At Go Fish Digital, we’ve noticed some interesting trends after working with several dealerships. Even though standard advertising channels persist in the Internet age, digital marketing is rapidly growing as brands recognize the ease in which they can reach their audience. Car dealerships can’t rely solely on the old standbys of 30-second TV spots, 60-second radio, and weekend print ads anymore. As consumer shopping habits continue to evolve and more people turn to the Internet, car dealerships need to understand and utilize the digital landscape. Digital marketing includes not just display advertising and search engine marketing, but search engine optimization, user-friendly web design, online reputation management, and online reviews tracking. To drive more customers to your location you need to implement proper local automotive SEO.

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What Is Automotive SEO?

Automotive SEO is an online marketing strategy that helps improve the visibility of car dealership websites on the search engines. Automotive SEO involves on-page optimizations, local SEO initiatives, structured data usage and more.

Prior to my current role, I spent two years managing marketing efforts for nine dealerships, and it was evident to me that strategic online advertising and search engine optimization was an essential component for attracting new customers. In my experience, leaving the TV to the OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturers) was evolving to be the best practice. Why fight for costly airtime when your money could be better spent on website updates, improving search engine rankings for certain local keywords, and working with local organizations to increase your visibility and trust in the community?

Over time, our dealerships’ marketing focus began to center around all things digital: PPC, Display, SEO, and online reviews. TV and radio were “necessary evils” that became increasingly difficult to tie back to positive ROI.

Digital efforts are essential for Local Car Dealerships for the following reasons:

• On average, car buyers spend about 12 hours searching the Internet when looking to purchase a vehicle. The Internet remains the #1 source for new vehicle research.
• Car buyers look at approximately 10 dealership websites before they become a qualified lead.

2015 market spending trends show that 28% of marketers reduced their advertising budget to fund more digital marketing while TV ad spends have remained flat, if they haven’t been cut back. Newspapers have also been hit by a 10% average decline in ad spending. Local news has been the hardest affected, experiencing an 11.6% decrease in 2014 vs. 2013. Meanwhile, in 2014 alone, the digital media spending in the U.S. jumped 15% to account for 30% of the market share.

Results from the August 2015 CMO Survey indicate that companies expect to increase spending on digital marketing 12.2% over the next 12 months, while traditional advertising lags with a growth rate of -2.1%.

Need more proof of the power of digital?  These trends are projected to continue over the next five years. Unlike digital, traditional ad revenues will remain flat, and analysts estimate that the total annual growth rate will only be around .04%.

As customers continue to shift more of their research and purchasing online, companies are following them. For instance, take Google’s continuously growing ad revenues and significant increase in mobile usage. The digital consumer doesn’t seem to be slowing down, and neither is the digital marketer.

So, what does this mean for car dealerships?

Historically, car dealers could just list their inventory in local papers or run a few gimmicky TV commercials and expect foot traffic and phone calls. Now, shoppers start their search on websites like EveryCarListed.com or TrueCar. Buyers compare dealerships, pricing, and online reviews before ever calling a dealership, contacting them via a web form, and most definitely before walking through the doors. Therefore, car dealership marketing efforts need to change to keep up with the times. Your presence online and in your local community can bear more fruit than any TV spot ever will.

If you’re are stuck running outdated marketing tactics, the following local automotive SEO strategies can help you push your local car dealership ad efforts into the future. While these tips will work great for car dealerships, any business serving a local area can implement these as well.

10 Tips for Local Automotive SEO

1. Your website matters

“You only get one chance to make a first impression” they say, and your website is the only first impression that over 90% of your potential buyers will get – so make it a good one! As of March 2015, there were close to 18,000 dealerships in the US. With the ease of purchasing online and the reach that each dealership has outside of their designated market area (DMA), more than ever your website needs to rank well to stand out against the competition. The goal is to have a website that is purposefully designed and maintained in such a way that you can rank high within Google’s search results.

