So does everyone else.

47% of people expect pages to load in just two seconds or less. Failure to meet that expectation and your conversions will tank. 40% of website visitors will abandon the page if it takes more than three seconds to load.

But humans aren’t the only ones who prefer fast—search engines do too. In fact, some of the key metrics, or ranking factors, that search platforms like Google Search use to rank a website in search engine results pages (SERPs) involve website loading speed. The faster the site, the better the rankings… so long as you as also follow other good SEO practices.

If you’re seeing high bounce rates, low conversion rates, and poor SERP rankings, page load speed could be the issue.

So, we will ask you again: Do you feel the need, the need for site speed optimization? Yes? Then take the following steps to increase website speed.

Site Speed and SEO

First things first. Before we discuss how to boost website speed, we need to discuss why it’s vital to SEO.

Human beings love faster internet. Google, Bing, and other search platforms know that and reward websites that offer a faster user experience.

In addition to relevancy to a search query and site authority, Google has defined 5 page experience factors to adjust search rankings. Those 5 factors are:

1. Mobile device friendliness
2. Safe browsing
3. HTTPS
4. No intrusive interstitials
5. Core web vitals

The first four factors give a pass or fail score, while core web vitals give “Good,” “Needs Improvement,” or “Poor” scores.

Core web vitals, before March 12, 2024, were composed of the following three metric types:

1. Largest contentful paint (LCP). LCP scores depend on whether your page/site loads in 2.5 seconds or less.
2. First input delay (FID). FID scores rate the responsiveness of your web page and how quickly a page becomes interactive.
3. Cumulative layout shift (CLS). CLS scores depend on how stable your web page is while it loads.

After March 12, 2024, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) has replaced First Input Delay (FID) as a core web vital metric type. INP, according to Google, is more comprehensive, and takes into account how much time it takes for a site to process and display all user interactions, not just the first.

The first two core web vital metric types (LCP and INP) involve speed, meaning that increasing the responsiveness rate and decreasing page loading times can boost these two scores and, therefore, your ranking in Google SERPs.

11 Steps to Increase Website Speed

1. Improve the TTFB.

Sorry, more jargon and acronyms! TTFB stands for “time to first byte.”

TTFB is how long a web browser needs to wait until the server receives the first byte of data. Google says that your TTFB should be less than 200ms for optimal performance.

There are many potential reasons why your server may not be responding as quickly as you want, including:

• Slow routing
• Memory starvation
• Frameworks
• Slow database queries
• Slow application logic
• Resource CPU starvation

Once you’re able to identify why the response time is so high, you can improve your TTFB.

2. Reduce the response time of your server.

DNS stands for “domain name system.” It’s a server with a database of IP addresses and names of hosts. Your page load speed is directly related to your DNS lookup time.

Here’s how it works. When someone types a URL into a browser, the DNS server converts the IP address to show its location on the internet. A slow DNS increases the amount of time a web browser takes to locate your site. If you can speed up this process, you’ll speed up your overall page loading time.

You can speed up a DNS server by either manually changing its settings or finding a new server to host your site.

3. Select the best web hosting provider.

When it comes to hosting a website, most people make the mistake of choosing the cheapest option. Sure, it might be the only viable option right now, but it’s not a good option for the long-term.

As your website traffic grows – and it hopefully will – you’ll need to upgrade your hosting.

There are three ways for you to host your website:

• shared hosting
• VPS hosting
• dedicated server

For the most part, shared hosting will be the least expensive choice. That’s because you’ll be sharing things like RAM and disk space with other websites also hosted on that server.

If you choose VPS hosting, you still share server space with other websites, but you have certain portions for your own resources.

Here’s a visual explanation of the difference between shared hosting and VPS hosting:

VPS hosting will likely cost more, but if you have more website traffic, it makes it easier for you to have more resource-intensive content.

Of course, a dedicated server of your own gives you the most space to spread out.

There’s a direct line from the server resources to your website, but it does require more work on your end. The setup is more technical than the other options, so if you don’t know how to set it up yourself, you’ll need someone else to configure everything for you.

