What's the Importance of Offpage SEO?

Increasing your organic traffic takes more than onpage SEO

That’s the easy stuff that you likely have nailed by now. You’re doing all the right things to increase your organic traffic. Things like: 

• Writing really good content. 
• Developing metadescriptions that include your focus keyword. 
• Identifying keywords and phrases and using these in your headings and subheads, in your titles and metadescriptions.
• Creating smart inner links among your pages. 
• Optimizing images by labeling them with your company name and the image’s description and providing descriptive alt tags. 

But this isn’t enough. You also need to be doing off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is an essential part of a successful SEO strategy—it’s the activity that’s OFF your website’s pages. It’s your total online and offline presence. It’s your social media sites where you’re posting on a consistent basis. It includes podcasts and the reviews you’re getting on your Google Business Profile. If you’re not into endless self-promotion, asking for reviews can be uncomfortable. Get over it. All of us are reading reviews these days before making both big and small decisions. 

What is the importance of offpage SEO

What’s most important about offpage SEO is understanding that it’s the activity that takes place OFF the webpage. It’s the stuff you’re doing away from your website to build your brand. 

Off-page SEO includes brand building and PR. That’s getting out in front of the public. Pitching articles to local publications or industry newsletters. Looking for opportunities to be a guest blogger or speaker. It includes networking, meeting people and growing your presence. 

According to Whitespark’s 2021 Local Search Ranking Factors report, reviews can influence both the Google Local Pack and Local Finder rankings as well as local organic rankings. You do want to be part of local search and show up on Google’s Local Pack. Podcasts are part of offpage SEO, just as influencer marketing is is. 

You’ve seen the Local Pack a gazillion times

You didn’t know it was a product in the search space. Let’s say you’re going to be in Athens for a month and you’re looking for cafes with wifi near your airbnb. (My local search for the month of May.) You’re served up a map with three listings, your location and that of three cafes. This is your Local Pack. I found a delightful little café in my neighborhood that became my go-to home with yummy food and friendly people, thanks to Local Pack!

GBP ranking factors guidelines

• Relevance: Complete and detailed business information will help Google better understand your business and match your listing to relevant searches. 
• Distance: How far each potential business is from the location terms used in a search. Google prioritizes by location. 
• Prominence: Your overall online presence. More reviews and positive ratings will improve your local ranking.

Reviews are another important component of offpage SEO

A Google Business Profile (GBP) review well may be one of the first places a user encounters your name and brand. 79% of people said they trust reviews as much as a personal recommendation from friends or family. Your GBP acts as a mini-website or citation that is displayed on the right-hand side of the Google search results page, which business owners can manage. It’s building a relationship within the Google environment. 

Feedback from your clients will produce more keywords and phrases—your company name shows up again and words about your services. It’s always a good thing to be drilling down into this big, robust Google network. That’s why I believe in using these Google tools. You can use a vast inventory of proprietary apps for just about everything, including keyword research. But Google owns the search space. Using their tools means that you’re in synch with their way of doing things. Take advantage of this.

We can help optimize your website. Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists.

SEO: Forget Keywords. Think Topics

 Search engine optimization (SEO) keeps evolving. It’s still about showing up in search, making your website more visible to those who are looking for the solutions that you provide. But the techniques to improve your rankings have changed, and it has to do with those notorious algorithms that are constantly on the move. Search engines have grown more sophisticated; they’re now using updated algorithms and practices to determine the contextual meaning behind keyword-based searches.

Search engines exist to solve your problems . . . 

And they’re getting much better at predicting what you want. The old days of randomly filling up a page with keywords is over—search engines recognize this for what it is—shameless keyword stuffing. Good content is nonnegotiable. In order to rank you, search engines look for title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure and inbound links. Also figuring in are navigation structure and site design–these are things we can easily execute ourselves. 

Build your SEO strategy around topics, not keywords

Keywords should feel natural, not forced, but your focus should be on the intent of your audience. Build your SEO strategy around topics, not keywords. If you do that, you’ll be naturally optimizing for keywords. For example, if you’re writing about planning a wedding, you don’t need to list every single wedding detail—champagne, catering, food, cake, flowers, photographer, music and all the other details. Google, in all of its wisdom, knows this. It understands the topic of wedding planning.

It’s not just about your website; building backlinks

Search engines work on your overall web presence, and backlinks are an important component. Any link from someone else’s website to yours (or any other site) is a backlink. Backlinks help Google find new pages on your site faster, and they’re associated with increased credibility and trust. 