Here are some quick tips:

• Aim for at least 400 words on your homepage
• Be sure to include your address and phone number on all pages of your site as well as all of the cities you serve
• Be sure your pages include a title tag, H1, meta description and image alt text and title if applicable
• Add a search bar and social sharing plugins

2. Provide content that’s useful

Search engines love fresh and relevant content. Digital content marketing efforts should focus on creating relevant and unique content that your customers will find valuable.

Does your dealership provide new and interesting content? Most dealers’ website changes are limited to updating inventory or listing any monthly specials. If your site’s content is limited to these routine updates it will be difficult for you to outrank your competitors.

Instead, create a blog or news section of the site with information about the cars you sell so you can add value to your potential customers. A good way to create local content that people in your DMA will want to read is by having someone in your IT department or social media team (if you have one) write a weekly blog post between 350-500 words. Remember, it isn’t all about you. Be a good steward of the community. Topics should include information that people actually want to know about. This could include:

• local events
• upcoming model launches specific to your brand(s)
• charity or fundraising opportunities
• local neighborhood news
• community construction that could impact residents and/or traffic

Car topics should also be written about regularly. Consider including tips on seasonal car maintenance, new model launches, current specials, holiday events, etc. Each post should be locally optimized, which means they include city and state information, along with title tags, alt text, and meta descriptions. Also do not forget to include an embedded GMB (Google My Business) map to your blog posts or the homepage of your site.

Of course, it’s important to include high-quality and unique images and/or videos with your car listings to help increase potential customers’ interest in your vehicle. Keeping the site fresh with daily or weekly updates and including unique and valuable information can set you apart from your competitors and will lead to improvements in your website’s rankings in search results.

3. Claim your Google Business page

If you haven’t already, you need to claim your business listing on Google My Business. It is a fast and easy way for businesses, products, brands, artists, and organizations to manage their online presence with Google.

A Google My Business page that contains the right information about your business can have a positive impact not only on your online traffic, but can make your business easier to find for individuals to view your inventory.

When setting up your account, be sure to have all of your contact details listed correctly, categories selected, times listed, a profile and header image as well as a description of your business. Ensure that the name, address and phone number (also known as NAP) associated with your business is listed in the exact same format on your Google My Business page and your website. You should always use the exact same NAP layout on all sites mentioning your business.

4. Implement AutoDealer Schema

Schema mark-up has been around for years, but is still being utilized by only a handful of websites. Integrating schema mark-up into your website can give you a leg up on your competition.

So what is schema?

Schema mark-up is an addition of code to your website to help search engines and site crawlers better understand the content on your site. It tells search engines not only what your data says, but what it means. For example, schema mark-up can be used to help search engines understand that the number listed on your website is a phone number. Or, it can help convey the difference between new and used inventory. It can also be used to identify user reviews and their rating of your business on a 1 – 5 scale.  Schema is also used by Google’s Knowledge graph.

Below is an example of schema markup influencing Google’s Knowledge graph for a local car dealership:

Schema can also power Google’s knowledge graph, increase user click through rates, and assist (even if indirectly) in improving search rankings. Studies have shown that websites using schema mark-up, on average, rank four positions higher than those that do not use schema mark-up. This higher ranking improves click through rates due to visibility. In short, websites that implement schema markup help search engines serve users higher-quality search results.

Pro Tip: Great schema mark-up options for car dealer websites include ‘hours of operation’, ‘address’, ‘reviews’, and ‘telephone’, to name a few. If you don’t have AutoDealer schema you should definitely add it to the backend of your site.

5. Get Citations

Mentions of your business’s name and address on other websites help validate your credibility in a community and establish trust with search engines and potential customers. These citations are important to help you rank highly in search engines such as Google and Bing. You can work to get your site listed on your local chamber of commerce website, reputable business directories, Facebook, and Yelp to name a few.

Using an aggregator tool is the easiest way to get more citations. When you use tools like Moz Local or Yext, your dealership’s details are published across a wide variety of directory sites in a way that ensures your Name, Address, and Phone number are listed consistently.

A visual example of how these aggregators push your information out can be seen below.

