because you don’t include those in your website content, page headers, meta tags, or other SEO real estate?
  • while you believed prior to keyword research completion that individuals were actively/regularly searching to identify an organization that offers the products, services, and solutions you do, your keyword research ends up indicating that the number of people entering relevant terms into Google is very low or negligible. The aforementioned scenario means all the SEO tactics in the world aren’t going to solve an immediate challenge of wanting and needing to generate more sales and leads for your organization since a “push” vs. “pull” strategy is warranted. You’re not going to drive a lot of “organic search” (search engine) traffic to your site, so traffic to your site will need to come from clicks on social media posts, display ads, links/banner ads on other external sites, e-blasts, and other marketing activities that put the idea of your products, services, and solutions in the minds of relevant target audiences who aren’t actively searching to find you.

Keyword research allows you to take a preliminary set of keywords/search terms you believe your audiences are searching on, and generate a much larger list of relevant search terms and the average # of times a month someone is entering that particular term into Google, for a particular geography. By reviewing this research, organizations can identify the keywords for which they most want to be found, and then make sure, as explained above, that those terms are included in SEO tactics/activities such as meta tags and public-facing website content and headers.

SEO Audit: An Ingredient That Adds Depth To Your SEO Recipe and Strategy

My Greater Boston SEO company employs a paid vs. free SEO audit tool to accurately determine for which of the keywords/search terms our clients most want to rank in a particular geography (identified thru the keyword research process above) they already rank well. We used to conduct SEO site audits for clients manually, but as our client list grew and the number of terms for which clients wanted to rank grew, we knew we needed to, and did invest in, a more cost- and time-efficient way to conduct SEO audits.

I consider an organization to rank particularly well for a particular keyword in Google if a listing with a link to its website or its Google My Business Profile/Google Search & Maps listing appears in the first 10 – 12 listings (for a particular geography) that Google serves up for the high-volume keyword in-question, i.e., appears on the first page of Google search results. I consider an organization to rank well, versus particularly well, if a listing with a link to its website or Google My Business Profile/Google Search and Maps appears within the first 25 listings Google serves up for desirable search terms, i.e., on the first two pages of Google Search results.

Identifying the intersection of relevant high-volume search terms and ranking on Google on pages BEYOND the first two (in positions 26 or higher in Google, and depending on the nature of an organization’s products and services, it may be critical to rank in position 1 – 12 in search results) allows us to know where there are areas for SEO improvement — therefore, areas where our client could be experiencing sweeter SEO success and for what terms we need to apply our secret SEO sauce to support ranking better in the future for those important keywords. The aforementioned secret sauce includes, but is not limited to, applying tactics such as employing the high-volume keywords in meta tags, page headers, and page content.

Why You’ll Want and Need To Repeat Your SEO Audit

Once you’ve set up your initial SEO audit, you’ll want to repeat it monthly to see if and how your organization ranks for the high-volume keywords regarding which you’re applying a lot of your SEO energy. Repeating this SEO audit will allow you to continue to tweak your SEO strategy and where you spend your SEO time, so that you continue to rank better and better for the keywords that are most important to the success of your organization and to your target audiences. Read why SEO is not a one and done marketing activity.

Why You Need This Winning SEO Ingredient Combo

Why does combining keyword research with an SEO audit make for a winning SEO recipe? Why spend time trying to rank well in Google for relevant, high-volume terms you’re already ranking well for? Sure, SEO is not a one and done marketing tactic and you should continue to employ appropriate-to-the-page-or-post-in-question content, headers, and page title tags that include those keywords for which you already rank well, but why not put the majority of your SEO energy into trying to rank well for high-volume search terms your organization currently isn’t ranking well for so you’re not missing out on important opportunities to reach your various target audiences?

