More on SEO

User friendly

People should be able to quickly access your content no matter what device or browser they are using. It needs to be mobile-friendly and load quickly. It should be free of clutter, pop up ads, ad links, or anything deceptive. Content that is user-friendly is much more likely to be shared and is viewed favorably by the search engines.

Shareable

The ultimate goal of SEO content is not only to get people to read and enjoy it, but also for them to share it with others. Make it easy for people to share your content in social media by including share buttons to any social network that makes sense for the industry you are in.
They say “content is king” but that’s only true if the content is valuable to target audience members. Anyone can publish a flimsy, low-quality piece of content in order to hit a content quota. But that’s not going to have any significant positive impact on an SEO campaign. In fact, it could harm the campaign. Creating high-quality SEO content that’s going to improve the SEO campaign requires time and planning and resources. It’s hard work, and doesn’t come cheap, but it’s going to pay off in the end.

There is so much information on SEO I am constantly studying and learning and this is my full time job! If you own a business, study how to operate your business better or more efficiently or release new and better products but do not try to be an expert on SEO it just takes too long.

So you ask what can I do? I suggest that you read a bit to at least get conversational so you do not get taken to the cleaners. I suggest you ask more than one vendor and get a feel for the pricing and the company. I suggest a company that is somewhat close so you can meet them.  Remember no one is perfect but also I would not go with a vendor who asks for all of their money upfront you lose your leverage!

OK more to come and do not feel afraid to e mail me at jrossini@rossini.com or visit my web site at Rossini.com.

More to come!

Joe Rossini

More on SEO and getting ranked

Here is some additional information on SEO and its important:

CONDUCT KEYWORD RESEARCH

While it’s true that the search engines have evolved to understand the semantic meaning of a search and match relevant pages to long-tail queries, that doesn’t mean that keyword research and implementation has become obsolete. Keywords are still at the foundation of an SEO campaign and an SEO-focused content campaign. Content is going to generate organic traffic if targeted keywords are found in the title, tags, and body content. When brainstorming topic ideas, use the Google Keyword Planner tool to see how people are searching for a topic and target keywords that hit the “sweet spot”: keywords that aren’t too competitive but still generate clicks and traffic.

REVIEW EXISTING KEYWORD DATA

Content doesn’t always need to target brand new keywords, sometimes it makes sense to build upon the keyword implementation that has already been done. Look at keyword data in Google Search Console and AdWords (if you’re running Google PPC ads) to see what keywords are performing well and generating both traffic and conversions. Build content around these keywords to further strengthen your site’s relevance.

How to get better rankings from Google

From Axandra:

There are four simple rules that will help you to get your website on Google's first result page. These four rules even work with Google's new machine learning algorithm:
Rule #1: Do not cheat

Google wants to return the most relevant web pages for a search query. They want to provide the best answer to a search query.
If you try to get a high ranking for a keyword for which your web page isn't really relevant then you won't get good results. You might even be accused of spamming if you use tricks to get these rankings. If your website consists just of ads and affiliate links then it will also be extremely difficult to get good rankings.

Do not use tricks or "secret techniques" to get better rankings. Do not buy links and do not use any other "shortcuts" that promise quick results. Google will find out and your website will be in trouble. Tricks do not work anymore.

Rule #2: Show Google that your web pages are relevant

A website about used car parts cannot get high rankings for a keyword such as "brain surgery". A high ranking for the keyword "used car parts" would be very beneficial to that site.
The problem is that Google must be able to find out that your web page is relevant for the keyword "used car parts". For that reason, you have to optimize your web pages. Optimizing your web pages simply means that you make it easy for Google to find out what your website is about.
When Google visits your web pages, it will analyze the following elements of your web pages:

• The URL structure
• The title tag and the meta tags
• The body text
• Headline tags
• Image alt attributes
• Your site architecture and the internal linking structure of your site
• The outbound links
• Many other factors in the HTML code of your web pages

Each element can contain your keyword and show Google that your website is relevant for that keyword. This doesn't mean that you can simply insert your keyword in these tags and that's it.
You can also over-optimize a website and that can get your website banned from Google's search results. It's important that you optimize the right elements and that you insert your keywords in the right frequency. Analyzing dozens of web page elements can be very time consuming.The Top 10 Optimizer in SEOprofiler can help you to do this quickly and easily.