6. Increase the number of local organizations linking to your website

Inbound links from trusted websites are important if you want to improve your website’s ranking. Obtaining links from local websites and organizations can improve your site’s ability to rank highly for location-based search queries like “Car Dealers in Washington DC.”

To obtain these local links, car dealerships should think about all of the sponsorships and community events they participate in throughout a given year. These are great starting points for local links. For example, if you are donating to a local children’s charity, be sure you’re listed as a sponsor on the charity’s website. Many dealerships are already involved with local non-profits, sports teams, and car meet-ups. Obtaining mentions and links from these local groups can be as simple as requesting to be acknowledged as a sponsor or participant on the organization’s website. It never hurts to ask!

7. Mine Your Analytics

Maybe you don’t see yourself as an analytics buff, but website analytics can help your business in many ways. Analytics can help you identify your most popular content, top landing pages on your site from search engines, top website referrals, and discover which marketing efforts lead to the most conversions. A weekly review of your website analytics can keep you on top of which marketing efforts are working and which should be dumped.

8. Protect Your Reputation By Earning Positive Reviews

 92% of consumers read online reviews and 40% of individuals form an opinion about a product or service based on just 1 to 3 reviews (Jones, Ross. SEO Meetup Presentation.(2015, October 29). You may be losing measurable leads if your online rating is lower than 3 stars. Only 13% of individuals will do business with an organization that has an average review ranking of 1 or 2 stars (Jones, Ross. SEO Meetup Presentation.(2015, October 29).

To begin protecting your reputation by earning positive reviews, you’ll want to capture any low-hanging fruit by getting in touch with your existing customer base and inviting them to provide feedback on your business. Existing customers can help you identify if your business needs to make improvements or adjustments.

Next, after each sale, send an email to the customer asking if they were satisfied with their service/purchase. Most dealerships have very detailed questionnaires after a purchase. There are vendors that provide a service to dealerships that include a questionnaire and allow positive reviews to be automatically posted to social media and auto review sites. However, if you choose to not go through a vendor and your customer claims to have had a positive experience, you can ask them to leave a review on sites like Google My Business or Yelp. Other great sites for auto reviews include Cars.com, DealerRater and Edmunds.com.

Make it easy for your customers to leave reviews online. Greg Gifford recommends creating a page on your website that gives instructions to your customers on exactly how they can review your business (i.e. yourwebsite.com/review-us/).

9. Make Your Automotive Website Mobile Friendly

Mobile devices are changing the way people search for products and make purchases on the Internet. This is especially true for location-based search queries. Of the 30 billion mobile searches a year, 12 billion are local.

Having a mobile friendly website is required to help you stand out from your competitors and make it easy for users to interact with your website on their mobile devices.

When redesigning or updating your site, speak with your web team to ensure that your site will be mobile friendly.

 10. Kill Home Page Sliders

Stop using carousels or sliders on your web pages. My firsthand experience with slider tests found that the click-through rate of the first slide is abysmal. Even worse, only 3% of people actually clicked on the second slider. Need more evidence of the pain that sliders cause? This site highlights why carousels and sliders should be obliterated.

 11. Create Location Based Pages

One great strategy that we’ve seen car dealerships implement is creating localized pages for some of their key car brands. A customer progresses down the funnel, they might narrow in on the exact make/model that they’re looking to purchase in a certain geographic area. For instance, a user might search for something like “honda accord raleigh nc”. When searching this query, we found that a local dealership, Leith Honda, did a fantastic job of creating a page for this.

This page has the ability to show vehicles that are currently in their inventory that are sold in the Raleigh area. This is a great example of a page that can capture some really qualified traffic as the users have narrowed down their make, model and geography.

For dealers, it could be worthwhile to consider creating these types of pages for your most popular make/models. This will ensure your site has relevant landing pages that are matched to low funnel keywords users might be searching for.

