Meet the ex-Perts '5-Stars' Practice Building Consortium™

Practice Building Webinar Series

Full Transcription

What we're going to talk about are some tools to improve Google rankings and I work with reputation X and we do reputation management as well as search engine optimization.

We improve reviews and make companies and people look better online and we do it in dozens of languages which is just a quick overview of what we're going to do here. We are going start out pretty simply for those of you who are a little bit more advanced you're going to see things like Google analytics.

We're also going to talk a bit later about some more advanced things as well. In the last seminar people were asking questions about how do we build more links to the website and what are some good techniques for that. I'm going to provide a little bit of that information in here as well too. Here's a list of the tools that we're going to talk about Google analytics and search console, generating schema, and something called answer the public.

Then for the advanced user, we're going to talk briefly about screaming frog. I don't know who named that but it’s a cool name including Majestic SEO, SEMrush, and using your Google Chrome browser in developer mode to be able to figure a few things out that can help you with your website.

Free tools to improve Google ranking and some that cost a little bit of money too, but most of them have a free trial that you can start with. The first one and probably the most obvious one is to have Google analytics on your website.

Google Analytics is really great and that's what you want - it's one of the most basic things. If you don't have that hopefully you have some other analytics package on there because if you want to improve anything you have to be able to measure to find out if you've improved it. You're going to need to understand that what some of these numbers are and what are your traffic numbers?

It's not just how many people are coming to your website because a lot of those people aren't really even people, they are bots. What kind of traffic are you getting? How many are people? How many of our bots and what countries are they coming from? What languages do they come from? What search terms they use when they get to your website and what pages they spend the most time on your website? What pages do they go to? and do they immediately leave because there's something wrong with it. Is the content not what they were expecting? To answer those types of questions you're going to want to have a tool like Google analytics.

It's one of the most basic things that you can add to your site. The next one is another Google tool called Google Search Console. If you know a bit about SEO you're going to think okay, but for those of you who don't a Google search console is really cool.

The difference between Google analytics and Google search console is the analytics is more a technical tool which tells you more things that are kind of going on with your search traffic and whatnot. Whereas, Google search console allows you to update your site map on your site which is really important as it allows you to see if there are problems on your site.

You really need to have both analytics from Google and the Google search console. If you want to find either of these, just type in Google analytics and to Google or Google search console that will walk you through the whole thing.

The next one, Hotjar, is pretty cool because what it does is you add a little snippet code free that had a snippet of code to your site and you can get a heat map - it shows where people actually are spending their time.

If you have a really important offer, for example, on your homepage or you have a place you want people to click you're going to see that red dot with maybe some yellow and some green around it. If it's blue and you want people to click on it, that means there's something wrong with your offer or it needs to be reworded, put someplace else, moved into the upper right hand corner, animate slightly, or something to be able to grab people's eye. The nice thing about Hotjar is that you can make these adjustments to your site and then you can check back a couple of weeks later after you've gotten enough traffic to have a good sample size and you can see if what you did worked.

If it didn't work, do you change it back? This is a great way to do an A-B test or a split test on webpages on your site especially the homepage. Just make sure that it's working the way that you want it to work because just because you're driving a lot of traffic it doesn’t mean they get to your website and doing the things that that you want them to do - then you're losing a lot of opportunity.

The next website and software is schema markup generator, this is more of an obvious tool and the schema markup generator places schema that's on your site and in your HTML code.

It doesn't just automatically magically populate itself within your website, you actually have to do something. If you have a WordPress site, there are lots of plugins that you can use. Just go into WordPress plugins and type in S C H E M – lots of other plugins to choose from as well too.

What schema will do is it will, it's like machine readable on your site. It doesn't show up where people who are visiting can see it, but it shows up in the code. Google sees it and it's kind of like shorthand for Google. They look at it and they know that this is a webpage that is located in this area.

They know when it's a blog post that's about this. They know what search phrases are. They know all these things very quickly without having to go through your whole page and read everything because what's happened is you've given Google a helping hand to identify with certain things on your site.

