It is very important for small businesses to use search engine optimization. This is because traffic is almost impossible without SEO. After all, it is all about increasing traffic and conversion rate for the ultimate goal of making as much money as possible. However, most small businesses don’t have the resources financial or otherwise to implement a good SEO campaign. The good news is that there are simple ways to implement SEO into your website which will help in making money. Here are the best money-making SEO tips for small businesses:

Regularly Add Content

Basically, adding content helps increase online visibility. The more people who come across your content, the more likely it is for you to make a sale. There are many other considerations but this is the basic formula. So, what really drives traffic? The answer is quality content. You need to have useful, relevant and engaging content. Also, make sure that the content and site design is specifically designed to lead people into purchasing something. If you don’t have enough time or skills to create quality content, you can always turn to freelance writers which don’t cost much. A little tweak here and there and you will have the best content possible.

Personalize SEO Content

You can personalize SEO content easily using Google authorship. This will somewhat give a face to your content which is vital for consumer trust. One of the most important factors that will make people purchase from you online is credibility. Trust is a big issue since this assures the buyer that he/she will not be cheated. To implement Google authorship, you just need to create a Google+ account and link it to all contents that you publish.

Improve Technical SEO

Page speed is a very important factor in the PageRank algorithm of Google. You need to make sure that your web pages are being served quickly. Also, are your pages cached? How about your JavaScript files, are they compressed and aggregated. A little technical SEO goes a long way especially when it comes to rankings. If you have no idea regarding these matters, then it is time for you to learn about technical SEO and improving performance related SEO. However, be wary of instant SEO magic that many “experts” are offering for a price. After Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, these attractive offerings are close to useless and won’t have any effect except penalty form Google.

A lot has changed in the SEO landscape over the last couple of months. This includes the Panda, Freshness, Penguin updates and the introduction of Google+ together with Search Plus Your World. Although many things have evolved, some aspects remain the same like the fact that SEO is not dead and will remain alive for a very long time. There is also a newer idea circulating in the SEO world which is the need to build out a hierarchy of web presence optimization in order to achieve organic search success. Here are some thoughts to ponder on regarding the hierarchy of web presence optimization:

Keyword & Competitive Research

Keywords are at the core of each organic search strategy. On the other hand, at the core of the search algorithm of Google is keyword relevance. It is a fact that there will be constant competition for each keyword that you want to rank for. The keyword and competitive research process is continuous and will expand and change as you get deeper into an organic optimization strategy. It is vital to understand that keyword phrases change as prospects go through the buying cycle. About 25% of SEO efforts should be focused on understanding the best keyword phrases for traffic and conversions.

Technical SEO and Fundamentals

You need to establish a strong foundation if you really want to be found in Google. This is a tedious task that involves many things like setting up robot.txt, sitemap, 301 redirects, etc. it also includes the configuration and interlinking of social accounts and blogs which includes LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, etc. Another major area of establishing a good foundation is the process of link building.

Optimized Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the big things in SEO today. However, content marketing isn’t really anything new. It is optimized content marketing which is relatively new. Basically, you need to focus on creating optimized content for about half of your entire SEO efforts. This is how important it is. In fact, an optimized content marketing plan is the answer to some of the major Google algorithm changes from the last several months which includes the Panda Updates, Freshness updates, Google+ and Search Plus Your World. It is really all about optimized content marketing nowadays.

Sharing Content

The main goal of creating content today is to come up with something that is easily “shareable”. Because of the massive popularity of social media today, there is a big opportunity in putting your content out there. If it is good enough, people will share it. At the same time, this is also good for backlink building, indexing by Google, creating social signals and traffic.

Everything is going to be alright according to Google. However, this is obviously not the case especially for small to medium businesses who follow everything instruction of Google. Right now, most of these businesses have experienced another plummet in traffic from the latest Google update. The update which was launched a few weeks back is called the Google Penguin update. First the Panda then now the Penguin, what’s next, the Whale? According to Google, the Penguin is designed to eliminate spammy websites and those that are trying to cheat Google’s system. The algorithm change is supposed to promote high quality content and penalize spam.

