411 Locals Named Among 10 Best Local SEO Companies for March 2016

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Leading global digital marketing industry ranking platform, FindBestSEO, has released its latest list of Top 10 Best Local SEO Companies for March of 2016. Las Vegas-based internet advertising agency 411 Locals made the cut for this term, an accolade based on a number of factors crucial to the field. Despite being relatively new to the industry, the company earned high marks in each of the categories considered by FindBestSEO in its monthly assessments.

“We’re passionate about our fields of expertise and dedicated to helping local businesses improve their sales as well as their online presences,” said 411 Locals representative, Claudia Romero in regard to the company’s recent distinction, “This honor gives us not only affirmation that our efforts are being recognized by other experts in our field, but the drive to continue reaching for new heights on behalf of our clients.”

Companies appointed to the monthly FindBestSEO Top 10 Lists are evaluated based on thorough analysis of overall business practices, client experiences, processes, reporting and effective use of various marketing channels as well as previous campaign success stories. In addition to those elements, the company compares agencies’ cost-effectiveness. More than 100 companies in this realm around the world are scrutinized during each FindBestSEO selection process.

An official Google partner with offices in the United States, Europe and Asia, 411 Locals has received an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, the highest of grades among online advertising agencies. The company is currently accredited with the online success of more than 33,000 clients, landing it among the most notable agencies of this nature worldwide in the eight years since opening its doors. As a full-service firm, the company incorporates web design, SEO, online and mobile marketing, Social media, quality content and a range of other tactics in its campaigns customized for each client.

Romero concluded, “We’re the most trusted name in online marketing. Our ever-growing team of SEO experts, web designers, marketers and programmers are all highly experienced with degrees in their fields and are 100 percent dedicated to the success of our clients. We hold them to the highest standards per our Human resources policy. Despite the massive growth and success we’ve seen over the years, we remain committed to giving each and every client the personalized attention they deserve.”

About 411 Locals:

Providing tailor-made web design and marketing solutions with proven results measurable on Google, the expert team at 411 Locals incorporates an array of top-of-the-line strategies in their efforts to propel clients to success.

Long Content at All Cost Can Backfire – Why and What Is the Solution

One of the most frequently encountered problems that SEOs and freelancers are facing repeatedly is how to make a service page longer when the service itself is boring, straightforward, vague or some nauseating combination of those elements. Then the average SEO specialist finds comfort in the mantra: “Google loves longer content”. Well, that's not necessarily the case.

While it's clear that on average, long-form content wins engagement, climbs the SERP and triggers sharing, it does not make long-form content attractive. Or from another point of view, if it was true, then it would be like the false notion that books are better when they have lots of pages. Imagine if William Shakespeare only wrote poems about peasants toiling for the Crown, and if he used only the same fifteen or twenty words in every single poem. So what can we add up here? It is clear that:

Longer content doesn't equal great content;
Writing longer content shouldn't be your primary goal;
Longer content is not the one and only factor for higher rankings and more shares;

There are many factors that show the downside of that overall trend. It's the constant rise of abandonment rates, the shrinking attention spans and the modest percentage of people who actually read long content to its end. Furthermore, many of the latter not only skip the end paragraphs – they also scan through the body, without reading every word or sentence.

So what are the characteristics of readable and sharable content:

The right content answers the queries of the visitors and help them complete their goals;
It gives great user experience no matter what is the visitor's choice of browser or device;
Saves time by delivering the sought-after information and experience quickly;
Combines the aforementioned elements better than the competitors;

Now let's see some examples. First, you should create content that helps people and do it efficiently. You should match your content to your audience's needs and your business/personal goals. Hundreds of additional words will not help you reach your goals any more than ten more words. Never write an ultimate guide where a single image could more powerfully convey the same value. Just like actions speak louder than words, a single relevant picture is worth a thousand words.

Next, you should always made a clear distinction between user-friendly, content-friendly and SEO-friendly characteristics. These are three different nuances of your website and if one of those three pillars is crumbling, the end result will never be satisfying;

While content is king, the audience is the queen. And just like the queens from the classic novels, the audience wants the relevant information. And it wants it now. So if you still think that those long and detailed guides are worth more than shorter and smarter pieces of information, which are keyword-rich and have lots of multimedia, please reevaluate your strategy before it's too late.

