5 Things You Might Not Know About SEO

Solutions by Design

Your business has a website…but is that enough? If your customers can’t find you online, you’re leaving money and growth on the table. That’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in. Most business owners know SEO is important, but what they don’t know can seriously limit its impact.

Here are five things you might not know about SEO and how a marketing partner like Solutions by Design in Fresno, CA can help you turn clicks into customers.

1. SEO Is More Than Just Keywords - Yes, keywords matter but modern SEO goes way beyond stuffing your site with search terms. Google now looks at user experience, page speed, mobile responsiveness, internal linking, and high-quality content. It's a complex, ongoing strategy that involves both creative and technical work. How Solutions by Design Helps: Our SEO Team takes a full-spectrum approach, optimizing your site structure, improving load times, refining your content strategy, and ensuring your site is built to impress.

2. Local SEO Can Make or Break a Small Business - If you're a brick-and-mortar business or serve a specific region, local SEO is critical. Things like your Google Business Profile, local citations, and customer reviews are key to showing up in local searches and on Google Maps. How Solutions by Design Helps: Our SEO Team specializes in local SEO strategies. Whether it's optimizing your listing, encouraging reviews, or building local backlinks, our team knows how to get your name where it matters most.

3. Content Creation Isn’t Optional Anymore - If you’re not publishing content regularly, your SEO is probably falling behind. Blogging, social posts, and videos help you rank for more terms, build trust, and give visitors a reason to stick around. How Solutions by Design Helps: Our SEO and Social Media Teams create strategic content that speaks to your audience and ranks on search engines. From keyword research to polished blogs and social posts, we help you become a go-to source in your industry.

4. You Can Track Real ROI From SEO - SEO isn’t just set it and forget it…it’s measurable. You can track traffic, rankings, clicks, and calls tied directly to organic search efforts. If your current SEO team isn’t showing you results, you might need a new one. How Solutions by Design Helps: Our SEO Team uses data-driven tools and analytics to show you exactly how your SEO is performing. No fluff…just real numbers, clear reporting, and continuous optimization to drive results.

5. SEO Takes Time But It’s Worth It - Unlike ads, SEO doesn’t deliver overnight results but what it does offer is long-term growth, sustainable traffic, and a higher return on investment over time. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll see results. How Solutions by Design Helps: Our SEO Team doesn’t do cookie-cutter SEO. They build long-term strategies customized to your business, your market, and your goals so every dollar you invest moves you forward.

Ready to Be Found Online?

Whether you’re just starting your SEO journey or want to upgrade your current strategy, partnering with a team like Solutions by Design in Fresno, CA gives you the advantage of expert support and personal service.

Stop blending into the background and start showing up where your customers are looking. Contact Solutions by Design today and get your business climbing the ranks, one smart move at a time.

 

Unleash the Power of Search Engine Optimization

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In today's digital landscape, having a strong online presence is crucial for the success of any business. With millions of websites vying for attention, search engine optimization (SEO) has emerged as a pivotal tool to enhance visibility and increase organic traffic. By implementing effective SEO strategies, businesses can rise above the noise and establish a competitive edge.

One of the primary goals of SEO is to improve your website's visibility on search engine result pages, like Google. When users search for keywords or phrases related to your business, you want your website to appear prominently. By optimizing your website's content, structure, and technical elements, you increase its chances of ranking higher in search engine results.

Higher rankings mean more visibility, and more visibility leads to increased organic traffic. Organic traffic refers to the visitors who land on your website through unpaid, natural search results. These users are actively searching for products, services, or information relevant to your business, making them highly valuable prospects. By leveraging Solutions by Design’s SEO techniques, you can attract a steady stream of targeted organic traffic, effectively reaching your desired audience and increasing the likelihood of converting them into customers.

When your website appears at the top of search engine results, it instills a sense of authority and trustworthiness in the eyes of users. Most people perceive top-ranking websites as reliable and reputable sources of information or solutions to their needs. By optimizing your website's content with high-quality and relevant information, search engines recognize your website as an authoritative source within your industry. Additionally, by implementing user-friendly navigation, mobile responsiveness, and fast page load times, you enhance the overall user experience, further reinforcing your credibility and trustworthiness.

A seamless and positive user experience is paramount for any business website. Our SEO techniques help optimize various elements that contribute to a great user experience, including website speed, mobile responsiveness, and easy navigation. These factors not only enhance user satisfaction but also reduce bounce rates and improve dwell time, leading to improved search rankings.

Additionally, SEO by Solutions by Design ensures that your website is structured in a way that search engines can easily crawl and understand its content. By organizing your website's pages, meta tags, headings, and URLs effectively, our team provides search engines with the necessary signals to index and rank your website accurately.

Implementing a robust SEO strategy gives you a significant advantage over your competitors. By optimizing your website and staying up to date with the latest SEO trends, Solutions by Design can help your website outperform your competition.

Furthermore, by conducting thorough keyword research and monitoring industry trends, we can help you identify new opportunities and target niche markets that your competitors might have overlooked. By consistently adapting and refining our SEO approach, we stay ahead of the curve to ensure your business remains visible and relevant.