 Conclusion

Digital efforts are essential to dealership survival. So, if you and your team are ready to move forward in the digital age of marketing, these local automotive SEO strategies and tips can help you push your local car dealership efforts into the future. Even if you cannot afford to hire a SEO company to help with your digital focus, these tips can be done in-house. It is also wise to remember that these strategies will not yield overnight success, local automotive SEO takes time. However, maintaining a consistent strategy, updating an outdated website, building up trust signals and ensuring your information is consistent among all outlets can help ensure success.

10+ Strategies for Automotive SEO is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

It’s not easy, but it’s absolutely manageable if you have the right tools at your disposal. While there are definitely pros to working from home, there are cons that you need to keep in mind.

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In this post, I wanted to share some of my tips and tricks that I have learned over the years on how to work from home effectively.  Check them out below.

Pros of Working from Home

Flexibility – Working from home is great because it allows your day-to-day life to be much more flexible. It’s great to know that if I need to take my son to the doctor, I can easily do that and when I get home, it doesn’t feel like I missed a beat. This is not only good for me as an employee but for most employers as well. Employers that offer a work-from-home option see employee turnover rates fall by over 50% along with higher morale and lower absenteeism than their 9-5 counterparts.

Saves Time and Money – A 2018 study found that, on average, no matter where you live in the US, employees save a considerable amount on gas by working from home. Employees in Atlanta, Georgia see the largest cost savings — the eliminated commute saves full-time remote workers about $555 per year and $278 for those working from home 50% of the time. Full-time, work-from-home employees in Atlanta also saved on average over 220 hours of commute time annually.

Increased Productivity – Think about it. There is no water cooler gossip, impromptu meetings, or noisy and distracting coworkers. While some can argue that this is also a “con”, in terms of productivity for the company this is a huge pro. 86% of those surveyed by SurePayroll back in 2016 said they preferred to work alone to “hit maximum productivity.” Managers also agree that remote workers increase their overall productivity when working from home.

It’s Going Global, and It’s Not Going Away – 79% of knowledge workers in a global survey by PGI said they work from home, and 60% of remote workers in the survey said that if they could, they would leave their current job for a full-time remote position at the same pay rate. That speaks volumes.

Environmentally Friendly – Companies can now be “greener”, reducing their carbon footprint and reaping more productivity by letting their employees work from home at least part of the time. A study by USPTO’s teleworkers showed a dramatic impact on reducing carbon emissions each year from teleworkers (uspto.gov page 3). When 5,044 teleworkers work from home four to five days per week, they collectively save $6,534,187 in gas a year and reduce emissions by 29,404 tons annually. So, for those that work from home at all, pat yourself on the back! You’re doing good and getting paid for it.

Remote Work Meets the Demands of Both the Younger and Older Generations – A robust 68% of Millennial job seekers said an option to work remotely would greatly increase their interest in specific employers. In addition to reaching Millennials, you can also attract the Gen Xer’s & Boomers who want to continue to work past “typical retirement”, says AARP with 37% eager to accept a job that offers work from home benefits.

Cons of Working from Home

Feelings of Isolation – While the stats point to increased productivity while working from home, there are also increased feelings of isolation. You miss the everyday office interactions and coworker camaraderie that we detailed above when you work from home. Things like being able to commiserate after a heavy client call or laughing over an inside joke with people can be challenging to manufacture if you work from home. 

Snacks, Lunches, Happy Hours, and other In-Office Perks – Who doesn’t love a free lunch? These kinds of food-based perks are a huge benefit of working in an office, so if you don’t, you miss that bit of excitement.  

Difficulty Establishing a Work Routine at Home – When you’re working from home, it’s easy to stay in your PJ’s all day, to let your morning coffee and news creep into the 10:30 hour, or to just let the day slip by without having made significant progress in your to-do list (assuming you made one). This can really throw your entire working life out of whack, affect your productivity, and make your bosses wary of your performance.

To address these, I have some tips and tricks that will help you overcome the cons.

Tips and Tricks to Work Well From Home

Here are some of my tried and true tips and tricks that I have learned over the last few years of working from home. These are things that work for me, but I would love to hear what works for you, or answer any questions that come up for you while reading this!