What to Do with Internal Linking after the April 11th Google Warning

Most of you, as SEOs, face the same challenge over and over again – to consider who we link and what we link from our websites. And this week, Google announced the following: linking to unnatural looking sites or in unnatural patterns will penalize you. It's not something that nobody have  seen coming. Every once in a while  the search engine finds new ways to reduce PR and the overall value of your links for the sake of spam control. But what are the onsite aspects of this latest change and how we can get benefits?

It turns out that internal links will have more power in the future. In other words, Google will reward internal links in a new way. So let's see what are the possible scenarios for now and how you can build up a strategy that will take you ahead of the competition.

The Screaming Frog Strategy

1. Use Screaming Frog and analyze with it the Google Search Console Search Analytics data. If you notice that a page on a deeper level is earning an interesting amount of traffic, you can opt to neutralize some of the level-creating internal links to that page from pages in higher levels. For example, a blog post buried in the archive can have higher traffic because of a new "evergreen posts" blurbs in homepage;
2. Use Screaming Frog by downloading the InLinks report and use it with Fusion Tables in order to visualize what URLs represent the most relevant nodes, hence use those nodes as spots (if justified) for placing those internal links that can help a page you want to be crawled frequently and to earn more Page Authority via link equity redistribution;

The Good Internal Links Will Bring Positive Impact 

So besides checking the traffic changes and redistributing, you can provide navigation, link off to specific pages ans categories – all that for the sake of indexing and crawling. Eventually, it would lead to higher traffic. So what are the first insights after Google's April 11th announcement?

You don't need to think twice about adding another link or reference to a specific category page;
Internal links tend to have the largest impact on already authoritative sites: some high-authority websites already made such redesigns – linking to strong pages in orde4r to get many pages deep in your site structure to get crawled and indexed;
It's prudent to remove manipulative links: a word on a page, on category-level page or blog-level page is a visitor-friendly linking. On the opposite side, links stuffed into footers, in deeply index pages or paginated versions of things will hurt the ranking of your site;
The main principle is to do changes for SEO, which are beneficial to visitors as well. An XML sitemap is an exception, though;
Footer links can be replaced by sidebars and top navigation links. Even in-content links are a better option;
High-authority websites with well-developed footers are an exceptions: it works when non-anchor text links go to all the properties that your site owns and controls;   

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Keyword Research Part II: Methods of Keyword Research Different Than Using Keyword Planner

As I mentioned in the previous article, you have a few possible options to find new phrases and synonyms. And these options are not necessarily confined in the Keyword Planner of Google. In general, your possibilities for keyword research include:

1. The classical methods;
2. Forums;
3. Wiki;
4. Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools);

The Classical Methods include AdWords, checking competition (Ctrl+U for source of webpage) and Google Suggest.

Competition Research

Just open a competitor site and explore what kind of keywords he has used in his copy (text). Look in the headings, the beginning of the paragraphs, in image titles. You can also check the source of the web page (Ctrl+U). There you can look for “keyword” (use Ctrl+F) tag and check what they have entered. Bear in mind – not everyone is putting their keywords there. Then you can copy/paste those words in Google Keyword Planner (GKP). Do you remember that “Your landing page” section just under the field where you enter the words? Paste the competitor's URL there. Use the filters and you can get some really neat suggestions.

Google Suggest

Simply type your keyword in Google Search. At the bottom you will find a few suggestions from the engine. When you find something relevant, go one step deeper. There you can find even more synonyms. All of them you can put in GKP to see if the words are worth it.
Advanced Search

The methods above are rather basic and most of the other SEO specialists and writers will use them. So you need something unique. Here are a few suggestions where you can look for keywords:

Forums;
Wikis;
Articles, Reddit subreddits, Moz categories;
Google Webmaster Tools;
Pinterest boards;

Forums

There you can find content written by users. This is very useful, because you will know how a user calls a service. Every topic could be a potential niche and a potential article for your clients! When you find the right thread (use for example “keyword”+”forum/board/forums”) you can paste the URL in GKP. Wikis, competitor sites, Pinterest boards and other URLs can be used the same way.

Webmaster Tools

You can use them to check how people find your website. If you have a new one, it wouldn't be in much use in the beginning. But as soon as you gain some visits, queries or if you already have some, you will be able to see how the users have found your website. For example, you notice that 4 people have seen the site while searching for “app for cleaning house” and there is even one click. Let's say you haven't worked for this word and you have just discovered a new variation of a main phrase. Run in through GKP to check search volume.

