• FAQs

          Search engine optimization (SEO) helps businesses drive visits to their website through organic search traffic. Given that the top organic search results receive a third of the clicks, a decline in ranking could be detrimental for your business. Implementing SEO best practices on your website will help to ensure that your web content is seen by as many potential customers as possible. The more visitors you have, the better your chances are of converting those visits into sales!

          Local search engine optimization (SEO) helps local businesses gain visibility by optimizing their local business listings for local search. A business that leverages local SEO will include its address, phone number, local opening times, and exact location in the form of a local citation. The goal is to rank for local searches which are usually performed by people in a specific geographical region looking for a business near them.

          We typically see results within the first 30 to 60 days, but when it comes to SEO, there are many factors at play. It's important to remember that SEO is a long-term strategy and results may not come as fast at you wish.

        • FAQs

          Digital advertising uses the internet to send advertisements to customers who are online through different websites and social media platforms like Google, Bing, LinkedIn and Facebook.

          The price for Google Ads management depends on the monthly ad spend. For accounts with $1,000 in monthly ad spend, the price is $550/month. Between $1,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $950/month. For $5,000 to $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $2,000/month. For more than $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $4,500/month.

          The price for Social Media Ads management depends on the monthly ad spend. For accounts with $1,000 in monthly ad spend, the price is $550/month. Between $1,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $950/month. For $5,000 to $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $2,000/month. For more than $10,000 a month in ad spend, the price is $4,500/month.

        • FAQs

          This depends on the complexity and size of a redesign and if eCommerce is needed. On average, it takes around 14-18 weeks from the web design intensive stage to launch.

          If your website experiences the following issues: it’s not responsive on all devices, has a slow loading speed, the design appears old and tired, users don’t spend long on the site, sales are stagnant, or your business is going through a rebranding - your website needs a redesign to boost your brand awareness and sales.

          Sometimes there’s no need to rebuild a website. Minor edits, refreshing page content and images, or restructuring page layout for SEO best practices can boost traffic and sales.

        • FAQs

          Semantic search launched in 2013 with the release of Google's Hummingbird update. Since then, Google's search engine has become more complex. The integration of machine learning, with RankBrain, and NLP, with BERT, has enabled the search engine to better understand the context of a query and deliver more personalized and targeted results. Semantic SEO is the process of creating machine-readable content using structured data and linked open data to help search engines better understand your content.

          On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page SEO refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals. From meta tags to page content, website structure, and HTML, on-page optimization services are focused on making your website more visible to search engines.

          Structured data refers to any organized data that conforms to a certain format, such as information in a relational database. When information is highly structured and predictable, search engines can more easily organize and display it in creative ways. Structured data involves using a piece of code that is laid out in a specific format easily understood by search engines. The search engines read the code and use it to display search results in a more dynamic way.

        • FAQs

          An SEO agency has experts in different areas of search engine optimization that may be out of the realm of your marketing team's abilities. SEO can be very complex and time-consuming. Furthermore, as search engine algorithms change it can be difficult to stay current on the latest ranking factors and strategies for improving online visibility. You will likely see a greater return on investment and better results from using a professional SEO agency than you would from tackling this on your own.

          As a digital marketing agency, SMA Marketing provides products and services in four areas: SEO, Local SEO, Digital Advertising, and Web Design

          We focus on building authentic, long-lasting relationships with our clients. We’re goal oriented and results driven and believe in doing good and making a difference in the world.

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Optimize Your Blog Posts Using an SEO Checklist [Free Template]

Rhonda Bavaro

July 12, 2022

At SMA Marketing, we are always looking for ways to refine our processes to produce the best quality content marketing services for our clients in the most efficient way possible.

We are currently in the process of building an in-house writing team to serve our clients’ content needs. It’s been a very rewarding endeavor, carried out by our exceptional Content Strategist, beth@smamarketing.net. We’re hiring talented writers that we work with directly to produce high-quality content that connects with our clients’ target audience.

When you’re building a content team, there will be members with varying degrees of expertise in blog content optimization. It’s to be expected ~ not everyone has had the same training in SEO (search engine optimization) best practices.

Content for SEO Increases Organic Traffic

There are various types of content incorporated within a website. When you publish relevant content it will enhance the user experience on your site and walk your target audience through a clear journey from seeking information to buying your products or services.

We’ve learned that content creation isn’t always natural. We don’t write the same way we speak. To ensure content quality aligns with an SEO content strategy, we’ve developed a few simple training techniques to ensure everyone was following the same guidelines for on-page SEO optimization of blog content. Along with providing our writers with our Blog SEO Checklist document, we determined that a template they could use for each article would guide them through the blog SEO optimization process.

If your goal is to rank for competitive keywords within your industry and connect with potential customers, your conversion rates will increase when you write SEO content with your audience in mind and consider how to best ensure search engines understand the context of your content.

If you’re in search of an easy SEO checklist to follow when writing your blog posts, look no further. You’ll find access to your free copy of the template below.

Blog SEO Best Practices to Increase Organic Search

The template covers the following blog optimization best practices:

Keyword in the Title

Make it easy for Google’s web crawlers to understand what your content is about by including the keywords in the article title. One of the first things the web crawlers look at is the title tag. If the keywords are at the beginning of the title, all the better.

Keep in mind when we say keyword or keywords, it could be a single word but is typically a string of words or a phrase commonly searched by your buyer persona.

Keyword in the First Paragraph

Again, you’re giving Google clues as to what the article is about by including the keyword in the first paragraph.

Link to Core Page in the First Paragraph

Try to link the keyword to a core page of your website in the first or second paragraph, if it makes sense contextually. You’ll want the link to be near the beginning of the article. This helps pass authority to your core pages which are the ones you are trying to boost in the search engine rankings. A core page, or pillar page, is one that provides high-quality content describing your services, solutions, or product.

At Least One External Link to an Authoritative Source

By linking your page to an external, credible, authoritative website, you are showing Google that your piece of content is related to a trustworthy piece of content. It lets Google know your content is trustworthy, as well. A few easy ways to link to an external site are:

  • Include statistics and link to the source.
  • Include terms that are relevant to your content and your industry and link to a website that defines that term.
  • Include a link to a YouTube video tutorial of the subject in your article.
  • Include an infographic from an authoritative site, using the embed code they provide.

Related article: Learn more about on-page optimization and external links, in Anatomy of an Optimized Page here.

Include Two Internal Links

You’ll be linking to a core page in the first paragraph, as described above. Also include links to other internal pages, such as other blog articles and landing pages. These links provide additional clues that the web crawlers use to determine whether or not your content answers the searchers’ questions.

Include the Keywords in a Heading

Google’s crawlers look at the H1, H2, and H3 tags of your page, those are the heading tags. The keyword will already be in the title tag, but make sure it’s also in at least one of your blog article headings. You could also include variations of the keyword in other headings. For example, note that in this article I used “SEO Checklist,” “Blog SEO Best Practices,” and “Why is Blog Post SEO Important?” in the headings. “SEO Checklist” is the keyword phrase for this article, but the other headings also relate to “blog SEO.”

Keywords in Image Alt Tag

When you add images, be sure you also add image alt text that contains relevant keywords to help Google serve up your image in search.

Keywords in the Body of the Article

You’ll want to sprinkle the article with long-tail keywords and variations of it. We’re not suggesting keyword stuffing. Google will penalize you for that, and it appears unnatural to the user. What we are suggesting is that you include the relevant keywords a couple of times in the article, where they fit contextually, and then also use LSI keywords throughout the article.

LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords are words or phrases that are related to the target keyword that are often used by searchers when they are using search engines like Google. You can learn more about LSI keywords in SMA founder Ryan Shelley’s video What are LSI Keywords and How do They Impact Content Marketing and SEO.

 Why is SEO Content Important?

Your blog content is one of the primary sources of content and context that search engines will use to determine the authority of your website. You are providing content that helps your audience, answers their questions, and adds value to your relationship with them. But, you need to help search engines like Google understand what your content is about and whether or not it’s relevant to searchers.

Give Google the clues to understand your blog content, and you’ll be one step closer to achieving your SEO goals.

Grab Your Free Blog Template and SEO Checklist

Our checklist is helping our content writers excel at writing blog articles that are SEO-friendly, while still serving the needs of our client’s target audience. We are confident that it will help you, too.

We’ve put all of these tips together in an easy-to-use blog template and SEO checklist that you can start using today to optimize your blog posts for SEO and increase your search traffic. Download your copy below!

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Rhonda Bavaro

Rhonda Bavaro wears many hats at SMA - Operations Director, Inbound Marketing Strategist and Content Writer. She loves helping business owners achieve accelerated growth through inbound marketing and creative content marketing strategies. She enjoys writing about digital marketing, sales, social media, technology, and health.

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