Create a Space that is for the Purpose of Work

Carve out a dedicated workspace in your home. I have an office in my house, but I know it’s not always possible to have a full room to yourself. To remedy this, some people prefer to work at the kitchen table in the morning and move to the couch in the afternoon. Others have a small desk somewhere in their homes. No matter your preference, make it your own and make it work-friendly.

Present Yourself and Your Space Well on Video Calls

You want to showcase a professional look and feel, even when clients or coworkers know you work from home. Every time I know I have a video chat, I make sure that I’m not wearing my PJ’s and I have at least a minimal amount of makeup on. I also make sure the background they can see is clean, clear of clutter, and looks professional. 

Don’t Skimp on What You Need

Find whatever office equipment works best for you and don’t be afraid to spend the money – you’ll be spending a lot of time in it, so make sure it’s something that you’ll be comfortable sitting in every day. For example, I work best with dual computer screens, so I have those and a separate mouse and keyboard. I also have a Varidesk, which I love. I can sit down and drink my coffee in the morning and stand late afternoon when I’m getting a little antsy. Also, as a perk of working for Go Fish Digital, our second-anniversary gift is money for a good office chair. I was able to get both a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing chair that fits into the rest of my office decor. I also purchased some solid bluetooth headphones that I use on all client phone calls, I personally love the Apple PowerBeats3.  

Establish a Morning Routine

I believe it’s great to establish a morning routine as if you were driving into the office.

Here’s mine, most days

• 5 or 5:30 am – Wake up and workout
• 6:00 am – Get a coffee, shower, listen to a brain stimulating podcast, get dressed 
• 6:40ish am – Wake up the house, clean, or pick out my kid’s clothes
• 7:00 am – Make breakfast, unload the dishwasher, get lunches ready, nag everyone along so they make it out the door on time
• 7:35 am – Wave goodbye as everyone heads out the door to work and school
• 7:40 am – Get a second cup of coffee, do hair and makeup, or drive the kids to school
• 8:00 am – Start work

Plan Your Days and Mark Your Shared Calendar Accordingly

Most of the people I work with don’t work remotely 100% of the time so I really try to make sure that my calendar reflects my availability. If I am going to the gym for lunch, I mark that hour as busy. If I am going to a doctor’s appointment, I set aside time in my calendar for both the drive and appointment time. That way I never have to leave early or miss a meeting because of my miscommunication.

Take Clear Breaks

This one was hard for me initially. I never used to take breaks, but I have found that they are essential and really beneficial for me mentally. I try to take a break for 5 minutes every hour or so, even if it is just to stretch. I also take two 15 minute breaks a day outside of lunch to either take a quick walk outside or do a load of laundry. 

Stay in the Know

Working from home is sometimes difficult for me because I can feel very isolated from what is going on outside of my four walls. So, I typically try to listen to the first 20 minutes of any news cycle just to get the headlines and top topics across the country. This actually helps with client interaction on calls. For instance, if there is flooding in California or a NorEaster in Boston, I’m able to use that as a talking point if needed in my conversations that day.

Go Fish also has a “Learning Opportunity” Slack Channel that includes podcasts, blog posts, white papers and more. This channel helps employees advance their skills by seeing what other colleagues find interesting and educational across the web. It’s a great resource to keep a pulse on what interests people as well.

Communicate Expectations with Others in Your Household (including animals)

Ensure that boundaries are set with friends, family and even animals that may be in the house while you work. For instance, if my door is shut, that signals to my family to try to keep the volume down (as much as possible) because I am on a client call. If I have my door open but my earbuds are in, they can be as loud as they want (just don’t bother me).

Pets are another distraction not only to you but to your clients. I am all for walking the dog as a break or throwing the ball during lunch, but for me, when I am working, my dog is not in the room. This ensures that there is no outside noise like barking or whining that my clients or colleagues will hear that could be distracting.