Certainly, for really important things use a schema markup generator. This particular one is a technical seo.com, but there are a lot of schema markup generators out there. If you've got a web developer, I strongly suggest you ask your web developer do we have website schema? and please explain it to me.

The website tool is “Answer the Public”, if you're on the last webinar or one of the things that I was talking about was one of the keys to growing your site is to continually add high quality content. We blog about reputation next three to five times per week and there is no greater indicator of the volume of your site. When you put a new blog post up and you get conditional traffic from that you can see that in Google analytics. The question we always come up with when we're creating our content calendar is what should we write about? We go to a couple of tools, but this one here is called answer the public.

Answer the Public is a funny website, when you go there you can type in your phrase like dermatology and it gives you the chart that you can see here. This is all the different types of questions that might come in. If you want to come up for content about dermatology or Botox or skincare or whatever it is type it in or anything you can think of it will provide all of the questions that people answer or that people are asking. If you create content for your site around those questions then Google will look at it and go, wow, this is really good content.

The blog post of yours will rise in search results, but you won't know what that is. You're never going to imagine it yourself or not going to imagine everything - it's amazing to look at all the crazy things that people put in. You can download these questions as well and you just start creating that content. Now you've got blog posts for the entire year figured out very quickly.

Another tool is called a HARO, HARO stands for help a reporter out and it works as well as free. You have the option to spend up to $140 a month and you get some additional things, but the basic idea is that everyday reporters and journalists wake up to a blank page and they have to fill that page and they have to start doing research to try to find experts. This allows journalists to put in an Ascot like I'm looking for an expert on dermatology. If you're signed up for alerts for that particular keyword from a journalist receiving an email saying there's a journalist out there who fits your level of expertise. You've written all this great stuff about it, why don't you contact them and pitch your idea of how you can help and who you are. That's really great because it makes it easier for journalists and if you're a good credible expert you can get written about by journalists all over the world with HARO.

You can do a lot with Google - most people say you use it because you're looking for videos of cute baby goats and stuff. That's probably the main thing that the Internet's used for but there are additional uses for search engine optimization as well. It really is the most basic tool for link building. As I've explained previously, the number of links and the quality of links that come into your website, not just your homepage, but to the sub-pages on your site are a huge indicator as to the level of quality of your content. That's what Google is looking at first, the number of links that are coming in and the quality as well as the content quality.

Google is looking at user behavior on your site, but it starts with great content and then the links that are coming in from other people's websites. That's why I use Google, there are some cool ways to use Google. Now that you've measured your analytics, you have an idea of what your traffic is because you have Google analytics.

You have uploaded your site map and looked at other really important metrics you shouldn't use in Google search console and a couple of other things you've measured. Some things you have a pretty good idea of where you are now.

You're going to a lot of sites and they're always asking for your name and your email address. If you put your email address in there, you're going to be inundated for the rest of your life with emails because they're going to sell your lists of your emails and all this kind of stuff - so what we always do for every client is we set up a special Gmail address. Then we just use that address to the client later on when whatever we're doing and when the projects are over, we hand them over to the client. If they need any updates or anything, they've got that special email address. They can see updates from partners and from tools a but this way it doesn't inundate their email inbox - set up that special email address.

So a quick recap - Google analytics, if you know, your volume, your users, where they spend their time on your site, geography, what kind of browser they're using, are they using mostly desktop? are you using more mobile? - it's crazy and does a million things you won't use nearly all of it.

Then Google search console, which is their sister and it tells Google about your site. Google tells you what search terms people are using to find your website as well as a lot of other information. There is overlap with Google analytics and Hotjar shows you a heat map where people click on your website. You can see if people are clicking on your offers and you can see in your navigation where people are clicking more often.