Rule #3: Other websites must confirm that your web pages are relevant

In addition to optimized web page content, Google heavily relies on the links from other websites to your site. Basically, the other websites have to confirm that your website is relevant for a special keyword.
The more websites link to your website, the more visible it will be to Google. The more other websites use a special keyword as the linked text in the links to your website, the more important is your website for that keyword.
A web page that has been optimized for the keyword "used cars" can also get high rankings for the keyword "pre-owned cars" if enough websites link with that text to the page.
It is also important that the other web pages are related your site. If a website that is about vintage cars links to your "used car parts" website then this will have a bigger effect on your search engine rankings than a link from a candy shop website.
A link from a web page that only links to car related web pages is also more valuable than a link from a web page that links to all kind of pages. Getting the right links is crucial if you want to get on Google's first result page. The tools in SEOprofiler help you to get these links.

Rule #4: Your website must have a clean history

The age of your domain and its history will also be considered by Google. Although Google says that the age does not matter that much, a domain name that has been around for a long time will get high rankings more easily.
However, if your domain name has been used by spammers before, you might still suffer from the ranking penalties that have been applied to the previous content.

If you follow the rules above and change your web pages accordingly, your website will get top rankings on Google. It cannot be done over night but it's definitely something that can be done within a few weeks if you do the right things.

2017 outlook for search

 An article from: Adam Audette   Senior Vice President, Organic Search, Merkle

In my outlook, 2017 trends will fall into the following categories:
Mobile The connection between device types will continue, resulting in richer and faster mobile experiences for users, with advances in PWAs and article formats like AMP. Apps will continue to have a place in the user experience, too, and indexing them for improved discovery will continue to be important. And dynamic sites and content will keep evolving.
Technical & Structural Work Structured data will get plenty of attention, too, as its application extends into virtually every field and device.
Speed will rule, and we’ll hear a lot about http/2 in 2017.
Link building for SEO purposes will continue its slow, welcome death, as marketers from social and content arenas rightly focus on marketing promotion and amplification rather than links for rankings.
Content Experience The SEO industry’s approach to the content experience will evolve. Search is one of the most powerful intent signals, and with data modeling allowing us to finally realize the promise of people-based marketing at scale, the user journey will be more personalized than ever in 2017. We’ll wait to see if that’s a good thing for users (we know it’s a good thing for marketers).

From Seth Bestmertick  a post that makes a heck of a lot of sense.:

The big trend in 2017, then, is a shift in mentality where your entire digital strategy (not just SEO) will be focused on understanding who your customer is, what they want, and using the data from search engines to better understand customer intent. By making something your customer needs – something that solves their problem – you will win the algorithm of the future.

More to come the above post makes a lot os sense because I tell my customers when we make keywords what will people search for to find you  Your articles on your website should also answer those searches. Yell them what they want to hear and answer those questions!

More to come soon.

Joe Rossini

Your mobile phone to be a point of sale in the future?

This is an interesting article and is heading our way fast!:More to come!

Visa, IBM make every connected device a possible point of sale

By Danny Parisi

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February 17, 2017

Visa is integrating its mobile payment platform with IBM’s IoT devices

Visa has partnered up with IBM Watson to bring its mobile payment system to all of IBM’s IoT-connected devices as consumers become more comfortable with the technology, driving mcommerce further into a futuristic era.
The partnership offers a unique opportunities for retailers by making almost any connected device into a potential point of sale. Visa’s latest effort reaffirms its commitment to taking payments out of the traditional setting and into a new mobile world.
“IoT is literally changing the world around us, whether it’s allowing businesses to achieve unimaginable levels of efficiency or enabling a washing machine to ensure we never run out of detergent. And behind this transformation are companies like Visa and technologies like IBM’s Watson IoT platform,” said Harriet Green, general manager, IBM Watson IoT. “This combination of IBM’s industry leading IoT technologies with Visa payment services, signifies the next defining moment in commerce by allowing payments on any connected object, with new levels of simplicity and convenience for everyone.”
Global mobile payments
In the years since the introduction of proper mobile payments, the payment world has only continued to change and evolve.