Eat Well

In my opinion, it’s nice to spend some money here as well. Invest in great “brain food” snacks. My go-to’s are almonds, avocado english muffins, trail mix (with M&M’s, obviously), and sometimes homemade popcorn.

Most days I prep my meals the night before (I’ve learned to do this the hard way). If I don’t prep my meal the night before I end up scrounging through the pantry or spending my entire lunchtime making a meal and cleaning up after it…no fun. Not to mention the potential extra calories you consume when you don’t plan. 

Limit Your Distractions (w/ Some Exceptions, Again be Self-Aware)

I try not to work with the TV on. I typically listen to podcasts or nothing at all. However, I have friends that keep the news on all day at low volume or flip on the History channel as background noise and get so much done. Music is also a good background noise option that can be helpful when trying to concentrate. Also, don’t let social media or app notifications suck you in. Remember, it’s their job to distract you. Just go into your phone settings, find notifications and choose which apps are the most distracting and disable their notifications. You can also put your phone on airplane or sleep mode during times that need intense concentration.

Leave the House

Sometimes, it’s good just to get out of the house. I try to do this on days where I have little to no client calls. There are a few go-to coffee shops with great coffee, atmosphere, and most importantly, great WiFi in my neighborhood so I try to take advantage as much as I can.

Now that you read through some pros, cons, and tips for working from home, here are a few tools that I use regularly to either get organized, account for my time, or stay in touch with co-workers. There are many more options, so feel free to add them in the comments section.

Communication Tools

• Slack – Slack is a collaboration hub where you and your team can work together to get things done.
• Calendars – Our office uses a shared calendar, and it’s wonderful for scheduling meetings.
• Google Hangouts – This is a really quick messaging option when you have a simple question for a colleague. You can also search your Gmail for past conversations – a really great tool.
• GoToMeeting – A must for me when scheduling client calls, presentations and screen shares
• Zoom – Another great video tool to use with clients.
• Basecamp – All of our company’s projects and tasks are stored here and it creates great transparency with clients. Other tools like Asana and Trello are good as well.

Productivity Tools

• Organize Your Email – I create labels and filters in Gmail. This helps me organize, store and keep my inbox clean. At the same time, important messages are easier to find.
• Keep Social Media at Bay – I keep social media accounts out of my bookmarks for easy access, but according to Fast Company, they also say you should log out of every account. If you don’t want to go that far, you can just work primarily in a private or “Incognito” browser window, so you are automatically not logged in. 
• RescueTime – This is a great tool to understand better how you are spending your workday. I use this because I want to know how I’m spending my time (Lite Version is free).
• Harvest –  Harvest tracks your time and I know a few friends who use this and really like it. 
• Unsubscribe from Non-Value Email Lists – You can use services like UnRoll.me which helps remove emails that you don’t want or read in bulk.

According to a survey of 1,000 hiring managers, 55% agree that full-time remote work is more common now, and they expect up to 38% of their full-time workers will be working remotely in the next decade.

So, whether you love working from home or hate it, the fact is that it seems to be growing in popularity with both employees and employers. If you ever get the chance to work from home, I hope some of these tips and tricks help you work from home effectively.

How to Work from Home Effectively is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

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If that sounds like you, this post can help! We know budgets can be tight, and some businesses have been burned by SEO before, so let us share with you some (fairly) simple tactics to earn legitimate backlinks to your site, all on your own with minimal resources required.

Work With Your Vendors for Quality Backlinks

Let’s start with the lowest of hangin’ fruit With this strategy, you will work with your own vendors to gain backlinks. If you already have some sort of business relationship with a person or a company, it is much easier to ask for a link, especially when you are the one giving them money. 

1.Testimonials

Some companies have a page on their site dedicated to testimonials. If a vendor you work with has a page like this, you could simply write a testimonial for them and provide it to them. If they do choose to post your testimonial to their site, you can then ask them to create a hyperlink of your company’s name  to your company’s homepage.  For example:

2. Case Studies

Some companies post case studies on their site detailing different successes. If that is the case with one of your partners or vendors, you could propose working jointly with them on a case study that they could post on their site. This benefits them as it highlights their capabilities and if they also include a link to your website, it benefits you as well. For example:

3. Guest Blog Posts

If your vendors or partners have blogs on their website, this can be a great opportunity to obtain a link from them. If they accept your proposal to write a high-quality guest blog post for them, then you can craft something really good, and it is natural to include a link (or multiple links, as long as it is natural) in the post.