The schema generator is for that code that goes in your HTML that is kind of shorthand for what Google's looking for. There's special schema for blog posts for news articles for people and if you have a bio page about the doctors at your clinic each one of those doctors should have it. Create one page about the doctor with a big, beautiful picture and then special schema only on that page about the doctor and that's called person schema. That gives Google all the information it needs about that person and you can put in their education and all kinds of other really great information that Google can pull right out of it.

The information doesn't even need to be on the page where people can see it and can just be in the code within the schema and Google will pick it up. To come up with ideas for content - Answer the Public to get ideas for that. Once you've kind of established yourself as an expert in your niche and you feel comfortable, having journalists give you a call or an email HARO help a reporter out.

These are really kind of the basic tools. One other tool not mentioned here that I've mentioned previously is called a H R E F s.com. What that does is it's very similar to other tools like SEMrush, but it's really great with keywords. That's what we use for all of our keyword research.

If you want more organic traffic you can publish content and attract links, there's a couple of kinds of trials and many kinds of tools but the two big ones are for paid traffic.

Google ads, that's a PPC or pay-per-click where you have that little ad at the top. If you look at search results only about 15% of people click on the ads, think about how you use Google. That means 85% of the clicks or 85% of traffic is coming from organic so you can pay for traffic and that's great. It's like junk food, someone said it's like crack and it'll get you high really fast but it's not very good for your health long-term. Organically growing your expert content on your site takes longer but remember approximately 85% of people click on the organic search.

You really want to be in the organic, but on your way to organic ranking it's a good idea to use Pay-per-click. Okay. Remember, you don't need to pay for every click to get into Google. Most people don't pay to get into Google and You just do that because you need to show up for specific keywords that are really competitive and convert.

That's a difference, so to show up in organic results you need to get great content. Next week's or next Thursday we're going to talk about content and just deep dive on how to make great content for your site and how to measure it. Once you get that content, you need to have links coming into your site.

The original Google patent is mainly about links and how to measure the quality of website based on the number and quality of links that are coming into that website. Even though Google has changed a lot the core premise is still there and you can check this every day. The sites that come up higher tend to have more content and they tend to have more of the right kind of links.

If you're just starting out and you want to start with the easiest links possible because link building is a bear. Start with the easiest ones and anybody who's been doing SEO knows for a while knows that you can't just go out and get a bunch of directory links or from other websites then say, all right, I'm done.

What you need to do is just add the directories that make sense and I have a list here on the right and there are a lot of others. You can just Google blog directories and then sign up. Some of them are free, some of them may cost a little bit usually for a faster turnaround time to get your site in there but again don't rely on it because it's fast and easy. Then continue to do some other link building after that but start with directories. That's a great place to start and the power of mommy bloggers are amazing. There are a lot of mommy bloggers out there especially during a pandemic, mommy bloggers are people who have their own blogs and they are blogging because they want to get traffic to their site so that they can sell ads on their sites.

Mommy bloggers and other websites are showing those sites, they are ravenously having to create content, not only on their own sites but other sites that they're affiliated with. Oftentimes if you can reach out to mommy bloggers and you say, Hey, I have this offering, this article, or I can be an expert that you can quote or whatever they'll write about you because they're looking for those connections. They're looking for something interesting to pull people in and you've got specialized knowledge - so keep that in mind and you can find them on mommy blogger.

Here's a Facebook go to go to Facebook and go to mom bloggers club. That picture that I have on the screen right now. That's a great, great place to start, you can also Google things like find mommy bloggers. There are so many websites out there that will connect you with a blogger some are free and some are paid, but there's just so much to explore. There are 20,000 mommy bloggers in this Facebook group alone and there are a lot more in the world. So that's where you start.

Story aggregators are another great thing, most people build their website and then they really don't think about it because if you're busy and you're doing your work and you want to do some SEO using mommy bloggers is one way but also story aggregators work well.

Story Aggregators like flipboard.com is an aggregator of other people's stories. What they do is they take blog posts from CNN and bloggers all over and they package them up based on the user's interests. It's an app and you use it and they don't write the stories they're just aggregating the stories.

