wedding mba 2014: actionable tips for ranking your website higher on google by jason hennessey
TRANSCRIPT
@JasonHennessey
@JasonHennessey
@JasonHennessey
@JasonHennessey
@JasonHennessey
@JasonHennessey
Action Items
1. Run your site through the Google page speed insights tool
2. Take the recommendations that Google provides you with and give them to your webmaster
3. Continue to rerun your site through this tool until you have a score of 95+
4. Do the same for mobile page speed and user experience
@JasonHennessey
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Action Items
1. Call your hosting company and see how your sites are currently being hosted (shared, dedicated, cloud).
2. Inquire about dedicated solutions with unique IP addresses for each of your sites. Be prepared to spend between $100 and $250 per month.
3. Have your webmaster migrate the sites to the new server.
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Action Items
1. Log in to your registrar (e.g. GoDaddy, Network Solutions, etc.)
2. Renew your domain name for at least 5+ years into the future
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Action Items
1. Create and verify Google Webmaster Tools Account
2. Create and verify Bing Webmaster Tools Account
3. Install Google Analytics
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Action Items
1. Make sure that you have a content management system (CMS) – aka blog
2. If yes: start/keep blogging regularly
3. If no: install one and start blogging regularly
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Questions to Ask Yourself before Writing Your Content • What is the demographic of your customer for
each page? • What does a day in their life look like? • What are their pain points and problems? • What are their goals when landing on this page? • What questions do they have? • What are their most common objections to your
product or service? • How have you helped someone in a similar
situation in the past?
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Action Items
1. Read your own content – every page – from your customer’s perspective.
2. If you don’t feel comfortable buying from yourself, start rewriting your content.
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What Should You Link out to?
• You should have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube channel set up for your business. Link out to all of these social profiles either at the top of your website or in your footer, on every single page.
• Do you have a biography section that talks about you and your staff? When you reference the colleges that everyone attended or the associations that they belong to, be sure to link out to each of them.
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What Should You Link out to?
• When blogging, link out to some of the people that you reference in your post (their personal Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn page) and be sure to link out to other articles where you sourced your information from.
• Have you been mentioned in the media lately? Create a press page and link out to all your press. This will also help create the perception that you are a credible company.
@JasonHennessey
Action Items
1. Make sure that your business has a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube account and link out to all of them from every page on your site.
2. Go through your site and look for other opportunities to link out to credible and trustworthy web pages.
3. When blogging, be sure to link out to people, videos, articles, Wikipedia pages, news sites, and other reference material.
@JasonHennessey
Five Blogging Strategies to Consider:
1. Industry news: Set Google Alerts for keywords associated to your industry. When you see something of interest, rewrite the story in your own words, while including your personal thoughts and insights. Just be sure to cite the source with a link out to the original article.
1. Interview others: Interview a prominent figure or expert and then create a blog post. When published, provide the link to the individual you interviewed and let them share it with their friends and colleagues via social media.
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Five Blogging Strategies to Consider:
3. Have someone interview you: Who knows your industry or business better than you? Each week come up with a list of questions or topics that your customers would find helpful, then get afree conference line from www.freeconferencecall.com, and have someone interview you while recording the call. From there, you can have the call transcribed, edited by either yourself or a professional editor, and depending on the length of the interview, you should have between 5,000 and 10,000 words of unique and interesting content ready to get published to your blog.
Five Blogging Strategies to Consider:
4. Live blogging: Attend industry tradeshows and conferences, but instead of taking notes from each session on a notepad, create a blog post detailing the highlights. Once published, promote your post via social media using the conference hashtag (#) to gain maximum exposure and reach. Be sure to take lots of photos and include them in your post; people will often share or link to a post just because they see themselves in it.
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Five Blogging Strategies to Consider:
5. Meetups: Create a local industry-specific meetupusing www.meetup.com. Promote the meetup to both your competitors (no I am not going crazy) and prospects. If your space can accommodate it, try to have the meetup at your office so that more people become aware of your company and services. Hire a writer to show up and take copious notes of discussion points. Then ask them to create a recap post to publish on your blog which you can use to promote future meetups and share among your social circles.
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Action Items
1. Create a content calendar using some of the strategies mentioned
2. Publish content to your blog and make each post aesthetically pleasing
3. Promote your content via social media and email marketing
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You Might Have Duplication Problems if:
1. You hired a blogger who plagiarized other articles on the web
2. You have multiple websites that have similar content
3. Someone stole your content and published it as their own
4. You set up your site in such as way that it created multiple instances of your content which is confusing Google
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http://www.dmca.com/signup/
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Action Items
1. Run a Copyscape query on your site(s)
2. Correct any duplicate content problems that you control
3. Report any suspicious duplicate content that you do not control by submitting a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown request.