411 Locals - SEO Experiment

411 Locals Keyword Research Part I: The Evergreen Method of SEO & Content Marketing

Let us take a deeper look into the keyword research. What are keywords? Those are the phrases the users enter in the search engines. With them they can find our websites and we, as SEOs and content marketers, must provide them with the best content possible. But the real question is “How to find those keywords?” All of us have some targets, websites, services to work for. This following method should be your starting point;
Keyword Planner

This is the basic tool you’re going to need. It will always be part of your future research, so it's essential to know how to use it. Just remember, this is not the actual search of the phrases. Those numbers are based on AdWords (ads in Google). There are four options you can choose from:

1. Search for New Keyword and ad group ideas;
2. Get search volume for a list of keywords or group them in ad groups;
3. Get traffic forecasts for a list of keywords;
4. Multiply keyword lists to get new keyword ideas;

You will mainly use the first of the aforementioned. The second is for search volume only. The fourth is great when you want to combine words. Let's check option number one.

Your product or service is the place where you enter your keywords. You can add them on different rows or with commas. Your Landing page is the place where you can add a URL, but more about that later. Targeting is the location you are targeting. You can choose the city – London, Sydney, Austin, or you can choose a bigger region – Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, etc. Negative Keywords is the place where you put words which you don't want to appear in the suggestion box. E.g – you want results for “carpet cleaning Las Vegas”, but you don't want results like “rug cleaning” to appear. In the negative keywords you enter “rug”. It won't show in the suggestions any more.

Keyword Filters – Here you get three options. The first one is Average monthly searches – you can choose whether the results to have a volume lower or higher than the value you have entered. The second is suggested bid, which is used for PPC campaigns. Ad impression share is also not so important from SEO point of view. But the bottom menu – Competition, is quite significant. Here you can choose the competition of the phrases. High means it is harder to rank for this word, Low is easier.

Keywords to Include – if you want some words to be in the suggestions, add them here. If you use the example above “carpet cleaning Las Vegas”, you can place “carpet” in this box. Now every suggestion will contain the phrase. This is how your result page should look like. Let's start from the top. Modify search is where you can change the phrases you have entered. Search volume trends is when you want to check how the same phrases work for mobile searches. 

Then you have Ad group ideas and Keyword ideas. What you should be more interested in is the second option. Here is where you can check each of the phrases you've entered and their average monthly searches as well as the competition. You can hover over the “?” boxes for more information. That chart icon shows you the search of the keyword for each month for the past year (when you hover). At the bottom you will see the suggested words. There could be hundreds of results. Use the filters to get the most on-point ones.

411 Locals 's Top Priorities for SEO Content Creation

As it's already a common knowledge among the SEO specialists, content is king and the audience is the queen. Creating good content itself is a process that deserves its own ranking factors. Below 411 Locals is showing you the top priorities you need to have in your mind when coming up with content marketing strategy.

Creating More Engaging Content

Having the attention-grabbing formula of success is the first and foremost priority when creating content. Setting yourself apart from the competition does not take a genius. You just need to follow these steps:

Write shorter sentences;
Use power words – Google a list and put it to use;
Utilize headings and subheadings;
Use a storytelling approach;
Involve your audience;
Be confident – IMAO works better than IMHO;
Use information from your niche more often;
Come up with a compelling title, shocking if needs be;

Better Understanding of What Content Is Effective – and What Isn't
As I mentioned before, the best way to measure the online impact of your content is the audience you're building around it. Never forget to publicize your articles and blog posts. Once you do it, use tools that track and show detailed data of your influence.

Finding Better Ways to Change the Purpose of Your Content-ma

If you are a content creator with more than four years of experience, you will find out that most of your texts written in for example, 2012 are just floating around, without specific purpose. You can reforge those raw materials and publish them one more time, as soon as they go out of index.

Creating Visual Content

Visuals make the huge difference between useful information that stays unnoticed and the viral nonsense that everybody's talking about. Add visuals – videos, images, graphic content and more.

Become a Storyteller

People remember stories, not facts. Incorporate your data, watered-down statistics and arguments into a story that will be touching to your audience. This is a tactic of content personalization and better understanding of your readers.

Content Curation

According to the Wikipedia definition, content curation is the process of gathering information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest. Services or people that implement content curation are called curators. Curation services can be used by businesses as well as end users.