Guess what? Your blog posts can go to these sites like Flipboard, et cetera, and you can submit your blog posts. Using flipboard.com as an example, you have your own area where you can post things and you're going to post your own stuff.

Once you post your own stuff and your own account, it's actually shared with lots of people who will read it and they'll upload it based on the quality of her content and they can share it with others as well, too. The nice thing is once it's shared, you get links from these story aggregators and some of the links are really good and some of them are really not so good, but the story aggregators are a great way to get your expert content out and attract more traffic to your site and also more links.

And now Google does look at these sites and they look at these pages as experts. And so if you're getting a link from an expert site, Google goes, Hmm, these are experts. Look at all these great clinics that are on here. They're all really highly rated. This must be a great page. Ooh. This link to your clinic or to yourself is on there.

Now you get Google authority passing from that and you can try other variations as well. Like for example, you can see here in this example, I did best dermatology blog award and top 10 dermatology.

Competitor referring domains, so what you want to do is you want to spy on your competitors? No, you don't need to sit in their parking lot behind the dumpster with binoculars - it's a little creepy today. We have a software that'll do it for you and so what this does is a backlink checker because we're trying to get more links for the site and using some of these tools. The software is Href.com and what this one does is you can put in the URL of your competitor and then look at their back links. It'll show you what other websites are linking in.

You're thinking, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to look at those sites - can I get any of those sites? They're linking to my competitor? Why wouldn't they link to me? and you're going to see Better Business Bureau on there. You're going to see the local chamber of commerce but you're also going to see dermatology magazines and you're going to see the name of the people who wrote the article. You almost have all of their contact information right there. This tool makes it really easy for you to do it and imagine trying to find who links to your site without using a tool. You have to have automation to be able to do this, but once you do it, it really just opens up the world of possibilities. You can steal ideas from your competitors even if they don't know someone's linking to them and if you get more links than they do from better sites you're going to win.

You can also let Google find opportunities for you, another free tool you can use is Google alerts or other tools like TalkWalker alerts and they have free alerts there as well, too.

You've got a PR friendly blog, niche, disclosure, policy advertising product, and you have guest posts. These are special searches, you can ignore the bullets but the rest of it is copy and paste to replace the word niche with whatever your subject is, Botox or whatever it is.

So how does that work? Here's an example using dermatology as a keyword and that gives you when you put quotes around something the exact search phrase. It only gives you the exact phrase on websites and then you're also looking for the word dermatology and you’ll get search results. You see on the right-hand side here, the next step and durham.com contributed guidelines, dermatologist.com, author guidelines. I just did this two hours ago and that's just what showed up, and there are hundreds of them and so you click on that link and it'll tell you if you want to contribute content to this dermatology related blog, here are the rules.

Follow the rules, you can send your content or a sample of your content like what you've written before. They'll tell you what to do, so when you write your content you embed a link and the content and they put it on their website which links back to your site.

If some of your competitors are outranking you for some of these search terms you want, you really need to do is write better content, embed a video in it, and put graphics in it. Anything can make your content better, longer, and more complete than your competitors. Use Google to compare your content to theirs, see what the difference is, and then write your content - refresh it. If the links are as strong as theirs you should rise above them in search results. If it doesn't rise above and then search results and you have the same links, that means your content is not as popular as their content for some reason.

There's always somebody who's trying to outrank you and something to consider is fresh. Awesome, excellent content which is the key. I told you earlier, we'd be talking about the simple tools and simple ones that we went over but there are some more advanced tools.

Let's say that you've been doing SEO for a little while and you understand a few things. If you're really advanced at SEO you probably are already using Screaming Frog. Screaming. Frog is pretty much an industry standard and helps you understand just about everything about your site, how many pages you have, how long your descriptions, and what are the keywords in your title?

If you've got a multilanguage version of your website, is everything correctly created? How many dead pages do you have any site which are called 404 errors and you don't want those because Google prefers sites that don't have a bunch of dead links because if somebody is searching for something in search results and they click on a link that you doesn't have that meaning they're going to go back to Google again.