How to build backlinks? Look for opportunities to be a guest blogger and include a link back to your website. Links should be from websites and content that are relevant to your focus. A really easy way to build links is to post your blogs to your Google Business Page. You can post a blog excerpt with a Learn More button and link back to your website. Easy. 

Your social channels are an important part of your SEO value 

Social can have a big impact on your organic search. Think about what goes on with our social activity—sharing posts, tweeting and retweeting. It could be through a Facebook friend, Twitter follower, a connection through another social network or something totally unrelated. Sometimes social search will even prioritize content that has been shared by an influencer. 

Our challenge is creating search experience optimization. We want users to not only find our websites but to stay there, drill down through our content and come back later and become a customer.

Does an SEO analysis and upgrade of your website need to be part of your marketing strategy? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists. 

Clubhouse: The Hot, New Audio-Only App

Clubhouse is the hot new social app that’s generating buzz from those who suffer from FOMO-disease (Fear of Missing Out). This invite-only, audio-based iPhone app is like listening in on someone else’s phone call. After a year of Covid privation, Clubhouse fills a need by creating community. 

What sets this social app apart: It’s audio-only 

Clubhouse has gotten some media attention from celebrities who’ve joined the Clubhouse rooms and immediately drawn big crowds. The biggest draw was uber-rich Elon Musk, whose Clubhouse appearance broke the 5,000-person limit for a room. Users tuned in to secondary listening rooms and live-streamed on other platforms to follow the Musk conversation. 

Clubhouse lets you listen in, or you could get called on as a participant in the chat. But this is a virtual clubhouse; each discussion takes place in a different room of the house. You can host chat rooms, browse the discussions going on in each room, look at who’s participating in each, and pop in and out of chats.

Clubhouse has also hosted a live reading of The Lion King, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recently joined a Clubhouse chat. Other Clubhouse celebs include Oprah, Kevin Hart and Chris Rock. California Congressman Ted Lieu and retired Yankee pitcher CC Sabathia have also joined the Clubhouse discussions. 

At the Clubhouse, it’s celebrities who draw attention

Clubhouse hype and its audience continue to grow. Some stats that will get your attention

This app is still in its infancy—it will celebrate its first birthday in April 2021. 

• Clubhouse has about 2M weekly active users, as of the beginning of March. 
• Clubhouse has just nine employees.

The app was initially valued at $100M. How is this possible?

• It began with 1,500 beta users in April 2020.
• Clubhouse’s owners haven’t done any significant press; it doesn’t have a real website. 
• Yet Clubhouse was valued at $100M in May 2020 after an initial round of Series A funding with a $12M investment from VC Andreessen Horowitz.
• Clubhouse has a large population of celebrities and elite users—exclusivity is, of course, a large part of its appeal. As it grows, it will lose some of that exclusivity. How will it continue to set itself apart? 
• Clubhouse remains invite-only. New users can allocate a select number of invites to whomever they choose. Some are selling Clubhouse invites on eBay for up to $125 each.

Join in the after-hours house party

At 10ish every night, there’s a group of 30-50 people in The Back of the Bus room. What goes on there? A host makes sure there’s no tech talk. Topics can range from dating advice to tarot card readings. 

Further contributing to the app’s exclusivity: No Android version yet

Given the app’s rapid growth, it’s easy to see why investors are watching Clubhouse closely. The app recently raised a new round of funding on a $1B valuation. As Rachel Maddow says, “Watch this space!”

Time to talk marketing? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists. 

Is Facebook Good For The World?

 

Has Facebook Lost Its Way?

Let’s start by giving Facebook credit for its attempt to combat disinformation. But has it done enough? The answer, increasingly, seems to be no. Facebook’s own staff, who have historically been positive about the platform’s impact, are now raising questions about the application’s broader social influence.

According to Buzzfeed, Facebook’s semiannual “Pulse Survey”, taken by nearly 50,000 employees in October, showed workers were losing faith that the company was improving the world. Only 51% of respondents said they believed that Facebook had a positive influence on the world.

Facebook on the wrong side of history

Facebook engineer Ashok Chandwaney quit the company over its failure to address concerns around racism, disinformation and incitements to violence. Other senior Facebook staff left the company over morality concerns and the direction the company is taking. Facebook can be a forum to do good, yet many believe that Facebook has no real interest in cracking down on dangerous and divisive hate speech because it sparks debate and interaction. Engagement is what keeps people coming back, though anger spills over into real-world incendiary incidents.