A dedicated server is the most expensive option, but it gives you the most control over your site. If you have a lot of traffic causing slow loading times, you should consider updating your server hosting.

4. Enable browser caching.

When someone visits a website, the elements on each page they visit are temporarily stored on a hard drive, which is called a cache. Then, when they revisit the same website, the browser can load the page using the stored data without sending another HTTP request back to the server. This process can shave valuable time off your site loading time.

Enabling caching is an excellent option if you’re using a lot of visual elements on your website. It’ll speed up the loading time for your repeat website visitors, which will make them happier. You can enable browser caching by either directly editing site code. Or, if you’re not into web development, you can enable a plugin like W3 Total Cache.

5. Enable lazy loading.

Many websites are eager beavers. They use “eager loading,” a loading process that loads everything on a page at once. While eager loading is popular, it isn’t always the most optimal in terms of loading speed.

We’ll let you in on a secret: sometimes being lazy is a good thing… at least when it comes to site loading speed.

“Lazy loading” means nonessential parts of your website—like images—load only when they are needed. You can enable lazy loading in a few different ways. WordPress, for example, adding <img loading=”lazy”> to image and video attributes can enable lazy loading.

6. Combine/minify your files.

Each file on your site increases the loading time. That’s because additional files require additional HTTP requests. It’s like when you’re carrying several bags of groceries up to your third floor, no elevator apartment. It’s going to take you longer because you’re loaded down.

Fortunately, there are easy solutions to this problem.

If you have a WordPress website, you can access plugins to reduce file size by removing unnecessary characters and eliminating anything that isn’t need for site code to function, including:

• WordPress Rocket
• Minify HTML
• CSS Minify
• Minify Javascript

7. Eliminate unnecessary redirects.

There are multiple reasons you might have redirects on your website. Maybe you’re tracking clicks or want a URL to represent a newer, better page on your site. While redirects have their place, too many of them can slow down your site.

Specifically, several redirects can increase latency and add an extra HTTP request, which can increase how long it takes a page to load.

Our recommendation?

Don’t set up more than one redirect for the same resource. If you have to have a redirect, make sure it goes straight from the start point to the target page and doesn’t redirect anywhere else.

8. Compress files.

If you have smaller file sizes, your pages will load that much faster.

To compress files, you can use tools like:

• Gzip. This tool gives you a report that shows the total size of your compressed files and uncompressed files.
• WinRAR. This tool does it all, from compressing to encrypting to archiving data.
• PeaZip. It’s cute, it’s free, and it gets the job done on a variety of operating systems, including ReactOS, MacOS, Microsoft Windows, BSD, and Linux.

9. Optimize images.

Large image sizes can seriously tank site performance. The solution? Optimize images.

Image optimization doesn’t just mean you resize an image. It goes much further than that: you need to yank some pixels (and metadata) out of the image files themselves.

Here are some tools you can use to compress images:

• Smush Image Compression. This WordPress site plugin has a funny name, but it gets the job done so your website will load faster.
• TinyPNG. All hail the panda. This app can compress WebP, PNG, and JPEG image formats for FREE, up to 5 MB each.
• ImageOptim. This app reduces image file sizes and removes private EXIF metadata.

PRO TIP: Make your life easier. Compress images before you upload them.

10. Rethink web fonts.

Quirky web fonts are fun, but they can increase HTTP requests for your site and, therefore, slow down your site. Rethink which fonts you use on your site and how much they can impact site speed.

Remember, when it comes to website optimization, every little bit counts.

11. Check site performance regularly.

Things change; your web pages are no different. Stay on top of your game by checking site speed regularly. You can run website speed tests with tools like:

• Pingdom. Sweden has given the world so much: ABBA, IKEA, and Pingdom to name a few. Pingdom allows user experience monitoring and offers suggestions to boost speed.
• Google PageSpeed Insights. Google ranks your site. Google knows how fast your site goes. Use Google to check site speed. Use that info to correct mistakes on your site. Google rewards you with higher SERP results. You dig?
• GTmetrix. Actionable insights meet free with GTmetrix.

