If your prospects can’t find you at the Google search box, then it is well worth your time to optimize your content, keywords and entire web presence for organic search. And you want to because more than 1 billion Google searches are performed every day; 85% of those searchers are most likely to click on the organic side (left-hand side) of the search results.

Getting to the top of Google’s search results requires ongoing commitment to optimizing your entire web presence.

Here are five SEO tips and tactics that will help you improve your search engine rankings, increase eyeballs to your online store and impact sales.

1. How do you rank now?

Before investing any time in SEO it’s best to understand how you currently rank for the keywords that you want to be found for. Accurate SEO rankings are challenging to obtain because Google personalizes search results for everyone.

If you go to the Google search box and search on your own product, it may appear as though you are #1 because you’ve likely searched on the keyword before and Google is personalizing the search for you. However, a prospect searching for your product for the first time might see your website or product page ranked #7.

SEO ranking results are also different by country. So if you’re located in France but trying to be found in Google.com, it is almost impossible to understand your actual SEO ranking.

Gaining insight into your true, unskewed, non-personalized SEO ranking for a particular keyword phrase requires access to an SEO ranking tool.

2. Closing the keyword gap.

The keyword gap is a concept I use to describe the fact that your prospects are most likely using a different keyword to find your products and services compared to the keyword you would use. For example, if you are selling “gizmos” your prospects may actually refer to them as “gadgets” in the Google search box.

Closing your keyword gap is about understanding how your prospects and customers are searching and adjusting your keyword strategy to match their intentions.

The only way to close your keyword gap is through keyword research. Studying your website analytics as well as talking to your customers are two great ways to get started. (Download: Getting Your Keywords Right Workbook)

3. Continuous content.

A strong SEO strategy starts with a continuous commitment to content. Content is at the heart of SEO. Without content, you’ll never be found in Google. Keep in mind that Google loves fresh, relevant content.

Start with evaluating your website and deciding if you think the content throughout your site could be improved. How do you take what you learned in #2 above and work those keywords into your content?

A regular blogging strategy will also boost and help maintain high SEO rankings when the content is optimized for the keyword phrases you are attempting to rank for. Brainstorm blog topics in advance. Think about stories about your products, the clients that love them, how they use them, etc. Post your blog content on your blog site and also Tweet it, Facebook it, YouTube It and Google+ it.

4. YouTube; YouBeFound.

YouTube is the second busiest search engine only after its parent, Google. Once you close your keyword gap and have great content, putting in the extra effort to publish video content on YouTube and optimizing it for search will really pay off.

Not only will you be found when a prospect searches directly from the YouTube search box, but YouTube results can also be embedded in the Google search results page. This increases the likelihood of you occupying multiple rank positions in Google for your product. Who doesn’t want that?

Ensure you have sufficient links back to your website from the video page and reference the keyword in your voice over. And remember, your videos don’t have to be fancy or expensive.

5. Socialize your online store.

According to both Google and Bing, social signals now account for 8% to 10% of their organic search algorithms. Your social media presence now matters to SEO! This means that Google is evaluating the volume of social signals that are being produced by your web presence.

A social signal can be a Twitter tweet or retweet, a Facebook Like or Share, or a Google +1. Here are a few tips to help increase your social signals:

• Ensure you have the social sharing icons on every page of your website. Not just the home page, but every shopping cart page. It is about providing your shoppers with endless opportunities to click the Like or Share or Tweet button.
• Incorporate Facebook into your site wherever possible. For example, add a Facebook Fan Box to your web pages as well as the Facebook Comments App to your blog.
• If possible, add your customers to your Google+ Circles and follow them on Twitter. They may reciprocate and retweet your product tweets or share your content in their circles.
• SEO Your Business Facebook Page. There are even more tips and tricks available in this SEO Your Business Facebook Page How-To Guide.

All this “SEO stuff” may sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Take it one step at a time, spend an hour per day figuring it out and it will pay off. SEO results do not happen overnight, but they do happen. It is a never-ending process but one worth investing in.