Google: Good Intentions, Bad Effects

According to Google, the Penguin update is intended to improve overall search experience. However, many legitimate businesses that religiously follow Google’s rules are taking a huge hit with the update. This leaves us to wonder if there is a way to protect businesses from potential destruction from Google’s algorithm changes such as Penguin. The best way to do so is not to diversify or not to invest all your SEO efforts in one particular area. Some experts put it this way: do not put all your SEO eggs in the Google basket.

The Weapon of Choice: Social Media

Don’t even think about pushing the self-destruct button. After all, there is life beyond Google when it comes to improving online visibility. There are so many opportunities available today in other organic marketing sources. One of the best sources is social media networks.

If you’re looking for new non-Google alternatives, you can create your online social strategy. The first step is to socialize your content. Create informative and easily shareable content and start socializing using Facebook, Twitter and other relevant sharing sites. You can also start a blog which will help you connect with similar businesses and let more people know about your business. It is also very useful to purchase social ads to really put your organization out there.

Once you have cut Google out of the picture, you can start working on your content quality which will make it naturally shareable. Remember to completely fill out your social media profile and don’t forget to optimize it. Remember to publish enough updates to keep it fresh and active. At first, target a small or local radius using social media ads. Even big deployment to limited populations won’t cost a lot. There is absolutely no reason for your local brand to remain invisible unless you want to commit “social suicide”. Don’t forget to create a Google+ page. After all, you don’t have to cut Google entirely out of the picture.

Algorithm update hit on April 24th. So to determine whether you have been affected or not, simply look into your analytics and check if your organic traffic had a clear drop around that period. If you did then you’ve been hit. Take note however that there are times when Google does not roll out its update at one fell swoop but in phases—starting in the United States and spreading out.

So the next question is why you’ve been hit, right? It’s a totally valid question. There’s actually nothing new about Google Penguin and Google is just doing what people need it to do. It is trying search for the best sites, and of course root out the bad ones—which means, if you’ve been affected then you have done something wrong.

In a nutshell, Penguin is the most recent algorithm update rolled out by Google. It is designed to penalize spammers. Plus it targets sites that are doing black hat SEO tactics, most especially those who engage in cloaking and keyword stuffing.

Immediate Plan of Action

Check your web analytics reports to assess damage. Do 30-day investigation. The traffic report will provide you the specifics – when you were hit and the number of visits you lost.

Determine which keywords lost traffic and how much. So have you been hit? If yes then a 30-day report, particularly the keyword referrer report (organic) can paint a clearer picture.

Check the rankings of your top 5 or 6 keywords manually. Do not just be contented with your analytics report. As SEOs, you have to do your own manual checking.

Look into Google Webmaster Central. If your website was affected, you might get a message in your Google webmaster account. Now, if you are convinced that you were mistakenly targeted, you can also send a message to Google web spam team for verification.

See your link profile using link tools. Run periodic reports on your inbound links and make sure that your link profile is still visible.

Do an over-all check using redirect tools. Run through redirect tools such as webconfs and pingdom to see if everything is well.

You know, Google updates can seriously harm your company, but it does not mean you cannot survive it. The immediate action plans stated above can help your site to get back on track for the moment but you still need to create your long-term action plan. What should you do to prevent getting hit again when Google rolls out its next update?

Each Google update entails another dose of confusion. Sure Google updates occur time and time again and there have always been winners and losers. But this time, many companies caught off-guard due to another stream of chaos brought by Google Penguin.

Do not panic. Of course updates can be a big blow to your business, but keep in mind that Google does not do the updates to break your company. Google does this stay alive and keep dominating in the succeeding decade. Google has to exert serious effort to maintain SERPs’ relevance and usefulness, and most importantly, to keep it free of spam. In fact, over the past 10 years, Google has implemented a series of major updates.

We will no longer discuss each of the updates but to focus our attention to one key factor that runs through each of these updates rolled out by Google, which is to keep spam in check. It’s true that there have been several definitions regarding spam, but fortunately Google continues to communicate with the community through its Webmaster guidelines, and through Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team.