Partner with the Experts

Improving your website loading time will ultimately optimize your user experience, boost rankings in SERPs, and help you increase revenue. But website load time isn’t something you think about all the time. It certainly isn’t a factor that you think would have such a significant impact on your website’s performance.

However, if people don’t even see your website, you can’t possibly determine if your content or design is effective. Making sure your load time is up to par is a small way to ensure your hard work doesn’t go unappreciated.

It’s possible that some of the smallest changes will make the most significant impact on your website performance. Website loading time isn’t the only aspect of your website that can affect your conversions, but it is a place to start.

Want to learn more about how you can increase website speed? Do you need help creating a comprehensive digital strategy that will set your website apart? Drop us a line! Our solutions are personalized and our consultations free.

Wait. No.

That’s not right.

The content or the links!

It’s a question we get asked a lot and one we wrestle with fairly often. The trouble is, both content and links are very important for any SEO strategy.

Links send readers to your site and a lot of good content will grow your audience and ultimately drive conversions. But which one do you choose to focus on first?

Ideally, you’d focus on both. But if you don’t have the time or the manpower, you have to choose one to start with first.

Content creation or link building?

It’s difficult to build a lot of links and create useful content at the same time, especially if you’re a small business or a one-person enterprise.

We’ll take a look at both strategies, the pros and cons of both, and maybe by the end of this post, we’ll have a concrete answer. (Spoiler alert: we will.)

Content vs. Links

Two strategies go head-to-head in a bloodthirsty battle. Which will the SEOs choose as their #1 strategy?

If you already have an opinion on content creation or link building, read with an open mind. Both have qualities that are worthy of your consideration.

Content First

Okay, content should come first because it’s naturally valuable. It is the foundation on which you build your long-term strategy. And if that content is good and evergreen, oh man, that’s good. Really good.

You want to establish yourself as an authority and for people to keep coming back to your content. Reap the rewards!

It’s what people in The Biz call “cornerstone content.” That content acts as a representative of your site. It’s the content people will link to all the time because it’s always useful and relevant.

Starting with content provides instant value.

That’s a pretty obvious criticism of the link-first strategy. If you start by going hard on the link strategy without any real content, you don’t have a reason for anyone to link to your site.

But if you create amazing content that people want to read, you give people a good reason to care, to keep coming back, and to share your site with other people.

People love good content that provides value and goes in depth. Everyone says that no one reads on the internet anymore. They just skim.

But the people that do read? They want useful content they can share with other people.

If you create that kind of content, you’ll have a solid foundation for your site’s future.

Good content sets people a-sharing.

The power of social proof is strong, y’all.

Think about the last thing you bought online. Did you buy it without looking at the reviews? Or checking to see if a friend had bought it first and if they liked it?

Or maybe you were even tempted to look up the product because you’d seen a review of it.

It’s the same thing with websites. You’re going to trust a website that is linked to from another website or person you trust. 

If you can create content that makes people hyped to share it, then it’ll be easier for you to get links back to your site.

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Links First

The other school of thought says that you should build your link strategy first because they give you an audience.

There are several pros to this approach:

Your content is useless without an audience.

I’m sorry, but it’s true! Even if you put hours and hours of work into creating wonderful content for your site, it’s no good unless someone is reading it.

If a tree posted a blog post in the forest and no one was there to read it, did it really happen?

An audience is what brings your content to life. The right backlinks network can expose your site to thousands of people you could never have reached on your own.

Just publishing the content won’t do that all by itself, unfortunately. In the case of content marketing, “build it and they will come” is a cliché that doesn’t apply.

Links also help with your SEO.

You can definitely focus on SEO while you’re creating content. Making sure your content is SEO-friendly and making it comprehensive are two ways you can do that.

But link building is a more scalable strategy. You can link to the same content all the time, but you can only publish the same post once. Instead of creating new content constantly without any links, you can update your old content. This will show Google fresh content without you having to make brand new posts all the time.

Link building can establish you as an authority by association.

Remember social proof? Say someone visits a site they like and sees it linking to your content. They’re going to think automatically that your site is an authority on that topic.