Search engine optimization is a necessity for any business seeking online success. Contact Solutions by Design today to learn more about the SEO Packages we have to offer. And remember… Everything we do at Solutions by Design is custom designed and developed with your company in mind. Search Engine Optimization is not a “What works for one, works for all” sort of thing and we pride ourselves on No Canned Content…ever.

SEO: What are Toxic Backlinks?

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Optimizing websites to rank high on search engines requires strategies that meet the individual needs of a website. One of those strategies is acquiring quality backlinks.

What are Backlinks? Backlinks are when another website links to yours. They can often be referred to as “external backlinks” or “inbound links.”  These links all are part of how search engines, such as Google ranks your website. These quality backlinks can come from websites that point to your service or content. Think of them as positive referrals that essentially give your website authority and legitimacy, in the eyes of Google.

Toxic backlinks are quite the opposite and are links that will overall negatively affect your rankings.

Google’s view on how toxic backlinks negatively impact your site, is pretty straight forward. “Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.”

These are a few reasons why Google will decrease your ranking with negative /low-quality backlinks. 

• Buying or selling links. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links, or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link
• Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
• Using automated programs or services to create links to your site

Where do Toxic Backlinks Come From? A link that is pointing to your website can come from a variety of places, which can be categorized as toxic. Often these links have no connection to what you offer, your services or industry. They can come from:

• Spam websites 
• Un-indexed Google websites
• Websites containing viruses 
• Payday loan websites

A simple way to view if you have toxic backlinks is to review all the backlinks to your website and determine where they are coming from and their credibility.

How Do I Remove Toxic Backlinks? You should try to remove toxic backlinks by deleting them and asking the site owner to remove them. Because most of the sites are spam websites, the most effective way to remove toxic backlinks is to use the Disavow Tool from Google. This can be done by identifying toxic backlinks and uploading a list to the Disavow tool. You can find the complete steps here. 

Backlinks are sure to reappear over time from new websites, which is why constantly monitoring your website is important. Think of backlinks as positive referrals and credibility to your website, such as when someone refers you to their favorite place. Backlinks ultimately help your website rank well on the search engine results pages. Solutions by Design offers various SEO packages to help your website rank high and attract new customers. We monitor backlinks through a backlink audit to ensure Google and other search engines are ranking your website correctly and efficiently. Learn more about our SEO services and contact us for more questions. 

3 Important SEO Insights Our SEO Reports Feature

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What was the last business you “googled” (or searched on a search engine)? Search engines are always changing and are constantly being updated daily, which means search engine optimization should always be worked on as an evolving process. Search engines use algorithms that are tweaked and at times changed completely by search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, and Google.

Our Search Engine Optimization services are focused on best establishing your website structure, content and set-up,  so that you can meet your customers online, at the right time, the right place, and in the right context. Our approach to an SEO strategy is unique and customized to each client, understanding all aspects of their business and target audience.

There are various important metrics we measure in SEO. We inform our audience by being transparent with their metrics and bring action plans to every approach to SEO. Through our customized monthly SEO reports, we offer an in-depth analysis of their website, their traffic, their keyword campaigns and many more data to help drive their goals. We believe these 3 important SEO insights are essential in guiding decisions on marketing goals.

1. Web Analytics
Website analytics are important to understand where your website traffic is coming from. Our reports show a breakdown of which traffic is coming from a mobile device versus a desktop. These website analytics show the location of your traffic based on city, the percentage of user acquisition, such as new users vs returning users to your website and the behavior of your audience such as bounce rate, how fast they are leaving your website. 

2. Keyword Campaign Rankings 
Keywords are the core of an effective SEO strategy. Placing keywords in the right place that allows the search engines to optimize rankings is a key component to improving your page rank on search engines. Our reports show a breakdown of your keyword campaigns, the keywords we are tracking for an SEO strategy. This shows the position of your rankings over time, allowing the client to see their growth.

3. Social Interaction
Many factors tie into an SEO strategy, one being social media. Social media is an easy way to engage with your online customers and reach potential customers. Our customized SEO reports show a breakdown of where your social media traffic is coming from and from what social media platform brought in traffic. From there, the client can see how many sessions that social platforms brought, along with how many page views on your website.

The way search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others rank websites are always changing. Their algorithm goes through constant updates, which means search engine optimization should always be worked on as an evolving process. Our approach to an SEO strategy is unique to each client. Solutions by Design offers various SEO packages to help your website rank high and attract new customers, so you can do what you do best. Learn more about our SEO services and contact us for more questions.

SEO: Google’s Core September Update

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the online visibility of your website in a web search engine’s unpaid results— referred to as “natural”, “organic”, or “earned” results.

SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, video search, academic search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. Search engine optimization is something that is always changing with updates by search engines and should be worked on and monitored.

Google is the king of search engines. “Google has dominated the search engine market, maintaining an 88.47 percent market share as of April 2019.” 3.5 billion Google searches are made every day and the number only seems to be increasing every year. Google releases a few core updates to its algorithm, which impacts the way websites are ranked and how the search engine works.