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www.bit.ly/weddingseo
SEO AUDIT
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Action Items
1. Hire a competent SEO consultant to conduct a comprehensive technical audit of your site
2. Have them review their findings and recommendations with you and your webmaster
3. Have your webmaster implement their recommendations
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Action Items
1. Invest in a decent camera and wireless lapel microphone and learn how to use it
2. Write down questions that come up when speaking to both prospects and customers
3. Take those questions and begin to answer them in front of a nice backdrop (at your desk or standing in front of a whiteboard) with the camera rolling.
4. Upload your video to YouTube. Be sure to write optimized titles, tags and descriptions for your content.
5. Have the video transcribed & edited6. Create a category on your blog called Vlogging, then publish a new post for
each video using either the YouTube video embed code or other services such as www.wistia.com. Include the textual transcript underneath the video.
7. Promote each vlog post via social media and email marketing.
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Action Items
1. Verify your correct mailing address with the United States Postal Service at -https://www.usps. com/zip4/. Please note that Suite 900, #900 and Ste. 900 are considered different when it comes to how search engines interpret a mailing address. If not properly filled out, you will have a challenge when trying to rank for local keywords.
2. Make sure that the USPS verified mailing address is listed on your website exactly as it appears on the USPS site.
3. Claim the following three of your local listings using both the USPS verified address and correct phone number for that specific office location:
1. Google: https://www.google.com/business/ 2. Bing: https://www.bingplaces.com/ 3. Yahoo: https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/local-listings
4. Fill each of these out completely including proper categories, detailed company descriptions, photos and videos and most importantly a link back to your website.
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Action Items
1.Get listed on both:
a.Better Business Bureau b.Local Chamber of Commerce
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Action Items
1.Submit your site to DMOZ: www.dmoz.org/add.html
2.Sign up for a Yahoo Directory listing: https://dir.yahoo.com/
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Press Release Topics Include:
1. Announcement of a new product or service2. Your involvement with a specific charity 3. Local and national news with your commentary 4. Awards and recognition 5. Celebrating company milestones (e.g. 10 years in
business) 6. Relocating your office of opening a new location7. Signing a large, well-recognized client (if they allow you to
publicize it) 8. Hosting a seminar, meetup or lunch-and-learn 9. Sponsoring an event or team 10. Announcement of new employees and/or business
partnerships 11. Exhibiting or speaking at a trade show or conference
Action Items
1. Write at least one press release per month. 2. Create a category on your blog called press releases and publish your release
there first. 3. Once published on your blog, submit your release through the following
distribution services. Be sure to choose a different service each month for maximum exposure and link value. Within the release, it is important to include a link back to the original version of that same press release located on your blog. This will prevent you from having any duplicate content problems as it relates to your press release strategy.
1. www.prnewswire.com (PR8) (DR80) (1996) 2. www.prweb.com (PR78) (DR80) (1998) 3. www.pr.com (PR6) (DR69) (1996) 4. www.prleap.com (PR6) (DR65) (2003) 5. www.globenewswire.com (PR6) (DR74) (2007) 6. www.prlog.org (PR6)(DR54) (2006) 7. www.24-7pressrelease.com (PR5) (DR66) (2004) 8. www.emailwire.com (PR4) (DR62) (2000)
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URL: www.weddingwire.comPage Rank: 7Domain Value: 74Domain Age: 1996
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URL: www.theknot.comPage Rank: 7Domain Value: 72Domain Age: 1999
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URL: www.marthastewartweddings.comPage Rank: 7Domain Value: 67Domain Age: 2000
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URL: www.wedding.comPage Rank: 3Domain Value: 66Domain Age: 1996
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URL: www.mywedding.comPage Rank: 5Domain Value: 65Domain Age: 1998
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URL: www.projectwedding.comPage Rank: 6Domain Value: 64Domain Age: 2004
@JasonHennessey
URL: www.weddings.comPage Rank: 5Domain Value: 58Domain Age: 1996
@JasonHennessey
URL: www.perfectweddingguide.comPage Rank: 4Domain Value: 62Domain Age: 1997
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URL: www.weddingstylemagazine.comPage Rank: 5Domain Value: 59Domain Age: 2001
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URL: www.oncewed.comPage Rank: 5Domain Value: 62Domain Age: 2008
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Action Item
Sign up for as many of these wedding directories as your budget permits.
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www.bit.ly/weddingseo
SEO AUDIT
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THANKSLets Stay In Touch
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Jason Hennessey770-481-1761