It’s like getting a shoutout from an important influencer in your niche. It’d be like if Neil Patel or Brian Dean linked to us. Or if Tony Hawk ran a website and linked to an up-and-coming skateboarder.

Or if a leader in the bad analogies and not relevant references worlds linked to this post. That’d be huge!

But what do the search engines say?

Because that’s what this is all about, right? What the search engines want and how you can “game the system” and get them to like you?

The real question we’ve been dancing around this entire post is “which do search engines care about more, content or links?” And we can even narrow that question further:

On-page SEO or off-page SEO?

Well, according to this extensive list of ranking factors from Backlinko, it would seem that Google cares most about factors other than content. And on this steps to a Google-friendly site page written by Google, they talk a lot about links too!

If you only look at that page, you’re probably convinced that links matter most.

But if you look a little closer at that Google-friendly site page, you’ll notice the very first thing they talked about is:

It seems like their #1 Google-Friendliness Factor is high-quality content that contains useful information.

That’s because Google’s primary mission is to help their users find the best content to answer their queries (and to drive SEOs insane). Links are great and very necessary, but ultimately, links lead to your content. 

If you don’t have content, those links are going to a site with little to no value.

Think about it like this:

Would you spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to advertise an ice cream shop just to send people to an empty storefront?

You have to have the store first before you start running those ads.

The Takeaway

I think the decision is pretty clear at this point.

Ideally, you would work on both content and links.

But if you absolutely have to pick just one, start by building your content. It’s the backbone of every successful marketing campaign.

I know it can be intimidating or demoralizing to create a bunch of content without having a vast audience. But if you create content that shines, it’ll be easier to grow your website and audience with links later.

Digital Strike can help you form a long-term SEO strategy made to fit your specific business challenges. Contact us for a free consultation.

First impressions are crucial, right?

If you make a bad impression in front of your girlfriend’s parents, they’ll probably hate you forever.

And if you write a bad headline, no one is going to read your article.

People may say “never judge a book by its cover,” but everyone does anyway.

(Don’t lie – you know you do)

Especially on the internet.

In this Newsie-less world, headlines are the thing that sells everything.

If the headline doesn’t interest you, you aren’t going to read it. Period.

And if you can’t get people to click, then the content you spent so long writing might as well not exist, because no one is reading it.

According to Copyblogger, 8 out of 10 people will read the headline, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.

The purpose of the headline is to get at least the first sentence read and then the rest of your writing will hopefully get them to read the rest.

From a copywriting and content marketing perspective, knowing how to write headlines is a critical skill.

How to Write Headlines That Are Actually Successful

There are a few rules you can follow when you’re drafting headlines, but I think the ones you need to write down and tack on your wall are from Neil Patel’s Definitive Guide to Copywriting:

The 4 U’s of Writing Headlines:

• Your headline should be unique
• It should be ultra-specific
• Make sure your headline conveys a sense of urgency
• Your headline should be useful

You probably won’t be able to include all four into one headline, but if there’s one or two, then you’ve made a compelling headline people will want to click.

Think of good headlines you’ve probably clicked on lately.

They made you go “huh, I wonder what that’s about” as you click on it.

The headlines probably came from viral content creators like Upworthy or Buzzfeed. 

But why do those headlines work?

Let’s take a look.

They’re specific, useful, and pique your curiosity.

This headline, 14 Things You Never Knew You Could Cook in the Microwave, is obviously one of the more tame Buzzfeed headlines.

But it checks off a few of the 4 U’s – it’s ultra-specific and it’s useful.

It also creates curiosity, because whoever reads it will think “huh, what else could I be cooking in my microwave?”

This headline also employs negative words that make you want to click on it. It’s telling you that you don’t know something, but you will once you read it.

They’re unique and tug at your emotions.

Upworthy is known for creating viral content that pulls at your emotions and it makes you want to share it with all of your friends.

They’re so successful at this at least partly because of their headlines.

The headlines are unique and often create that curiosity gap that makes you want to click.

They’re conversational and typically much longer than you might want in a headline – but it works for their social media promotional style.

Upworthy creates content that is designed to be shared on social media, so a headline like this works perfectly for them.

They give you a hint of what’s in the article with brackets.

This headline from Hubspot isn’t as exciting as the headlines above, right?

But the reason I’m using it as an example is their use of brackets.

Some people might click on it just because they want to learn how to write better headlines.

But more people will click because now they know there’s an infographic in there.

Using brackets or parentheses can add more specificity, usefulness, and uniqueness to your headline. 

It gives your readers a hint of what’s to come without giving it all away.

And if you’re writing for your business’ blog, you probably won’t be using sensationalist headlines like Upworthy or Buzzfeed (even if you kind of want to). 

Your headlines might be more straightforward, but you still want them to be clickable and promising something interesting inside.

That’s where the use of brackets can come into play.

They make a strategic use of numbers.

As a content marketer, I have to say “all hail, Brian Dean” because he consistently writes useful and informative posts that people love to share.

Another thing he does is make a strategic use of numbers (and in this case, parentheses too) in his headlines. 

Not only does he tell you a highly specific percentage, but he gives you a specific number of days as well.

And on top of that, he gives you a hint of what’s to come in the article by using parentheses.

Literally amazing.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that your headline is one of the most important parts of your content.

If not the most important.

There are a lot of ways to make your headline stand out from the crowd.

When you’re drafting headlines for your next blog post, remember the 4 U’s, and write several different ones.

You aren’t always going to come up with the best headline on your first try.

Now that you know how to write headlines like a pro, go forth and rake in those page views and shares.

Are you looking to add more quality content to your website? Contact us today for a free consultation.

Or maybe they say “rel=canonical” and you’re sitting in the meeting like:

Then they come back and say “301 redirect” and you’re still confused.
We’re here to clear up that confusion.

But first, we should explain why any of this matters.

If search engine crawlers look through too much duplicate content, they will often times penalize you by not allowing you to rank well or the consequences can be worse in some cases.

Your ranking ability is hindered tremendously when you have duplication on a large scale.

Or, if your content does rank, the search engine might choose the wrong page as the original and show a page you didn’t want people to see, like old content.

You never want to see your site have duplicate content and search engines hate seeing it.

Canonicalization lets you take control and tell the search engines what pages you want them to see.

What is a canonical tag?

A canonical tag (A.K.A. “rel=canonical”) is a way to tell search engines that a specific URL is the master copy of the page.

It’s simply a piece of code that you put in the head section of the page HTML:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.digitalstrike.com/blog/example-page-A” />

The code above would tell a search engine that Example Page A is the original page and that’s where all of the “Organic Search Engine Juice” (a technical term) should go even if we reposted the content on a platform like Medium.

It still crawls those pages, but it knows that it’s similar content and shows the original, canonicalized page in the search engine, rather than the copy.

If Example Page A was outdated and we wrote an updated post, Example Page B, we’ll add canonicalize Page A with rel=canonical so the search engine knows that Page B is the better page.

What is a 301 redirect?

A 301 redirect is a status code that tells Google “don’t look at this. Look at this. Isn’t it better?”

It’s another way to canonicalize a page when you want the search engine crawler to look at a different, (hopefully) better, page.

You apply a 301 redirect when you don’t want people looking at Example Page B anymore and instead you want them to look at Example Page A. 

It literally redirects you from the unwanted page to the new one and it is supposed to redirect that Organic Search Engine Juice as well.

You should only use a 301 redirect if you want users to go directly to Example Page A and never see Example Page B.

When to canonicalize URLs

So when are you supposed to use canonical tags or 301 redirects, anyway?

There are a few instances where a canonical tag or a 301 redirect will come in handy:

• The content is very similar or exactly duplicate
  • If the content on both pages is very similar or an exact copy, you should use the rel=canonical tag on those pages.
• Searcher intent is serving the same or nearly the same purpose
  • Google does a better job at ranking one page with many ranking signals and keywords related to it, rather than spreading yourself thin across many pages with few signals. Use the canonical tag on pages that have very similar search intent.
• When you’re updating, refreshing, or republishing old content
  • Someday, if we were to update this blog post, we’ll create a new post and add a canonical tag to this page so the search engine knows that the new page is the one we want on the search engine results page.
• If a product, event, etc., isn’t available anymore, but there’s a similar match on a different page
  • Don’t let a temporary page go dead! If there’s another page that would fulfill a search as well as the original expiring page, use a 301 redirect.

So there you have it. You’ll finally know what your SEO specialist is talking about when they’re saying “canonicalize” over and over.

You can learn even more about SEO with our Digital Marketing 101 guide.

Digital Strike’s strategy-driven and data-focused SEO team can help you find the solutions you need. Contact us today for a free consultation.

You might be wondering:

“Why am I not ranking first in Google for [INSERT KEYWORD]?”

It’s not a bad question—it shows you value your business’ position in search engine results pages (SERPs) and understand that organic—or unpaid—search traffic can give you a continual stream of targeted traffic, qualified leads and, eventually, paying clients.

But if you, too, are asking this question, you’re focusing on the wrong measure of SEO success.

Don’t worry. I’m not avoiding your question—I’ll answer it in this post.

But before I do, allow me to reframe your problem with another question:

“What is the real goal of your SEO efforts: increasing your Google ranking, or creating a continual stream of qualified leads?”

Here’s the thing: your keyword rankings for a variety of terms should increase with any comprehensive SEO strategy.

But that’s not the goal. And it shouldn’t be your focus.

While we are monitoring how you are ranking across of hundreds—even thousands—of keywords, we don’t measure the success of your campaign by SERP rankings.

And why would we? You want to attract qualified leads, not win a blue ribbon for ranking first for a specific keyword. It’s the trend of rankings across industry-related keywords that will drive business, not ranking for any one keyword.

Here’s how we measure success:

• An increase in tracked engagements (calls and form submissions directed from your site)
• Number of qualified leads month by month (those who’re a good fit for your business, and interested in your product or service)
• The overall trend in rankings for various keyword themes—groups of keywords surrounding your business’ key service areas, products or markets

“But wait—I thought SEO was all about keyword rankings”

Okay sure, increased rankings in Google are correlated to an increase in targeted traffic and qualified leads—that’s the very idea that search engine optimization is built upon.

But SEO is not about winning a specific keyword. See, 3.5 billion Google searches are made. Every. Single Day.

And about 16 to 20 percent of those searches have never been made before. Especially as searchers become more comfortable asking Google complex questions, optimizing for specific keywords isn’t enough.

The best way to rank for these new, never-been-searched-before keywords is to have a strategy focused on building helpful content surrounding all facets of your business, and optimizing for every possible question a potential client might have from awareness to conversion.

By creating shareable content and increasing the number of sites linking to you, you will increase your Domain Authority and, eventually, increase your SERP rankings for industry-relevant searches—even searches that have never been asked before.

Yes, you still need to have a robust keyword-targeted SEO strategy. But now more than ever, you need to be more focused on addressing questions, improving user experience and creating a robust collection of web pages, blogs and backlinks in order to compete for the ongoing stream of new, long-tail search queries.

That’s why we—though we thoroughly monitor your SERP rankings over time for hundreds of keywords—focus most of our time on “keyword themes” rather than individual keywords.

Back to your question: “How do I rank first in Google for [INSERT KEYWORD]”?

I know what you’re thinking:

“This is great and all, but I still need to rank #1 for [INSERT KEYWORD]! How do I do that?!??”

Okay, let me actually answer your original question. One caveat before we begin: the answer is not simple.

Let’s say you desperately want to know how to rank #1 in Google for the keyword “locksmith STL.”

There are at least five other variations of that same keyword. Locksmith St. Louis. St. Louis locksmith. Locksmith in St. Louis. Even locksmiths STL.

Though these keywords all seem the same, you will get a slightly different SERP for each one. You might appear for “St. Louis locksmith” but not “Locksmith STL.”

To drive this point home, let’s compare the SERPs for two Google searches: “locksmith STL” and “locksmiths STL.”

The ads are different. The local pack is different. And the organic results are different. 

You might be ranking for every single variant of “St. Louis + Locksmith” except “locksmith STL.”

See, if you focus only on one keyword, you’re missing the big picture.

And this example only shows generic location-based searches.

What about when someone searches, “How to get broken key out of ignition”? Or when they search “How to fix a door lock that is jammed?” Or when they just want to know the “cost of rekeying a lock”?

You could lose your mind trying to optimize for every single variant of every single keyword. Even for the best SEO companies, optimizing for every possible search query is impossible.

Remember: Nearly 630 million Google searches are made every single day that have never been searched before.

Shift your focus from specific keywords to “keyword themes”

At Digital Strike, we do tons of keyword research for each of our clients.

We’ll create a detailed spreadsheet of every possible keyword phrase someone might use when talking about your products or services, from the awareness phase (when someone is looking for a solution to a problem), all the way to down to the purchasing decision or conversion.

In any given SEO campaign, we are optimizing for hundreds of keywords for every market you serve, service you provide or product you sell.

Usually, each of these keywords can be distilled down to several “themes,” or broad areas of focus that we’re optimizing for.

Let’s tie the locksmith example back in:

You provide both residential and commercial locksmith services. The end goal of your SEO campaign is to leverage targeted search traffic, turning searchers into paying customers.

Once we understand your business and know your goals, we’ll do some keyword research.

We might find there are three main “keyword themes” surrounding the keywords in your business: residential, commercial and emergency services.

There are a variety of keywords that fall under these keyword themes:

1. RESIDENTIAL
   Example keywords: residential locksmith, front door lock replacement, how to rekey a deadbolt, door lock repair service
2. COMMERCIAL
   Example keywords: commercial locksmith, electric strike installation, filing cabinet key replacement, digital safe lock change out
3. EMERGENCY
   Example keywords: emergency locksmith, how to get a broken key out of ignition, locked out of house, commercial lockout

Of course, there are dozens of other keywords we could list under each theme. But essentially, these themes describe facets—service areas, products, or markets—of your business you’d like to grow.

We’ll develop a long-term content and link building strategy that encompasses many different ways to search about each theme. In the end, this will help increase your SERP rankings and, in the end, drive business for each of your service areas.

Bottom line is this:

Ranking for one keyword won’t drive results. Building a robust collection of web pages, blogs and backlinks surrounding the various services you provide and markets you serve will.

The success of your SEO campaign is measured by bottom line results, not keyword-by-keyword rankings.

It’s the same with local SEO.

Sure, at one time clean citations and proper Google My Business (GMB) categorizations were enough to rank in the local pack and local organic.

No longer.

Citations and GMB listings are now considered foundational, similar to paying the entrance fee to get into a race.

Without them, there’s no way to rank in the local pack at all, and it’ll be harder to rank in local organic. But clean citations alone will not make you competitive in local SEO.

The things that will make you competitive and drive business are factors like the quantity and quality of sites that link to you, and the presence of robust, keyword-optimized content.

Competitive ranking factors harder to implement than foundational ones, but you can’t win without them.
To rank in local pack/local organic search results and, more to the point, generate leads for your business, you need to first build a strong foundation and then move onto what will make your website stand out from your competitors: the competitive local SEO ranking factors.

Moz, a key voice in digital marketing, recently released their annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey for 2018, detailing the top foundational and competitive ranking factors for local SEO.

We took a look at this survey and distilled it down to its core: the top foundational factors and the top competitive factors.

Basically, we’ll tell you what you need to enter the race—and what you need to do to win.

