Finding Digital Balance

So, you have created a fantastic website.   The user experience is great, the content is fresh and relevant, it loads quickly and it’s mobile friendly.  You’re all set right?  Not quite.  You have set a strong foundation (technical SEO) and constructed the building (on-page SEO), but you need to help more people find you.  Off-page SEO (the promotion) “involves improving search engine and user perception of a site's popularity” (Moz, 2021). This is the digital equivalent of “word-of-mouth referrals from current customers” in a local, in-person scenario (Moz, 2021).  You can read more about a few aspects of on page SEO and technical SEO in previous posts.  Why is off-page, or off-site, SEO important? Though we don’t know exactly how Google ranks content, Moz found that “data from [their] Search Engine Ranking Factors study show that off-site SEO-related factors likely carry more than 50% of the ranking factor weight.” (2021). But off-page SEO isn’t only about search en

You might be asking: but if my business only serves the community it’s based in, why do I need an online presence? Why should I even care about SEO? These are great questions. “Even for businesses with a local customer base, online visibility is essential” (Kosaka, 2019). Think about where you go when you are looking for something locally. Especially in a post-COVID world, consumers aren’t walking around discovering businesses. But they are spending time scrolling around the internet. “86% of people use the internet to find local businesses” (Kosaka, 2019). So, it is important to have an online presence and SEO helps you get noticed when consumers are searching for you. Last week we talked about creating a consistent SEO practice to compete with overwhelm. This week let’s dig in a bit deeper and look at how a small business is using SEO to its advantage. SEO Case Study: Riverstone Books First, a little bit of background information.  Riverstone Books is a small, independent bookstore

If you are like me, just thinking about SEO is overwhelming.    SEO stands for  search engine optimization.  It might sound like a fantasy entity   that you know is important, but have no idea how to tame. Or maybe you have no clue as to what it is in the first place. For a long time, I understood the meaning of the words “search engine optimization” but I struggled to comprehend what SEO truly meant let alone how to use it to my advantage.    If that sounds like you, don’t worry.    Let’s start with a quick break down of SEO.   According to Moz,  SEO  is the “practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic, as well as exposure to your brand, through non-paid (also known as "organic") search engine results” (Moz, 2021-a). To do this we, as business owners and marketers, need to know what our audience is looking for, what questions they are asking, and what solutions we can provide. Additionally, we need to know how to make sure the right audience finds

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by social media? It can feel like there are so many decisions that must be made. They ALL seem urgent. (Spoiler: They aren’t.)     You have probably heard a lot of things about social media. You may have thought: •     I need to be on ALL the social media platforms. •     To stay relevant, I need to be on the newest, most popular platforms.  •     I don’t have content for social media. •     I need to have the right hashtags and use as many as I can. •     When my audience engages, I have to respond immediately.   Luckily, they are all FALSE. Simply reading those myths can be overwhelming!   Even though social media evolves a rapid pace, as  HubSpot  says “it's important to identify myth from reality in order to create an effective social media strategy” (Wainwright, 2021).    Before we debunk a few of those myths, let’s start at the very beginning…  Maria (aka Julie Andrews) says it’s a very good place to start.      What is Social Media?   Social me