• 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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Position Zero and Other SERP Features

Long gone are the days of 10 blue links in Google search. Today’s search results are full of rich features that are intended to help the end user. The problem is that many organic listings are now past the scroll. In this video, I’ll share some other ways to get your site to stand out by leveraging “position zero” and other SERP features.

The Evolution of Search

Search has changed a lot over the last few years and it’s no longer about those 10 blue links, it’s about so much more. And we’ve talked about SERP features and we’ve talked about how we can expand what users see when it comes to our site in search, but sometimes we overlook the other opportunities.

Now, when you look for a term, let’s just say “sports car,” right? We type that in. You used to see things like these blue links. “10 best sports cars.” But as you can see up here at the top, I typed in “sports car,” now we have all of these info cards and tons of information. What the car is, what it looks like, what’s the starting price for each one of these cars. By simply typing in “sports car” I have all this information.

Now, I have some other plugins here that tell me some stuff, but if we just ignore those and we look strictly at the search results, the next thing down is images. And again with these images, I have the scrolling up here. It’s not till I scroll down do I even start to see the blue links that are associated with it. Once I get a little bit further I’ve got videos. Then I’ve got, “People also ask for.” I’ve got top stories. The search results are not what they used to be by any means. Now, I can open this up in an incognito window, which is not going to look at any of my history. I can do something again. I can go “sports cars.” I don’t really look at sports cars a lot, but for me, that just came to my head. Now, this is what it looks like without all those tools around me. Google is making me scroll down before I see any of these websites.

Increasing Your Search Rankings with the Help of SEO

There’s a lot of site owners who have looked at this and said, “Man, this is not fair. Where’s my content? I put so much information in the content.” But what Google said is, when people type in “sports cars,” they want to see images. So as a site owner, I might want to put things on my site, like these different images, and also mark up things like, what is the car? What is the price of the car? What are some images of that car? now that I could use to hopefully be in the search results. And this is where having good content, but also adding structure to your data, marking up your images, and making sure you have stuff, if you’re in this industry is going to play a big role.

Let me do another one. SEO. Oh, that didn’t work. So it’s here. We’ve got two ads right here at the top, and I’m not going to let them know my location at the moment, just because I don’t want a local pack in right here. So we’ve just got ads. One, two, three, four. And then over here we’ve got the knowledge card. We’ve got information here in images, one, two, three. We’ve got a Wikipedia snippet. We’ve got SEO software. We’ve got people searched for, which these are things that are related to SEO, website, backlink, home page blog hyperlink.

Ranking Position Zero

Right here at the bottom, this is position one. Normal positioning. This is what we would call “position zero” in some instances because this is technically organic and it’s showing up right next to all of these tools. I have to scroll down.

So I’ve got position one, “People also ask for” box, then position two. Now, as somebody who’s wanting to do SEO or wants to make sure that they rank, this is something that you want to pay attention to. You want to log in, you actually want to go to incognito, and then you want to start doing some searches for these core terms that you’re going for, and see what are the other ranking opportunities. Because once I put an agency here, now I’ve just got three ads and now I’ve got this local pack that’s showing up. And then I’ve got the “People also ask for.”

One thing I know, I need to have these answers on my website. If I’m in this location, I’m going to want to do some advertising because now the number one position in maps is an ad. But also make sure that I’ve got reviews, make sure that I’ve got my local structured data set up, and make sure that I’m meeting these needs. Because honestly, if you’re down here, you’re not getting much traffic, if any at all. Most people are going to stay either in these ad positions in this local pack, and that’s probably about it.

It’s a little harder, but we have to look at the different features, the different ranking options that we have available to us. I’ll do one more just to show you that every type of keyword is going to deliver something different. It’s not all the same right now. So let’s do something like “RF modulator.” This is something that’s a little more technical. This is also something you can buy. So right here we’ve got ads right here, or buy now. These are ad placements. We’ve got an ad here. And then what’s the next thing? Video.

This is in position zero, “People also ask for.” Again, I have to scroll all the way down before I find an organic listing. Now, I’m going to scroll down further and it does some local packs. It also is going to show me some images. These are all different options that you have to rank, it’s not only the 10 blue links. And you have to understand what Google is showing because they’re showing you what people are expecting to see.

So make sure that you go on, that you look at these different keywords, you look at how the search engine results look, and then you need to know what type of content and then you can also mark it up. Create videos. Add schema to your videos and put them on your website. Put them on YouTube. Make sure that you’re answering the questions of the “People also ask for.” Make sure that if you’re selling a product that you have reviews and that you use schema reviews here to show that in the search results.

Ranking for Your Target Keyword Today

There are so many more ways to rank today, so we need to shift the way that we produce our content and shift the way that we look at SEO in general because we have things like position zero, people ranking above that first position. And then we have SERP features, which are all of these things like ads and videos, and “People ask for,” and the knowledge box, and local, and images. And the list goes on and on as Google continues to find new and creative ways to show the search engine listings.

If you’ve got any questions on this or you’d like some help in kind of figuring out how to do this better, please comment below. We’d love to continue the conversation with you online. Until next time, Happy Marketing.

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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in December 2019 and has been updated.

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