1. Anchor text
2. Social media profile page indexing
3. Changes to the use of synonyms
4. The detection of old pages

1) Anchor text

Google: “We’ve improved systems we use to interpret and use anchor text, and determine how relevant a given anchor might be for a given query and website.”

gShift: Google considers anchor text a relevant signal for understanding how your web page should rank for a keyword phrase. Anchor text may say “click here” or “learn more”, but higher quality anchor text contains keyword phrases relevant to the page that it links to, for example: “SEO Reports.” gShift provides accurate data on your current anchor text from your backlinks.

2) Better indexing of social media profile pages

Google: “This change improves the comprehensiveness of public profile pages in our index from more than two-hundred social sites.”

gShift: The statement above really emphasizes the fact that social media does matter to SEO. Links from your social media profiles are considered backlinks and thus are relevant signals that can help increase your domain authority. gShift provides the necessary social media metrics reporting to help you monitor your entire web presence including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.

3) Less aggressive synonyms

Google: “We’ve heard feedback from users that sometimes our algorithms are too aggressive at incorporating search results for other terms. This change makes our synonym system less aggressive in the way it incorporates results for other query terms, putting greater weight on the original user query.”

gShift: Understanding your long-tail keyword phrases is an SEO necessity. You should be constantly updating content on your websites, such as blogging about product and service benefits, using descriptive keyword phrases. gShift provides up-to-date keyword research to help you discover new long-tail keyword phrases that are being used to find your website so that you may continually optimize your web content and improve your organic search rankings for those phrases.

4) More precise detection of old pages

Google: “This change improves detection of stale pages in our index by relying on more relevant signals. As a result, fewer stale pages are shown to users.”

gShift: Fresh content is being pushed to the top of the search results and websites that have been “collecting dust” will start to fall in the rankings. An optimized content marketing strategy and schedule is extremely important to your web presence and organic rank now more than ever before.

If you are a marketer you must be thinking, “How do I know if we are maximizing our SEO investment given all the changes Google has introduced?” If you are an SEO or marketing consultant you are probably asking yourself, “How do I sell my services and prove value to my clients?”

Although a lot has changed, two aspects of SEO remain certain:

1. SEO is not dead, nor will it die in the foreseeable future. Billions of marketing dollars are invested every year into “being found” organically in the search engines and this trend will continue. With more than a billion Google searches performed worldwide every day SEO is not going away.
2. The way we perform and measure organic search optimization has to change and is changing. Blatantly building out backlinks and optimizing on-site content is not enough. Measuring only rank and position is not enough either. Today organic search is about fresh, relevant, findable, optimized content that generates leads.

A New Theory: The Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization

The idea of building out a hierarchy of web presence optimization (WPO) comes from the belief that basic fundamentals are required before organic search success can be achieved. The purpose is to visualize how the execution of SEO and the services required to perform SEO have evolved due to Google’s algorithm enhancements, and to maximize your SEO efforts and investment.

There are five different tiers in The Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization:

1) Technical SEO Fundamentals & Foundation

If you are serious about being found in Google and optimizing your entire web presence, it is important to start with a strong baseline or foundation. We call this first tier Technical SEO Fundamentals & Foundation. A strong base layer will accelerate your efforts in the higher tiers by ensuring your web presence has a strong infrastructure, can be effectively indexed and is identifiable.

Technical SEO Fundamentals & Foundation accounts for approximately 10% of the SEO efforts often consisting of one-time tasks such as:

• Setting up Robots.txt, 301 redirects, sitemap, title tags, etc.
• Configuration and cross referencing of a blog presence and social accounts including: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+ and any other industry-specific social media or sharing sites.
• Implementation of social sharing icons throughout the main web and blog sites.
• Backlinking from respected industry and local directories.
• Setting up Google Places listings.
• Understanding web page load time and server details that may affect rankings.

This is not an exhaustive list and is bound to change as Google continues to tweak its algorithm to serve up the most relevant search results.

2) Keyword & Competitive Research

At the core of every organic search strategy are keywords. Coincidentally, at the core of Google’s organic search algorithm is relevance for keywords. There will be constant competition for every keyword you are trying to rank for – guaranteed.

The Keyword & Competitive Research tier is an on-going process that will expand and evolve as you venture deeper into your organic search optimization strategy. It is important to understand that the keyword phrases your prospects use will change as they progress through the buying cycle.

Approximately 25% of your organic search optimization efforts should be focused on continually understanding the keyword phrases that drive targeted traffic and conversions.

Before advancing any further up the WPO pyramid, become very focused on your keywords and your competition for those keywords. To get started, determine a shortlist of (two to four) unbranded keyword phrases your prospects are actually searching for to find the products and services you are selling. Only after you develop a keyword list should you scale your efforts into the next tier – The Optimized Content Marketing Plan.

3) The Optimized Content Marketing Plan

Content marketing is experiencing a lot of buzz lately, and it should be! Content marketing is not new, but “optimized content marketing” is. Optimized content marketing is at the intersection of organic search optimization, social media, all the recent Google algorithm changes, and content marketing. Planning and creating your optimized content accounts for the majority of your SEO efforts – approximately 55%.

The Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs interviewed 1,092 B2B marketers in August 2011 and found that 60% plan to increase their content marketing budgets in 2012. Also, 40% are using SEO rankings as a measurement of the success of their content marketing campaigns.

So what would the impact be to your organic search rankings, impressions and clickthroughs if you optimized your next major piece of content for the keyword discovered in the previous tier?

An optimized content marketing plan addresses four major Google algorithm changes from the past year:

a) Freshness Updates – Google favors fresh, relevant content in the form of press releases, blogs, case studies, news and events.

b) Panda Updates – Optimized content distributed to valid, reliable sources will assist in building strong backlinks that are less likely to be penalized.

c) Google+ – Social networks and social media are about relationships and relationships prove relevance. Google’s social network, Google+, is indeed factored into its search algorithm. Build your Google+ presence and circles and start sharing your content today.

d) Search plus Your World – Most importantly, when you share your content publicly in Google+ it has a broader reach and a longer life than any other social network including Facebook and Twitter.

Additionally, an optimized content marketing plan will provide you with sustenance for other lead generation techniques such as paid search campaigns (i.e. Google AdWords and banner ads) and email marketing. And you need content to be successful at generating social signals, which is the fourth tier.

4) Publishing, Socializing & Sharing Content

Now that you have effective, optimized content that your prospects want, you need to tell them about it. Distributing your content effectively and frequently should occupy about 5% of your SEO effort. Here’s where to publish your content:

• Corporate website and blog site
• If a blog post, then to industry specific blog sites that your prospects will visit
• If a press release, then through a newswire such as PRWeb or Marketwire
• Social channels including: LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Facebook (with Twitter the content should be tweeted multiple times over a specified period of time)
• Subscribers and client base via email marketing

The distribution of your optimized content marketing is key because it accomplishes the following goals for your SEO campaign:

• Backlink building
• Indexing by Google so it can ultimately be found
• Social signals creation (Tweets, Retweets, Likes, Shares, Views)
• Beginnings of a sales conversation with prospects

5) Measurement & Improvement

In order to improve a content marketing campaign for further execution, not only must you master the previous tiers, but you must measure, benchmark, tweak and repeat. This is the final and ultimate tier – the remaining 5% of your SEO effort.

But how do you measure the success of an SEO campaign? Compare the following SEO metrics to other marketing campaigns (i.e. Google AdWords, email marketing, banner ads):

• Impressions
• Clickthroughs
• Conversions
• Social signals
• Backlinks
• Keyword Rank

Conclusion

As organic search optimization and the services required to “get found” evolve, so too must our tools, techniques and tactics. The Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization can be used by marketers to guide their in-house SEO efforts, as well as by agencies in their sales conversations and implementation processes.

According to WordStream, companies were chosen based on “innovation, value, and proven results” and their ability to help online marketers save time, increase productivity and grow business. gShift Labs is proud to be listed in the top 150 in the SEO software category. Congratulations to all of the companies who made the list!

Here is a map created by WordStream to help you navigate and conquer Internet marketing by developing strategies in the 10 key areas (click on map to enlarge):

In this session, you will learn how to take your top 100 non-branded keyword phrases and automate daily bidding strategies based on your current Google Rankings. You will learn about the most recent major Google algorithm search engine changes that affect your organic search rankings. Data will also be presented around increased click-through rates when both organic and PPC are seen together on the first page of Google. Considering that Google hides Referrer Keywords on Organic Traffic, ranking reports are more important than ever!

When: Wednesday, June 27 to Friday, June 29, 2012

Where: Hyatt Regency Montreal, Quebec

Speaker: Chris Adams, CoFounder & CTO, gShift Labs

The Acquisio User Summit promises three days of sharing experiences with other Acquisio users, learning tips and techniques from Acquisio staffers, and getting insights on online advertising from some of the brightest folks in the industry. The Summit coincides with the world-famous Montreal Jazz Festival, giving attendees the chance to enjoy valuable learning opportunities during the day and unparalleled entertainment at night.

Your SEO efforts are worth paying attention to on a regular basis because everyone looks at the organic side of search, and over 85% of searchers click on organic search results over paid results.

The following 10 SEO metrics are useful for tracking the progress of a web presence in organic search. Each metric provides signals as to what is working and what is not so your SEO efforts can be constantly tweaked and results improved.

1. SEO Rankings

Track your online organic search visibility for the keywords your organization wants to be found for in the search results. Following your SEO ranking metric every day, week or month will allow you to understand if your organization is expanding its web presence.

2. Unique Keywords (Discovery Index)

How many unique keywords are being used to find your organization on a monthly basis? If that number is trending upwards that means more and more unique keywords are being used in the search engines to discover your organization’s web presence. This is called the discovery index. Look at these terms and add a few to your content strategy each month to capture even more qualified traffic.

3. Backlinks

Are you growing the quantity and quality of the websites linking to your web presence over time? The number of backlinks should increase as you build out your optimized content strategy of blog posts, press releases and case studies. The associated anchor text as well as the domain authority of the websites linking to your content affect the quality of your backlinks.

4. Indexed Pages

Is the number of web pages from your web presence increasing or decreasing in the Google index? The more pages indexed in Google, the more opportunity you have to be found. For example, it would be difficult to rank for 100 keywords if you only have five web pages indexed in Google. As you build out your optimized content strategy adding new blog posts, web pages and press releases on a regular basis, your index count will grow.

5. Social Signals

Google and Bing factor social signals into their search algorithm to determine relevancy and rank. Social signals are metrics such as: Facebook comments, likes and shares, tweets and retweets, LinkedIn shares, and Google +1’s and shares – all of which include a backlink to a web page. gShift tracks the number of social signals during a specified time period to all your web content including web pages, blog posts, and press releases.

6. Website Traffic Breakdown

Tracking your topline website traffic on a regular basis is important. Are you growing your organic traffic? Or are you getting most of it from direct traffic? Is your referral traffic increasing? What traffic is converting better – organic, referral or social? Tracking these website traffic metrics can help you understand both your SEO and content marketing strategies.

7. Organic Conversions

It is also important to understand what percentage of your organic search traffic takes action on your website. Which keywords are driving the most conversions? Which keywords are leading to a high bounce rate (only visiting one web page)? Are your conversions increasing based on your optimized content marketing strategy?

8. Organic Market Share

Your organic market share is calculated based on the number of keyword phrases that your organization is following or wants to rank for organically. Calculate the volume of searches for those terms, how you rank, and then apply a “potential” click-through metric to determine the number of potential visitors you would get if you were ranking in the top three organic positions.

9. Organic Search Value

What is the dollar value of your organic search traffic as compared to what you would have paid for the same traffic via a paid marketing program such as Google AdWords? This metric can help set your budget for organic search and content marketing.

10. Branded versus Non-Branded Keywords

Out of the discovery index, how many keywords are branded? If 95% of your organic traffic comes from branded keywords, then your organization has an issue with your online visibility. A goal would be to increase your non-branded keyword phrases by building out your content marketing strategy.

SEO is one of the most difficult marketing tactics to measure and manage – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. And once you’ve mastered SEO for your organization the increase in leads and conversions will be worth the effort. Our recommendation is to pick a few SEO metrics to get started, measure them on a consistent basis and take action from the data.

The core of any search or social media marketing program is content. Digital assets, rich media, web pages, MS Office and PDF docs, and content created and shared by consumers all offer opportunities for optimization. If it can be searched, it can be optimized!

Online marketing is increasingly competitive, and brand marketers worldwide are seeking real advantages that will improve the efficiency and impact of their social media and SEO efforts. This session will provide unique insight into content-based optimization strategies and processes as well as tactics for sourcing, creating, and promoting optimized content on the social web.

When: Monday, June 11, 2012 @ 3:30pm – 4:30pm

Where: Hyatt Regency Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Moderator: Matt McGowan, MD, Incisive Media

Speakers:

• Krista LaRiviere, CoFounder & CEO, gShift Labs
• Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board; CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
• Jennifer Slegg, CEO, JenSense

Visit gShift Labs at Booth #6!

Register and SAVE 20% on any conference pass: Enter 20GSH upon registration. Or register for a FREE expo hall pass. SES Toronto will be packed with sessions covering topics such as PPC management, keyword research, SEO, social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, and usability, while offering high-level strategy, keynotes, an exhibit floor with companies that can help you grow your business, networking events, parties and more.

Toronto, ON - April 3, 2012: gShift Labs, the creator of web presence optimization software that is giving marketers and agencies control over their SEO campaigns, announced today new functionality that delivers Google Places SEO rank data to clients, enabling businesses to better understand how they are being found in Google’s local search results.

The new functionality is a response to major changes Google made to its algorithm in March 2012 to improve search results by better detecting when a search query is local to the person performing the search. Google’s free local platform – Google Places - enables businesses to manage their listing so they can appear in the local search results on the first page of Google if Google determines the business is relevant to a localized search being performed - for instance, “Downtown New York Hotels.” Until now businesses could not easily understand how they rank in Google Places for all the keywords they want to be found for compared to a competitor.

“Ranking in Google Places is vitally important to businesses that sell their products and services to a local market,” says Krista LaRiviere, Cofounder and CEO, gShift Labs. “Since the Google Places listings are positioned before non-local results, it is a massive opportunity for businesses to rank on the first page of Google.”

LaRiviere says Google loves fresh, relevant, optimized content and aided by software such as gShift’s industry leading software, Web Presence Optimizer™ (WPO), businesses can better align their digital footprint with local long-tail keyword phrases that rank highly in Google. They can also gain deep competitive insights into how a competitor is ranking in Google Places.

“Google’s algorithm changes are all about improving relevancy for the searcher,” explains gShift Cofounder and CTO, Chris Adams. “This is a great opportunity to update and optimize your Google Places listing for your organization by arranging for reviews and accurately configuring your address, map and YouTube channel. A poorly optimized Google Places listing could negatively impact your overall SEO ranking.”

About gShift Labs

gShift Labs’ industry leading Web Presence Optimizer™ software system is helping companies across North America achieve top organic ranking in search engines by simplifying and standardizing how a website gets found on the internet. Organizations of all sizes benefit by reducing the time and resources required to analyze and improve organic search optimization. For more information: www.gshiftlabs.com

Media contact:

Samantha Kemp-Jackson
CAROUSE Communications
647-999-1694

Lori Gariepy
gShift Labs, Senior Marketing Manager
1-866-743-5960

1) Improvements to freshness. “[project codename “Freshness”] We’ve applied new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before.”

2) Improvements to ranking for local search results. “This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.”

3) Improved local results.* “We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.”

*Note: Local results described here pertain to your Google Places listing being displayed on the first page of normal Google organic search results.