Here’s an example from my own business. Two high-volume keywords I want my own site to rank well for are “digital marketing agency Boston” (average monthly search volume whole U.S. = 480/month), and “Boston SEO company” (average monthly search volume whole U.S. also = 480/month) since both of the aforementioned keywords have the highest average monthly search volumes among keywords/search terms that are relevant to the products, services, and solutions to problems we offer. Based on an audit we conducted today, we learned that we rank better for the term “digital marketing agency Boston” than we do for “Boston SEO company” — hey, Boston is fortunate to be a place that a very large number of SEO experts call home, so we are always competing with the best of the best SEO experts to rank for relevant terms. Anyhow, given the aforementioned audit information, while we’ll want to continue our efforts at ranking for “digital marketing agency Boston,” we’ll put extra effort into tactics to rank for “Boston SEO company (for the time being anyhow since rankings constantly change and shift depending on your marketplace and competition to be served up for certain keywords.)

Continuing with our food metaphor, we know this was a lot to “digest,” We’d be glad to walk you thru a recent case study we put together about the above winning combo, so please don’t hesitate to use our calendar app to schedule a time to chat https://calendly.com/gail-moraski.

Being Found on Google, blog, Blog, Blogging, brand promise, content marketing, digital marketing agency, Google Ads, Google Analytics, integrated marketing, keywords, Marketing Planning, online advertising, online presence, organic SEO, paid search, Post-COVID-19 Marketing, pull marketing, push marketing, Results Analysis, sales, Search Engine Optimization, search terms, SEM, SEO, SEO tags, social media, social media strategy, social media voice, staying current, technical SEO, website

Our Favorite Marketing Blogs and E-Newsletters

Note: This post was updated on July 15, 2022 to also incorporate favorite marketing podcasts, and also on November 25, 2022 to incorporate key places to obtain information on the new G4 Google Analytics property type (vs. UA/Universal Google Analytics property type).

Anyone who provides digital marketing services, like our digital marketing agency, or has a role at a organization where they are responsible for the planning, execution, monitoring, and reporting on of digital marketing tactics, knows that the landscape keeps changing. New social media platforms get introduced. The interfaces or management tools you use to execute activities or monitor results change regularly. It can all have your head spinning.

To help you “keep calm and carry on,” we thought we’d share a list of some of the organizations whose websites we go to when we are in need of answers and help or whose e-newsletters we read to stay on top of all things digital marketing and e-commerce. Since Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are two of our Greater-Boston-Area digital marketing agency’s specialties — we love any digital marketing work that is technical or analytical — you’ll see a number of websites that focus on those topics below. Note: use the scroll bar underneath the table below to see right-most columns.

Cheerful, Pretty Woman Reading A Book Related To List Of Best Digital Marketing Blogs and E-newsletters

We hope the below makes your life as a digital marketer easier and welcome ideas for organizations we should add. We expect to continue to update this list as we discover more digital marketing experts to learn from. We’re all in this together as the digisphere continues to evolve! Note: use the scroll bar underneath the table below to see right-most columns.

Best Digital Marketing Blogs and E-newsletters

Publication/URLSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM/Google Ads)Social MediaE-mail MarketingOther
https://searchengineland.com/X
https://www.emarketer.com/XE-commerce, Retail
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/X
https://www.searchenginewatch.com/X
https://iab.comBranding, Consumer Goods Research
https://thirddoormedia.com/
XIncludes A Variety of Brands That Address Marketing Technology and Conferences
https://www.hootsuite.com/X
https://www.marketingprofs.com/Marketing events and Training
https://corp.smartbrief.com/Industry Updates, Including: Small business, Food, Finance, Healthcare, Education
https://www.smarketingconnect.com/XXXMarketing & Sales Podcasts and Training, Opportunities To Meet and Collaborate With Other Marketing Professionals
https://npdigital.com/XXX
https://www.seoblog.com/
X
https://ahrefs.com/XContent Creation & Marketing
https://seo-hacker.com/X
Favorite Digital Marketing Blogs & E-newsletters

Since we shared the info. above, we’ve come across some other very helpful and informative sites, including the following:

Digital Marketing Podcasts:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/bwg-strategy-llc/

SEO Guide For Lawyers:

https://www.camginc.com/services/seo-lawyers-personal-injury/

G4 Analytics/GA4 Analytics Info. Straight From Google:

Google Analytics Official Blog

https://blog.google/products/marketingplatform/analytics/

Google Analytics Help Center

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9164320

alt-tags, Being Found on Google, keywords, marketing best practices, meta tags, organic SEO, Search Engine Optimization, search terms, SEO tags, technical SEO, Uncategorized

Making Infographics and Other Website Images Consumable by Search Engines

Infographics — images that are designed to condense and consolidate a bunch of complex information, and present that information in a fashion that makes it understandable by a variety of target audiences — have a variety of plusses, including, but not limited to, the following key ones:

  • they tend to get shared by others, whether it be in a social media post or on a website, so they have a lot of potential to go viral
  • they provide a vehicle for graphically/visually educating audiences on topics or concepts that may be hard to grasp when simply presented via text

The downside of infographics is when they are added to website pages without what’s known as “embedded text” or an “alt-tag,” they:

  • aren’t accessible to those with vision impairments or learning disabilities who use a screen reader to crawl a site and read the text aloud to them
  • can’t be crawled and indexed by search engines, so even though they may contain many high-volume search terms (keywords) for which you want target audiences to find your site, Google, Bing, and other search engines won’t know that the images contain those keywords or reward you from a search standpoint for using them

Spoon-feeding Google What It Needs To Index Your Infographic

Thankfully, there’s an easy solution to the infographic challenge described above. Regardless of what CMS (content management solution)/website platform your site resides on, your website solution should provide for the opportunity to enter an “alt-tag” or “image description” to describe to search engines or screen readers what an image is all about. This is an opportunity associated with all images used on your site, not just infographics.

How To Write An Effective Alt-tag For Website Images

So, what are some best practices for writing an alt-tag to accompany an image on your site? KEEP IN MIND THAT WITH ALT-TAGS YOU ARE BASICALLY DESCRIBING THE PICTURE TO GOOGLE’S AND OTHER SEARCH ENGINES’ SPIDERS/CRAWLERS WHO CAN’T SEE. Therefore, it’s important to adhere to the following:

  • Keep the tag simple, clean, and authentic, plus descriptive. Imagine describing the image to someone who has their eyes closed.
  • Don’t overstuff/use too many high-volume keywords. Google will ding you for that. Focus on one or two and only use them if you would fairly naturally use them in describing the image in-question.
  • You don’t need to include the terms “image of” or “photo of” in your alt tag – just by the fact that Google is crawling an alt tag, it knows it’s related to an image or photo.
  • Keep to 125 characters (including spaces) or less (you can use the “Word Count” function in MS Word to check for this.)
  • In general, only include the name of your business if you are writing an alt-tag to go with your Logo artwork/image. If you were describing a picture to someone based on what you are seeing, unless the name of the company were in the image/photo, you would not know what organization was associated with the photo and wouldn’t naturally mention it. Exceptions to this might be a photo where you described a staff member of your organization and the alt tag included a phrase like “Gail Snow Moraski of Results Communications & Research donates a check to…”

Alt-Tag Example

The below image which is found in my blog post “Defining Your Differentiator With Detail” employs an alt-tag “a bunch of white balloons with one red balloon standing out and rising above the white ones.”

a bunch of white balloons with one red balloon standing out and rising above the white ones.

For more help on writing alt tags, visit https://www.cincopa.com/blog/the-dos-and-donts-of-writing-image-alt-tags/

An Additional Opportunity To Increase The Positive SEO Impact Of An Image

When and where appropriate, consider hyperlinking your images, so that when a visitor clicks on the image, it will take them to another page on your site. Google rewards sites from an SEO standpoint that effectively use “internal links” to support a good user experience (note that user experience is expected to be a key component of Google’s search algorithm in 2021). That said, don’t “link” just for the sake of linking. Only include links when image clicks take site visitors to appropriate content.

Help Implementing Alt-Tags and Other Organic/Technical SEO Tactics

Our team is always here to either train your team on implementing organic SEO tactics, such as those that are the subject of this post, or implement such tactics on your organization’s behalf. So, don’t hesitate to reach out. We adore a good SEO challenge!