Okay, first of all do not attempt to earn money too easily by using black hat SEO strategies. Moreover, do not let some agencies, otherwise known as Black hat SEO magicians to let you believe that using “tricks” are just fine. It’s not. Here are some usual black hat SEO tricks that you must avoid as summarized in Google’s Webmaster guidelines:

• Hidden doorway pages
• Hidden text
• Hidden links
• Buying links
• Different page for engines and users
• Redirects or cloaking
• Keyword stuffing

Based on the recent Penguin updates, it is evident that Google centers its attention on cloaking and keyword stuffing.

So what you should do instead? Focus on your customers rather than engaging on these hostile tricks. Besides, long-standing websites prove their worth by giving their customers what they truly need. They think about how to improve the visitor’s user experience, what value-added services are needed to stay competitive, and how they should acquire a customer base so customers would also keep coming back for more.

This mind-set will lead you to a better in-house SEO plan and not merely to address problems by employing dangerous black hat SEO tricks as mentioned above. It is also best to plan ahead of time by utilizing white hat SEO tactics so when algorithmic updates like Penguin occur, you won’t get hit hard. The key is to publish high-quality, relevant content on a user-friendly website. This would make users want to stick around and remain loyal to your company.

Another update, another surge of chaos, huh? So is there anything you can do to shield yourself from Google updates? You know, Google is doing what they have always done for users— trying to wipe out the bad sites and find the best ones. If you have been affected by the latest Algorithm update, then it’s about time to look into your SEO practices and identify what you did wrong.

The most recent update, Google Penguin seems to focus on two black SEO tactics—cloaking and keyword stuffing. Google Penguin is specifically designed to punish spammers.

Cloaking – Creating two different contents: one content is presented to the user’s browser and another one is presented to search engine spider. This SEO tactic delivers a different version of the web page—one that contains content that can’t be seen on the visible page, or that is visible but not searchable. Black SEO “magicians” do this to hide or “cloak” the site with low quality pages so it remains invisible to search engines. Hence, search engines will display the web page.

Keyword Stuffing – Repeating keywords over and over throughout the site when it’s not really necessary. Here’s a fact for you. About four years ago, keyword stuffing can increase your rank because keyword density was one of the ranking factors, but currently this can actually cause you to lose your rank. Update your site if you have not updated it for quite some time now. That’s possibly why you were hit.

What You Can Do About It?

Confirm whether or not you have been affected by the update. Log in to your Webmaster tools account and check if Google has notified you about spam. If you have not created an account yet, create one. Do you think you were erroneously targeted? Let your views be known by sending Google spam team a feedback.

Manually check if you have been hit by the latest update by looking into your site and checking your links, are they ‘no followed’? Have a good look at your keywords if they are ‘stuffed’. It’s hurting and frustrating to lose your traffic, but you need to continue changing your SEO and see what happens. Be patient. Gradual changes are better than sudden overhaul. Once your site is crawled, do a couple of additional improvements.

How to check when your site was most recently crawled:
Type cache: before your URL in the navigation bar located at the top of your browser.
For example, cache:provenseo.com
You should see something like this:

Long Term Plans

Performing an action plan as immediate as possible is crucial when your site is hit by algorithm changes, particularly the latest algorithm update, Google Penguin. But most importantly, you need to prepare a long term plan. Let’s discuss some of them:

• Create an enterprise-wide guidelines focusing on white hat SEO practices such as on-page optimization and balancing keywords in ad copy. Moreover, train your employees and if possible, do a case-study of companies that got affected by the latest Google updates.
• Create a financial forecast of how much income you lost due to the update.
• Work with your IT/Developers closely and provide clear directions, especially when recommending actions for SEO best practices.
• Observe page level keywords. Do this by working with your content and copy team closely. Do not stuff contents with keywords—this is the basic rule. Make sure your content is focused and use a keyword no more than three times on a page.
• Monitor links and observe on-page SEO guidelines. Apart from monitoring the inbound links you are obtaining, be aware of also of instances called link warfare. This happens when your competitor hired an outsourced firm to build links that will work against you. Also, make sure to check your overall link profile. As for on-page SEO guidelines, these are pretty basic. These include your title, internal linking, meta, URL naming convention, etc.

