SEO This Week EP15 - Social Media, SEO Trends, Analytics, and Local SEO

1. SEO This Week Episode 15 Social Media, SEO Trends, Analytics, and Local SEO olympiaseo.com/seo-this-week-episode-15/ 12/19/2016 by Clint Butler December 20, 2016 Twitter Deep Dive: How to Use Social Media to 10x Your Website Traffic – Whiteboard Friday 1/8

2. Whiteboard Friday is hosted by the amazing Tara Reed who’ll walk us through how to use social media broadly and Twitter in particular not only to earn engagement and a following but to drive visitors directly to our websites and to the content that converts. Read More Our Insights: This is a great whiteboard Friday with some real actionable ideas on how to leverage Twitter. Two of the steps are completely automated which really makes life easy for any business owner. The content ideas are actually pretty interesting as well. Basically, she recommends 14 posts a day, about 14 of your blog posts, for 7 days. Following the process, she states that you can increase your reach and website traffic all using Twitter. I really like this idea and we will develop a spreadsheet for you guys and perhaps a tutorial on using BuzzBundle to make it all happen. SEO Trends 2017: 42 Experts on the Future of SEO 2/8

3. Here’s what 42 of the top experts say will be the biggest SEO trends you need to know to succeed in organic search in 2017 – and beyond. Read More Our Insights: We are going to see a lot of these posts for the next two months and I don’t know that I will be adding many of them to SEO This Week because they are full of a lot of opinions. However, this list has quite a few people in it whom I respect so I said, “what the heck”. As you read through some of the insights you will find a really heavy emphasis on RankBrain, AI, and machine learning. Google has been very open to the fact that they are working at creating AI systems to help improve their results. This work will have some interesting side effects as it relates to rankings, keyword research, and link building. The ability of the searcher to leverage tons of information in a more effective manner will be cool as well. So SEO’s, link builders, and content marketers all need to pay attention to how RankBrain and AI are implemented. What the heck is machine learning, and why should I care? 3/8

4. Understanding the impact of machine learning will be crucial to adjusting our search marketing strategies — but probably not in the way you think. Columnist Dave Davies explains. Read More Our Insights: With all the talk of machine learning in the rollup, I thought this article would add a lot more insight into what “machine learning” and “AI” really have to do with search engine marketing and why Google is so invested in it. There is a section of the article that actually provides a lot of insight into why Google does anything and where they truly stand when considering new concepts, platforms, or features that they push webmasters to adopt. How to use data to justify SEO fixes 4/8

5. SEO fixes tend to get pushed further down the development queue as their benefit is harder to put a number on. Read More Our Insights: Here at Olympia SEO we are data junkies. As a matter of fact, we are putting together a service which highlights how data can improve the marketing ROI clients get from ALL of their marketing efforts, not just SEO, and creating Digital Marketing Blueprints that move away from just depending on content and towards a 360° Brand Awareness and Marketing Campaign. This blog post and the spreadsheet toolset offered here will certainly be something that you should add to your arsenal, we know we are, and can’t wait to dive into the data insights we will gain from adding it to our day to day processes. A Beginner’s Guide to Organic Traffic Audience Segmentation with Google Analytics 5/8

6. Call it a case of too much of a good thing. Google Analytics puts a lot of data at your fingertips. It’s a mountain of metrics and a deluge of dimensions. With it, you can drill deep down into your website visitors, their demographics, and their behavior. Read More Our Insights: This is a great introduction to segments and how they work in Google Analytics. We find them helpful when looking at how people got to a site, who they are, and perhaps what some of their interests are. You can combine this data with other data sets to make a pretty accurate avatar for any business on the net. 3 Common Google Analytics Gaps You Need to Plug 6/8

7. Google Analytics is the de-facto industry standard analytics tool. It’s installed on almost every single business site. (It’s even looked at too, sometimes, too.) It provides a tremendous amount of data that you can manipulate, along with customization options for advanced features that power users crave. Also, it’s free. Read More Our Insights: Another great post from the KissMetrics team that covers some issue with the standard views provided by Google Analytics and how to turn that generic data into powerful insights for campaign optimization. One-Time Work vs. Ongoing Work in Local SEO The nature of your work on a local SEO campaign should change over time, or you’re doing it wrong. How you’ll make progress in week 3 differs from how you’ll make progress in year 3. Read More Our Insights: We have a lot of clients who believed before we started that once we ranked a site in a given position that was the end of their search marketing campaign. I guess it’s reasonable if you think about, after all, you are in the #1 one spot, what else is there to do right? The problem is, you have about 300 other businesses that want the #1 spot and if you got there, so can they. This post highlights, very generally, some things that need to continue to be done even when you’re on top. Google My Business Really, Really, Really Wants Your Photos – Will They Really Send You More Website Visits? 7/8

8. Over that past 6 months, Google has gone to great lengths to get businesses to post most photos in the My Business Dashboard…. For months Google has encouraged business with the promise that (and I quote): Businesses with recent photos typically receive more clicks to their websites. Read More Our Insights: Google is notorious for saying one thing but doing another and it’s hard to trust the interpretation the author has made concerning images. However, I will say, as a Local Guide I have uploaded a few images to other people’s Google Map’s listings and those images are getting hundreds of views. So I don’t know if you are going to get more traffic from your image uploads, but I can see that you are going to get more brand exposure at the very least if you do it right. Images from moz.com, searchenginejournal.com, martechtoday.com, searchenginewatch.com, kissmetrics.com, localvisibilitysystem.com, lsainsider.com, blumenthals.com Clint Butler Husband, father, dog owner, marketer. Clint Butler, an Army vet, founded Olympia SEO to combine his love of marketing with his desire to help small and medium sized business succeed. 8/8