Mobile payments have exploded the longstanding conception of how transactions can work, showing that they do not have to take place in the same settings, under the same rules they always have.
Instead, mobile payments have shown that payments can go anywhere. Already we see waiters swiping diners’ credit cards right at the table with a mobile device, or Amazon dash buttons that let consumers quickly purchase a vital product with nothing more than a single button press.

How you can find clients

As a veteran salesperson I have used a variety of ways to make sales and find leads. One way is simple and that is go to your customers and ask them if they know of anyone to call on. Another is to make calls around your customer and tell them a story of your customer to get you in the door and usually it works. How about using the phone and make telephone calls? Yes this is work but it does work! Set up your week with calls to an area.  How about sending out an e mail newsletter once a month or a quarter. let people know you are around and what you are doing. Do not forget social media use it and use it often it does work.  OK use these steps and I know you will succeed. Sales and such can take time but they will come.

More to come soon.

Joe

ADWords is not an easy thing to do.....

Tip #1: Take time to read the documentation

It’s deceptively easy to start an AdWords campaign and begin wasting, oops, I mean spending money immediately. Why? Google doesn’t let you complete your AdWords account setup without first creating an ad and making live.
It’s much more difficult, however, to make your campaign effective. AdWords has an incredible number of moving pieces. You have the Search and Display networks, remarketing, plus all the add-ons: extensions, dynamic insertion, bid adjustments by device and so on.
It really helps, therefore, to take the time before opening your account to read through Google’s documentation. That way, you can decide where you want to place your focus — and your budget.
Google does a nice job of explaining exactly how AdWords works. I advise taking at least a week or two to read through the Setup and Basics guides — and be sure to watch the videos, as they’re quite helpful. Do this learning in small chunks of time so that you retain what you read.

This was posted by an SEO specialist and notice his first tip:  advise taking at least a week or two to read through the Setup and Basics guides — and be sure to watch the videos, as they’re quite helpful. Do this learning in small chunks of time so that you retain what you read.  I ask how many of you have the time to spend weeks! If you are building or running a business you are worried about other things like making sales, meeting payrolls, paying taxes and more.  Do the right thing...hire an SEO specialist to help you, it is well worth the money to do so!

More to come

Joe Rossini

Let SEO work for you!

Work

Some people think that search engine optimization is a one-shot thing, or that SEO can be done on auto-pilot. Unfortunately, that doesn't work.
If you want to succeed, you have to invest a lot of time and effort in your search engine optimization activities. There are several things that you have to do to make sure that your website becomes a success: keyword research, optimizing pages, fixing technical errors, etc.
Without investing time and work into your web pages, you won't get the best results.

When we at Rossini.com tell our customers that it takes time to let SEO work. You must let your expert continue to work on yur web site and internal programming. You need to continue to upgrade your web site with new content and much more. Rossini.com assist our customers to remain updated. Recently I went into to two of my valuable customers and updated the keywords and description.  These are things we do.

More to come.

End of an ERA

This sad and happy all at the same time. For years I have worked and my faithful servers spun away right beside me but now we turn them off and go to faster and newer servers!

A mention on Brenda's blog: http://rossiniblog1.blogspot.com/

Leads, sales, new customers....

If you need more leads, make sure your website is up to date. Up to date means it has to be responsive and the internals are correct.  You should have internal and external links to other good websites. You should have a reputable SEO company helping you out with marketing. You should use at least for a bit Google Adwords to bring in verified leads. Offer your customers new and exciting things and much more....

More to come..