“What is a Google core update? A Google core update is when Google adjusts its core search ranking algorithm with the goal of returning more relevant and useful search results to the searcher.” According to Google, “Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our search results. Most aren’t noticeable but help us incrementally continue to improve.”

Later today, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the September 2019 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this blog for more about that: https://t.co/e5ZQUAlt0G

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) September 24, 2019

With each update Solutions by Design analyzes what impacts this has on each client. Google’s core updates come a few a year, however, the impacts can lead to a decline in rankings, a spike for others, emphasizes backlinks or content, while some updates don’t impact others at all.

What is in this update? 

A Change in Rankings: 

With any update, search results change for each website. The website may see a spike in ranking higher for their keywords, while others see a drop in their ranking positions. Updates also impact click-through rates, which lead to a decline in website traffic.

In 2018 alone, Google made over 3,200 changes to its algorithms. However, core updates affecting search algorithm changes happen only a few times a year, with Google announcing the update and what it means for websites.

This September update affected the health and finance industry more than any other website. “Whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms it means that your site can do better or worse in the search results.” Understanding when Google does these core updates allows us to understand when something has changed on websites such as traffic and where we can improve upon for better rankings. Always optimizing SEO is essential, especially as Google changes its algorithm.

What Can We Do? 

As an SEO company, Solutions by Design is always tracking changes in SEO and how to get our clients to rank as high as possible organically. If SEO rankings have been impacted, it does not mean that your website has been punished in any way possible by Google. According to Google, “There’s nothing wrong with pages that may perform less well in a core update. They haven’t violated our webmaster guidelines nor been subjected to a manual or algorithmic action. In fact, there’s nothing in a core update that targets specific pages or sites. Instead, the changes are about improving how our systems assess content overall.”

Google reminds us of what is rewarded and the best way to ensure search engine optimization is at its best for all websites. Focusing on content and websites that offer great quality content is what is rewarded in search engines. Here are recommendations on what to ask when creating content for your website, straight from the search engine source itself, Google.

Content and Quality: 

• Does the content provide original information, reporting, research or analysis? 
• Does the headline and/or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Would you expect to see this content in or referenced by a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?

Presentation and Production Questions: 

• Was the content produced well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• Does the content have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Does content display well for mobile devices when viewed on them?

Expertise Questions

• Is the website source trustworthy?
• Is this content written by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?
• Is the content free from easily-verified factual errors?

Comparative Questions:

• Does the content seem to be serving the genuine interests of visitors to the site or does it seem to exist solely by someone attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines? 

As an SEO company, Solutions by Design is always tracking changes in SEO and how to get our clients to rank as high as possible organically. Real SEO is worked on every month: adding, changing, linking, and enhancing so we get you results that are tough to achieve. Contact us for more information on how to get your website ranking in your communities.

Sources: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/08/core-updates.html

Google Local 3 Pack Matters

If you’re searching for anything, chances are you are going to Google it (search on Google). Searching for the best information fast is critical for someone searching for a need or service. Let’s say we are searching for a specific business. Google wants to provide the information that is most relevant to you, depending on geographical location, prominence, and relevance, Google will determine which local business listings will be displayed. These listings are at the top of the page in a special list accompanied by a map. This is called the “Local 3 Pack” - because Google displays the top 3 results.

According to Google, “Local results appear for people who search for businesses and places near their location.” Let’s say we are searching for a “Veterinarian,” Google will display the top 3 local businesses, based on my geographical location, prominence, and relevance.

There is no denying the top spot on Google is the desired spot for all businesses with an online presence. Only 3 businesses are displayed at the top of the first page on Google, leading to an increase in competition. Google only shows the name of the street where your business is located, with a description of your services. As a user searching for information, you have to click to get the full address, phone number, and reviews.

The top 3 results are local, meaning you will get different results based on your physical location and depending on your search terms.

Through the Local 3 Pack from Google, local businesses have the opportunity for more exposure. Especially with ‘Map View’ you get an overview of most of the local businesses, which expands to a list, leading to more exposure.

How does Google Determine Local Ranking? 

According to Google, “local results are based primarily on relevance, distance, and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might decide that a business that's farther away from your location is more likely to have what you're looking for than a closer business, and therefore rank it higher in local results.”

Filling out your Google My Business page correctly and constantly update all the information is the first step in ensuring your business is being ranked properly. Adding detailed business information such as business hours, description, address and phone number and photos, will help Google match your business to those searching for your services.

Of course, the distance will impact your search results, showing the local business closest to your location or search terms. Prominence is a determining factor in search results, telling Google how well a business is known. Google gathers this information about a business from various places such as links, articles, websites, and directories. This is where an effective SEO strategy comes in.

It is important to note that you can not pay for a better ranking on Google. According to Google, “There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. We do our best to keep the details of the search algorithm confidential to make the ranking system as fair as possible for everyone.”

The Google Local 3 Pack has allowed businesses to reach an audience and become more discoverable. Local businesses have the opportunity for more exposure. Be sure to ensure your business or practice is optimized as best as possible. Searching for help on SEO or social media? Contact us for a customized package that is the perfect fit for you.