Many SEOs who want to climb the ladder and beat the competition usually focus on the latest trends in SEO techniques. Meanwhile, competitive analysis typically takes a backseat due to the focus on keywords and other popular SEO techniques. Of course, keywords and other proven SEO techniques are really important. However, competitive analysis is equally important when it comes to achieving SEO success. To better understand competitive analysis, it is easier to divide it into separate areas namely content, authority and opportunity.

Content

We all know about content being the most important part etc. etc. To look into content for competitive analysis, start with your keywords target list and determine the central requisites of your website. Search online and study the search results for such requisites. Take note of which websites come up over and over again in organic results.

Most of the time, your online opponent is different from your key competitors in the real world. After you have determined the top sites that frequently appear in search results, make a review, and study how they use title tags, meta tags, descriptions, etc. How are they targeting the terms they are consistently appearing for? Take advantage of tools like SEM Rush in order to weigh up what terms these competitors rank for and which ones drive traffic. Also, look into their social profiles like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Swot up their content delivery, presence, engagement and fan base. In short, learn from the top competitors in your niche and determine what areas you need to work on.

Authority

If your competitor has lots of content, this doesn’t mean that it is quality content that leads to authority. Study their link building strategy and try to determine what you should be doing in order to be on top of your industry. Tools like Open Site Explorer are invaluable when it comes to this part of competitive analysis. To find the best linking options, you can bring tools like SEOmoz Competitive Link Finder into play.

Opportunity

Essentially, this is an on-site review. This is a chance to evaluate the site’s structure in order to determine what areas you need to work on. Explore on-page keyword targeting of site pages. Focus on areas like copy, titles, heading, internal link anchor text and alt tags. Check if the information architecture of the site is organized well. Are sitemaps utilized correctly to deliver content to search engines?

Conclusion

Focus on the areas above to have a thorough competitive analysis that you can utilize to improve your website. Remember that there are other elements that should be considered depending on how thorough the analysis needs to be. Don’t forget that the main goal is to keep your competitors at bay and stay on top of your niche. For a quick analysis set up a Google Alert in your competitor’s name. Google may be noticing them more than you think which means that you should be spending more time working on your strategy.

Everyone knows how important it is to tailor fresh content to the interest of users. The role of content when it comes to improving an affiliate site’s revenue stream should never be overlooked. However, most online marketers underestimate its importance thus resulting to unimpressive revenue figures and other revenue problems.

Here are some of the best tips regarding content and how to use it to improve an affiliate site’s profitability

Study Your Customers

The first thing you should do is to know exactly who your customers are. This will enable you to make your content useful to them. Are you targeting families, couples or single people? What kind of information are they looking for, business or leisure information? What is the reason that they are visiting your site? You should have a clear idea about these things in order to know what you should be offering in terms of content.

The Content Should be Useful

Google Panda is now all about original and useful content that has value for users. When content is lacking in substance or duplicated from another source, the site will be penalized with low rankings making it almost impossible for users to find the site. The content should have a specific use for the visitor. It should also be geared toward a certain action like making a purchase or gaining the interest of the visitor.

Have a Call to Action

Once you have engaged your audience with content, make sure that it leads them toward a decision on what to purchase or a certain action. Quality content is not just for optimization and attracting links. It is also very useful for increasing conversion.

Work on Becoming an Authority

This is not an easy task. However, if you work really hard and put in the necessary effort or if you really have an excellent grasp of knowledge regarding your niche, you will become an authority figure sooner or later. This gives your site credibility which results to more people knowing and trusting your site. Also, this is great for branding.

Encourage Interaction

Aside from creating useful information, it is also a great idea to give your customers the opportunity to share their ideas and opinions. You can do this by having a comments section or encouraging visitors to write reviews about your articles. You can also use social media to encourage interesting discussions or gain feedback from your customers.