Oh yes we update web pages, we do SEO, we do Adwords and we help market!

Walmart taking on Amazon!

Today, Walmart announced its latest attempt at leveling the playing field, and it looks like it came straight out of Amazon’s playbook: free two-day shipping on more than two million products.
It looks like Amazon Prime, but there are a few twists:

• Walmart isn’t charging a membership fee. Amazon Prime is $99 per year, or $10.99 per month.
• Walmart requires a minimum $35 purchase to get free two-day shipping. Amazon Prime has no minimum purchase level.
• Walmart’s offer covers about two million items. Amazon Prime reportedly includes 40 million items.

Of course, Amazon offers Prime members several other benefits beyond free two-day shipping: free same-day delivery in certain areas, free two-hour delivery in some areas via its Prime Now product, unlimited media streaming via Prime Video and Prime Music, Amazon Dash button ordering and more.
Prime has been a huge success for Amazon. Analysts estimate that Prime has 65 million members in the US who spend $1,200 per year with Amazon — about double what non-Prime customers spend. One recent survey revealed that 30 percent of Prime members place at least one order per week from Amazon.
Marc Lore, Walmart’s head of US e-commerce, says today’s shipping announcement “is the first of many moves we will be making to enhance the customer experience and accelerate growth.” He also called free two-day shipping “table stakes” in today’s e-commerce landscape. Lore is the co-founder of Jet.com, the e-commerce startup that Walmart bought last year.

Google strikes again..this could be neat

Google launches Ads Added by AdWords pilot: What we know so far

In the new test, ads based on existing ad and landing page content are added to ad groups by Google.

Ginny Marvin on January 31, 2017 at 12:38 pm     

• Automation is nothing new in AdWords, but this month, Google launched a pilot that adds new text ads to advertisers’ accounts. Dubbed Ads Added by AdWords, the program started on January 26.

Not surprisingly, this news has set off alarm bells among paid search managers that worry about Google usurping control over the ad creation and testing process. Here is what we know so far about this test.
The initial set of advertisers were notified of the pilot on January 12. For those that chose to participate, ads were added to ad groups two weeks later, on January 26, at which time a second wave of advertisers were notified about the pilot. Currently, 2,000 accounts have been selected for the test. Each has a two-week opt-out window via a form. If you do not receive an email, you haven’t been selected for the pilot.
What accounts were considered for this program? Google looked at campaigns with ad rotation settings of either “Optimize for clicks” or “Optimize for conversions” that have ad groups with few ads in them.
If you’ve opted out of automated extensions or are in a vertical with privacy sensitivities such as pharma, your account was not selected for this program.
How are the ads generated? We’re told that for the test, the ads were generated by people (as opposed to auto-generated) based on the existing ads in the account and the landing page content. The ads went through review by the product team, among others, for quality assurance. The sales teams were also involved in creative review and account selection for the pilot.
From the Help Center page on this new program, we also know that any ads generated for the pilot will be labeled “Added by AdWords.” In the example below (yes, all of the ads are terrible, but try to look past that for now), Google has added two test ads in an ad group that had just one ad. Notice that the headlines, description and paths are all being tested.

Google says on that Help Center page, “We believe that adding more ads to the affected ad groups can improve these ad groups’ performance by 5 to 15%.” The new ads are set to run indefinitely, and Google recommends pilot participants not pause the ads. Theoretically, if they perform worse (based on conversion or click-through rates), the ads will be shown less. But certainly, review the ads if you’re participating in the test, as Google also advises.
This program obviously raises more questions about advertiser control and the role of machine learning in ad creation. If Google deems the pilot successful and rolls out Ads Added by AdWords more broadly, it’s hard to see how the current ad creation and vetting process can scale without automation. One can assume that the machines will be learning from this pilot.
If you think you might miss the notification email from Google about this test, Frederick Vallaeys has written a script for MCC accounts will send an email if it finds automatic ads: https://gist.github.com/siliconvallaeys/a42e247d7923a3181b0a9eb7332fdbad