4. Client or Partners Pages

 Many business websites have a page on their website which lists their Partners or Clients. It is great if you are included on these lists, and even better if that listing includes a link. Here is an example of a company that links to all of their partners:

Partners and vendors can be a great source of links because you already have a working relationship with them. One of the hardest parts about building links is establishing a reason for ‘why’ someone should link to you. In the case of your vendors and partners, this has already been established (you pay them for a service or partner with them), and thus the process is streamlined.

Analyze the Competition

There are a few different ways to analyze your competitor’s backlink profiles to look for potential opportunities for your website. My go-tos are Moz and Ahrefs. We also use Screaming Frog, BuzzSumo and Google Analytics. Sometimes certain tools miss things, so using at least two is best when trying to gather the majority of broken links.

Why do we look at competitor’s backlinks?

Because you are able to gauge your competition’s success in terms of content and it also gives you ideas of where they may be missing an opportunity or how you can follow in their footsteps.

5. Look for Branded Anchor Text that links to the Competitors Homepage

Looking at a competitor’s backlinks can be daunting, especially if they have thousands. However, if you just stick to searching for branded anchor links to the homepage, you can narrow your search. These types of links usually include things like guest posts where you can reach out to the journalist or company and offer your opinions and insight as well.

You might also find directories that are related to your industry. However, be cautious when signing up for directories and make sure the domain authority is relatively high and ideally it is very relevant to your industry.

For instance, we just began working with a large dry cleaning company recently, and we recommended they sign up for a couple of different legitimate directory sites like the first image below. However, we would never recommend a site like in the second image below.

The Difference Between Good Directory Sites and Spammy Ones

When determining if a directory site is spammy or not, it is good to ask yourself the following questions. Does the directory reject URLS and curate a quality list? This matters, because if the site accepts every URL, then it will be viewed by Google as more of a “free-for-all links” type site. Spammy sites are well known to Google and sometimes one of the most obvious ways to know if a site is spammy is if the site contains words like ‘submit link; or ‘add your URL’  – making it apparent that it was created for the purpose of creating links.   

Also, look at the quality of URL’s in the directory; are the other businesses listed high-quality companies? And lastly, is there is a fee, and what is the purpose of the fee? Typically a legit fee is used to vet companies, or to add value to the business requesting a link, like technical advice, marketing help, networking opportunities, a detailed profile, etc.

Example of a legitimate directory site:

6. Research Your Competition’s Content and Then Make it Better

Finding your competitor’s best performing content can give you an insight into what people are looking for from companies like your own.

You can use Ahrefs, or a different tool I’ve enjoyed using recently is BuzzSumo. You can use this to see what your competitor’s most popular content is and create your own content, but better. Then you can see which mediums are the best to promote it on. For example, if your competition is getting more shares from Facebook than Pinterest, you know there is likely an active audience for your content on Facebook.

7. Competitor Broken Backlink Reclamation

Another alternative is to check for any broken links that you competitor has. You can do this in Ahrefs fairly quickly. Once you have the broken link, you can then contact the site and let them know, and additionally offer your services and/or additional information to better the page.  

8. Find Recurring Links to Your Competitors

Look for informational and content oriented sites like Quora, Medium, Inbound.org and even Reddit that regularly link to your competitors. When you uncover these, you can determine how to add these to your own content promotion strategy. While researching, if you see certain journalists that link to your competition’s content, you can formulate how to reach out and offer your own insights and possibly new story angles for them to cover as well.

9. Create a Google Alert for Your Competitors

It’s dead simple to create a Google Alert. Just go to google.com/alerts and you will see, at the top of the page, a search bar where you can create your own alert. Type in the competitor’s name and then probably their homepage URL as well, and then choose how often you would like to be alerted.