Google is going to say they spent one second on that page it must not be very good and then Google will go to it and say it's a dead link. It's just best to keep your site clean of those types of errors and this will show you that. How much is Screaming Frog? you pay a couple hundred bucks, something like that. For the SEOs out there I know you're watching and going why isn't he talking about this and that? So Majestic SEO does a lot of things but the thing that we like to use majestic for primarily Is to find out the trust of a website.

For example, if I want to get a link from a dermatology website to our client, I want to look at that dermatology website I want the link from before I offer them my valuable time to write content for them. I want to find out if they're a strong site and I want to find out if they're a trustworthy site.

There's a thing in majestic that shows trust and flow among other metrics that majestic it is the trust feature we liked the most and shows you how much you can actually trust the link from that website and they assign a score to it. There probably is a free version of Majestic SEO you check it out, try for a while until you're a little bit more advanced. The next software, this is one that we use every day all the time is SEMrush, and we use it primarily to track the positions of search results.

Wherever you are if you're in Florida or Marin County your search results are going to be different based on where you're searching from. One of the great things about SEMrush, among many other things, is that it will show you the position for your keywords in your area plus any other areas that you want to see.

Let's say that you're in New Jersey but you want to see what your search results like in New York City. You can add that and New Jersey and anywhere else that you might have locations or prospects coming from and you'll see how you show up in local results which will be better with a higher rank than if you are further away. That's because Google is trying to provide the most relevant search results for anybody searching. Again, once you measure something you can see what your ranking is in New York. You might want to tweak your content to be more New York related or create another page on your site that's specifically about New York somehow, so that you can attract. SEMrush is also great for auditing your site, it'll tell you how many errors you've got and what you can do to fix it.

For example, this website say it says 1 error, 1,502 warnings which are kind of like ours, but they're not as big a deal, and notices which are just kind of random things that you should really fix though it's not going to hurt you. Errors are the ones you want to fix, a warning if you've got time, and fix those notices are good - so that's SEMrush and then the site audit tool is really great with that.

Then of course, the Chrome browser that you probably use most of the time and a lot of you are in the Chrome browser right now. If you right click on any webpage, like your home page for example, there is a lot of very great info there and is super detailed for everything that Google sees when it's scrolling at the bot. One of the really important things is there's a tab on there as you can see in this graphic, red box around audits, and will open up a box at the bottom of the webpage that you're visiting.

Click on it and then you click on audits to generate a report and you can see that logo with the lighthouse and the two little fluffy clouds around it that tool is what is called lighthouse. It's a Google tool and you click generate report and it will open up that report in another browser. And it will show you statistics on your site, how good is your SEO, how good is your accessibility, and things like if blind people use your site easily or not - this is all really important to Google. One tip with using this though is that for you to use incognito or private mode. I say to do this on your browser because that shuts off all these extraneous plugins that you might have in your browser that might interfere with getting a clean generator report about your site.

Here's an example on our reputation repair page and we just updated that page today. We're going to update it again next week as you see last week our performance on that page is 75. Now it was 36 prior to that and then we had our developers go in and make some changes.

We've gotten a 100 SEO score before and I was super stoked about that. The best practices and accessibility score are 86 - a pretty good score. We want the performance to go higher than 75 and we want it to be green which means that it needs to be 90. It's pretty hard to do with our content management system that we use which is called HubSpot but we like it for other reasons.

This area and particular thing will show you that actual performance number and it's a great, easy way for you to know if you're doing a good job. Here's the other thing, if you hire an agency to do your SEO, you're going to want to run this report every time and compare it. Take a screenshot from the last time you ran the report and you can tell very easily whether they're doing a good job or not. You hire an agency and you don't know what they're doing and there is all this technical crap this is a nice way to sort of shortcut and go “that's funny. my performance numbers went down from 75 to 43. Can you explain that? that's a great thing to have.

That's what I have right now, but next week, we're going to tie talk about content a lot here.