How does this impact your web presence?

You may start to see minor changes to Google search results based on your “localized” keyword phrases. A localized keyword phrase is a keyword that contains a city or region as part of the phrase (i.e. “Downtown Toronto Hotels”).

1) Depending on the organic search signals that you have been building with Google, your local results may appear more often than before. Or if your competitors are more optimized for local phrases, your local listing may not appear.

2) Your organic search results may appear with your local search results – as a combination organic search result.

3) Freshness of your content will have a direct impact on how Google perceives your website and will contribute to the success of your local results showing up.

4) Ensure that your Google Places listing is at least 90% configured with content because an incomplete Place Page can have a negative impact on your local search results.

What has gShift added recently in Web Presence Optimizer™ to help clients?

We responded immediately by developing the ability to track the position of your local search results and to report if and when they appear or disappear.

To view your local search results in gShift Labs, go to the “All Keywords” tab in the Keywords section. The local keyword phrase ranking data will also be included in your monthly reports.

Will this positively affect your gShift Score?

Yes. Your gShift Score represents your overall search visibility based on the keyword phrases that you want your web presence to rank for. Now that it includes localized search results, your gShift Score will increase based on your presence in Google Places.

What can you do to learn more?

Contact our client success team to review your data and they can provide guidance on these new changes and how you can change them into opportunities.  Also read: Getting Found in Local Search: Playing by Google’s Rules.

Sessions feature best practices and insights from thought leaders at Market Motive, ReachLocal, Unbounce, Sendible, gShift Labs

Paris, France – March 23, 2012: Krista LaRiviere, co-founder of gShift Labs, is speaking on the future of organic search and optimized content marketing on the opening day of the WSI Excellence and Innovation Convention in Paris. The convention, hosted by WSI, the world’s top Internet marketing franchise, will provide more than 150 franchisees from around the world the opportunity to hear the latest trends in digital marketing.

The three-day convention features a range of the industry’s top solutions providers and thought leaders, including Avanish Kaushik, author of “Web Analytics 2.0” and co-founder of Market Motive.

“We’re excited to have Krista as part of an impressive speaking roster,” says Ron McArthur, president of WSI. “We are committed to helping franchisees boost online profitability for local businesses. And search innovators such as gShift Labs are doing just that for clients around the world.”

LaRiviere will share key strategies with attendees to significantly improve a company’s organic search rankings by optimizing their content marketing strategy. gShift’s industry leading software, Web Presence Optimizer™, helps marketers increase their organic search rankings with a range of tools designed to optimize online content based on their most important keyword phrases. By publishing and distributing relevant content into the various streams that align a company’s digital footprint with those keywords that rank highly in Google, marketers can better connect with customers and prospects.

“While the fundamentals of organic search optimization remain important – such as ensuring you have a strong technical website that the search engine robots can crawl, and addressing local search and industry-specific directories for backlinking purposes – a real shift is taking place in the traditional approach to SEO,” says LaRiviere. “That shift is the creation, publishing and distribution of an optimized content marketing strategy. Focus on strong, consistent and optimized content distributed effectively through company blogs and social networks and you will crush your competitors in organic search.”

About WSI

WSI is the world’s leading Internet franchise offering digital marketing services to suit the needs of multiple industries.  The company has the world’s largest Digital Marketing Consultants’ network with its head office in Toronto, Canada. WSI Digital Marketing Consultants have helped thousands of small and medium-sized businesses realize their online marketing potential. By using innovative Internet technologies and advanced digital marketing strategies, businesses can have a WSI Digital Marketing System tailored to their individual needs to elevate their Internet presence and profitability to new levels.

About gShift Labs

gShift Labs’ industry leading Web Presence Optimizer™ software system is helping companies across North America and globally achieve top organic ranking in search engines by simplifying and standardizing how a website gets found on the internet. Organizations of all sizes benefit by reducing the time and resources required to analyze and improve organic search optimization.  For more information: www.gshiftlabs.com

Media contact:

Lori Gariepy
gShift Labs
1-866-743-5960