QAnon: Facebook missed an opportunity to do the right thing

QAnon is a dangerous group of conspiracy peddlers who found a home on Facebook in 2016, and there are millions of members and followers. Experts had long been warning Facebook about the group, yet only last month did they finally take down these pages. There were countless warnings, yet it took four years before Facebook finally acted on this. 

Many recall Zuckerberg’s speech to Georgetown University in October 2019

In this speech, Zuckerberg essentially capitulated, explaining that he was not responsible for monitoring what people were posting on the Facebook platform. “I believe in giving people a voice . . . with all of our individual voices and perspectives, we can bring the world closer together.” Sorry Mark. Incendiary rhetoric and disinformation aren’t bringing the world closer together. They’re tearing the world apart. Engagement seems to drive all major decisions at Facebook, with little regard for values such as honesty, authenticity and contributing to the greater good. Let’s not forget the endless data problems that seem to plague Facebook.

It’s difficult to conclude that Zuckerberg is motivated by anything other than profits. Congress has made lame efforts to regulate these big tech companies. In the case of Facebook, without penalties from enforcement, we’ll have more empty platitudes. In a better time, this might not be necessary. 

We’ve written about Mark Zuckerberg’s cozying up to Donald Trump

Zuckerberg clearly has no interest in being hauled in front of Congress again for long hours of testimony. If forging a relationship with Trump was a path to circumvent that, he was happy to take it. We’re now ushering in a new administration, and our social media companies may be in for more accountability. 

Marketing 2021

Everyone right now seems to be in the process of updating his/her website, including me! This is the perfect time to develop new marketing strategies or start working on a new site. Contact Top of Mind Marketing. Writers and content marketing specialists.

TikTok Steps Up to Protect Users from Body-Shaming

I’ve been fascinated by TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app for which I am so not their demographic. In its relatively short life span TikTok has spurred controversy. In February, the Pentagon banned soldiers from downloading the app. And if you’re not paying attention, TikTok has become a flash point in rising U.S.-China tensions. U.S. politicians worry that parent company ByteDance would hand over American users’ data to Beijing or use the app to influence the 165 million Americans who have downloaded it. 

But here’s what got my attention: TikTok is stepping up

We see countless examples of irresponsible activity and abuse on our social channels. So this is an excellent example of corporate social responsibility, of one Chinese company championing an important cause. 

A recent report from The New York Times suggests that more than a third of TikTok’s U.S. users are aged 14 or younger–an extremely impressionable audience. The TikTok application has filters and editing tools, so users can dramatically alter the videos of themselves that they’re posting. That means their audience may be seeing dramatically enhanced and unrealistic images. And these are what impressionable young women will be comparing themselves to.

TikTok has taken a stand against body shaming

So get this: In the midst of a bitter election, a pandemic and a masked president rushing off to Walter Reed, TikTok has announced that it’s taking new steps to ensure that it’s protecting users from body-shaming and self-esteem issues. It’s placing bans on weight-loss ads and identifying new tools to connect users to professional services that assist with weight issues. Somebody at TikTok understands that food issues can be potentially life threatening. That for too many young women, self-esteem is tied to how they look. To being thin.  

TikTok has updated its ad policies

TikTok is now banning all ads for fasting apps and weight-loss supplements. There are restrictions on ads that “promote a harmful or negative body image” and ads that make exaggerated claims about diet and weight-loss products. 

New policies include:

• Weight management products that can only reach users age 18+.
• Stronger restrictions on weight loss and implied weight loss claims.
• Limiting irresponsible claims made by products that promote weight loss management or control.

Granted, some of these regulations are going to be difficult to implement and will require human interaction. So get this: TikTok is apparently adding 25,000 new staff in the U.S., many of whom may be dedicated to enforcing this new policy. 

Who will win the TikTok sweepstakes? 

Oracle is leading the bid to buy a stake in TikTok. They’re hashing out the deal, which Trump has tentatively endorsed, but resistors include the Chinese government. No one expects this to be confirmed before the November election.

A good time to be thinking about a website

I don’t know anyone right now who isn’t in the process of updating his/her website, including me! If COVID’s given you some downtime, this might be the time to start working on a new site. Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists.