GEOFENCING - TARGET MARKETING - 10 Steps to Be Successful at this Cutting Edge Tactic.

1. Find A Venue Where Your Target 

Audience Will Have Specific Wants or

 Needs

Stadiums, airports, universities, and malls are examples of specific venues that can be targeted in order to reach specific interest groups. Stadiums provide a great opportunity to focus on specific short engagement events with an audience defined by that event. They often host fans from two specific cities or schools or fans of a specific music genre that is heavy in one demographic. A band like One Direction, for example, is likely to attract school-age female fans.

Use these consumer characteristics to time and target your marketing. For example, airports on weekdays are a great source of business travelers looking for high-end restaurants, while weekends and Spring Break bring more leisure visitors and families looking for more casual dining options. Likewise, dance clubs and bars can benefit by promoting 18 and over events targeted at universities whose student bodies are largely between the ages of 18-21. These are just a few examples of how venues define audiences that can be effectively targeted.

2. Exclude Locations Where Your Target 

Audience Will Not Be

Not only can you define an area you wish to reach, you can carve out an area you wish to exclude. Exclusion can be done by venue or one side of the street or any area that could have been specifically targeted.

For example, clubs and bars that might otherwise want to target university students may exclude that same area during breaks or the summer when most students are away.

Excluding locations may also be a more cost-effective way to avoid the higher ad rates of high demand target areas. Digital marketing agency Mediative how lower-cost, broader area ad campaigns can accomplish the same targeting goals by opting out of all areas but your desired target location.

3. Define A Radius by Distance Or Time 

Around Your Store Or An Area Of 

Interest

Geo-fencing allows marketers to set a perimeter around a physical location in which ads can be delivered. For geo-fencing ads, they may include creative messages acknowledging the user’s location or may include location-based features such as a store locator.

For example, a coffee shop can set a 1-mile perimeter around its store and reach any user within that radius. Or, it could set a 3-mile perimeter around a nearby office complex to reach users that may be looking for somewhere to grab coffee before going into work. You can also try geo-conquesting, which targets customers around a competitor’s location.

Another way to define a perimeter is not by distance, but by time. A company named iGeolise developed a platform they call TravelTime, an API that allows mobile apps and sites to search by time rather than distance. This could be useful for a condo unit near downtown looking to attract workers with very long commutes, or a restaurant targeting hotel patrons within a 10-minute walking distance.

4. Adjust Your Bid on Ads To Prioritize 

Better Locations

One concern with specific targeting is the loss in volume of audience. Even if you have an otherworldly 10% click-through rate, that’s just 10 click-throughs if only 100 people see your ad.

In low performing locations, the business developed from those areas may be outweighed by the campaign cost. By raising your bid for more desirable target locations, you increase your exposure in that area, while lowering your bid in other areas keeps your reach broad at a justifiable cost. These adjustments are a way of optimizing ad performance.

An event planning company or marketer for a musician that is hosting a concert in Chicago may use bid adjustments to prioritize Chicago, but also reach, at a lower cost, Milwaukee, WI and Grand Rapids, MI, both of which are driving distance

5. Use Location-Specific Keywords for 

Paid Search Ads

Geotargeting doesn’t always mean you have to capture where someone is physically located. Consumer intent is conveyed all the time by search queries, and location is a commonly included term. Consumers often narrow their own searches by adding in the name of a city or district.

For example, “Austin gyms” or “coffee shops near Dupont Circle” or “uptown restaurants” provide location intent that you can target. Include location terms such as area code, ZIP code, neighborhood, community name, nearby landmarks, popular venues, tourist destinations, well known street names, local jargon and other keywords that will help you get found when a consumer is searchingfor businesses around you.

6. Predict Your Audience by Geography

Geography can also be used to predict desirable demographics and information about users in that area. Neighborhoods can often be delineated by residents’ income bracket, age, ethnicity, education, and many other demographics or interests. Politicians often draw district boundaries into areas of common political constituencies that also predict demographics or common values.

Knowing your business’ target audience and matching it up with where they live or work helps you find those who might be most interested in your product or service.  For example, a ticket broker might want to advertise NCAA basketball tickets in the state of Kentucky and might think of using Kentucky basketball in its messaging.  However, Louisville basketball would be preferable for any advertising within 50 miles of the city on the Kentucky side of the border and 70 miles into Indiana due to the strength of Louisville’s fan base in those areas.

7. Discover Location Intent by Search 

History

Targeting ads using search history allows marketers to deliver location specific ads to consumers, even if the consumer’s tracked location doesn’t match the physical location of where he or she was searching.

For example, a user searching for information on the Empire State Building, Central Park, and Broadway tickets predicts a trip to New York. A hotel in the area could use that search history data to deliver a relevant and timely search related ad or message.

8. Analyze Consumer Behavior and 

Preference from Past Locations Visited

Location history of a consumer provides a lot of information specific to that person: where they like to shop, what they like to buy, how often they make the trip, and even how they get there. Obtaining this information gives great insight to marketers that enhances the ability to target consumers and deliver relevant, responsive location specific ads and information, even if the consumer is not currently in that area.

For example, a bagel shop might serve up a free coffee coupon to anyone who’s visited a Starbucks location more than once within 10 blocks of its shop.  The customers may be from anywhere in the city, but their location history allows the bagel shop to target those who are likely to be in the area in the future.

9. Use Location-Specific Landing Pages to

 Provide Relevant Content

It’s important not only to target the right consumers, but to provide the most relevant information to them. If you find the right user who clicks on your ad, but the landing page for that ad isn’t customized, that conversion could be lost. Offer different website landing pages for each targeted ad that match the reason that user was targeted.

Another way to get the right people to the right landing page is through geo-aware targeting. Your site or landing page can detect where the user is when they click on a banner or visit your website.

For example, if a user from a high-income neighborhood visits a car dealer’s site or clicks on a paid search display ad, that consumer may be directed to a landing page displaying a luxury vehicle, while consumers located in a lower income area may be targeted with a deal on an economy vehicle. The higher income consumers may be more interested in deals such as cash off or lower interest rates whereas those in lower income brackets may be more receptive to lower monthly payments.

10. Take Advantage of Geographic 

Specific Events

Lastly, geographic specific events, such as the weather or traditional local holiday celebrations, can be used to target consumers. Some events are known in advance, like St. Patrick’s Day in Boston. Others are unexpected, like snow storms in Dallas.

Upon forecast of a blizzard, a hardware store may target consumers with content promoting snow shovels or snow blowers. The week before St.Patrick’s Day, a clothing store may promote its green colored or festive attire. Either way, these events will spike demand for particular items and are a great opportunity to boost sales.

In summary, these are but a few of the examples of how geography plays such an important part in creating customized and targeted marketing campaigns. Consumers respond better to relevant marketing which means that ROI of targeted campaigns will increase. Mobile consumers make geography one of the best ways to target while technology and data make doing so a real advantage to those who use it. Sometimes it takes a little creativity, but it is worth the effort. Especially for the business of local.

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www.thirteen.red

BONUS FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM QUICK FACTS

Targeting Customers within a Region

Here, we’ve placed a pin in the East Village in Manhattan and set a 1-mile radius for the targeting — ensuring that everyone in this geographical region will be part of the audience for the ad that we’re going to run.

Our ad will be shown to 710,000 people: that’s a lot. Better to narrow that down a bit. To do that, we’re going to use some more targeting around the age, gender, and type of person that we’re trying to show our ad to.

Since we’re trying to help people selling their homes, we should look forindicators that the people we’re showing our ad to are actually likely to move.

Targeting Customers with a Region + Behavior & Demographic Targeting

In order to get more specific with our audience, we set up our targeting to focus on those people that Facebook says are interested in moving. We narrow our age range slightly to exclude those too young to (probably) be looking to sell their home, and also include some demographic and behavioral targeting traits. We target those who are “likely to move” and those within a range of incomes and networths that we like:

The “likely to move” indicator is given to us based on Facebook data about people it has deemed are in the early stage of leaving their house. For net worth and income data, we’ve set up a fairly wide bracket that will at least give us some understanding of the financial situations of the customers we’re using this ad to target.

This combination of traits gives us a much more reasonable 2,800-person audience. We can show an ad to virtually every single one of these people with not that much spend.

Targeting with Geographic Exclusion

Say our real estate marketing business really starts to blow up. We make a few new hires and start to divide Manhattan up into regions, with each new employee responsible for a new section. Each one is responsible for marketing within their region. We can easily carve out an “excluded” area within any local awareness region to, for example, exclude a particular zip code that we’re not responsible for from our ad’s targeting. That lets us save money by not targeting customers that we don’t really want to be attracting:

You can use multiple different exclusion zones if you have an extremely particular region that you’re looking to target. The only caveat here is that you have to make sure you’re not being too narrow with your behavioral and demographic targeting. When you focus on too small a region, the size of your audience can get so small that it becomes practically impossible for Facebook to actually deliver your advertisements.

Targeting by Geographical Behavior

If you target a particular geographical region long enough, you will probably notice that there is some ambiguity behind what it really means to “target” a location.

Facebook determines the locations of its users in a variety of ways: by data collected from smartphones, by manual check-ins at different locations, and by the places that users list in their profiles as their current and home cities — to name a few.

That means it is not always clear which kind of “location” you’re going to be targeting with your local awareness ads:

• People who actually live in a particular region
• People who have recently visited a region
• People who are in a region on vacation or otherwise traveling

The distinctions here can become quite urgent depending on the kind of product you’re selling or the kind of customer you’re looking to find. If you’re trying to find people who are interested in selling their homes in the East Village, then you don’t want to target people who are just in the East Village on their spring break or while visiting family. If you’re trying to target high net worth individuals on vacation in Montauk, New York because you believe they’re ripe targets for ads about buying beachfront houses in Montauk, then you don’t want to waste your ad spend showing ads to locals.

Fortunately, Facebook saves you the trouble of worrying about this by allowing you to specify just what kind of “location” you’re trying to target. You can choose between people simply in a location, people who live in the location, people who were recently there, or people traveling there.

Custom Targeting Lists

If you’re running a lot of local awareness ads or have a very strong idea of where your best customers come from, you will probably develop a longer list of places that you want to target. Facebook makes it easy to run more complex, custom ad campaigns on more locations.

You can, for instance, target multiple areas specifically by their zip codes. Let’s say our real estate business explodes and goes nationwide and we want to look for the cheapest places to buy homes in America. We can look up a list of the zip codes with the cheapest homes and enter them as our targeting criteria, giving us a “geo-fence” that spans different communities and states:

If you already have a list of places where your high-value clientele lives or work, you can upload that in text or spreadsheet form and insert it right into Facebook. That way, you can automatically begin targeting in the areas where you know your highest value customers live.

Combining geographical regions with behavioral and demographic targeting in this way can allow you to zero in on the high-value customers you want to attract to your business no matter what you’re selling or who you’re trying to find.

Use location-specific landing pages

If you have different landing pages on your website for each region that you serve, send customers to the landing page most relevant to their geographic areas. That way, they don't have to spend time searching for the information that's relevant to them.

Example

You're a real estate agent and your website has listings for apartments for sale throughout Florida. If a customer is searching for apartments in Miami, you'll want to send them to your landing page with Miami apartments, rather than Orlando apartments.

Use location extensions to highlight your business address

If it's important for your customers to know where your business is located, it can be helpful to add location extensions to your ads. Location extensions merge your business address and phone number seamlessly with your ad text.

If all of the businesses in your location extensions are in the U.S., you can target a radius around your location extensions to show ads to people located near your business. With bid multipliers, you can also set different bids for these areas.

Example

Let's say you own a bicycle repair shop in downtown Chicago. With location extensions, a customer near your store who searches for bicycle repair shops can see your ad, along with your full address and phone number -- and head your way with his flat tire.

** Bonus About advanced location options**

Location targeting based on household income is being automatically migrated from location targeting into demographic targeting. To make household income targeting changes or see your reports, go to the Demographics section of your Google Ads account.

Location options let you include or exclude people based on:

• where they're likely to be physically located
• the places they’ve shown interest in

By default, location targeting includes both physical locations and locations of interest, but advanced advertisers can use these options to limit their targeting to either one. This article goes over the advanced options for location targeting and location exclusion. Note that advanced location options only apply to ads on the Search and Display Networks.

Compare location targeting options

By default, you'll be able to reach people who are likely to be physically located in your targeted areas, as well as those who show interest in your targeted geographic areas. People can show interest through terms used in their searches, if they were recently in a location, or through content they view related to the location (such as pages or sites).

Areas that people show interest in are also known as locations of interest, which we identify regardless of the Google search domain the person searches on. Find out more about how we determine geographic location and locations of interest.

You can have the option to switch to a different way of targeting. Let's take a look at our available targeting options.

Reach people in, or who show interest in, your targeted locations

This default and recommended option lets you reach people who are likely to be physically located in your targeted location, as well as people who have shown interest in your targeted location.

Most campaigns will see a decrease in impressions when switching from the default targeting option. We suggest that you change your targeting option only if you want to refine your campaign’s traffic.

Reach people in your targeted locations

This option lets you show your ads only to people who are likely to be physically located within the area you've targeted.

If people outside of your targeted area include terms related to your targeted locations in their searches, they won't see your ads.

Reach people who are searching for your targeted locations

This option lets you show your ads to anyone who searches on Google for your targeted location. If a person doesn’t specify a location in their search, then the system uses their physical location for targeting.

Compare location exclusion options

By default, you'll exclude people physically located in or showing interest in your excluded locations.

You have the option to change your default setting to exclude only people who are in your excluded locations. Let's look at our available exclusion options and examine how they work with some example campaigns.

Don’t show ads to people in, or who show interest in, your excluded locations

With this option, we won't show your ads to people who are likely to be physically located in your excluded location OR who showed interest in your excluded location.

Don’t show ads to people within your excluded locations

This option keeps your ads from appearing to people who are likely to be physically located in the areas you've excluded. People who are physically outside these areas may still see your ads.

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Vinny the Marketer

5 suggestions to get to the decision maker.

Have Old Leads? Reopen contact with these people. You will find you recapture many of them. The alternative - trying to develop new markets or new customers is expensive so let your competitors do this while you work to steal their customers from them.

Your team's motivation Leakage in Communication gives the game away Be aware of verbal leakage. What we say and more importantly how we say it are determined by what is going on in our head. So check your team’s motivation. Because if they are feeling frustrated with company systems or are demotivated, chances are it will come across in their dealings with your customers.

Be proactive Keep a step ahead of your customer . Often the last thing you want to do is communicate with a customer about a problem. However if you let them know what has gone wrong and more importantly WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT, it will win them over and impress them that you're thinking about them

Getting past the receptionist The age old problem.

Here are 5 suggestions to get to the decision maker. 

1. Try calling them at one end of the day or the other when the receptionist is unlikely to be there
2. Always store direct dial numbers when they're given to you or you hear them on voice mails
3. Try another person - such as someone in their department and ask them some questions
4. Refer to previous information if you've spoken to them before
5. Use some technobabble, i.e. more technical information so that the receptionist doesn't feel confident answering for them

Befriending gatekeepers Treat the gatekeeper as your friend The receptionist or P.A. is in a stronger bargaining position than you, so respect this imbalance of power. Be friendly to them, use their name back to them and use words like advise, suggest and help. You will get more out of them if you are respectful to them.

Shortcuts ?

 There are no shortcuts ! There are no quick fixes, or shortcuts in selling
It is about doing the right things methodically, and consistently. Dedication to the sales process and professionalism will get you the results you want.

Objections - been there You've heard them all before Find out how to deal with the objections you will face.

Once you’ve decided, then formulate the words you will use. Most of the objections you face are ones you’ve heard before once you’ve been doing the job for a few weeks.
Your voice How much your voice can give away 80% or more of your message is received from your vocal tone. So be conscious of the impression you're giving If you're having a bad day, chances are the other person knows it !

Get the appointment !

You need to close Closing an appointment with someone needn't be scary. Because if you've done the ground work thoroughly you should be lining them up to say "yes" to you. Furthermore a professional business person expects you to close them. Remember your ABCs. Always Be Closing !

Be assertive ! 

Make sure your questioning is assertive Make your questioning assertive. This will only happen naturally if you genuinely believe in your head that your call is worthwhile and has some value so have a word with yourself to get your mind right ! Do you mind if I ask you what you’re using at the moment is not as assertive as “What are you using at the moment ?”

"People buy from people If they like you your job is easier People buy from people. Remember this always."

This means that you need to create an image of yourself that they will like. So this includes sounding genuine, honest, and interested in them. Being obsequious or saying things that you think they want to hear may make you sound false, and they’ll not trust you so readily.

Closing You have to ask ! 

When selling it is important that you ask for the order, as soon as you feel that they ought to say yes. If you've done the selling job correctly, you'll know when this is.
Then ask, because if you don't ask they can't say yes !!

Top quote Quotes to live your life by ! 

"It's not about how good you are when you're winning, it's about how good you are when you're losing." This is credited to Margaret Thatcher. Remember things won't always go your way, things won't always be easy. True champions and successful people are those who keep going even when the going gets tough, and who show great character and resilience.


Top quote Quotes to live your life by !

"Winning doesn't happen in a straight line." Sir Clive Woodward wrote this in his autobiography 'Winning' and I like it. In order for you to be successful in whatever you do, you need to remember that you won't always win, you won't always be successful, it won't always be easy, but don't give up. Keep on being determined to be good at what you do.
Talk benefits - not features Benefit selling is an important part of building interest in your offer It is easy to get carried away with all the latest whizz bang features of your new product or service.
However what will really interest your prospect is how it will benefit them. So consider it from their point of view. It works better that way

Dealing with whingers !

Tip for managers If you have someone within your team who constantly complains and moans about everything - try this simple technique. Simply tell them that whenever there is something they wish to complain about, they should also come to you with 3 suggestions on how it could be overcome. Getting them to become solution orientated will help reduce the whingeing ! We run a training course specifically for telephone team managers, supervisors and team leaders

Efficiency How to offer efficient service Efficiency in customer service consists of 2 opposing forces.
It means speed, but it also means accuracy. Neither one without the other is efficient service.

Be friendly It's obvious isn't it ? 

We all appreciate that it is important to be friendly. So how is that we have all spoken to people who aren't ?

Make sure that your words, your tone and your attitude are in tune with being friendly !

Keep smiling !

Your mood affects the other person It's true that people can tell a lot about us by our mood. So if you have someone in your customer service team who is having a bad day, chances are your customer can tell !

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Vinny the Marketer

34 Search Engine Optimization Tips: Top Techniques and Strategies for the Best SEO Results

Everyone could use some good search engine optimization tips.

SEO is an ever-changing process, and therefore you have to be up to date with all the algorithm updates and best practices.

If you are looking for some good and actionable SEO tips, you arrived in the right place.

Search Engine Optimization is something every website should do. By optimizing a website for search engines, you increase your chances of ranking high for your main keywords, which means you get more traffic to your site.

While SEO is not rocket science, and anyone could do it, you have to understand that there’s a very small border between white hat SEO and black hat SEO. 

White hat SEO refers to optimizing your website using the practices agreed by Google. On the other side, Black Hat SEO involves using shady techniques that are violating Google Webmaster guidelines. Black Hat SEO it’s not something you should do if you care about your website. 

In this post, I will be talking about search engine optimization tips and tricks for websites that want to achieve long lasting results.

34 Search Engine Optimization Tips: Top Techniques and Strategies for the Best SEO Results

1. Understand the process

SEO is an ongoing process. Search engines are updating their rankings algorithm a few time each year. Hence why SEO techniques that used to work last year, can be obsolete today.

To be successful with SEO, you have to know what works best and avoid using outdated techniques.

2. Results don’t come overnight

I like to think at SEO as a poker game between you and Google. It’s a game of patience. Optimizing a website for higher rankings takes time, and results usually come after months of work.

A very common mistake among beginners is that they expect to see results in the first days, and get discouraged when nothing happens.

If you follow the best SEO practices, with time, results will come.

3. Stay away from “guaranteed SEO results”

If you want to outsource SEO to a company or freelancer, whenever you head the words” Guaranteed SEO”, run as fast as you can. There is nothing more misleading and more untrue than saying you can get guaranteed rankings in search engines.

Those that guarantees they can rank your website on the top positions in Google for certain keywords, most of the time are scammers.

Stay away from companies or freelancers that make empty promises.

4. Don’t over optimize anything

Over optimization is something you must avoid. Don’t do keyword stuffing or building links using the same anchor text. Google penalizes websites that don’t look natural.

5. Publish outstanding content

Your content is the most important part of your website. Without good content, it’s impossible to rank high in Google. Your articles must be well-written and provide real value to your readers.

Google gives more credit to longer articles and posts that get a lot of engagement, like comments, for example. Do your best to engage your readers and make them share their thoughts.
Short articles that don’t bring anything new to the table can get your website penalized by Google Panda. Also make sure you are not covering the same topic too many times, or your site may start to look like a content farm.

6. Do keyword research

Never start writing an article without doing keyword research. Use Google Keywords Tool to find what people are searching for and for what problems they’re trying to get answers.

Discover synonyms and what keywords are used to search in Google. Also study the trends and understand if the demand is increasing or decreasing.

7. Write for readers, not search engines

Think about what your readers want to hear from you and write with humans in mind. Very often, SEOs are writing only for the purpose of getting higher rankings, and they end up over-optimizing their content.

Use a friendly tone and be yourself.

8. Publish fresh content frequently

If you publish new articles on a daily or weekly basis, Google will crawl your website more often and will give you more authority.

With new content, you also get more chances of ranking for new keywords. Websites that rank higher tend to publish more content.

9. Make your website user-friendly

Your website has to be intuitive and very easy to navigate. The last thing you would want is users not knowing where to find your content. Create a good navigation system and place links to your best articles on the sidebars.

The better your website is, the more time the users will spend on it, and the higher the chances they will return

10. Improve website speed

Website speed is a ranking factor. Even if it’s not a critical one, it’s something to consider if you want to create a good overall user experience. Websites that load in more than 5 seconds can be labeled as slow by Google. 

Use Google PageSpeed Insights to get speed optimization suggestions.

11. Make your URLs user-friendly

Add your main keywords in your URL, but don’t make them too long. Shorter URLs are better for social media sharing as well. URL’s with more than four hyphens may look spammy.

Here’s an example of a correct URL structure for an article titled: How To Improve SEO and Traffic

Website.com/improve-seo-traffic

12. Use unique and relevant titles

Just as anything on your website, your titles have to be unique. Add your primary keywords in your titles. Ranking high without having the main keywords in your title is a very rare scenario.

Your titles have to be catchy and not longer than 55 characters.

13. Meta descriptions

By using a meta description, you give Google a summary of your content. Describe what your articles are about and use your main keywords inside. Use a unique and relevant meta description for every page on your site.

If you are using WordPress, download SEO by Yoast plugin and use it to customize your meta titles, descriptions, and keywords, its easy enough to use.

14. Use a sitemap 

A sitemap helps Google easily find your site’s pages and crawl them. If your website has thousands of pages, a sitemap is very important. 

There are numerous tools that can help you create a sitemap and even some WordPress plugins.

15. Create a good interlinking system

When publishing a new article, always place links to internal pages to improve the user experience. It’s the easiest ways to create one way backlinks to your pages. You have full control of the anchor text you are using, but make sure you are not abusing it. 

Each article you publish should contain links to other pages on your site. It helps increasing the average time per visit and decrease bounce rate.

16. Build smart links

Backlinks are critical for SEO. Without backlinks, your outstanding content will be lost somewhere between page 10 and 20. Follow link building best practices and create links that will help you improve your rankings in Google. 

Don’t waste your time building bad backlinks from directory or article submissions websites. Instead, try to build backlinks from authoritative websites. 

To increase your domain authority, you must get backlinks from reputable websites in your niche. Keep in mind that relevancy is very important. 

Think about quality and not about quantity. A good backlink can have a lot more value than a hundred of low-quality links.

17. Keep track of backlinks

Keeping track of your links is just as important as building them. Use Monitor Backlinks to know when any of your backlinks status changes. With our SEO tool, you can determine if a webmaster unfollows your backlinks or removes them completely. 

Many SEOs are building backlinks and then they completely forget about checking their status. That’s a very common mistake you should avoid.

18. Protect from negative SEO attacks

Unfortunately, negative SEO attacks are becoming more and more common. It sometimes happens that competitors want to penalize your website and knock you out of the first page from Google.

Most of the time, negative SEO attacks involve building hundreds or thousands of low-quality and spammy backlinks to your website.

To protect your website from such attacks, you have to keep an eye on all the backlinks your website is getting. Monitor Backlinks automatically sends you alerts when a new website links to you. If a negative SEO attack is unleashed against you, create a disavow report before it’s too late.

19. Monitor keywords rankings in Google

Another important SEO tip is to be up to date with your keywords rankings progress in Google. It will help you understand what has worked best and what has given best results.

By monitoring your rankings, you can also know if your competitors are outranking you.

Use Monitor Backlinks ranking tracker tool to see how your average keywords position is evolving along with your organic traffic.

20. Use social media to do SEO

While social media is not yet an SEO ranking factor, and it will probably not be in the coming future, you can use social media to do SEO. Use Twitter and Google Plus to outreach bloggers and build a relationship with them.

Once you get to know a blogger well enough, you can ask him to link to your articles.

Social media outreach is a great way to build backlinks and relationships.

21. Don’t rely just on Google’s traffic

Google is the main search engine, and even if it’s currently bringing you a good amount of traffic, your business should never depend solely on it. Think what would happen if an algorithm update would hit your site very hard. 

Recovering from any Google penalty is a time-consuming process, and sometimes it can take months before you’ll get your traffic back.

Diversify your traffic sources and find ways to drive traffic from other platforms as well.

22. Use Google Webmaster Tools

The use of Google Webmaster Tools is mandatory for any website owner. The free Google tool gives you insights and improvement suggestions for your website. If anything goes bad with your site, this is where you’ll find out first.

23. Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most advanced visitors tracking tool available, and you should take full advantage of it. It’s free and can give you a huge amount of details about the users visiting your site.

Use Google’s click maps to determine where users are clicking the most and find ways to improve your site.

24. SEO is never “done” 

Lots of SEOs think that their website is “done” and lose focus on optimizing. Hence why competitors take advantage and outrank them.

The truth is that your website is never “done” and you should never stop doing SEO. There are always new opportunities and SEO techniques you can try to make your website rank even higher.

25. Avoid using flash

Flash websites might look pretty and cool, but they are the worst for SEO. Google can’t understand Flash and Ajax, meaning it will be impossible to crawl your content.

26. Optimize images 

Use images to help readers understand your content better. Insert screenshots with examples, if appropriate.

Each image should have a relevant name, ALT tag, and description. Captions are also good for your pictures to describe with text what your image is about. By doing SEO for your images, you also get higher chances to rank high in Google Images.

27. Don’t link out to bad websites

Never place links to websites that are penalized or that are unrelated. When you link out to a website, you are vouching that you are trusting and recommending it as a good resource.

Analyze the website you want to link to, and determine if it’s valuable or not. Bad linking can get your website penalized.

If you are uncertain about the quality of a website, it’s best to use the rel=nofollow attribute.

28. Don’t concentrate on PageRank

PageRank is useless. I mean, literally, useless. Google has stopped updating the PageRank toolbar more than one year ago, and announced that it doesn’t have any plans to update it.

Your website’s PageRank is irrelevant. Try to improve your authority by building quality links.

29. Use a short domain

If you haven’t yet started to build your website, choose a short domain and try to create a brand around it. Exact match domains don’t have the value they used to have a few years ago, so there’s no reason to buy a long domain, just for the sake of having all your keywords inside it.

Pick a domain that’s easy to remember and pronounce.

30. Use a good SEO TLD

The most common domains are using the extension .com, but with millions already sold, it has become challenging to find good domains.

Choose a correct domain extension for SEO and make sure you can compete with the location you want to target.

31. Fix broken pages

Sometimes your website might have links to pages that don’t exist anymore. Use Google Webmaster Tools to identify these issues and fix them.

32. Don’t pay for backlinks

Paid backlinks are terrible for SEO. If you want to purchase advertising links or banners, make sure you are using a nofollow attribute to them.

33. Structure your content in Google Webmaster Tools 

You’ve probably seen the knowledge cards already. Google has started showing cards with information scraped from third party websites with links to the source.

To have higher chances of getting knowledge cards with your website, you can structure your website in Google Webmaster Tools and tell Google more about your website layout. To get started, simply click on ‘Search Appearance’ and then on ‘Structured data’.

34. Make your website mobile-friendly

Google has serious plans for forcing websites move to a mobile-friendly platform. In the coming weeks, Google will release a mobile ranking algorithm that will include usability factors.

Websites that have a mobile version will be labeled as such, and be rewarded with higher rankings for mobile search queries.

Conclusion

These 34 search engine optimization tips should help you take your SEO strategy to the next level. Follow the best practices and always be up to date with what’s new and what is working best.

Have I missed anything? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.

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Felix Tarcomnicu