Google Alerts are great because you will be immediately alerted of something that your competitor has done to receive a mention (and possibly a backlink). Armed with this information, you can use it to determine how you might get similar coverage and links. 

Find Opportunities Unique to You

10. Reach out to your Alma Mater

If you are an entrepreneur with some notable success, it may be a great time to reach out to your college and business school (if applicable) alma maters to see if they’d consider doing a feature on you and your growing business. Features on these blogs would result in .edu links, which would be a big link building win.

11. Chamber of Commerce in Your Area(s)

Membership in the Chamber of Commerce is not only a great way to build local contacts, but also an effective means to secure a strong backlink. Joining the Chamber of Commerce in cities where your company operates would result in a backlink for each city.

12. Job Listings, if You Are Hiring

Hiring? Create a job listing! Not only will it help you find viable candidates in your area, it can also lead to backlinks on sites like Career Builder and Indeed.

In Conclusion

Not all of these tactics will work for every company, but if you have the time to do at least two or three, you have a chance of expanding your backlink profile. Now, go get ’em!

12 Tactics You Can Use To Get Quality Backlinks is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

Some of the more important aspects of on-page optimization for as long as SEO have been a thing are title tags, meta descriptions and alt text. In terms of SEO, title tags matter – but it can also positively or negatively impact your CTR.

What are title tags?

Time for a breakdown. The HTML title element (otherwise known as a title tag) is one of the most important components of a web page when considering search engine rankings. These “tags” are written to describe the content on the pages they are titles for, and the search engines (sometimes, but not always) use them in the search results like so:

It is best practice to include the primary keyword you wish to rank for as well as your brand name. In this example you can see “Roast a Turkey” prominently in the title tag along with Butterball’s brand name.

When it comes to the length of your SEO optimized title tag, keeping it between 50 – 60 characters is best, because Google truncates titles that exceed their 600 pixel (or roughly 50-60 character) containers.

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In the early days of the web, the best way to rank well was to jam as many keywords as you could into the title tag. And while this achieved great rankings, a title tag like “Best mashed potatoes, how to mash potatoes, mash potatoes” was/is abysmal from a user-experience perspective.

So, now we focus on creating super enticing title tags that also include keywords. It gives the search engines what they want and attracts the user’s attention as well; a win-win.

A real world example

A client of ours was interested in increasing the CTR of a particular blog post that was rising in the rankings, but simultaneously experiencing abysmal CTRs. The keyword they were ranking for on page 1 was highly competitive with a MSV of 14,800 and competitive results from quality domains with strong Domain Authority (DA) over 80 and 90. These high quality sites exude trust signals to users who are familiar with them, making it difficult for other sites to move up based on their strong DA’s and CTRs.

Not only that, but Page 1 of the SERPs was cluttered with an answer box snippet and the “People Also Ask” accordion feature, drawing attention away from the results lower on the page.

Answer box snippet example:

“People also ask” accordion reature example:

So, after some digging we made the following suggestions:

Recommendation 1: With click-through improvement in mind, we suggested that the client adjust the title tag for the post – creating a more engaging snippet within the search results.

Recommendation 2: We also recommended a small meta description change to move the focus of the description to the first few words rather than the end, which could help pull people in more quickly and avoid truncation.

Results of how a good title tag increased CTR for our client

In the two weeks after our title and meta description changes were implemented, the following was achieved:

• CTR for that post more than doubled: from 0.9% to 2.05%
• The post became the 6th most visited on their blog. It had never cracked the top 10 before these adjustments.
• Downloads of the content on the updated page became the 2^nd most downloaded content on the site.

The updated post became an organic visit and download (their primary goal) powerhouse. Even though the ranking did not change in the short term, the CTR most definitely did.

Just like a juicy turkey, a juicy enticing title tags can really draw a crowd in.  So don’t overlook it as you work to grow your organic traffic!

How Title Tags Can Increase Your CTR is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.