Foundational local SEO ranking factors: Your ante into the game

• Your business’ proximity to searcher
  You have little control over this, but proximity is by and large the greatest factor for the getting into the local pack. Lately, proximity has outweighed every other factor, at least when it comes to the local 3-pack.Let’s say you own a pizza shop. If someone looks up ”pizza near me” on their phone, but your shop is located all the way across town from the searcher, you are unlikely to show up in the local pack (the 3-listing box atop search results).It’s important to note that local organic results—the results that lie below the local pack—are significantly less affected by proximity.Still, for both organic and local pack results, you need to have a physical location in the city of search, especially where there’s a geo-modifier—a city or location attached to a keyword phrase—in the search.Essentially, you won’t show up for local intent searches if you aren’t close to the searcher.But proximity hardly guarantees ranking, and only gets you into the running.
• Google My Business Category Associations
  Your Google My Business category associations help Google determine what kind of business you are.If you are a plumber, but your GMB category is ’electrician,’ then you are less likely rank for your business—plumbing. Now, that isn’t a likely scenario, but it drives the point home.You won’t rank for your business in the local pack if your GMB listing doesn’t accurately portray what you do.Make sure your GMB listing aligns with your business. But your GMB listing will not help you compete with other businesses in your vertical—it simply gets you in the game.
• Citation consistency
  Google wants to display accurate results to its searchers, especially in local where there is a high likelihood the searcher is looking to call or go to a business.Because Google doesn’t want to frustrate its users with incorrect addresses or phone numbers, it has a ”trust but verify” policy when it comes to the business name, address and phone number (NAP) in your GMB listing.That’s why Google cross-verifies your NAP across hundreds of other directories across the internet. Still, don’t worry too much about hunting down every single listing. NAP listings from primary data sources are given more weight. Start with cleaning up your listings in prominent directories, and then work down from there.After all, citations are important, but will not set you apart from the crowd.

Competitive local SEO ranking factors: The key to winning business

• Inbound links to your site
  Your site’s link profile—the collection of sites that link to your pages—is one of the most important ranking factors.In fact, it’s the most important competitive ranking factor for local, according to Moz’s 2017 Local Rankings survey.Google takes inbound links as votes of confidence in your site’s authority and relevancy. The more inbound links you have, the better your chances of ranking in the local pack and local organic.Back to the pizza shop example: if sites all around town are linking to you menu with the anchor text, best pizza in town, Google will begin to believe that your pizza shop does, in fact, have the best pizza in town, and be more likely to feature your business when someone’s looking for pizza.The key here is that you need quality, relevant links, and you need a lot of them. And, especially when it comes to ranking locally, having local magazines and resources link to your site is an extra bonus. For ranking in the local pack, you’ll also need to earn inbound links to your GMB landing page—the page you link to within your GMB listing.
• Your site’s domain authority
  Developed by Moz, your domain authority is a score assigned to your site out of 100 that gives you an indication of the strength of your domain.The number of unique domains linking to you, as well as your total amount of links are taken into account when calculating your domain authority. As implied, good domain authority numbers point to high authority in your vertical because many other sites are talking about you.Generally speaking, the higher your domain authority, the more likely you are to rank locally.
• Inbound link diversity
  You link profile cannot all be comprised of all the same link.The pizza example again: If all your inbound links are from your city’s food magazine, point to your menu and use the anchor text ”best pizza in town,” Google might think something is up.You need diversity in referring domains (the sites linking to you), anchor text (the text in the hyperlink), and pages they link to (i.e., menu, homepage, blog).Google wants you to build natural authority—not just trade or buy them.And it knows your link profile is natural if a variety of sites are linking to you within relevant articles with varying anchor texts.If your link profile is diverse, you stand a greater chance of ranking over your competitors.
• Keyword-optimized site content
  And the last competitive local SEO ranking factor we’ll talk about is keyword-optimized content.Basically, to rank for a keyword phrase, you need to talk about that keyword somewhere on your site.Seems pretty straightforward, right?It is. For Google to think you might answer a searcher’s question or satisfy their need, they need to know that you provide the answer or solve the problem within your site content.Without a keyword-optimized content marketing plan, it will be much less likely you will appear in local search results.

Local SEO is a hard race to win. What’s true today won’t necessarily be true tomrorow—the only constant in local SEO is change.

You need a dedicated team of local SEO experts who will stay up on changes—and implement them—for your business.

And you need your local SEO team to know what tactics are simply the foundation, and which ones will push the needle. You need them to get the foundation right, and move quickly to working on the competitive local SEO ranking factors that will improve your rankings and drive business.

Digital Strike is that team. We will tailor a local SEO solution that takes into account what you already have, and helps grow your business.

If you’re ready to get start growing your business, then let’s talk. Schedule a cost- and obligation-free consultation today!