Focus on Content Personalization

The content marketing space is full of bland writing that lacks distinction as well as a capacity for understanding a brand’s fit within its margin. In other words, most writers produce content that could fit them OR any of their competitors. This isn’t particularly useful, so focus on the personalization of your writing style. For example, you can diversify your content by considering the average age of your audience. For example, you can include the perspective of recent college grads or mid to late twenty-year-olds. Or else, focus on experienced managers and consultants who need to build teams and learn how to spot the required talents.  

Longer or Shorter tweet is better ?

Are longer tweets better tweets?

Marketing Land broke down 4,700 tweets to discover

A gander at 300 of the most took after Twitter records to perceive to what extent brands', celebs' and media organizations' tweets are and how retweet checks fluctuate by length.
Twitter has chosen not to augment tweet lengths past the current 140-character limit. Be that as it may, would it matter on the off chance that it did?

To look at to what extent tweets ordinarily are, Marketing Land took a gander at 300 of the most prevalent brand, big name and media Twitter accounts, as recorded by social investigation firm Socialbakers. Those records are as of now running up against Twitter's 140-character limit, most ordinarily sending tweets with somewhere around 130 and 140 characters. Possibly, they'd top off any additional character space Twitter would have given them.

Be that as it may, despite the fact that more drawn out tweets are more well known among these records, they don't give off an impression of being any more famous among their gatherings of people than shorter tweets. The information demonstrate that shorter tweets frequently normal pretty much the same number of retweets as longer ones, and they now and then normal all the more, particularly big names' tweets. In the outline underneath, you can look at the information for yourself, including what offer of the tweets contained connections, hashtags and photographs or recordings (spoiler: such a variety of).

To perceive to what extent the most prevalent Twitter records' tweets ordinarily are — and how those tweets' lengths connect with retweet rates — Marketing Land gathered the latest 200 tweets sent by Socialbakers' arrangements of the 100 most-taken after brands, famous people and media organizations. In the wake of barring retweets and answers, the set contained 4,751 tweets: 301 from brands, 1,742 from big names and 2,407 from media organizations. We then assembled those tweets into sections by additions of 10 characters. At that point we figured the normal number of retweets that the tweets in those character bunches got.

The 5 Ranking Factors Working for Your 2016 SEO

On quarter of 2016 have passed and the rankings you worked so hard for are not moving? But how is that happening when you're creating nice, readable content and generating high-profile links? The key to the answer is that the world of SEO is a place where some factors outweigh others and the end result depends on which strategies should be incorporated in your future campaign. 

So which factors are the most important for the rest of the year? This is one of those loaded questions that would force me to accept a questionable premise merely by answering it. However, I can dignify it with a reply by pointing out the strategies that worked for me so far this year:

1. The post-Mobilegeddon conditions for your site to be mobile-ready. You have three options: responsive design, which serves the same html code on the same URL regardless of the users' device, but can render the display differently, based on the screen size; dynamic serving, which uses the same URL regardless of device, but generates a different version of HTML for different device types based on what the server knows about the user’s browser; separate URLs – it serves different code to each device, and on separate URLs, trying to detect the users’ device and redirect to the appropriate page using HTTP redirects, along with the Vary HTTP header. 

And one more thing: you should apply SEO for the apps on your website.

2. Transferring your website to HTTPS. The whole idea of the “S” in HTTPS is the safety of your URL. Google openly encourages the migration from HTTP to HTTPS by giving a ranking boost to sites going HTTPS.

3. Schema.org. This is the essential markup to put in the code for 2016. Basically, this addition will make the crawling of your website so easy that over time, the markup itself might go to the rankings, as the leading search marketing gurus predict - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-structured-markup-ranking-purposes-20885.html Schema will point out your logo, the testimonials page, your whereabouts and so forth.

4. Actively seeking links to your site. The old tactics still work – writing long pieces of content, publishing them in highly-trusted places, making your content viral. To enhance the initiative, you can invest in tools. For example, the paid features of Majestic SEO will allow you to analyze the links of your competitors. You will be free to choose a similar strategy for your link building. 

5. Bring content creation to a whole new level by becoming an influencer. The proper use of keywords for your posts is the essential part of your content-marketing strategy. You should post and publicize your content on a regular basis. However, you will earn even more credibility if you build your own audience. To ease up the process, you can add a nice tool to your Twitter account. It is called Audiense – the same tool that was previously known as SocialBro. 

It will show you the metrics of your Twitter profile, including the influence you have over your audience. The more people you influence, the more you can convince the search engines that you are a subject-matter expert.